As a lawyer, or a law firm, the lure of the Web 2.0 medium as a means of expanding your business is too tempting to resist. Web 2.0 consists of social media and networking sites and platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ryze, Xing, and many more. The fact that these sites provide free advertising as well as help to expand your network from the quite comfort of your workplaces or home are really worthy reasons to consider spending time on them. In fact, some of the largest law firms in the US have elaborate firm profiles on networking sites such as LinkedIn!

Link Me In On LinkedIn
To many lawyers and law firms, social networking may not seem a worth enough cause to spend time on. However, by the time you finish reading this article you’ll probably change your mind (or at least we hope so)!
It may come as a surprise to lawyers and various law firms to know that LinkedIn, which is one of the largest and highly popular professional social media network, has some of the most detailed law firm profiles of some of the biggest and most reputable law firms of North America. Most of these profiles are demographically intense and provide details about the firms and their employees under the following subcategories:

• Firm’s outline
• Career route taken by lawyers prior to joining the firm
• All the networking contacts of the law firm employees
• Latest lawyers to join the firm
• Announcements of the most recent promotions and position changes in the firm
• Profiles of some of the most popular law firm members
• Latest law firm related news
• Various law firm locations across the country
• List of the various law schools the firm’s lawyers have graduated from
• Demographic data of the employees
• Gender break up

In days when a business’s success is measured in terms of hits, pageranks, traffic, and authority links, having a complete profile on LinkedIn can prove to be extremely beneficial.

The LinkedIn Numbers
LinkedIn, as mentioned earlier, has 30 million plus registered professionals from over 150 industries. That’s a lot of people to network with! Very potent stuff! Best of all, it’s a completely free service to use and with a very easy interface and regular updates.  Linked in should play a part in your legal website marketing & online SEM efforts.

Additionally, of the 200 of the largest law firms in the AmLaw 200 list, there may hardly be a firm that doesn’t have a company profile on LinkedIn. At least we aren’t aware of any that aren’t online making their presence felt. Also, lawyers working in law firms have also created their individual profiles on LinkedIn. At the time of writing this article, there were almost 118,000 plus profiles under the law profession.

It is easy to make connections, generate relationships, create awareness and get involved – which ultimately leads to more business and a higher amount of recognition.

Our prediction: within the next 1-2 years, a large majority of lawyers and law firms, however big or small, will have their profile on LinkedIn. Are you part of this revolution… or are you still waiting?

Joel McLaughlin – Dataflurry Law Firm Internet Marketing Services