From Lincoln Lawyer to LinkedIn Lawyer: How Law Firms are Winning on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is not important for lawyers until it is. The majority of lawyers spend on average one minute on LinkedIn, mainly to accept new connection requests and quickly browse through a few posts. However, utilizing LinkedIn in this manner can be similar to using a smartphone solely for making phone calls.

From setting up the account to boosting your social selling index, LinkedIn provides a clear path on how to build your online reputation and acquire leads.

Building LinkedIn Lawyer's profile

When building your LinkedIn profile as a lawyer, it's important to keep three main objectives in mind:

Marketing: Law firms rely on new clients to generate income. Finding long-term clients who can provide consistent income for the next 5 to 10 years can be challenging. Acquiring new clients is crucial for the firm's success, and it's not just the firm's responsibility. Partners and associates are essential to the firm's operations. Without them, there would be no product or process to bring in income. So, involving these people in marketing and advertising is vital. LinkedIn provides an excellent platform for this purpose.

Attracting New Talents: On LinkedIn, younger students see your profile, articles, and posts. They admire your experience, positioning, branding, and reputation both inside and outside the law firm. They want to be like you. Law firms stay successful for centuries due to fresh ideas, an enthusiastic approach, and a thirst for learning. Every lawyer, whether a partner or a junior associate, should be a role model for new joiners and students who dream of being part of the law firm.

Sharing Knowledge: When you join LinkedIn, you're there to learn and share with others. But sharing doesn't mean talking about your daily routines or personal feelings. Instead, it's about passing on valuable knowledge and teaching others something new. Lawyers may find it challenging to know what can be shared due to confidentiality in projects and processes. However, there are always things that can be shared within the limits of allowed information.

Components of a good-looking profile

Building a professional and attractive LinkedIn profile for a legal expert or lawyer involves several key steps.

• Profile Picture: Having a profile picture is crucial on LinkedIn because it creates the first impression of you. It's the most important part of your profile, yet many people overlook it and leave it blank. If you don't have a profile picture, it's likely that people won't send you connection requests, and they may not accept yours either.
• Headline: Your headline is an important part of your LinkedIn profile. It should explain what you do and showcase your expertise. Remember, when someone searches for you on LinkedIn, they definitely looked other lawyers' profiles as well, and their first comparison will be based on picture and headline. In your headline, highlight what sets you apart from others and use keywords instead of full sentences. Take a look at your colleagues' and competitors' headlines to get ideas.
• Summary: The summary section is where you can share more details about yourself, including your achievements, skills, and the value you bring. Avoid using unnecessary words and focus on using clear and important information that helps others understand who you are.

Instead of writing

"I am a highly skilled and accomplished corporate lawyer, specializing in the dynamic field of Legal Tech. My expertise in this niche area allows me to navigate the intersection of law and technology with finesse and precision. In addition to my legal practice, I hold the esteemed position of professor at Mannheim University, where I have the privilege of imparting knowledge and shaping the minds of future legal professionals. Notably, I am a published author with a track record of three influential books that have garnered recognition within the legal community and beyond. Furthermore, I have contributed to the academic discourse by publishing a remarkable 72 articles in reputable journals, sharing my expertise and contributing to the advancement of legal scholarship."

Just write

"Corporate lawyer with Legal Tech specialization, professor at Mannheim University, author of 3 books and 72 articles."

Another challenge is finding the right balance between being concise and using all the available characters in the LinkedIn Summary field. In your summary, you can talk about your abilities, skills, accomplishments, plans, processes, and approaches. It's important to keep things brief and avoid unnecessary words, while still providing a very detailed and comprehensive summary about yourself. Using bullet points or short paragraphs is key to making it easy for others to read and understand.

Experience, Education, 50 Skills, Projects:

Take the time to not only list your past experiences but also describe them in at least three bullet points, explaining your specific responsibilities and tasks in each role.

Make sure to include your educational background and certifications on your profile. Similarly, showcase your projects while maintaining confidentiality for sensitive information.

LinkedIn allows for only 50 skills to be added, so ensure you reach that number by including not just legal skills, but also skills in leadership, process and project management, technology, and more. This will demonstrate to clients that you are capable of handling various types of legal projects.

Recommendations: Don't forget about recommendations! Request testimonials from satisfied clients, colleagues, or supervisors. These recommendations provide social proof and boost your credibility. Offer to provide recommendations in return to build a mutually beneficial network.

Increasing Social Selling Index

Many people are unaware of SSI and miss out on the opportunity to assess their performance on LinkedIn. The Social Selling Index (SSI) on LinkedIn is a score that ranges from 0 to 100, indicating how well you use the platform for social selling. Although there isn't a specific number that defines a "high" SSI, generally, a score above 70 is considered strong and shows that you have an effective social selling presence on LinkedIn.

Consultants, sales professionals, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and lawyers can all benefit greatly from having a good Social Selling Index (SSI) on LinkedIn. Lawyers should pay attention to their SSI because selling legal advice is highly dependent on personal connections. By positioning yourself effectively on LinkedIn, you can attract more clients to your legal services.

Having a high Social Selling Index (SSI) on LinkedIn offers many advantages. It can enhance your professional reputation, help you expand your network, and attract new clients. It also increases your visibility and establishes you as a leading legal professional in your field. Most importantly, it allows you to become a thought leader. The SSI provides a rare opportunity to receive a grade for your positioning and progress in your professional development.

