Of all the social media platform options, the professional network of LinkedIn should be part of every lawyer’s marketing plan.  Not having a profile on this well-respected platform puts you in the dark ages category of doing business in today’s marketplace.  If your clients are using it, your competitors are using it, your prospects are too – then so should you!

According to the 2016 ABA Legal Technology Survey report, more than 93% of lawyers surveyed now use LinkedIn.  As the survey indicated, among the respondents who personally use and maintain a presence in a social network for professional purposes, over four-fifths of every law firm reported a presence in LinkedIn including: 85% of respondents from frms of 2-9 attorneys, 91% of solo respondents, and 99% each of respondents from firms of 10-49 and 100 or more attorneys.

LinkedIn offers a variety of marketing opportunities for lawyers.  It’s a great way to showcase your work and experience, and respectable way to maintain regular contact with clients, prospects and referral sources.  It’s also used by many attorneys as a source of information for educating themselves about a new practice, new facet to an existing practice, or just updates and news on what’s happening in the legal industry overall – business, trade, legal or news unique to a particular company or individual.

If you choose to be active in LinkedIn, be sure your profile is regularly updated and provides a comprehensive overview of what you do.  I typically recommend lawyers ensure their LinkedIn profile is synced with the bio maintained on their respective law firm website.  For some attorneys, LinkedIn offers even greater opportunity to provide expanded bio information than that provided under the template used on their law firm website.   Also be sure to keep your LinkedIn profile current – when updating the bio on your firm’s website, those same updates should be applied to your LinkedIn bio.

LinkedIn is just as the name implies, it’s a way to link to and connect with other professionals.  These could be new contacts you’ve recently made or contacts from ions ago that you’ve been thinking about reaching out to – LinkedIn is a comfortable, non-threatening, non-intruding way of reigniting those old relationships and builidng new ones.

If you’re not sure how to get your profile established, need help populating it with content and then fully leveraging it – give us a call.  We’re happy to help steer you in the right direction so you can begin using this valuable business development tool.  Contact us today at info@firmevolution.com.