Social media for law firms: the complete guide
Social media does not bring a law firm clients the way search does, and the firms that treat it as if it did waste a partner’s time and a marketing budget on applause. Used for what it is actually good at, keeping the firm in the minds of the people who refer work, giving a solicitor a reputation beyond their own clients, and providing the proof a prospective client looks for before they call, it earns its place. This guide covers which platforms matter for which practice areas, the partner-led approach that produces referrals, what to post and what never to, paid social, measurement, and the professional rules, which apply to a solicitor’s personal account as much as the firm’s.
What social media is for in a law firm, and what it is not
- People with a legal problem search; they do not scroll for a solicitor. Social media rarely produces instructions directly, and for most consumer matters it never will.
- It does three things well: it keeps the firm in front of referrers, it gives individual solicitors a reputation that travels, and it provides proof when a prospective client checks the firm.
- Judge it on referrals and reputation. Followers, likes and reach are the platforms’ numbers, not the firm’s.
The Legal Services Consumer Panel’s tracker survey has found for years that reputation and recommendation are the factors people weigh most when choosing a legal provider, and that recommendation or previous use is the most common single reason for the final choice.1 Social media is where reputation is built and recommendations are prompted, among the accountants, IFAs, HR directors, estate agents and former clients who do the recommending. It is not where a person with a dismissal letter goes looking for a solicitor; that is search, and our SEO guide covers it.
That distinction decides everything else. A firm that posts to “generate leads” produces content for strangers who are not looking, measures it in impressions, and concludes after a year that social media does not work. A firm that posts so that its referrers see a partner’s name attached to a useful point three times a month, so that a partner’s profile is the thing a corporate client reads before the first meeting, and so that a prospective client who looks the firm up finds people rather than a logo, is using the channel for what it is good at, and it works.
The third job, proof, is easy to underestimate. When a referred client, or one who found the firm in search, checks it before calling, they look at the website and then at the people. A solicitor whose LinkedIn shows them explaining their area clearly, being thanked by clients and engaged with by peers, converts that check into a call. One whose profile was last updated in 2019 does not.
Platforms by practice area
- LinkedIn is the platform for every practice area that has professional referrers or business clients, which is most of them.
- Facebook and Google Business Profile posts serve local consumer work; YouTube serves explainers that search finds; the rest are optional or for recruitment.
- A firm should be on two platforms properly rather than six badly.
| Platform | Who is there | Practice areas it serves | What works | What to avoid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business owners, HR, finance directors, in-house counsel, accountants, IFAs, other solicitors, journalists | Corporate, commercial, employer-side employment, private client via referrers, property, any firm’s recruitment | Partners posting in their own voice on what changed and what it means; comments on referrers’ posts; the company page as an archive | Company-page-only presence; posts about awards and office moves; selling in comments | |
| Local communities, parents, older adults, local groups | Conveyancing, wills and probate, family, local personal injury | The office’s page with real people and events; useful answers in local groups where rules allow; reviews | Boosted posts to cold audiences; commenting on anyone’s individual situation | |
| Google Business Profile posts | People who searched the firm or a local matter | Every consumer practice area, per office | A fortnightly post: a matter explained, a solicitor, an event, an opening-hours change | Leaving it blank; it is read more than most social accounts |
| YouTube | People searching for explanations; Google’s video results and AI answers | Any area with questions clients research: family, employment, probate, conveyancing | Two-minute explainers by the solicitor, captioned, titled with the question | Firm promos; unscripted rambles; videos without captions |
| Younger adults, staff, local businesses | Brand and recruitment; some consumer firms | The firm’s people and culture; occasionally a plain explainer | Pretending to be a lifestyle brand | |
| TikTok | Younger adults | A few consumer firms with a solicitor who is good on camera | Short, accurate answers to common questions, delivered plainly | Trend-chasing; anything the SRA warning notice would call puerile |
| X | Journalists, policy people, some lawyers | Press and commentary for firms with a view | Timely comment on legal news from a named solicitor | Arguments; commenting on live cases |
For most firms the answer is LinkedIn for the partners and the firm, Google Business Profile posts for each office, and one of Facebook or YouTube depending on whether the firm’s clients are local consumers or people researching a question. Everything else is a decision to make when those are working.
The partner-led approach: why people outperform logos
- Referrers and clients follow people, not firms. A partner’s post reaches more of the right people than the same post from the company page, and it is trusted more.
- The profile is a landing page: it should say what the partner does, for whom, and why someone should get in touch.
- The firm’s page is the archive and the recruiter. It supports the partners; it does not replace them.
