In this post I am going to compare the Twitter accounts of the top 5 UK law firms. From the data that I got their combined 2009 turnover was a staggering £5.5 Billion. So, I wanted to see what they have been up to with Twitter. Whether any of them have adopted it, tried it, have a strategy for it, and then properly resourcing it and executing their Twitter marketing plan.
This was the only Twitter account I could find for them. http://twitter.com/linklaters I am going to presume that this is not their Twitter account, but that someone has simply acquired their name. So, at present Linklaters don’t appear to be embracing Twitter
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
I could not find a Twitter account for them under the name Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. But as their website is just Freshfields, I tried that, and found this http://twitter.com/freshfields. Again, I am going to presume that this is not an official account of theirs, but someone simply grabbing their name. So at present it appears that they are not really embracing Twitter
Clifford Chance aka http://twitter.com/ccpressoffice
Clifford Chance have a Twitter account. It is their Press office simply pumping out and endless broadcast of the news from Clifford Chance. It has been on Twitter since 11th Dec 2009, and has acquired 335 followers. The logo is an escalator presumably leading into their office, and the Bio must have been completed in 3 seconds with no thought what so ever. My bet is that very little thought has gone into this. It has not been personalised in any way, the bio tells us very little, other than it is the Clifford Chance Press office.
Allen & Overy aka http://twitter.com/allenovery
Allen & Overy have a Twitter account, but yet again it has not been personalised in any way and the Bio probably took less than 3 seconds to fill out. To my mind they don’t have a strategy. They are simply broadcasting whatever they deem to be important all through one faceless and nameless account.
DLA Piper aka http://twitter.com/dla_piper_news
This is the DLA Piper Twitter account. They have gone for the News broadcasting approach. Again, not personalised, and an endless stream of news messages, which I suppose is to be expected from such an account.
So there you have it. These are the Twitter accounts of the top 5 law firms in the UK. They have all sadly missed the whole point of Twitter. At the end of the day, each of these firms have thousands and thousands of employees. They are probably out day and night networking, lunching, dining etc… to develop relationships with potential clients and people that will advocate and refer them. Many of them will also want to become more visible, write for papers and magazines, become speakers, authors, and generally demonstrate their expertise and knowledge to ultimately drive more business to their firm.
As I explain to all my clients, Twitter allows you to tell us who you are and not just what you do. All these firms should be harnessing and embracing their staff and encouraging them all to be on Twitter. Yes of course they should be properly trained, supported and given guidance and policies on what to do. Legal firms are no different to any other types of business. People want to do business with people they know like and have built up a relationship with. Twitter allows them to do all of this.
I would love to hear from any employees from these law firms on what is their Twitter strategy?
Thank you Mark this has fully supported my own view – and I’m going to share this with my own prof services prospects and clients.
Hi Mark,
Firstly thank you for starting a discussion around how law firms should better be using Twitter. You’re right, there’s much room for improvement! A&O likes to be engaged in any discussions around the business of law, and my interest is online communications in particular.
In fact, we manage three ‘official’ Twitter sites: @allenovery, @allenoveryjobs, @allenoverycsr. We have looked at different audiences and personalisation in terms of a long term strategy, in the case of @allenoverycsr our focus is on our community initiatives. Our tweets are always manually crafted, not fed automatically from press releases, and highlight topical content and opinion. In this way, we hope to be engaging in the broader debate around critical legal issues. We have also integrated Twitter into our latest annual review, using hashtags to pull out sector specific tweets, which I feel is quite an innovative use of Twitter and annual reporting more generally. You can see it at http://www.allenovery.com/annualreview.
We also have an approach as to how individuals within the firm use social media on behalf of A&O.
Of course, there is more that we could all be doing, and we intend to build on these solid foundations, using the channel to stimulate debate, rather than purely broadcasting our corporate messages. Sorry for the long email but I thought the above might be of interest. Further thoughts are very welcome!
Regards,
Chris Walsh, Allen & Overy
Hi Christian and thanks for the comments.. I welcome your long reply. I have taken a look at your annual review and yes indeed it makes good use of Twitter. As far as ther other accounts are concerned, it is great that you are hand crafting the messages and not just using auto RSS feeds. But my feedback would remain that you are not really listening and then engaging. I would love to see far more engagement. I would encourage you to ask questions, poll your audience, ask for feedback, utilise Twitter for research.
You also mention that you have an approach for your members of staff. I would encourage you to harness & embrace them. I hope that you have put in place training, support, guidance and policies.
thanks
Mark