This is the @legalaware twitter profile page:

The Intendance report published in December 2010 gives an overview of how law firms should use Twitter.

http://www.intendance.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Intendance-Twitter-Report.pdf

It is interesting to see whether the LegalAware profile page lives up to the suggestions of Intendance. Indeed, Intendance recommends that simple changes like having a bespoke background, firm logo, and a suitable account name all help to make the page look professional. Apparently, such features make Twitter output an authentic identity, helping to attract followers and giving your tweets greater “credibility”.

We have a picture logo to represent the BPP Legal Awareness Society, although we haven’t undergone any formal branding process. The website link is to our website (http://legal-aware.org), and our background is a simple one in keeping with our new found ‘corporate identity’.

I use Twitter as a channel for promoting legal blogs, podcasts, press releases, newsletters, videos and any other legal content. Some of the blogs I would like to feature include:

http://www.headoflegal.com/

http://copyright4education.blogspot.com/ (this is, as such, not a legal blog, but contains an excellent range of in-depth copyright issues, particularly relevant to education)

http://charonqc.wordpress.com/

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green

http://legalbizzle.wordpress.com/

http://www.clerkingwell.co.uk/

http://gavward.com/

http://lawyertechreview.com/

http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/ (Adam Wagner)

http://nipclaw.wordpress.com’ (Jane Lambert; useful advice for start-ups)

http://www.shireensmith.com/ (this is a lovely blog by Shireen which has a focus on copyright, trade marks and brand management)

I like to follow relevant people in the legal industry such as journalists, ‘blawgers’, in-house counsel, solicitors, recruiters, legal commentators, to raise the profile of our initiative at BPP (the Legal Awareness Society), and to encourage an interesting conversation between people of very different backgrounds. However, in the case of the BPP Legal Awareness Society, whilst we hope to cover all practice seats of large corporate law firms fairly, there tends to be a bias towards social media, cloud computing, human rights and reputation management tweets, because of the nature of population actively tweeting at the moment.

On our new blog (about to be launched), there is a Twitter button on our LegalAware blog, connecting to Twitter, and a Facebook one, connecting to our new page on Facebook. The Intendance survey of the top 50 UK law firms found that Twitter use can generally be split into three key areas:

• No Twitter account found for the firm
• Incomplete Twitter account – unclear if owned by the firm
• Complete Twitter account with varying levels of interaction

Remarkably, it appears that number of firms lack a clear, branded presence, which confuses potential followers – and Intendance considers that this reflects badly on the firm. Quality of tweets is another area of contention, and worryingly analysis of the output across these firms shows that a majority post updates that fail to spark debate. Instead, tweets tend to be summaries of press releases or news articles with links straight to the news page on the main website. Intendance advises that “this sort of content lacks the social element thatwill attract more followers.”

Finally, there is no doubt that Intendance considers that the social element is crucial:

“Social content helps to cement relationships – the human empathy and shared interest factor – but valuable information is what will ultimately make or break Twitter in the B2B sector, not meaningless gossip. .. The ultimate aim, in a similar way to a website, is to achieve a reputation as a credible source of legal knowhow, both on a personal level and a firm-wide level.”