Social Media for Lawyers

The mushrooming popularity of social media creates novel legal issues to be resolved, as well as a lot of opportunities for mistakes by lawyers and their clients. Wake up! How can you answer your client’s questions or warn them about potential legal infractions, if you aren’t familiar with the medium? Could you be completely missing a good business development opportunity?

Many lawyers tell me their clients don’t use social media, but have they really checked? Or is that just an assumption? How do you check, if you don’t engage in social media yourself? Not long ago I spoke to about 50 lawyers, most of whom knew very little about social media. The room got very quiet when I started putting up on the screen the logos of their clients who had Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. If you asked your clients last year whether they used social media, they may have a different answer now. Could your competitors be enhancing their relationships with your clients via social media, while you remain oblivious?

Even if your clients don’t officially have a social media presence, their employees, customers, or competitors may be posting things that affect your clients. When they ask you what to do about it, how will you be able to advise them if you don’t understand what they are talking about?

Here are some examples of how you might be called on in your law practice to address social media issues.

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