On LinkedIn, and on most platforms, content from an individual is shown to more people and engaged with more than the same content from an organisation. That is partly the platforms’ design and mostly human nature: an accountant wants to know what a particular employment partner thinks about the new tribunal time limits, not what “the firm” thinks. The practical consequence is that a law firm’s social media presence is mainly the sum of its partners’ presences, and the marketing team’s job is to make those easy to maintain.
The profile as a landing page
A partner’s profile is read by a referrer deciding whether to recommend them and by a client deciding whether to call. It should answer both in the first lines: what they do, for whom, where, and what someone should do next. A photograph taken this decade. A headline that says “Employment partner advising employers across the North West on restructures, disputes and tribunal claims”, not “Partner at Firm LLP”. An about section in the first person. The firm’s website and the partner’s profile page linked. Experience that reads as the work, not the job titles.
Who should do it
Not every partner, and not under duress. The partners whose practices depend on referrers and business clients, and who are willing to give forty minutes a month, are the ones to start with. Three partners posting well is worth more than twelve posting reluctantly, and the reluctant ones can be left with a good profile and nothing else.
The three kinds of post that work, and one written out
- What changed and what it means; a story from practice, anonymised and permitted; and a view the partner actually holds. Everything else is filler.
- Two or three posts a month per partner, each about one thing, in plain English, with no hashtags doing the work the words should.
- Comments on referrers’ and peers’ posts are half the job, and the half most firms skip.
From 1 October, employees have six months rather than three to bring most tribunal claims.
For employers planning a restructure this winter, that changes four things. The window in which a dismissed employee can decide to claim doubles, so the paperwork from the consultation has to be good enough to be read a year later. Settlement agreements become more valuable as a way of closing that window early. The cost of a defective process rises, because more claims will be brought. And HR’s record-keeping is now the evidence for a hearing that may be eighteen months away.
If you have a restructure planned for the first quarter, the process you run in November is the one a tribunal will look at in 2028. Worth getting right.
Comments
Posting is half the work. The other half is commenting, with something useful, on the posts of the people the partner wants to be referred by: the accountants, the HR consultants, the corporate finance advisers, the other professionals in the firm’s town. A thoughtful comment on a referrer’s post is seen by that referrer and their network, costs two minutes, and does more for the relationship than a lunch. Fifteen minutes a week on this is the most efficient use of a partner’s social media time there is.
What never to post
- Anything that could identify a client, even anonymised, even years later. Confidentiality does not expire and the test is whether anyone could work it out.
- Anything about a live matter, the firm’s or anyone else’s, that could prejudice it.
- Anything the SRA’s warning notice on offensive communications describes, on any account, at any time.
Client information. Paragraph 6.3 of the SRA Code requires client affairs to be kept confidential, and an anonymised post can still identify a client to the people who know them: the only family in the village with that combination of facts, the one local employer with that kind of dispute. The test before posting a story is whether any reader could work out who it is. If the answer is possibly, change the facts further, make it a composite, or get written permission.2
Live matters. Commenting on active court proceedings risks contempt of court, whether the matter is the firm’s or someone else’s, and commenting on a client’s live matter is both a confidentiality breach and a litigation risk.3 A partner may explain a reported judgment once it is handed down; they should not be the first to speculate about a case that is still being heard.
Other firms and other people. The SRA’s warning notice on offensive communications lists what has led to disciplinary action: offensive or abusive comments about another firm or its client, derogatory remarks about opponents or unrepresented people, and anything puerile, harassing or discriminatory. It applies to personal accounts, outside working hours, and to resharing someone else’s post without refuting it, and it states that privacy settings and pseudonyms are no protection.4 Defamation law adds a civil risk to a regulatory one.
Advice. A post explains the law; it does not advise a particular person. Replies to comments asking “what should I do about my situation” are answered with an invitation to call, not with advice in public, both because the answer depends on facts the partner does not have and because it creates a relationship the firm has not checked for conflicts.
Promises. “Guaranteed”, “we always win”, “no win no fee” without its conditions, compensation figures, “the best”: the SRA Code’s accuracy rule and the CAP Code apply to a post as they do to an advertisement.5
The monthly routine that a busy solicitor can keep
- Forty minutes of the partner’s time a month, in one conversation. Two or three posts come out of it, written for their approval.
- Fifteen minutes a week of commenting, which the partner does themselves because it has to be them.
- The marketing team drafts, schedules, monitors replies and reports. The partner approves and engages.
