Law Firm Reputation Management
As part of the ABA’s http://www.abanet.org/ teaching on lawyer reputation management, experts stressed the importance of positive press being in the top results of Google searches. It was suggested by the ABA that to counter negative remarks and increase positive mentions online that lawyers use blogs. Law firm blogs can help with reputation management by becoming a platform to showcase work, skills and individual personality. Another key step in managing your online reputation is keeping track of what people are saying about you. Setting up Google Alerts for your name, the name of your practice, and other relevant keywords is a great way to know immediately when something is put online that may require your attention.
Let’s look at Reputation:
• Reputation is the opinion (more technically, a social evaluation) of the group of entities toward a person, a group of people, or an organization on a certain criterion.
• Reputation can be considered as a component of the identity as defined by others.
• Reputation is known to be a ubiquitous, spontaneous and highly efficient mechanism of social control in natural societies
• Reputation influences ranges from competitive settings, like markets, to cooperative ones, like firms, organizations, institutions and communities.
• Reputation affects phenomena of different scale, from everyday life to relationships between nations.
• Reputation is a fundamental instrument of social order, based upon distributed, spontaneous social control
Reputation in general is the culmination of ‘the result of what we do, what we say, and what other people say about us’.
Law Firm CEO & On-line Reputation
Research has shown the reputation of the CEO is inextricably linked to the reputation of the firm. CEO’s set the tone and defines the firms’ direction, attracts talent, and is the human face of the firm. Increasingly, CEOs are building their brands on credibility. In times of uncertainty, the CEO is called upon to speak on behalf of the firm and promote stability.
Today, law firm CEO’s are operating in an increasingly connected and conversational web environment. Sources of information about a firm and its attorneys are no longer limited to the firm’s website or press releases. Instead, casual dialogue or references on social networks, blogs, directories, job boards and other websites all contribute to the reputation of a firm in the legal marketplace.
When people are searching for information they are most likely to be using Google. According to Experian Hitwise, a global online competitive intelligence service, Google accounted for 71.08 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in September 2009.
A lawyer’s reputation is his or her stock in trade.
To begin developing an online reputation, consider how your firm’s brand should be perceived. What is your brand identity / what are your value proposition / selling point / unique voice? Once you have developed the image you would like your constituencies to perceive, develop a strategy to build your brand. Are you seeking credibility in the marketplace (consider blogging, answering questions on LinkedIn), gain market leadership (create innovative tools for your industry) or connection (build a network of contacts in professional and/or social sites).
A major force behind the changed online environment is Google, which as Andy Beal and Dr. Judy Strauss explain in their book, Radically Transparent, is no longer just a search engine; it’s a reputation engine that stores links to every single reference – positive or negative – about a company anywhere on the Web, and displays them to anyone who inquires.
Following is a collection of resources for lawyers regarding online reputation management:
Online Reputation Management: First Rule is to Avoid Self-Inflicted Wounds – Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Blog
Online Reputation Management – Kennedy-Mighell Report podcast
Is Bad Publicity Better Than No Publicity? Not Necessarily in an Internet Age – Nolo’s Legal Marketing Blawg,
Debate rages over anonymous blogs – The Lawyers Weekly
Additional Resources:
Control Your Online Reputation: Google Profiles
The Many Uses of Online Reputation Management for Lawyers
Managing Your Online Persona – A Success Story
So the idea that reputation simply attaches itself to good work might have been broadly true 50 years ago (but not anymore). In the legal profession reputation management isn’t an add-on to the business, it is the business. And not actively managing your reputation is the same as managing it badly.
