Which Firms Are Most Effective With Social Media?

Throughout 2014, along with our friends at Good2BSocial, ATL once again researched the social media practices of law firms. Today we publish the first component of our findings: our second annual Social Law Firm Index, where we identify which specific firms are making the most effective use of social media.

Throughout 2014, along with our friends at Good2BSocial, ATL once again researched the social media practices of law firms. Today we publish the first component of our findings: our second annual Social Law Firm Index, where we identify which specific firms are making the most effective use of social media.

We conducted a review of the websites and social media profiles of the Am Law 100 (expanded from last year’s look at the Am law 50) across all public platforms, including an assessment of each firm’s publicly available content as well as social reach and engagement. (We are also eager to glean the perspective of practicing attorneys and other legal professionals — please take a brief survey here.)

In order to create our Social Law Firm Index, we developed a formula that took into account the following metrics:

Reach. Represents the total number of unique people who had an opportunity to see the firm’s content. Reach would include number of followers on Twitter and/or LinkedIn, company page likes on Facebook, and followers or subscribers on other social media channels (for example: YouTube channel subscribers or Slideshare followers).

Engagement. Measures the actual interaction with the firm’s content via social media. This would include comments or likes (for status updates) on Facebook, RTs or mentions on Twitter, and likes on LinkedIn.

Owned Media. An assessment of the firm’s own site (including microsites) based on, among other things, the proportion of non-promotional content, frequency of updates, and shareability of content.

Here are some broad findings from our research:

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• Size matters. There is a significant correlation for law firms between the size of the firm and the measured reach of their social media activity. (There is a much lower correlation between size of firm and recorded engagement. Many smaller firms performed extremely well by that metric.)

• From 2013 to 2014 on average the largest U.S. firms improved both the reach and audience engagement levels by more than 60%.

• Many firms that were lagging behind in 2013 moved to catch up with market leaders, rather than significant improvement among the already active firms.

• American law firms still lag substantially behind the level of social media usage in the UK.

• Among the firms showing marked improvement in their performance were Baker & McKenzie, Kirkland, and Sidley.

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Here are the top 10 firms based on our Index:

Congratulations to DLA Piper for dominating this Index for the second straight year. Other repeat appearances on this list are Hogan Lovells, Latham, Greenberg Traurig, and Reed Smith. Each of these firms is a global behemoth: Winston & Strawn is No. 39 on Am Law’s list of largest firms by gross revenue and the rest of these firms are in the top 20. These firms apparently take advantage of the benefits of scale to establish a broader digital footprint.

Again, we are eager to hear from all of you out there about your employer’s success or failures in the use of social media. What does your firm use social media for? Is it working? Please take a couple of minutes and let us know here.