Social media for lawyers is becoming an important element in their Internet marketing campaigns.

In an interesting report, Mashable has published a note where it says “While the more traditional marketing channels for law firm credentialing continue to dominate … in-house attorneys now are using new media platforms to deepen their professional networks; to obtain their legal, business, and industry news and information; and to enrich their social and personal lives. Most importantly, they expect that trend to accelerate in the future.”

Being a typical consulting services operation, law firms can benefit the most from blogging. Nevertheless, important lawyers do not seem to have the time to write and post for a blog thus avoid  having a blog as part of their strategy. The other reason for not blogging is the structure under which most law firms operate, if a blog is designed to represent a complete firm then all lawyers need to blog so all specialties are covered in the blog and if one or several lawyers do not want to blog or think it is not necessary, then they will most likely not allow other lawyers to blog under the firm brand a build a reputation of their own… a real complex issue. Nevertheless, everyday there are interesting examples of sucessfull bloging from law firms.

The power of social media can be capitalized as a tool for referrals from within an existing legal or business network and should be part of any internet marketing campaign for a law firm. If your are a lawyer or represent a law firm, you should read the complete article at Mashable