Over the past two years or so, the way solicitors network, interact and go about business development has undergone a profound, but almost unnoticed, change.

Back in 2007, I wrote a feature for the Gazette on how social networking would change the way solicitors did business with each other and with their clients. My questions to lawyers and firms about the use of Facebook were met with almost universal derision. Questions about using the business social networking website LinkedIn were treated by most as being barely worth answering, though it was obvious a small but growing number of firms had cottoned on to potential uses for social networking technologies. In October 2007, LinkedIn had just 200,000 members across the world who marked their business as ‘legal practice’ – though this could be in any position – a mere 12,000 of whom were here in the UK.

Now, however, the picture is very different. LinkedIn reports that nearly 95,000 UK members mark their business as ‘law practice’, ‘legal services’, or ‘alternative dispute resolution’ (which accounts for a meagre 1,809 of that total). LinkedIn reports that its membership is growing by one million new members every 17 days, and that, in global terms, site members in ‘law practice’ rank in the top five industries on LinkedIn.

Back in late July, the Gazette launched a LinkedIn group that has grown to over 460 members. We also launched a feed for the Gazette’s content on the micro-blogging site Twitter, which has more than 630 ‘followers’ receiving our daily updates. We did this because we are convinced online social networking could help us to deliver value to our current and future readers.

But law firms and lawyers can use social networking sites for much more complex and, potentially, more profitable purposes. Christina Hoole, European marketing director for LinkedIn, says the benefits can seem intangible, but they are, nonetheless, about brand, visibility and ultimately what lawyers get out of networking in the real world. In other words, online networking is as important as real-world networking and status-building for lawyers – and that means very important.

Hoole says: ‘There is an element of "professional karma" to LinkedIn, as, by using the site regularly to connect with other people, share your knowledge through answering other users’ questions and engaging in group discussion, you will reap the rewards of improved online visibility and gaining valuable new contacts, as well as benefiting from other members’ knowledge and expertise by posting questions and following group discussions.’

As a test of whether UK law firms are ‘getting’ social media, I thought I would go about researching this article differently from my normal methods – I posted a general query on LinkedIn to those in legal in the UK, and I asked our Gazette LinkedIn group. That’s all. The response (thankfully) was more comments than I could use.

Andrew Keogh is associate editor for legal at the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, director of training at CrimeLine Training, and a former partner at crime specialist Tuckers. ‘I have used LinkedIn for some time now, and the quality of leads is most impressive,’ he says. ‘The group is professional in ethos, and you can be assured, by and large, of high-quality connections. It is therefore a serious B2B networking tool.’ Keogh does not use Facebook for business, but he has started using Twitter. ‘The main problem for me is that there are too many different social networking sites; we shall see which one(s) prosper – meanwhile, we have no choice but to play around with them all.’

Firms of a wide variety of shapes and sizes are using social media sites in interesting ways. Steve Kuncewicz, intellectual property (IP) and media lawyer at Ralli, a 60-plus-strong firm in Manchester, says the firm is pushing hard to use ‘web 2.0’ as much as possible, and the reason ‘is simple – given the backdrop of the Carter reforms, the growth of [legal disciplinary practices] and the credit crunch, we believe firmly that this is much less a case of change for change’s sake, and more a case of change, or become extinct’.

Kuncewicz points to research, covered in the Gazette in the past, from various sources, that the internet is a growing power in consumers’ choice of solicitor – so ‘the progression towards working and interacting with our clients using social media is natural for us, to the point where we are working on it daily’.

‘The investment of time, if nothing else, is fairly heavy to start with, but the great thing about social media is that they create a completely level playing field upon which firms without the marketing and PR budget of larger practices can punch well above their weight.’ Ralli has, he claims, received instructions via Twitter already.

But if your firm isn’t already throwing itself into the future, getting involved in the technologies of tomorrow isn’t easy – unless you’re the boss. Many people I met on my quest through LinkedIn for this article said, privately, that the solicitors at the top of their firms often did not ‘get it’ at all.

