What if the Legal LinkedInfluencers are already our "future lawyers"?

Yesterday morning marked a big moment for many of the people we know on LinkedIn: due recognition in our Q3 LinkedInfluencers Report. The report showcases even more of the top Legal LinkedIn voices across the sector than ever before. 

This time around, we have brought you not only the top-20 law firm leaders, the 100 leading LinkedInfluencers working at UK top-200 firms in any role other than leadership, and the top-20 posters from SRA-regulated independent UK firms, but also the top-20 silks and barristers. In other words, we have identified and celebrated no fewer than 160 influential voices from across the sector in our latest edition.

It’s therefore fair to say that in our Q3 2024 report, we have managed to capture and analyse more of all the great content that has been posted on LinkedIn by the UK’s legal community over the past quarter than in any previous edition – the result of many weeks of hard work on the part of the TBD team: thanks, gang!

Drawing on our findings this quarter, I want to take this opportunity to offer some thoughts and advice based on the different categories in our report. Hopefully, it will reassure and affirm some of you in your decision to invest your time in LinkedIn and provide food for thought for anyone still doubting the value of this platform as a BD and networking tool. As my French teacher used to say: on y va!

The Indies and barristers

My advice to you lovely lot is simple: please don’t be shy! 

As pleased as I am that we have been able to feature many of the leading voices in both of these categories, it has to be said that our rankings of barristers and those working at SRA-regulated independent UK law firms are still very much a work in progress, because we are often reliant on people either nominating others or putting themselves forward. It’s gfar easier for us to find people who work at the top 200 firms than it is to find them at all the other SRA-regulated firms

It would be great to get more engagement from the Bar in particular, especially as the recent exodus of barristers from the increasingly toxic space that is X (Twitter) under Elon Musk’s ownership means that LinkedIn is the perfect, much-more-civil alterative for making their voices heard.

As of right now, both the Indies list and the Barristers list represent a wide-open field: dominated at the top by some heavyweight practitioners, but with less competition beyond the top 20 places or so. So if you are ever in any doubt as to whether or not you should be ranked, please put yourself forward and we would love to consider you for our Q4 report. And if you do get ranked, you can come and join the LinkedInfluencers party – we would love to celebrate your success!

Law-firm leaders

It’s an unfortunate truth that leaders are yet to maximie their use of the LinkedIn platform in a way that not only enhances their own profile but also encourages their junior colleagues to do likewise (and thereby build their personal brand and enhance that of their firm). 

When leaders signal that it is okay to find and use your voice on LinkedIn, the rest of the firm feels safe to follow, and the positive brand-amplification effect that can ensue is something to behold. 

So what does it look like when leaders do make successful use of LinkedIn? Many of them have a campaigning agenda or issue strongly values-driven posts: maybe they are a parent to a child with SEND and talk openly about the challenges they face; maybe they are particularly focused on moving the dial when it comes to DEI; maybe they champion flexible working; or maybe they want to advocate for their clients (James Quarmby).

Although we cannot rank him because he works at an offshore law firm and therefore falls outside of our report’s criteria for inclusion, Harneys’ global managing partner William Peake is perhaps the best known example of a law-firm leader who has made the platform his own. He is the epitome of what modern, accessible leadership looks like as evinced through the medium of LinkedIn – a blend of thought leadership, humorous anecdotes from William’s travels and family life, and insights into his passion for fashion in general and sneakers in particular. If you don’t already follow him, you need to fix this, pronto.

If you have made it to the top of the pile as a law-firm leader, you will have had a rationale, together with a skill set and a host of successes, to get you there. The same attributes that saw you voted into the managing partner or senior partner position are the exact same currency that you can draw on when you post on LinkedIn: your own career journey and day job represent a rich seam of gold that you can mine pretty much ad infinitum in your external leadership comms.

Which is something that you really ought to be doing, because the internal comms channel is full. If you want those internal comms to land, go external. The internal messages that your people will fundamentally listen to and believe in are the ones that they witness you communicate externally – because when a leader is willing to publicly back up and commit to something that they have already expressed within the firm, this gives the message much greater power and authenticity.

Perhaps the greatest recent example of this is A&O’s then-senior partner Wim Dejonghe publicly talking about the proposed merger with Shearman & Sterling in 2023. His video announcement of the deal beat market rumours to the punch and, whilst he staked his own reputation on the outcome, I think we all know how this worked out. His legacy is now assured.

I’m not saying that every merger or big business decision should be approached in this same way – but I do think that leaders can afford to be braver in their externally expressed commitments to internal change. And LinkedIn provides the perfect platform for doing so.

Everyone else: keep doing what you are doing, and don’t listen to the naysayers

Okay, so this overarching point needs a bit of a run-up. Bear with me. So, for the Q3 rankings, we can clearly see that the top dozen LinkedInfluencers have pulled ahead and there is now clear blue water between them and the rest of the pack. They have more power than they ever had before.

By power, I mean their power score, which we calculate in line with LinkedIn’s own algorithm. And by power score, I mean reach: the number of people that see and engage with (i.e. like and  comment on) the respective LinkedInfluencer’s posts. For example, Jen Shipley and Justin Farrance receive northwards of 10m impressions a year, which trounces the results of any law firm out there.

