'Marketing Tech:' How Law Firms May Ensure Social Media Compliance

How can law firms ensure social media compliance? What are the rules and restrictions to creating profiles, publishing content and communicating with prospects and clients? This article answers these questions and provides tips to help firms create a sound social media policy.

Law Firms and Attorneys in Social Media

Paid Facebook ads, YouTube video promotion, Twitter tweets — social media is one of the most important and effective channels in digital marketing today. Social media is a powerful platform to promote business, but it is important to establish certain policies and procedures, first.

Legal Restrictions

There are restrictions and compliance rules that attorneys and law firms must follow. Among these are:

• Attorneys are prohibited from posting false or misleading information on a website or social media, which includes inaccurate or outdated credentials. Therefore, it's important to review all content created by any third party, such as marketing, communications or public relations firm, before publishing.
• Bar association guidelines and federal regulations also restrict how a firm may advertise and promote legal services. Ethical rules also apply to all professional online activities, including social media.
• Ethical regulations forbid lawyers to associate themselves with certain individuals on Facebook and other SM platforms, such as an adverse party or the judge on active cases.

What's Allowed?

On social media, lawyers are allowed to publish information about their professional and personal lives. The latter often helps reflect human insight, which may have a positive effect on prospective clients. After all, individuals like to do business with others whom they know, like and trust.

Tips for Creating a Social Media Policy

When the firm decides to embark upon its social media journey, all campaigns must be ethically compliant from the start. The best way to achieve this is by creating a social media policy. The goal is to create a dynamic policy that encourages the use of this relatively new technology while avoiding institutionalizing a static policy with too many inflexible rules. See the ABA's guidance, “How to Create a Law Firm Social Media Policy.”

Profiles

Consider implementing a pre-approval process for newly-created social media profiles. If the firm grants access to profiles for non-lawyer staff members, make it mandatory to assign an admin ID to each profile. In establishing a social media policy, also define rules for the use of your firm's logo for profile images and whether to include the firm name, address, phone number and website address.

Publishing Content

The firm should establish specific guidelines for the type of content it allows. Influencing factors are professionalism, ethics and client and company representations. The prevailing question should be: What are the consequences of publishing this particular piece of information?