Social Law Firm Index Released

Last week consulting firms Above the Law and Good2BSocial released their joint Social Law Firm Index ranking the Am Law 50 law firms’ social media presence. Ranking was compiled in terms of:

• Reach – “total number of unique people who had an opportunity to see the firm’s content.”
• Engagement – “actual interaction with the firm’s content via social media.”
• Owned media – “An assessment of the firm’s own site (including microsites) based on, among other things, the proportion of non-promotional content, frequency of updates, and shareability of content.”

Access to the Index is free, but you will need to provide your contact info to view the full list of 50.

Are we surprised that DLA Piper is head and shoulders above the rest, a full 30 points ahead of the number two ranking firm Hogan Lovells? DLA Piper, which the American Lawyer said was the largest firm worldwide by head count, is also somehow killing it with social media.

That seems counterintuitive to those of us who study social media. Usually in more conservative industries such as the law it is only the smaller organizations that are nimble enough to take advantage of social media. The bigger the organization–as the usual theory goes–the more difficult it is to be personable, participate in conversations, and make quick decisions on content. The flexibility and infrastructure (or lack of over-imposing infrastructure) typically just are not there in the larger organization.

I haven’t had a chance to look more closely at DLA Piper’s web presence, but it seems to me there will be some good lessons there for other law firms that want to build their business advantage with social media.

I was also very interested in the joint white paper The Social Law Firm: An Assessment of the use of social technologies at America’s leading law firms which is essentially the methodology used to put the Index together. It was compiled from data collected between June and October 2013 from the 50 largest U.S. law firms identified by American Lawyer. The white paper is available for free download.