John Smith (not his real name), head of IT at a 100-strong northern firm, says the goal at his firm is ‘to engage in conversation with potential clients, and use the various platforms (Twitter, LinkedIn et al) to extend [the] reach of the firm and generate trust and recognition’, but ‘unfortunately, the biggest hurdle is getting buy-in from fee-earners – the majority have an inability to see the bigger picture and see non-fee-earning as a waste of time, effort and money, which means efforts are left to IT departments and only the bravest fee-earners’. Those brave few, however, could end up changing their firm.

City and national firms are ‘getting’ social media, too. Andrew Sharpe, technology, media and telecoms partner at City firm Charles Russell, runs his own commercial law blog, CRITique, with an associated Twitter account to advertise blog posts – which is more like the ‘integrated’ approach media people take. The firm also runs a Charles Russell commercial law group and a Charles Russell pharmacy group on Facebook.

‘The CRITique blog is a long-running experiment,’ says Sharpe. ‘The intention, if there is enough interest, is to incorporate the [blogging] software into the Charles Russell website [which would allow more staff to blog about what they’re doing]. I also have a Twitter account, @TMT_lawyer, which I use for more informal legal and associated micro-blogging and to receive legal updates. I am also a big fan of LinkedIn.’

Partner David Reissner is the man behind the Charles Russell pharmacy group on Facebook, and he says he uses it because it is going to where the work is. ‘I think it’s important to recognise that clients and potential clients are Facebook users,’ he says. ‘I don’t see Facebook as a means of seeking and providing legal advice, but it could prove to be an effective way of communicating ideas and opinions which may attract a generation that uses social networking sites.’

Making law personalAt national firm Irwin Mitchell, using social media makes sense – perhaps because of the consumer-oriented nature of the firm’s core work. Steve Simpson, website manager, says the firm is actively promoting blogging within the firm. The big question being asked at the firm though, he says, is how to achieve return on investment (ROI).

In fact, it might be impossible to define the ROI such moves into social media might cost in terms of time and resource investment. Does that mean a firm shouldn’t do it?

Back in 2006, the then head of IT at Charles Russell, Jon Gould, told me a story from the early 1990s about email. He’d proposed adopting email at the firm, but partners asked him for an idea of ROI – how long would it be until email paid back its investment? He had to admit that email didn’t have an ROI timescale – it wasn’t about recouping investment directly, it was about adopting the communication medium of the future. In the early 1990s, this might have sounded a bit rash to a law firm managing partner.

Now, of course, we know better – email is the standard communication medium for lawyers. As recently as two years ago, letters to the Gazette editor came overwhelmingly through the post. Now, almost all arrive via email. And, if we consider that online social interaction may be as popular as its growth rate indicates, it may be that we have another email on our hands.

Business development people are nevertheless finding it hard to convince law firm senior management that social media are a good idea. Sara Dixon is a solicitor, law firm consultant and training adviser under the banner FirmBeliefs. She echoes Smith’s comments that getting through to the upper echelons in law firms isn’t easy, but stresses that it is, nonetheless, important.

‘I work with a number of law firms and it is a slow process, but it is largely because they don’t know what social media can achieve, don’t know how to evaluate it, as they don’t often know what they want their comms plans to achieve, and don’t know how to measure ROI, both financially and in terms of its impact. But we’re getting there.’She points out that, even if firms don’t have a social network presence, ‘they might be "discussed" on those sites, which means they would do better to engage with that world than leave it up to others to promote the firm for them. They may not think it is appropriate for them to use, but it might be appropriate for their clients and for their opposition.’

Knowing what the competition is up to is half the story on social media – Twitter can help you ‘listen’ to what other solicitors, and even firms, are publicly ‘thinking’, while sites like LinkedIn let you see who’s answering which questions and moving to which firms. There’s even a negative PR reason to be out there, blogging and tweeting, one City lawyer told me confidentially – to deny the competition the floor.