The division of labour matters. The partner’s voice cannot be faked and their comments cannot be delegated, which is why the forty minutes and the fifteen minutes are theirs. Everything else, drafting, scheduling, monitoring, logging, reporting, the company page, can be done by a marketing executive or an agency, and should be, because a partner who is also expected to be a social media manager will stop within a quarter.
Video and explainers
- A solicitor explaining a question in two minutes, on camera, captioned, is the most reusable asset a firm can make: it works on YouTube, on the matter page, on LinkedIn, and increasingly in Google’s video results and AI answers.
- It needs a question as the title, a script the solicitor is comfortable with, and captions for the majority who watch without sound.
- Production values matter less than clarity. A phone, good light and a quiet room are enough.
The questions people research before instructing, what a settlement agreement is, whether probate is needed, what happens to the house, have video answers in Google’s results and are increasingly answered by AI systems that cite video as readily as text. A solicitor who records a plain two-minute answer, titled with the question and captioned, has a piece of content that ranks on YouTube, embeds in the matter page where it raises conversion, posts natively to LinkedIn, and appears in search for years. The same answer delivered as a firm promo with music does none of that.
The practicalities: a script or at least a structure the solicitor has approved; the question stated in the first five seconds; a phone on a tripod, a window for light, a room without echo; captions, because most people watch without sound and because accessibility requires it; and a title that is the question, not “Firm LLP Employment Update March”. Consent and the confidentiality rules apply exactly as they do to text, and the same person who checks posts checks scripts.
Local and community: Facebook, groups and Google posts
- For a local consumer practice, the office’s Facebook page and its Google Business Profile posts reach the people who will actually instruct, and cost nothing.
- Local groups can be useful when the firm answers general questions helpfully and never pitches. Most groups’ rules say the same.
- Sponsorships, events and charity work are social content because they are true, and they earn the links and mentions that search rewards.
A high street firm’s clients are in the town’s Facebook groups, follow the local news page, and search the firm’s name on Google before they call. The office’s Facebook page, with real photographs of real people and a monthly post about something the firm did or explained, is a modest, honest presence that costs an hour a month. Google Business Profile posts, a fortnightly note on each office’s profile, are read by more prospective clients than most firms’ social accounts put together, because they appear when someone has already searched for the firm or the matter.
Local groups need judgement. A solicitor who answers “does anyone know if you need probate for a small estate” with a clear, general explanation and no pitch builds a reputation in the town; one who answers with “contact our office” is removed by the admins and remembered for it. Group rules usually prohibit advertising; they rarely prohibit being useful. Our page on opening a new office covers the local presence a new office needs, of which this is a part.
Paid social, and where it is a sensitivity problem
- LinkedIn advertising reaches HR directors, finance directors and in-house counsel by job title, which makes it the one paid social channel that fits employer-side and commercial work. It is expensive per click and works as reinforcement.
- Meta advertising reaches local consumers cheaply for planned matters with a clear offer: wills, LPAs, conveyancing quotes. It fails for urgent matters.
- Family, criminal, injury and clinical negligence should not be targeted on social platforms at all. The platforms’ own rules restrict it and the discretion risk is real.
| Channel | Fits | How to use it | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| LinkedIn ads | Employer-side employment, corporate, commercial, property | Sponsor a partner’s best “what changed” post to a list defined by job title, company size and region; invite to a briefing or webinar; small budgets | High cost per click; measure in briefing registrations and conversations, not clicks |
| Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram) | Wills, LPAs, conveyancing quotes, local events | A specific offer to a local radius: a fixed-fee will, an LPA clinic, an instant conveyancing quote; a landing page that delivers it | Lead-form quality; the platform’s own restrictions on sensitive targeting; no remarketing for anything personal |
| YouTube ads | Rarely a law firm’s | Occasionally, a solicitor’s explainer promoted to people who searched the question | Cost against the organic reach the same video gets for free |
| Boosted posts | Almost nothing | Only a post with an offer and a landing page, to a defined local audience | Boosting firm news to strangers is the commonest waste in legal social spend |
The sensitivity point is not a nicety. Meta’s and Google’s advertising policies restrict targeting people on the basis of personal hardships, which covers relationship breakdown, injury, illness and legal trouble, and a family law advert following someone across a shared family tablet is a discretion failure the firm would never forgive in a solicitor.6 Our PPC guide takes the same position on remarketing. For those matters, search is the channel, because the person comes to the firm.
Measuring in referrals and reputation, not reach
- Followers, impressions, reach and engagement are the platforms’ measures of the platforms. They are not instructions.