There are numerous articles available on increasing SSI, but here's a brief list of tips to improve all four areas of it with simple actions:

• Fully complete LinkedIn profile
• Share content (posts boost SSI better than articles)
• Join groups
• Get 10.000+ connections
• Seek and provide recommendations
• Use advanced search (filter by at least 4 categories)
• Contact people fewer people regularly, rather than many people once a week
• Use Sales Navigator
• Like, comment, and share posts of others
• Get likes, comments, and shares from others
• Stay consistent

Building LinkedIn Department

Implementing a simple strategy can help large law firms gain an additional 100,000,000 impressions on LinkedIn each year.

An Inhouse LinkedIn department that focuses on involving lawyers in regular LinkedIn activities.

You have 1000 lawyers, and each of them writes one article and two posts on LinkedIn every month. The topics are already chosen, the banners are ready to use, and the structure is pre-defined by the LinkedIn Department. The department will also review, approve, finalize, and package the content to ensure quality and consistency.

Every single one of the 1000 lawyers shares a common goal: to increase the law firm's presence on the most important professional platform. They support each other in achieving this goal, while also spending less time on providing valuable content and establishing a giant source of legal information.

Is this strategy realistic? Absolutely! However, it relies on partners effectively communicating the importance of the campaign to their associates.

Can it bring advantages? Absolutely! The law firm that implements this strategy will strongly outshine and outperform other firms on the platform.

It's a global marketing and content generation strategy that opens new opportunities for lawyers and unifies all practitioners of the firm under a common objective.

Here is the step-by-step process for lawyers:

1. Lawyers send 100 connection requests every week.
2. The LinkedIn Department (LD) provides 24 topics for posts and 12 topics for articles.
3. Lawyers create 2 posts and 1 article per month based on pre-defined topic and structure.
4. LD prepares banners, improves the posts and articles, and schedules them.
5. LD analyzes the results and adjusts the strategy as needed.

After 2 years, each lawyer in the firm will have:

• Written 24 articles
• Shared 48 posts
• Established 10,000 connections
• Reached 200,000 impressions

Mistakes on LinkedIn

• Not organizing connection campaigns: To make the most of your LinkedIn profile, it's important to regularly choose whom you want to connect with and add to your network. Having only 500 connections may not bring many benefits. Take the time to search for people, filter by sectors, companies, and locations, and send them messages to connect. Some people believe you should only connect with those you already know, but imagine if the same rule applied at offline conferences - you would never expand your network and would only stay connected to the same people. Even if your account is perfect, it won't have much impact if nobody can see it.
• Too personal, less professional: Sharing personal posts or unrelated topics on LinkedIn is not appropriate. LinkedIn is a professional network, and platforms like Facebook and Instagram are more suitable for sharing personal aspects of your life. By posting non-professional content on LinkedIn, such as your photos, daily routines, or personal stories, you may not be taken seriously by colleagues, clients, and competitors. It's important to maintain a professional image and focus on sharing relevant and valuable content related to your expertise on LinkedIn.
• Lack of Consistency: Not being consistent in your posts and interactions with your network can make others think you're not engaged or not committed. To avoid this, it's important to establish a regular presence on LinkedIn. Share valuable content, join discussions, and showcase your expertise on a consistent basis. As a lawyer, finding time for articles and posts may be challenging, but it's crucial to allocate some time for this activity, as it's an essential part of your personal and firm's marketing. Many people tend to prioritize marketing last, but don't make that mistake and neglect this important aspect of your business.
• Not setting profile viewing to "Private Mode": Whether you're a hiring lawyer, partner, or junior associate, it's important to have the freedom to visit other people's profiles on LinkedIn without being visible in the profile visit history. This avoids confusion or potentially compromising your contact approach preparations.
• Ignoring Professional Groups: Not joining and engaging in relevant professional groups can restrict your networking opportunities and limit the sharing of knowledge. It's beneficial to have a wide range of contacts and be visible within your network, but to expand beyond that, consider joining alternative groups focused on specific topics like legal tech, agile law, e-learning in legal education, Six Sigma in law, and more. This allows you to connect with legal experts and professionals in specific areas of interest.
• Sharing too much or too often: According to some marketing experts, bombarding people with content is considered one of the highly effective strategies for building a brand. However, in the legal field, this approach may not work so well. Lawyers are often busy with cases, and if they constantly publish numerous articles and posts every week, it may give the impression that they are overly focused on marketing rather than their legal work.
• Not liking and commenting on others: It's important not to overlook the value of liking and commenting on other people's posts. To maintain a high Social Selling Index (SSI), it's necessary to engage with others. Just because you create content doesn't mean you should ignore content created by others. By being attentive to their posts, you can learn and gain insights. Liking three posts daily and leaving one comment will help you stay active and engaged in communication and interaction.
• Not using LinkedIn Learning: Lynda is a valuable part of LinkedIn journey where you can gain knowledge on various topics. By completing LinkedIn courses and earning certifications, not only do you acquire valuable knowledge, but LinkedIn also promotes your profile.

Whether you're a lawyer at a large international law firm or a small local German firm handling local cases, LinkedIn opens doors to vast opportunities and connections with promising prospects. Create an outstanding profile, share your expertise through articles and posts, and build your professional brand. By doing so, clients will find their way to you, unlocking new possibilities for your legal career.