Baker McKenzie : Content is Our Conversation With Clients and Audience

Content for lawyers is the currency of engagement. Content is not the end goal.

Leah Schloss, Baker McKenzie’s associate director for North American
communications, as part of Baker’s being recognized as the leading law firm in Good2bSocial’s The Social Law Firm Index shared:

We want our content to resonate with people. We don’t want to put out content that people aren’t engaging with.

The content we put out there is for our clients and what they say they need from us. We think of our content as part of a conversation with our clients and audience. (Emphasis added)

The end game in legal blogging is not to publish a blog post. That’s just a start.

The conversation – the dialogue which ensues from “content” is what leading bloggers are after. It’s from this engagement that reputations and relationships are born.

Attending a social event for networking, lawyers keen to business development are not focused on the words they speak – the content – they’re focused on the conversation, the engagement and relationships.

Recognition that content is merely the currency of engagement is made all the more important with the advent of social media.

Social media, ala LinkedIn, is how lawyers take their content – their words – out to network with people, just as they would take their words – their content – out to network at a face to face social event.

Baker McKenzie recognizes exactly that. Schloss, in discussing how important the firm views LinkedIn:

“Training and then retraining is super important. We’re constantly training employees on sharing on social media. I also really impress on people that the more personal the post, the better. They need to make it relevant to the people they’re posting to.

“We’ll hear from clients that one of our pieces of thought leadership was helpful, or it spoke to them on their end. We love hearing that sort of feedback.”

Business development as a lawyer is all about a reputation and relationships.

Content may get you to first base, but recognition that content is merely the currency of engagement leading to relationships and a reputation will get you home.