Time to get linked in?

“What’s the point of using social media?” “I am not getting any new business out of it.” “It just seems like a lot of noise.” “I am wasting valuable fee-earning time.” “If I let my solicitors use it they will spend too much time on it or they might expose the firm to risk.” “They might breach client or firm confidentiality.” All comments made by solicitors about social media and networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. To gauge the extent of legal reluctance to  embrace social media, Core Legal commissioned IRN Research to carry out a survey into the use of these sites by solicitors in relation to their work: 140 interviews were carried out earlier in the year with solicitors in law firms of all sizes. The key results are:

• A significant majority of solicitors use at least one site and by far the most popular is LinkedIn, the only site used by a majority