Social Media Marketing & the Legal Professional - Ken Strongman, Esq.

Project Social Media

Project Social Media presents my thoughts regarding the impact of social media marketing on the practice of law. When I first started my mediation practice, out of necessity I was forced to research and learn how to use social media to market my practice.
My learning process has been pretty much trial and error, and from time to time, I blog about what I have learned. Often I present information I could have used myself when I started my own practice.

Marketing is a necessary evil of a law practice

Marketing is a necessary evil of a law practice. Unfortunately because marketing is not done to benefit any particular client, these efforts are not billable hours. Thus, it behooves the law firm to minimize marketing costs. Social media are the logical choice to start with because their time requirements and costs tend to be at the lower end of the spectrum while providing maximum exposure.

Return on Investment (ROI)

It is difficult to accurately quantify a Return on Investment (ROI) for social media marketing. This rings true for not only major non-legal corporations but for a law practice. Obviously, simple metrics such as number of “unique hits” or number of clients who say they came to you through your on-line presence are a good start.
My first passion is for helping others resolve their conflicts. A close second is for using social media to promote my work in this area. Both are the outgrowth and intersection of an amalgam of my professional career activities, as follows:

The substantive areas of many of my mediations have involved intellectual property and social media. Others have either involved eDiscovery issues or the major aspects of the intellectual property of the social media itself and technology.
Besides speaking on mediation and conflict resolution I’ve spoken on the following topics: numerous speaking engagements on social media and the law;
- Twitter: Impact on the Legal Community—the #Good, #Bad and #Ethical in Less than 140 Characters.
- EDiscovery: An MCLE presentation.
- Social Media—Friend and Foe! A four-hour MCLE workshop on how the legal industry’s landscape will never be the same.
- If You Post It, They Will See It—The Legal and Ethical Duties of the Legal Professional in Social Networking. A three-hour MCLE seminar on legal ethics responsibilities in light of the ever-changing world of social networking
While teaching legal ethnics at John F. Kennedy University as an Adjunct Professor, how to ethical use social media as a legal professional was always a serious topic of interest by my students. This included the unauthorized practice of law, eDiscovery, privacy and confidentially, attorney solicitation and marketing.
Before starting a law practice, I had a fifteen plus year career in information systems.
And finally, there is my own need to develop and implement my own social media marketing plan for my Mediation practice and finding few resources useful to the legal professional.

About the Author: Ken Strongman (www.kpstrongman.com) has years of experience and a growing national reputation as a mediator and arbitrator. He has successfully resolved more than a thousand disputes in the fields of construction defects, real estate, intellectual property, and employment. He is also a Mediator and Arbitrator for FINRA.