- Measure referrals the partners can trace, enquiries that mention a post or a profile, connection requests and messages from referrers, brand searches, and briefing attendance.
- Report one line per partner a month, and judge over quarters.
| Measure | How | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Referrals traced to a post or profile | The partner asks; the enquiry log records “LinkedIn” or “saw your post” | The result the channel exists for |
| Referrer engagement | Which accountants, IFAs and HR contacts commented, shared or messaged | Whether the right people are seeing it |
| Connection requests and messages from target referrers | Logged monthly per partner | Relationships forming |
| Briefing and event registrations | From sponsored and organic posts | The employer-side pipeline |
| Brand and partner-name searches | Search Console queries containing the names | People who saw a post and went to check the firm |
| Profile views by the right people | LinkedIn’s own analytics, filtered by role | Whether the profile is being read before meetings |
| Instructions with social as a source | Enquiry log matched to case management | Rare, and worth recording when it happens |
Reported as one line per partner a month and summarised quarterly. A partner whose posts are being shared by accountants, who has had four conversations with new referrers this quarter and one instruction the client said came from “that piece you wrote”, is succeeding, whatever the follower count. Our page on knowing whether marketing is working sets out the enquiry log that makes the tracing possible.
The rules: the SRA Code, the warning notice, CAP, contempt and defamation
- A solicitor’s social media is subject to the SRA Principles and Code on every account, personal or professional, at every hour.
- The firm’s posts are publicity under paragraph 8.8 and advertising under the CAP Code; direct messages to prospective clients are unsolicited approaches under 8.9.
- Confidentiality, contempt and defamation are the three ways a post becomes a disciplinary matter or a claim.
The warning notice. The SRA’s warning notice on offensive communications applies to solicitors, to everyone working in a regulated firm, and to firms and their COLPs. It makes clear that the Principles apply outside practice, that privacy settings and anonymity are no protection, that resharing without refuting can amount to endorsement, and that failure to have regard to it is likely to lead to disciplinary action.4
Publicity and approaches. Paragraph 8.8 requires every post that promotes the firm to be accurate and not misleading. Paragraph 8.9 prohibits unsolicited approaches to the public to advertise legal services, which catches a direct message to someone who posted about their dismissal, however kindly meant. Public posts are not approaches; private messages to strangers are.2
Confidentiality. Paragraph 6.3, discussed in Part 5. It covers stories, photographs of documents, screenshots and “a client of ours” anecdotes, and it does not lapse when the matter ends.
Advertising codes. Paid social and promotional posts are marketing communications under the CAP Code; testimonials need to be genuine and permitted; anything the firm pays a third party to post must be identified as an advertisement, under the ASA’s and CMA’s rules on influencer marketing.5
Reviews. Asking clients to review the firm on social platforms is fine; incentivising or filtering them is caught by the fake reviews provisions of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, in force since April 2025.7
Contempt and defamation. Comment on active proceedings risks contempt under the Contempt of Court Act 1981; comment on identifiable people and firms risks defamation. Neither is a marketing matter, but social media is where they happen.3
Staff and data. Photographs of staff and clients need consent; posts about colleagues engage employment law; the firm’s data protection obligations apply to any personal data in a post. The Law Society publishes practice guidance on social media that is worth adopting as a baseline.8
The firm’s social media policy
- A short, practical policy that everyone in the firm has read protects the firm and gives the people posting confidence.
- It covers personal accounts, approvals, confidentiality, what to do with a complaint or a hostile comment, and who speaks for the firm.
- Two pages, reviewed annually, with the warning notice attached.
- Scope: applies to every account, personal and professional, when the person can be identified as working for the firm
- The SRA warning notice on offensive communications, attached, with a plain summary
- Confidentiality: no client information, no matter details, no anonymised stories without the check in Part 5, no screenshots of documents
- Live matters: no comment on active proceedings, the firm’s or anyone’s
- Approval: who checks firm-promotional posts for accuracy before they go, and who signs off case stories
- Speaking for the firm: who may, on what, and the disclaimer for personal views
- Enquiries in public: how to respond to “what should I do” comments and messages, and where to route them
- Hostile comments and complaints: acknowledge, take it private, never argue, never confirm a client relationship
- Direct messages: no unsolicited approaches to prospective clients
- Photographs and consent: staff, clients, events, documents
- Paid content and endorsements: labelling, and no incentivised reviews
- What happens on leaving: profile updates, the firm’s pages, content ownership
The mistakes that embarrass firms
- The company page as the only presence. Awards, office moves and charity runs, posted to nobody, measured in followers.
