Twitter Success Stories From BigLaw

Reprinted from Law.com Legal Blog Watch

From Small Tweets, Big Firm Clients Grow

Many large firm lawyers are hopping aboard the Twitter bandwagon, (as well as those of other social media sites) and realizing big time benefits from tiny, 140-character tweets, reports the San Jose Business Journal. However, it bears noting that most of the large firm lawyers finding business on Twitter represent startups or emerging technology developers who tend to rely heavily on social media.

For example, Glenn Manishin, an antitrust, telecommunications and technology policy litigator at Duane Morris says that at lease a half dozen clients have retained him based on connections built through social media. These days, Manishin’s clients typically DM him (DM stands for direct message, a way of sending a private tweet to a friend via Twitter) instead of sending e-mails. Corporate attorney Cindy Hess of Fenwick & West finds that using social media enables her to understand her high-tech clients’ businesses and even use their products, which in turn builds stronger connections with existing clients and sends a message to prospective clients that she’s not “out of the loop.”

Other large firm lawyers are slow to get on board with social media, but Pete Townshend of McDermott, Will & Emery isn’t complaining:

I’m happy my competitors are slow, and I would love their firms to adopt dumb policies about forbidding use of social networks,” he said. “The temptation is to adopt don’t-use-it policies without thinking about the client benefit. It’d be great for me if that was adopted because they obviously don’t understand the technology and completely whiff on the marketing opportunity.

It certainly makes sense for firms representing high-tech clients to engage Twitter and other social media.

Posted by Carolyn Elefant on August 25, 2009 at 03:20 PM.