The value of Online Social Networks, such as LinkedIn are becoming more of a mainstay in the large law firm arena. Usually the taboos that follow these types of “outside the control of the firm” technologies prevent the use by lawyers or staff of the firm. However, I am seeing a shift in the attitude of some of the firms, and an embrace, although a weak embrace, of some of the functionality that these types of services can bring to the firm.Law Firm Alumni Groups
I broke out my “researcher” cap and started delving through the LinkedIn Groups page to see how many of the top 100 law firms had some type of Alumni or Employee LinkedIn Group. I found that 35 firms out of the top 100 had a LinkedIn Group page. Most of them were Alumni groups, but there were a few that had current employee groups along with the Alumni, or specific groups just for employees. And, a few were apparently rouge employees that created a group at some point, but never did anything with the group after it was created.
Here is a list of the 35 firms, ranked highest to lowest by the number of members, and the type of LinkedIn Group:
LinkedIn Profiles For Each Law FirmWell, these results got me thinking about the number of LinkedIn profiles that are also linked to these specific law firms. I decided to take a look at the LinkedIn Company data for each of these 35 firms, and jotted down some stats for each. For this portion I looked at the following information:1. Number of profiles linked to the firm (LinkedIn max is 500+)
2. Percentage of these profiles that had an “Attorney” title (associate, partner, counsel, etc.)
3. Median Age of the LinkedIn profile members
4. Percentage Male
5. Percentage FemaleHere is the results:
From these results I was able to calulate the following:
| % 500+ Members | 68% |
| Avg. % Atty Titles | 59% |
| Median Age | 32 |
| Avg. % Male | 56% |
| Avg. % Female | 44% |
| Avg. “Group” Members | 78 |
No Surprises…. Well, Maybe OneOf course, there are a lot of things that pop out of these results that are interesting, but not all that unexpected. Things like the average age being in the early 30’s isn’t surprising, or that a majority of those profiled are male (just look around your firm.) The one thing that did surprise me, was the large percentage of those profiled that had “Attorney” titles. I would have thought that there would be more “administrative” profiles (IT, Library, KM, Marketing, Competitive Intelligence, etc.) So, it would seem from this initial overview, that there are a lot of attorneys that are actually creating LinkedIn accounts. Granted, this doesn’t say whether or not they actually used the LinkedIn account after they created it, but nonetheless, it does show that there is an interest in using this sort of Online Social Network.