One way to get ahead in your legal career is through thought leadership. This includes public speaking, presenting webinars, podcasting, writing for publication (online or print), blogging and participating in social media.
These activities increase your visibility, develop your credibility, demonstrate your expertise and plant seeds for attracting direct client contacts and referrals for building your own clientele in the future.
No matter what path you eventually take in your legal career — whether it’s to make partner in a law firm, start your own firm or go in-house — you want to be known, easily found and top of mind by differentiating yourself from the rest of your competition.
A bonus is that, as you prepare each thought leadership piece for posting, publication or presentation, you’ll learn more about the subject and clarify the issues in your mind, further building your expertise.
Define the audience
First, define your audience or audiences. Who are you trying to reach? Prospective clients? Referral sources? A specific industry sector?
While there are significant benefits to you, the purpose for every piece is to provide value to your audiences by imparting helpful, practical and actionable information on subjects that interest and concern them.
You can’t be all things to all people and, although you want broad exposure, you don’t want to spread yourself too thin. You need to target your efforts and develop thought leadership in specific, identifiable niches.
Determine content
The next step is to determine content themes or general subject areas for your speeches, publications and social media engagement. What would be of value to your defined audiences? What interests you?
You’ll be more effective in consistently and diligently researching, developing expertise and presenting your knowledge if you’re fascinated by the subject.
For instance, as legal recruiters, our content generally revolves around the following themes:
- Job search and recruiting tips and topics applicable to the legal industry and in the broader marketplace
- Trends in the legal profession
- Issues in the legal profession or the broader workplace which affect women or non-traditional candidates in particular
- A few holiday-related posts and some highlights of our more interesting search assignments for variety.
Getting started
You can start by assisting others by co-authoring articles and providing content for newsletters, webinars and podcasts. Look for opportunities to speak at or write for the newsletters of professional and community organizations to which you belong. Soon you’ll have the confidence and track record to wing it on your own.
The social media focus
As you begin law practice, your social media participation will need to change from your student days. Focus! Stick to business (but be personable and approachable) and concentrate on only one or two social media channels to maximize your efforts and manage your time.
For professionals, LinkedIn is the primary social media channel. Many businesses use other social media channels but establish a strong presence on LinkedIn first and expand to others later, if at all.
For how-to tips, you can find social media experts on LinkedIn. Follow them and learn.
Keep your target audiences in mind, regularly post new content and periodically pop online to like, comment and share relevant posts by others. This makes you more visible and amplifies the reach of other content posters — with the hopes they’ll do the same for you and your posts.
Connect with and follow others who may be useful sources for you and whose posts you find interesting and thought-provoking. Stick to your content themes and avoid anything controversial.
Don’t get discouraged by low engagement numbers. You probably have a much larger “ghost audience” than you thought (people who read your posts but don’t engage for a variety of reasons).
Consistency build results
Becoming a thought leader requires consistent effort and builds over time, but it pays off. Public speaking and writing for posting or publication may not be for you, and that’s OK. You can find other ways to differentiate yourself.
It’s about doing what you love, which usually is what you’re good at. If you enjoy it, you’ll be more likely to spend time and effort doing it and will consistently work to improve over the long haul. Keep at it. Eventually, you’ll be known as a thought leader in your niche — and will reap its rewards.
