Legal Research

"Legal Business Development via Twitter: The Challenge"

Posted by Bruce Carton: "In a post today on Legal Technology called "Where to Focus With Social Networking," Larry Bodine argues that while the number of online social networks continues to grow quickly, the good news is that marketers and lawyers can ignore most of them. At the top of his list of "time-wasters" that can be ignored is Twitter, which he says a study has shown to be 40 percent "total pointless babble." He cites to other statistics showing that 10 percent of Twitter users account for over 90 percent of tweets, 60 percent drop out after one month and never come back, and 55 percent have never posted a tweet.

One thing I was quite confident of after reading Bodine's post was that a blistering response would be posted quickly by Kevin O'Keefe, CEO of LexBlog and a Twitter evangelist. Kevin did not disappoint, writing today on his blog that:

The basis for [Bodine's] argument appears to be that most lawyers don't use Twitter and that 40% of the discussion on Twitter is mindless - as if the conversation among lawyers and local business leaders in the country club on men's golf day is that of complex legal matters.

Based on the results I am hearing lawyers are getting by building relationships through Twitter, and getting clients as a result, I am beginning to think that Twitter offers the highest ROI of any networking/relationship building tool.

I've already told you that I'm a Twitter fan, although I remain skeptical of its current value for BigLaw business development. As discussed here, however, anecdotal evidence of actual clients gained by solo practitioners through Twitter is starting to roll in.

To me, this is a specific question that has an answer: Either lawyers are getting clients from Twitter or they are not. The "evidence" I've seen so far on this consists of the four lawyers in this article who say they did gain new clients from Twitter; an old report that lawyer Adrian Dayton picked up a "major legal client" on Twitter; and dozens of examples of lawyers who made connections, received speaking engagements and so on that I hereby deem to be irrelevant to this particular inquiry.

So my challenge to you all is this: Provide us with real examples of clients gained through Twitter in the comments below, so that we can all have some facts to work with in the ongoing "Business Development via Twitter" debate."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Legal Blog Watch, 22 September 2009

Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on September 23, 2009 (boomark / email).