You would not have gotten nearly as far as you have in your career as a lawyer if it were not for your keen sense of professional etiquette. Of course, once you reach a certain age, you start to feel like the rules of etiquette are changing faster than you can keep up. When you graduated from law school, email was the preferred method of communication, but now it seems like new communication apps are constantly making old ones obsolete. For every person who thinks that texting is a lazy habit of young people who are too unrefined to handwrite letters in cursive, there is someone who thinks that text messages are the province of elderly windbags; if you really want to communicate a message to someone who has the attention span of a goldfish, leave a voice memo. No matter your favorite means of communication, you do not have to be an aspiring social media influencer to know that some forms of online communication are beneficial to the practice of family law attorneys and their relationships with their clients, while others are downright unprofessional and leave you vulnerable to disciplinary action.
Set Clear Guidelines About Communication With Clients and Follow Them
The days when you could only call a law firm during business hours or leave a message on the answering machine are long gone. Lawyers were among the earliest adopters of cell phones since they needed to communicate with clients outside normal business hours, especially when preparing for a trial. Today, some people think that phone calls are just for old folks; they would rather communicate on Instagram or the messaging app of their choice.
It is up to you to decide which method of communication works best for exchanging messages with your clients. If you prefer to have clients email you at the work email address that you can easily access from your phone, communicate this clearly at the initial consultation. If you choose to use a messaging app, you should be the one to choose which app, not the clients; if they do not like your rules about means of communication, they can have consultations with other lawyers to see if there is another one that better suits their preferred communication channels.
Creditors are allowed to send private messages to borrowers via private messages on social media, but even though this practice is legal, it is tacky for a lawyer to message a client on Facebook to remind the client that he or she still owes money. Stick to email for communications like these.
Do Not Feed the Trolls on Social Media
Content marketing should be part of every law firm’s strategy; writing a blog on your law firm’s website is essential, and you might even want to venture out into writing guest posts on other sites or even starting a YouTube channel or posting content on Facebook, X, or Tik Tok. Eye-catching content is an admirable goal, but steer clear of clickbait. If you try to stir up controversy for controversy’s sake, you will regret it. You never know how scary trolls are until they choose you as their next meal.
Do Not Write About Your Cases in Your Online Content Unless You are Simply Sharing Existing Media Coverage
No one goes to law school unless, on some level, they enjoy writing. Your law firm needs a blog, whether you compose the posts yourself or you hire a content marketing firm to do it. Thinking of enough blog post topics to add a new post every month, or ideally even more frequently than that, is a challenge, to say the least. Writing about real legal cases can be informative, but be careful not to breach confidentiality. Do not write details about your own current or former clients on your blog, even if you anonymize the parties.
To stay on the safe side, only write information about legal cases on your blog when that information is freely available on other online sources, such as news reports of court decisions publicly available on Google Scholar. Your originality lies not in the reporting of facts but rather in the lessons you impart to clients based on the information in these reports about legal cases. Likewise, your original turns of phrase can persuade clients that you are eloquent while still communicating your message in a way that is easy to understand. It is even better if you can draw parallels between highly publicized legal cases and other real or fictional events not directly related to the case.
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