(800) 854-6735
Social media can be one of the most powerful tools for lead generation and branding for your law firm—and the increasing use of these connection-based platforms is making a significant impact on the legal industry as a whole. Social media offers lawyers a new pathway to connect with prospective clients, earn referrals, expand professional networks, and build essential awareness and credibility online.
From making it easier than ever to target and engage with your ideal clients to bringing critical conversations around confidentiality and professional ethics to the forefront, we explore the impact of social media on the legal industry with statistics, challenges, and benefits outlined in this guide.
Why Lawyers Can’t Ignore Social Media
- 80% of law firms use social media
- 84% of firms find new clients through organic social media
- Broad benefits, from lead generation to professional networking
Social media is a go-to marketing channel for 80% of law firms today, according to the American Bar Association’s 2024 Legal Technology Survey Report. Without a voice on the most-used social platforms for lawyers (LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, according to the report), your top competitors will dominate these digital spaces and easily engage with the prospects you’re hoping to target.
Lead generation is the name of the game for lawyers on social media, with 84% of firms using social networks as a reliable channel to find, nurture, and convert leads. Just 42% successfully generate leads from search engines, with 41% relying on word of mouth and 26% getting lead referrals from professional directories.
Another ABA report found that lawyers rate social media as an invaluable tool not just for lead generation, but also for professional networking and career development, building brand awareness, and case investigation.
Whether you’re posting regularly to engage and educate your community, find new prospective clients, or uncover information to support a legal case, it’s clear that social media’s impact on the legal industry is significant.
10X Your Leads Without Blowing Your Budget
A rock-solid B2B content marketing funnel will keep the leads flowing and preserve your marketing budget. Watch our on-demand webinar and learn how to 10X your leads with a holistic marketing strategy.
Navigating Social Media Challenges as a Lawyer
A majority of practices are implementing social media strategies for lead generation, but not without facing some common challenges. By taking note of the key issues and hesitations that lawyers face when making social media part of their marketing strategy, you can position yourself to overcome these pitfalls.
- Time: Busy legal professionals struggle to make time to find, post, and engage with content on social media.
- Best practices: Uncertainty about when to post, which platforms to be active on, or what to post as a law firm can hamper social success.
- Content: Coming up with plenty of interesting, relevant, and engaging content to share can be time-consuming and tedious.
- Consistency: Posting content on a regular basis can be challenging for any lawyer, especially if you use more than one platform.
- Ethical/legal guidelines: With strict state bar association rules for advertising, confidentiality, and client solicitation, lawyers may struggle to know what’s okay to post on social media.
Navigating these challenges is easier when you find solutions before you and your team start getting active on social media. Try these approaches:
- Use technology with features to automate and optimize your social media posting process, like scheduling posts to share at the optimal time of day for engagement, cross-posting your content to multiple platforms, and helping you discover new, share-worthy industry content.
- Engage your staff to be digital advocates for your firm with an employee advocacy program, motivating them to share and amplify approved company content on their personal pages to help your firm engage their personal connections.
- Commit to posting consistently to grow your legal practice with social media, aiming for anywhere from 5-10 posts per week.
- Share behind-the-scenes content to build trust and engage followers, like showcasing employee milestones, sharing how your firm got started, and announcing exciting news and developments.
- Provide clear guidelines to staff members who will be posting on your firm’s social media accounts to avoid sharing confidential information or specific legal advice that may create inadvertent client-attorney relationships.
Maximize Your Social Media ROI With Corporate Posting
Social media is a powerful top-of-the-funnel tool and can boost your B2B content marketing ROI, especially with the right tools. Download our e-book and learn how to maximize your social ROI with corporate posting tools from Clearview Social.
6 Ways Social Media Can Benefit Your Firm
From connecting with new clients to building strong community ties and brand awareness, social media holds a lot of promise for law firms. Here are key ways social media can benefit your firm.
- Find new clients: According to a recent iLawyer Marketing survey, 48.8% of clients looking for legal advice online said they use Facebook or Instagram as key research methods before hiring a law firm. Being active on social media and engaging your staff to amplify your firm’s content makes it possible to find and engage these prospects.
- Stay competitive: When 84% of law firms are already using social media to generate and nurture leads, establishing a strong social presence helps you stay competitive in the digital space.
- Grow your network: Professional development opportunities are abundant on social media, making it easy to connect with other legal professionals, engage in discussions, provide key insights, and establish beneficial collaborations.
- Build brand awareness and trust: A strong social media presence lets people know about your law firm, and using your accounts to post informative, engaging content while building your follower count and gaining endorsements can establish social proof to help you build trust and stronger client relationships.
- Earn more referrals: When current and past clients can direct their connections to your social media pages, you can earn more referrals and achieve consistent growth.
- Boost ROI: When using technology to automate and simplify social media marketing tasks, your hands-on time is minimized as lead generation, conversions, and referrals increase—boosting your ROI and giving you more time to focus on billable tasks for clients.
Social media's impact on the legal industry is broad and beneficial—it's a reliable channel to find clients, offering firms a way to stay competitive in the digital space, grow professional networks, build brand awareness and trust, earn referrals, and boost ROI. With the right automation and management tools in place, social media can be a ground-breaking part of your firm's digital marketing strategy.
Put Social Media to Work for Your Firm With Clearview Social
Establishing a strong social media presence holds the most promise for firms who are pursuing a path to scalable growth—and Clearview Social can help. Our social media automation tools simplify social media marketing for law firms, offering you a hands-off way to tap into the vast network of prospective clients seeking legal assistance on the most popular networks.
Automatically source and schedule a consistent stream of engaging content for your social media pages with one-click sharing, then use our AI-powered PeakTime™ tool to ensure your posts go live at the optimal time for reach and engagement on every social platform you use.
Give staff members role-based access to your automated sharing tools to instantly amplify your firm’s content, and help your firm build a powerful presence on social media with real-time analytics that keep your progress and ROI metrics at your fingertips. See how Clearview Social can power your law firm’s social media success by scheduling a free demo now.
Tap Into the Power of Employee Advocacy With Clearview Social
Clearview Social provides user-friendly tools and actionable insights to empower your employees as brand advocates. Book a demo and learn how Clearview Social can optimize your B2B content marketing funnel with employee advocacy.