Many lawyers provide insights into their everyday work on LinkedIn. You benefit from this, but also your law firm as an employer. Anja Schäfer explains how law firms can use lawyers as digital brand ambassadors.
As part of digital transformation, it is now essential for law firms to be present on social network platforms such as LinkedIn. Positioning yourself as an attractive employer brand and directly addressing specific target groups, such as young lawyers or other applicants, are becoming increasingly important in times when classic job advertisements have become obsolete.
Basically, the shareholders of a law firm, regularly supported by PR, social media marketing or human resources managers, influence its public image and decide on employer branding.
However, individual lawyers now have an increasing influence on the positive image of a law firm, not only from the perspective of applicants. Because their visibility on LinkedIn has just as much of an impact on the employer brand as their personal appearances at career fairs, conferences or other networking events.
Through their contributions on the relevant platforms, lawyers can convey a more authentic image of the law firm as a company and therefore also as an employer. Find out below how you can represent your law firm as a so-called corporate influencer – and how the law firm can promote your commitment.
Lawyers as the authentic voice of the firm
In times of information overload and fake news, with a little courage, time and strategy, you can become a credible voice for your law firm through your digital visibility.
Although many lawyers are now on social media, not all of them are suitable as corporate influencers. The law firms therefore rely on voluntary work.
Corporate influencers or brand ambassadors, with the approval or support of the law firm, provide insights into their everyday work via their personal LinkedIn profile and position themselves on certain legal topics in order to educate, strengthen or change the image of the law firm contribute to outsiders.
What is crucial for your role as an ambassador is your intrinsic motivation to make your own legal know-how visible on LinkedIn and to be perceived primarily as a lawyer in your law firm – and not as an independent specialist. In addition, you need a certain affinity for this platform and some courage to get involved with the (digital) public. Because unlike the functions of the platform, this cannot be conveyed in appropriate training courses.
Applicants want to read about “real” people
According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, employees are considered very credible sources of information. 72 percent of respondents said they are more likely to trust people who are similar to them. For the employer branding of a law firm, it is therefore important, with a view to replacements or new appointments, that the lawyers on LinkedIn also provide individual insights into their everyday (work) life and their professional topics.
Personalized content published individually via the LinkedIn profile has therefore long been one of the most successful content marketing trends. After all, it’s not just potential applicants who want to read about “real” people.
In addition, the law firm's content is much more successful on social networks when it is presented by the lawyers – and here by many of them – rather than by the law firm's LinkedIn account. Ultimately, personal contributions achieve significantly more engagement on the platform than individual contributions from the company.
How law firms can promote the engagement of their ambassadors
The brand ambassadors usually decide for themselves what and about what they communicate. In some law firms they are supported by the PR or BD department.
Regardless of this, law firms should provide their employees with working time for this voluntary commitment – and material such as content and images, as well as appropriate training if necessary.
But the most important thing is the trust that the people can actually become visible to the outside world in the interests of the law firm. Under no circumstances should the lawyers in question have to share certain content made available to them by the law firm, constantly talk about their employer or even submit their contributions for approval. Of course you can agree on some content, but that shouldn't be the rule.
In any case, law firms should take time for internal communication – and value the work of their brand ambassadors. Because nothing is more valuable than motivated employees who enthusiastically report on their legal topics, their day-to-day work at the office or other internal and external activities.
Commitment also impacts one’s career
Of course, engagement on LinkedIn also benefits your own career – because nothing is more important for lawyers than becoming visible with your own expertise. Personal commitment leads to the necessary credibility and awareness of your own reputation in a short time. Lawyers who consistently communicate their expertise both digitally and analogue become opinion makers over time.
The more time, know-how and commitment you have in your personal branding and your external impact and thus invest in your network, the faster you will be successful with your strategy as a brand ambassador. A sharp positioning as an expert and active marketing on your own behalf not only influence your visibility on LinkedIn, but also your perception inside and outside the law firm.
As a law firm ambassador, it is becoming increasingly rare for you to have a strict separation between professional and personal topics, provided you show the appropriate commitment. It is therefore not always easy for outsiders to identify the role as such. This context usually only becomes apparent via the LinkedIn profile when it is made clearly visible in the profile slogan or elsewhere.
If you as a lawyer manage to authentically link your know-how to yourself, you will not only be approached for interviews, specialist articles or lectures. At the same time, you will also regularly be asked for interesting internal projects within the firm or suggested for the next career step.
The lawyer Dr. Anja Schäfer is an expert for networking & female leadership in law firms and host of the “Female lawyers make careers!” podcasts. As a career mentor, she focuses on supporting female lawyers and corporate lawyers in terms of personal branding, network building and visibility. She regularly organizes networking events for female lawyers, such as on April 4, 2025 the fifth virtual “Female Lawyer Networks… DAY”.
