By Jim Calloway

We have seen a resurgence in professional engagement on LinkedIn the last few years. As other social media hosting sites have evolved into platforms less appropriate for professional engagement, many law firms have revitalized their LinkedIn pages with regular posts about legal subject matters related to their practice areas. Many of these posts have received very positive engagement.

So, while marketing on some social media sites may still be valuable for certain types of consumer client outreach, LinkedIn is superior at this point for outreach to other law firms and for publishing professional content such as long legal memos or other items for a sophisticated legal audience.

But branding on LinkedIn is different, due to the traditions of the platform and its audience. Branding to Combat Pricing Pressure: Why Lowering Fees Isn’t the Answer for Law Firms by author Carol Kaemmerer provides a good outline of analyzing law firm’s best strategies on advancing the law firm’s (and individual lawyer’s) presence on LinkedIn. While this branding piece is well done, I’ll quibble a bit with her conclusion that great branding will help you avoid pressure from clients to reduce fees. It won’t. I still believe AI and other automated document assembly tools will lead law firms to offer fee agreements that blend flat fees with other billing methods where automation produces significant lawyer time savings.