Should a Lawyer Do Twitter?

Broadly speaking, lawyers help their clients achieve risk aversion or compliance. The nature of the legal profession requires lawyers to be comfortable while handling different extremes. On one extreme, they could handle their clients’ confidential issues, and on the other, they could be present when their clients achieve major milestones. Such reasons make some lawyers hesitate at the thought of joining social media platforms or participating online.

Twitter is famous for its negative and sometimes combative atmosphere. However, considering the potential benefits, such drawbacks should not prevent a lawyer from joining. Boasting an average of 300 million users per day, Twitter can be a goldmine of potential connections for lawyers. Nevertheless, like choosing whether to use other social media for lawyers, it is important to make decisions based on personal and professional factors.

Reasons a Lawyer Should Do Twitter

1. Lawyers Are Experts on Lucrative Subject Matters

Whether a lawyer realizes it or not, many online conversations related to the legal profession are happening every minute. Twitter is an excellent platform for accentuating sector-shifting news as it unfolds, and holding real-time discussions on major industry developments.

The more lawyers make meaningful contributions to such discussions, the more they can build their reputations as credible professionals by demonstrating their knowledge on legal matters. Besides, Twitter is arguably the best place to voice opinions in front of a vast audience and perhaps inspire some people to take action.

2. Twitter Feeds Are Essentially Free Focus Groups

A lawyer can stay on top of important news and understand how different legislations, regulations, or events might affect certain stakeholders by following relevant hashtags and users. From the latest happenings in tech, politics, business, and more, Twitter can be a useful resource for lawyers interested in understanding what matters in a specific niche industry at a given point in time.

Clients often appreciate lawyers who are capable of analyzing tough concepts and providing meaningful insight regarding their industry positioning. Also, modern cultural movements tend to appear on social media first. This provides a useful outlet for the voiceless to air their concerns about social issues like immigration, police brutality, healthcare, and workplace harassment.

3. It Is Great for Profile Building

Law firms and attorneys greatly depend on the strength of their brands’ reputation. In this age of social media, having a significant online presence is becoming a hallmark of a successful lawyer. The workforce is experiencing a new wave of legal practitioners with significant online profiles.

However, this should not concern senior lawyers who did not have social media in their heydays. They have plenty of room to display their record of accomplishments, expertise, and authority in the industry. Therefore, having a Twitter handle is the bare minimum for lawyers seeking to build an online presence and improve their rankings on search engines.

Furthermore, it is becoming a norm for journalists to scout for experts on Twitter. In such instances, the experts with the most established profiles and strongest points of view will likely be prioritized for media opportunities.

4. There Are Virtually Endless Networking Opportunities

The social media profiles of most lawyers may not create new business leads immediately or directly. However, an established social media profile can be the key to unlocking networking opportunities with industry stakeholders.

Following a single tweet, a lawyer can start conversations with people they typically would never meet due to different limitations (e.g., geographical and social). So long as lawyers publish relevant content, Twitter will eventually reward their efforts by reinforcing their authority and position in the industry to people searching for legal counsel.

Beyond building new professional relationships, establishing an online presence helps strengthen existing relationships. Lawyers can engage in friendly banter with their colleagues and peers.

5. It Humanizes Law Firms

For lawyers, the unintended consequence of providing expertise not easily available to everyone is that they may sometimes seem inaccessible. Through Twitter’s democratizing nature, lawyers and their firms can not only establish their brands as legal resources but also provide a “behind the scenes” view to their audiences. This allows lawyers to expand their interests into other non-legal networks.

Lawyers can also share the things they enjoy in their personal lives on Twitter (e.g., their hobbies and interests). To build an online profile successfully, lawyers should provide their audiences with a holistic perspective of who they are, even if it means revealing a few personal details.