It’s an amazing achievement, but nobody needs to feel discouraged by their success. For if you are currently outside the top 100, it is still perfectly possible for you to claim one of the other 90 os so spots in the LinkedInfluencer rankings for Q4 from a standing start if you begin posting today.

But in order to do so, you must carve out with real clarity who you are writing for and what you care about, and show your audience that you are someone they can buy into on the basis of Aristotle’s three key rhetorical devices: logos, ethos and pathos. In other words: you need to persuade people that you have intellectual credibility, can demonstrate a proven track record of advising clients in your area, and can emotionally engage with your readers. 

And that last bit – the emotional component to your posting – is a really crucial piece of the puzzle. It seems readily apparent to us here at TBD that you will be forever locked out of the top-100 slots in the LinkedInfluencers rankings if you cannot bring all three rhetorical elements into play. And yet quite a few of you have been privately telling me that partners at your firm have actively sought to dissuade you from showing much, if any, pathos – for which read personality, authenticity, vulnerability, humour, all the good stuff that connects people – in your posts, and to restrict yourself to technical talk. Or even worse, to not talk at all on LinkedIn, as if to do so were somehow unprofessional or even shameful.

This is a reflection of the orthodox, old-school way of thinking. ‘We don’t need to hear about your thoughts on mental wellbeing. You shouldn’t talk about your life as a working parent in the law. Who cares about what you do outside of your role at this firm? Just do your damn job!’ That ‘touch-feely stuff’ is not how these partners won business in the past, so they don’t understand the need for it now.

All I can say is: adapt or go extinct. Because this is the tail-end of 2024, and emotional authenticity and connection is absolutely how twenty-something and thirty-something lawyers – the partners of the future, in other words – network and win business. 

Maybe it is time to get on a LinkedIn training course and explore for yourself the personally and professionally transformative possibilities of showing your clients (both existing and potential) some of your personality as well as your legal expertise and pedigree?

The old way of doing things is what has given rise to the myriad problems we see in the sector today: the always-on, long-hours culture; the lack of diversity; the attrition rate among female lawyers in particular; the burnout epidemic; the mental-health crisis. And the only way that this will change – and is, indeed, changing, albeit a little too slowly – is to talk about these things openly, publicly, with honesty and humility and a genuine desire to understand and do better. 

Do I think these issues are the only topics that people should post about on LinkedIn? No, of course not – we still need a balanced diet of content that includes top-notch legal expertise and client advocacy. But I don’t want to go back to the dark old days of never publicly acknowledging the problems that the sector has, or for people to hide their humanity away and pretend to be some kind of infallible automaton. That’s a little too dystopian for me.

It is essential to realise that making the legal industry more humane is not only a moral imperative, but also an urgent professional necessity for those that are still stuck in the old-school mindset. Because be in no doubt: the legal sector as we currently know it is still in the very early stages of a massive, radical and permanent transformation as AI continues to be injected into its system and surge through its veins.

Once this utterly disruptive technology has achieved complete ascendency when it comes to producing baseline legal work product, as is likely, it will be more important than ever for lawyers to forge strong relationships with their clients, be emotionally available to them and act as their trusted adviser in this increasingly complex world. 

It is my belief that those in our top 100 have fundamentally understood this reality and are already acting today like the lawyers of the future. Our LinkedInfluencers can see the direction of travel for the sector, and are helping to light the way. More power score to them, say I.

In other news

Helping to reduce the gender earnings gap at the personal-injury Bar

Catherine Kearney, a partner at Weightmans and friend of TBD, has published an article discussing the fact that improving the gender earnings gap for suppliers can make a positive difference when it comes to achieving EDI objectives.

The days of “robing room banter” are (hopefully) over

As reported by Legal Futures last week, experienced criminal lawyer Geoffrey White has narrowly avoided being suspended by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) after making sexualised comments directed at a young female probation officer. 

Trying to explain his behaviour, which included showing the probation officer an image on his phone of a naked woman lying on a table with bottles covering her breasts and suggesting that the woman looked like the probation officer, White told the SDT that he had “qualified into a culture of ‘robing room banter’ that made light of difficult work by relying on inappropriate humour”. He was reprimanded by the SDT and ordered to pay costs of £12,000. 

A case of lying down with dogs?

As the Al Fayed scandal continues to grow, the BBC has reported that one of Harrods’ long-serving former executives, Nigel Blow, has claimed that the department store chain Fenwick has withdrawn its offer to appoint him as its chief executive in order to protect its reputation. 

Blow told the BBC that he had been deemed “guilty by association” by Fenwick: “I believe Fenwick’s action is unjustified, unfair and in breach of contract,” Blow told the BBC, also stating that he “never heard about or witnessed” grooming, sexual assaults or rape during his 14 years working for Al Fayed.

From living on the streets to running a £5m law firm: the remarkable story of Adam Pope

Adam Pope, the founder and CEO of Bolton-based law firm Spencer Churhill, has told the Manchester Evening News of his journey from living on the streets to setting up and running a law firm generating £5m in revenue a year. It’s a compelling read.

I hope you have enjoyed this week’s edition!

Thanks,

Si Marshall

simon.marshall@2bd.me