An Uncensored Discussion About Social Media for Lawyers

Most people who know me think I’m a quiet, unassuming, laid-back guy.  And I am.  Until I reach my level of tolerance.  Tonight, I reached my level of tolerance for snake oil salesmen who bill themselves as social media experts for lawyers.  Perhaps snake oil salesmen is too kind.  People who want to charge lawyers money for teaching them about social media are bullshit peddlers who hope to exploit the (presumed) ignorance of the (presumed) rich.

If a guy with a J.D. is trying to make his or her money from teaching other lawyers about social media, you can be sure that he or she is a failure as a lawyer.  Lawyers who are good at rainmaking have one thing in common, no matter whether they do their rain dance for plaintiff or defense firms: They’re rich.  They don’t try and teach others how to be rainmakers because (a) they don’t want the competition, and (b) they don’t need the money.  Every time I get a Facebook, a Twitter, or a LinkedIN spam from some lawyer offering to teach me everything I need to know about rainmaking via social media, I know I’m dealing with a first-class failure as an attorney.  Insert some more epithets if that “lawyer” is wanting to charge me money for his or her teaching.

You know what social media is?  A giant cocktail party.  If you couldn’t get any business at a cocktail party, then you won’t get any business via social networking.  Let me share with you a self-effacing story.

Nearly a decade ago, I ran my own internet consulting business.  Through some connection or another, I managed to get myself an invite to the annual party of some association of general contractors.  It was a really big deal for me, because I assumed that my door pass would get me to the President of the organization, and I would therefore be able to make an awesome deal.  I was half right.

I went to the party and spotted the President of the organization.  He was holding court with a group of guys who were obviously in the construction trade.  (I, on the other hand, look like I can barely handle a hammer.)  I sauntered up to him and his group, and he was telling some dirty story about how he had to evict some porn store from a strip mall.  I laughed right along with the rest of the other guys, and he turned to look at me.  To this day, one of the most awkward moments of my life was this guy and his buddies looking at me like I just made a pass at their wives.  It was obvious I had nothing in common with them, and was only there hoping to get business.  I brought nothing to the table, and they smelled it on me.  Shortly thereafter, I left with my tail between my legs.  I never got a call from any of the dozen or so people who I forced my business cards on.  My attempt at networking was a big fat fail for several reasons.  First, I looked like an outsider.  Second, I didn’t speak their lingo.  Third, I wasn’t interested in anything but their business. 

There is a lesson here for lawyers.  If you show up at a social networking group looking and acting as out of place as I did, you too will look like a Grade A Asshole.  Seriously, there’s nothing more pathetic than a lawyer trolling the net for clients.  Do you honestly expect that being hip enough to be on Twitter or Facebook will somehow translate into people deciding you’re the lawyer for them?  I’ve got a bunch of lawyers as friends on Facebook, but only a handful of them would ever get my business if I needed legal services.  The rest of them are friends because they friended me and I was nice enough to friend them back.

Keep that in mind when some dickhead with 20,000 friends on Facebook promises that he knows the secret to Rainmaking with a capital R.  The odds are, 19,950 of those “friends” are people he just randomly added, hoping they were kind enough to reciprocate.  Yes, as I write this post I have one particular douche in mind.  No, I’m not naming him, but the fact that you know who I’m talking about says it all.

The rules of rainmaking through social networking are the same as rainmaking in real life: Only join groups you’re genuinely interested in.  Don’t join a group because you’re hoping for business.  Don’t obviously troll for referrals.  Don’t spam.  (In real life, it’s not called spamming.  It’s called talking about yourself incessantly, which is also known as being an arrogant asshole.  No wonder so many lawyers do it.)

If you really want to know about social networking, here’s what to do: Just do it.  Get on Facebook and find your old high school/college friends.  Get on LinkedIN and find the people you worked with fresh out of college.  Start a blog.  Play around.  Explore.  Have fun.  And for God’s sake, don’t worry about the “right way” to do this.  There is no right way, but there is a wrong way: The wrong way is to be a self-promoting ass who spams everyone on his friends lists about Rainmaking.

Comments

[Anon]

Can I anonymous call out David Barrett?

[Tracy Thrower Conyers]

I daresay, Justinian, that you don't appear to have learned much from your cocktail party debacle. Isn't your second paragraph just a teeny bit overgeneralizing? Just saying....

[Justinian Lane]

Actually, I did learn something from my cocktail party experience: I'm not cut out for the corporate world. That's part of why I'm going to be a plaintiffs' lawyer.

There may be a bit of overgeneralization, and perhaps even a tiny bit of exaggeration in this article. But my major premise is still true: If someone really knows how to be a good rainmaker, he or she will make substantially more money by making rain than by teaching others to do so. Thus, if someone is trying to support themselves by teaching rainmaking skills, he or she doesn't know enough about it to actually do it.

[David Sugerman]

I think you may be missing the mark in one important way, and I'm only writing here because you want to work on the side of consumers (plaintiffs) That's great. I've been at it since the mid 1980s. I don't know many consumer-side lawyers who are well off simply because they have succeeded at marketing. Marketing is only half the skill set. We get paid based on results. Having a bunch of cases and no ability to handle them is a recipe for massive failure. So I don't think you can equate what we do on the consumers' side to market with defense/business rainmaking. Apples and oranges.

That, by the way, is one more reason why the soc media experts and many of the web sites devoted to lawyer marketing are such a failure. They can't deliver.

[Justinian Lane]

It's great to hear from a fellow plaintiffs' guy, David! I do think you forgot about one group of plaintiffs lawyers, though: Every day you and I are bombarded by TV ads of national law firms who act as nothing more than referral mills. They have the sign 'em up and refer 'em out business model, and some of them make millions of dollars a year doing it.

If, for example, you've got the knack for marketing down pat, you could start an asbestos referral mill and easily make 7 figures a year in referral fees. All you'd need to do is get one good meso case per quarter and refer it out. Easy money, but not exactly being a lawyer. As you point out, though, if you plan on working up your own cases, you damned well better know what you're doing or you will have a "massive failure" on your hands.

I also agree that most of the lawyer marketing "gurus" can't deliver for either side of the bar.

[Tracy Thrower Conyers]

Just by the way, Justinian, I am a former consumer class action attorney, myself (plaintiff side). You'll still need good manners and good sense. =-)

[Thorne]

RE: "If a guy with a J.D. is trying to make his or her money from teaching other lawyers about social media, you can be sure that he or she is a failure as a lawyer. "

Are you calling Kevin O'Keefe a failure?

[Justinian Lane]

Kevin doesn't make his living trying to teach lawyers how to be rainmakers. He developed a pretty good blogging platform for lawyers to blog with. That's a huge difference. Now, if he decides to shut down Lexblog and start hawking books on how to be a legal blogger, we'll revisit this discussion....