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More In House Lawyers Are Taking Up Social Media

By Stephanie Rabiner, Esq. on March 04, 2012 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Are you using social media? Your colleagues are.

Inside Counsel has followed up on its 2010 survey with the 2012 In-House Counsel New Media Engagement Survey, and the results are pretty interesting.

Researchers talked to 334 GCs, chief legal officers and other corporate counsel, and 86% of them reported using some sort of new media. Most of them preferred LinkedIn, too.

The biggest surprise this year involves older counsel -- attorneys in their 40s, 50s and 60s. The group has embraced social media in the last two years, almost closing the generational divide. Those over 50 nearly doubled their usage of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn does seem to be the star of the in house social media show. Approximately 88% of respondents preferred it to any other social network. Twitter and Facebook were severely lagging.

One thing in house counsel does not seem to do with social media is use it to communicate. Most respondents reported using social networks to monitor information and scope out attorneys, but rarely contribute to discussions.

And only 34% use social media to liaise with outside counsel.

Inside Counsel's social media survey also looked at blogs. Researchers found the following:

  • 76% of respondents look at a lawyer's blog when deciding whether to retain a firm;
  • 55% use those blogs when making a hiring decision; and
  • 84% find lawyer blogs credible.

Strangely enough, in house counsel loves Wikipedia. Fifty-one percent of those surveyed use it for law-based research. What did they do during the recent blackout?

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