The key finding of our latest LinkedInfluencers Report? Many law firm leaders are still MIA on LinkedIn!

Wednesday marked the day all you eager LinkedIn-posting beavers have been waiting for: the publication of TBD’s LinkedInfluencers Report for Q2 2024.?

News of our latest ranking of the top 100 legal voices on LinkedIn has been spreading like wildfire across the platform, and our report has already broken all previous records in terms of numbers of both likes and downloads.

To celebrate our latest publication, this week’s newsletter delves into some of the trends that emerge from our Q2 LinkedInfluencers Report – chief among which is the fact that law firm leaders still need to be braver when it comes to posting on LinkedIn. But we’ll get to that…

What’s new in this quarter’s LinkedInfluencers Report?

Those of you who have already downloaded the report will instantly have noticed that it’s much bigger and even more informative.

We’ve broadened the scope of our report to include not only the top 100 voices at the UK’s 200 biggest firms by revenue, but also the top 20 barristers, the top 20 independents working at SRA-regulated businesses (this section of the report also comes with a foreword by the inimitable Amy Cousineau Massey ), as well as the top 20 law firm leaders.

Next, we’ve also brought you a page-by-page profile of this quarter’s top 20 posts, complete with their stats, a screenshot of and a link to the original post, plus a summary of why we like each post so much.

Finally, we’ve also included four insightful Q&As with some of this quarter’s top-performing LinkedInfluencers, bringing you their unique take on how to craft good content, connect with colleagues and reap the many rewards this platform has to offer.

Say hello, wave goodbye

The Q2 LinkedInfluencers Report features many familiar names – here’s looking at you, Jen Shipley , Matt Schwartz , and Justin Farrance – as well as no fewer than 38 fresh new faces to the rankings, including the likes of the wonderful Maryam Dean of IBB Law , Juliet Schalker of Debenhams Ottaway and Pranay Lekhi of A&O Shearman , to name but a few.

However, there is also one very notable absence from our report this quarter: gone is Sophie Pender , one of our most consistent top performers in our previous rankings, who decided to leave the law behind at the end of the last quarter to focus on her social mobility campaigning work as the founder and CEO of The 93% Club . Goodbye Sophie, and thanks for setting the tone and raising the bar!

A tale of two Emmas

When we dedicated an issue of Si’s Matters to the Q1 LinkedInfluencers Report back in April, I said that it’s never too late to get started and make an impact here on LinkedIn, but that it would take a concerted effort to make it into our ranking.

Well, if you want a demonstration of what sheer determination can do for your LinkedIn-fu, then you need look no further than Emma Mack and Emma Geale , who both really took to heart the challenge of making it into our Q2 ranking.

They have both massively stepped up their posting game to zoom up the rankings and into our report this quarter. Emma Mack has gone from 199th to 9th place in just 12 weeks and is our highest new entry. Emma Geale has moved from 175th-ranked to 23rd-ranked, also a huge improvement.

Their sudden arrival in among the top legal voices on LinkedIn is all the more impressive when you consider that it’s become harder to be ranked this quarter: you now need 1,692 power points compared to 1,533 last time (although this has been revised upwards, as we captured more people along the way, including historic rankings) – in other words, you need to score 10% higher than just 12 weeks ago!

The success enjoyed by the two conquering Emmas reflects a wider trend that is seeing women increasingly coming to the fore on LinkedIn: five of the top six posts this quarter are by women, with three of the top six coming from Jen Shipley , who truly understands what resonates with her audience and is one of the best in the business when it comes to leveraging the power afforded by this platform.

Which brings us neatly to the main point I want to make…

Leadership starts at the top

Okay, so here’s the thing: with the notable exception of those who made it into our dedicated top 20 leaders ranking, we are still not seeing a whole heap of law firm leaders showing up on LinkedIn. And that matters.

When we first created our Linkedinfluencers Report format, we focused exclusively on LinkedIn users working at, but not leading, the UK’s top-200 law firms. The reasoning behind treating this group in splendid isolation, like some protected species, was simple: we wanted to celebrate their voices and their achievements pour encourager les autres.?

In other words, by highlighting what some members of the legal community are doing on LinkedIn whilst still working within the constraints that come with being an employee at a top-200 firm, we sought to inspire their colleagues to be brave and, crucially, show them that it’s safe to make their voice heard on this platform.

But what do we see when we open things up and add the independents and law firm leaders to the mix of the LinkedInfluencers rankings, as we have in our most recent report??

Firstly, that the indies – wonderful people like Jodie Hill , Pardeep Kandola and Emma-Jane Taylor-Moran – are absolutely smashing it and serving as a great source of inspiration for other legal professionals when it comes to demonstrating what LinkedIn is all about.?

But, secondly, we also see that, with the honourable exceptions of our top 20 law firm leaders – which notably include the ever-impressive Dr. Trevor D. Sterling (Hon.causa) of Moore Barlow , Aedamar Comiskey of 年利达 and Sarah Walker-Smith of Ampa - Legal & Professional Services , there is a real gap on the platform where the voices of senior leadership should be.