But it’s true that the internet levels the playing field, as Kuncewicz at Ralli says, which means smaller firms can have big-firm marketing power, if they play their social media cards right. There is a phrase in the internet world – ‘on the web, no one knows you’re a dog’.

Barbara Cookson, former partner at Nabarro and, before that, Field Fisher Waterhouse, now runs her own trademark practice and uses social media to help market it. ‘One of the reasons I am using Twitter is to try and create some influence on the IP world, whether it be small improvements, or suggestions for day-to-day practice, or issues of policy,’ she says. ‘Patent offices can be very aloof from their users, and Twitter is a method of creating constructive dialogue.

‘I tweet as @filemot and, since I am a sole practitioner, I do not have to ensure my partners agree with my views, which could be a big hindrance to spontaneity and influence when I was an EP in a PEP machine. It’s also a great cure for urban isolation that can be a problem if you work alone.’

It would be tantamount to heresy in a feature on lawyers and technology not to mention Professor Richard Susskind, who devotes quality time to the future importance of social networking online in his latest book, The End of Lawyers?. Mark Miller, commercial property/real estate partner at regional firm Wright Hassall, agrees with Susskind’s argument that the impact of social media on the legal profession will be no different to other sectors.

‘My view is that the legal profession will ignore social networking at its peril,’ says Miller. ‘We want to promote a more uniform and joined-up approach with existing LinkedIn users across the firm, and to encourage others to join in. One of our colleagues has made a special effort in this area, and has recently secured three real new contacts in his particular field of expertise directly in consequence of using LinkedIn – real evidence, perhaps, that it does work.’

Miller acknowledges the downsides of social media – ‘just like any other marketing medium, they need constant attention and effort, and they can also be abused and misused in the workplace’ – but the upsides, to his firm, are too great to ignore.

‘I can see the time arriving where more and more clients – existing or prospective – will go beyond looking up legal advisers on the traditional firm website and start to delve further into social networking sites to understand the character and background of the individual.’

We’re back to the future in terms of value – using social media connects you to a new way of networking and a world of contacts that works in a way that future generations will, probably, see as normal.

This does not mean it is easy for traditional law firms to jump into any social networking environment. Lauren Charnley, a solicitor at MacLaren Britton Solicitors in Nottingham, says LinkedIn has proved useful for building contact, but she can’t really work out how to use Twitter or Facebook to the firm’s advantage. This isn’t because they are not useful – it’s because MacLaren Britton is ‘quite a traditional high street practice’, so it’s ‘quite hard to work out how to present ourselves in Facebook and Twitter without looking like you’re trying to be a cool grandad’.

Maybe traditional high street firms don’t belong on Facebook – and there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that outcome. Perhaps the social media world has not yet separated out into business and non-business parts, but perhaps it never will. However it turns out, though, it is here (in some form or other) to stay.

Whether it stays, of course, does not address the ‘elephant in the room’ raised by Keogh at the start of this piece. A common counter to predictions of the success of social networking sites is that they are ‘over’ just as everyone is getting on to them. So, goes the argument, why bother putting loads of energy into a site when it will be dead in 18 months?

To me, the growth of LinkedIn – and that of Ecademy and other social networking sites for businesspeople – indicates that, even if it isn’t the most popular business networking site in the UK in five years’ time, if enough people have invested time and energy in it, it will retain them. It will only retain them, however, if they see more value in staying than detriment if they do not, and the weight of the ‘pull’ to remain is probably directly related to the amount of effort they have put in. Which means that the longer they are inside an online social network, the less likely they are to move out. They may go to dozens of others, but they will keep a foot in the camp, which justifies the effort of being involved in them and putting energy into them.

Whether law firms see the world of social media the same way as I do, I don’t know. But judging from the answers I received, I think I can take a pretty good guess.