He’s in good company. For the first time ever on our Associate Tech Survey, more than a third of respondents (35 percent, up from 31 percent the year before) say they use social networking tools—both specialized legal blogs and applications intended for the public at large—for job-related purposes. LinkedIn was the most popular platform, at 94 percent, followed by Facebook at 30 percent and Twitter at 13 percent. Other sources listed by respondents included Instagram, Google Chat, and Pinterest, along with such industry-specific sites as Lexblog.

“If lawyers don’t make it a point to become social and understand how to communicate in social media, they will not be able to effectively join the conversation,” says Glen Gilmore, a New Jersey–based solo practitioner and social media expert who is ranked number 15 on Forbes’s list of top social media influencers. He found it surprising that only a third of midlevel associates are “leveraging social media [because] the failure [of] law firms to ‘get’ social is a terrible disservice to their clients, most of whom are using social media for personal and business purposes.”

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