With any form of innovative marketing at top-200 law firms, what we tend to see is that the mavericks go first – in the case of LinkedIn, that’s your Jon Gregson s, your Jen Shipleys or your Mark Stephenses, say – before the marketing department tries to put restraints and guidelines in place for this new practice and then encourages the leadership team to get involved and lead by example.

And that’s precisely what we’re not seeing on LinkedIn; or, at least not enough of it. If leaders don’t show partners that it’s safe and indeed desirable to post, then this has a real throttling effect as far fewer members of the partnership – some of the big engines that drive thought leadership and brand-building power – will go out on a limb and start using one of the most powerful BD and networking tools available to the profession.

What results is a noticeable void, and the people we see rushing to fill it are the aforementioned mavericks, early adopters and next-gen lawyers who are hungrily eyeing up a promotion, or who want to encourage others into the profession, or who aspire to work in the profession.

I think it’s fair to say that leaders and partners have become a little stuck when it comes to LinkedIn. So to get them unstuck and inspire them to be braver, I’d like to make a prediction for the year ahead: if you’re a member of the senior leadership team at your firm and want to win a managing partner election next year, get some LinkedIn training today and you have a much better chance of coming out on top. A prior example would include Georgia Dawson at Freshfields whose LinkedIn efforts supported her bid to (successfully) become the firm’s senior partner.

How does this work? By demonstrating a year’s worth of leadership on this platform: letting everyone understand what you are about, what your agenda is, sharing your vision for the future. You can do this from today and I guarantee that it will make a material difference to the outcome of your tilt at the top seat.?

Don’t believe me? Don’t think LinkedIn has such transformative power? Then I refer you back to the remarkable achievements on this platform of the aforementioned two Emmas, who have not just leap-frogged but positively pole-vaulted their way up through our ranking within a single quarter – they decided they wanted to get noticed, went for it with a clear plan and consistent approach, and now they’re the talk of legal LinkedIn.?

To quote those old National Lottery ads: it could be you. But as they say, you’ve got to be in it to win it.

No LinkedInfluencer is an island

It’s fair to say that none of the brilliant people to feature in our latest ranking have excelled on the LinkedIn platform in splendid isolation – we all need a little help from time to time.?

If you’re determined to make it into our Q3 report, or just want to feel confident enough to take your first steps on your posting journey, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We have helped many of the people featured in our rankings to find their feet and their voice on LinkedIn.

Let’s get all meta and feel alright

To those of you who featured in our Q2 report: the TBD team and I have been loving all your celebratory posts. Loving them, and ranking them. It’s all very meta – a ranking of the LinkedIn posts about being ranked for posting on LinkedIn!

So without further ado, I bring you the top five reaction posts to making it into our LinkedInfluencers ranking:

1. Sophie Wardell

2. Jen Shipley

3. Pawe? Sawicki

4. Jodie Hill

5. Helen Burness (notionally, natch)

In other news

Dentons the latest firm to be accredited ‘menopause-friendly’

As reported in the Law Society Gazette, City firm Dentons is now one of only six law firms in the UK to have been granted the “menopause friendly accreditation” from Henpicked: Menopause in the Workplace, an organisation whose mission is to make every employer menopause-friendly. The measures put in place encompass a menopause policy highlighting the firm's responsibility and investment, flexible working arrangements and training, and informal drop-in sessions to create a 'safe space' for staff to discuss their experiences.

Meet our new lord chancellor and justice secretary…

https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/mahmood-appointed-lord-chancellor/5120245.article

As you cannot have failed to notice, Labour won a landslide election victory last week, bringing us a new lord chancellor and justice secretary: out goes Alex Chalk, in comes Shabana Mahmood, who was profiled in the Law Society Gazette after being appointed to the roles last Friday.

…and our new Attorney General

In last week’s edition, I predicted that there would be few, if any, changes made by Sir Keir Starmer to his cabinet lineup. Apart from the replacements he was forced to make when Jonathan Ashworth and Thangam Debbonaire failed to get re-elected, we have seen one very surprising swerve: rather than making Emily Thornberry attorney general, our new Prime Minister has instead appointed human rights attorney Richard Hermer KC to the role. Read this feature in the Law Gazette to read more about Hermer, one of the high-profile Jewish lawyers who called for Israel to be guided by the law in its response to the Hamas attacks on 7 October last year.

Good news for commercial firms: M&A work is coming back

According to new research conducted by Thomson Reuters and quoted in this piece by City A.M., around 40% of UK corporations are expecting to ramp up their legal spend this year as M&A transactions gradually recover.

Partner pay at Linklaters approaches the ￡2m mark

We’re in the middle of financial results season, and Linklaters has just published its latest statement. The FT reports that the firm’s top partners have taken home nearly ￡2m each after the Magic Circle firm racked up record-level earnings that saw it cross the ￡2bn revenue mark for the first time.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s edition!

Si

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