- Boosting firm news to strangers. The most common waste in legal social spend.
- Anonymised stories that are not. The village knows who it is.
- Direct messages to people who posted about a legal problem. An unsolicited approach, and a bad look.
- Arguing in the comments. With a client, a competitor, a stranger. The warning notice exists because of this.
- Commenting on a live case. Contempt is a strict liability.
- Hashtag soup and stock imagery. A post about redundancy illustrated by a handshake, tagged #law #lawyer #legal.
- Partners made to post. It shows, and it stops.
- Targeted ads for sensitive matters. A discretion failure and a policy breach.
- Reporting reach. The platform’s number, not the firm’s.
A 90-day plan
- Weeks 1 to 2. Adopt the policy. Choose two or three partners whose practices depend on referrers. Rewrite their profiles as landing pages with new photographs. Tidy the company page and each office’s Facebook and Google Business Profile.
- Weeks 2 to 4. First forty-minute conversations. First posts drafted, approved and published. Each partner’s list of twenty target referrers built, and the fifteen minutes of commenting started.
- Weeks 4 to 8. The routine running monthly. Google Business Profile posts fortnightly per office. The first “what changed” post timed to a real change. The enquiry log recording social as a source.
- Weeks 6 to 12. First explainer video recorded and captioned, published to YouTube and embedded on the matter page. If the firm does employer-side work, a briefing announced and a sponsored post tested to a defined list.
- Week 13. Report per partner: referrer engagement, conversations started, enquiries mentioning a post, brand searches. Decide which partners continue, which join, and what the next quarter’s posts are built around.
We run the monthly conversations, write in the partner’s voice, schedule, monitor, handle the company page and the office profiles, and report in referrals rather than reach. The partners give forty minutes a month and keep their own comments.
Questions solicitors ask about social media
Does social media bring law firms clients?
Directly, rarely; for urgent consumer matters, almost never. It brings referrals, keeps the firm in referrers’ minds, builds individual solicitors’ reputations and provides the proof a prospective client checks before calling. Judged on those, it works; judged on leads, it disappoints.
Which platform should a law firm be on?
LinkedIn for the partners and the firm, Google Business Profile posts for each office, and one of Facebook or YouTube depending on whether the clients are local consumers or people researching questions. Two platforms done properly beat six done badly.
Our partners will not post. Is the company page enough?
No, but the partners do not have to write. A forty-minute conversation a month, posts drafted in their voice for approval, and fifteen minutes a week of commenting is the whole commitment. Start with the two or three whose practices depend on referrers.
Can we share client stories?
Only when nobody could identify the client, which is a harder test than removing the name, or with the client’s written permission. Confidentiality does not expire, and the COLP should see any story before it is posted.
Should we pay for social advertising?
For employer-side and commercial work, sponsoring a partner’s best post to a list defined by job title can reinforce the relationships. For wills, LPAs and conveyancing, a specific local offer can work. For family, criminal, injury and clinical negligence, no: the platforms restrict it and the discretion risk is real.
How do we measure it?
Referrals the partners can trace, referrer engagement, conversations started, briefing registrations, brand searches, and the rare instruction with social as a source. One line per partner a month. Not followers, not reach.
Do personal accounts matter to the regulator?
Yes. The SRA’s warning notice applies to every account at every hour, privacy settings are no protection, and resharing an offensive post without refuting it can be treated as endorsing it. The firm’s policy should say so plainly.
Ben leads search at Law Firm Marketing Agency, a Liverpool-based agency that works only with law firms across England and Wales. He has run partner-led social programmes for multi-office firms alongside their search work, written in partners’ voices from monthly conversations, and reported them in referrals rather than reach, and he writes the agency’s guides from that work. This guide is reviewed when the platforms or the professional rules change.
- Legal Services Consumer Panel, Tracker Survey 2024, as summarised in Ten lessons from the Legal Services Consumer Panel tracker survey, Legal Futures.
- Solicitors Regulation Authority, Code of Conduct for Solicitors, paragraphs 6.3, 8.8 and 8.9.
- UK Parliament, Contempt of Court Act 1981; Defamation Act 2013.
- Solicitors Regulation Authority, Warning notice: offensive communications, updated 25 November 2019.
- Committee of Advertising Practice, The CAP Code; ASA and CMA, Influencers’ guide to making clear that ads are ads.
- Google, Personalized advertising policy; Meta, Advertising standards, sensitive attributes.
- UK Parliament, Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.
- The Law Society, Social media guidance.