Is This Any Way To Start A Relationship?

Recently, I was in the audience at the Law Firm Alliancemeeting in Vancouver as Kevin O’Keefe, CEO of Lexblog, patiently explained to the 100 lawyers in the room that social media was not a substitute for actually meeting people.

A month earlier as I sat in a session on engaging with the media at the Legal Marketing Association annual conference in Texas, I noted Kevin’s answer to my tweet on a comment by a panelist who reported that when a lawyer approached her with the intent of blogging, she advised him to first show his ability to be consistent with content by maintaining a presence on Twitter for six months. “Exactly backwards” was Kevin’s retort.

I have a lot of respect for Kevin. He is a man who consistently puts his money where his mouth is, and has made Lexblog one of the world’s leading content communities for legal expertise. His “Real Lawyers Have Blogs” is a remarkably reliable and lively source of information and advice for lawyers who want to add value to their client relationships and demonstrate their skills through online content.

Lawyers, many of whom are already reluctant to venture out of their offices and billable constraints to build better relationships that drive their business development efforts, don’t need another excuse to sit behind their computer screens. Long before social media intruded, it was already difficult for firms interested in  marketing to extract articles, news interviews and seminar appearances from them. In a profession that requires its practitioners to maintain an exaggerated confidence in their own authority, the adoption of a new and unknown technology is likely to be viewed a fraught with peril.

Kevin’s point, of course, was that social media only matter to the extent that they support a lawyer’s current relationships and extend his or her reputation through them. Participation in the creation of online content through owned media like blogs or social media utilities such as LinkedIn or Twitter must communicate to an existing circle of clients, referral sources and allied professionals the legal knowledge and skills array of the lawyer. This then enables these relationships to spread content through “word of mouse.”

Research is clear: people and companies that hire lawyers find out about them online. Search engines and their professional directory siblings respond to queries with a bewildering array of choices having varying degrees of relevance. Online content creation is a reliable marker for experience and reputation and one that carries the added value of advice and problem solving to the relationships lawyers have and want to expand. In addition, the ability of this content to be shared through existing relationships with potential clients is a lubricant to business development.