Top 200 embrace thought leadership marketing

The top 200 UK law firms are producing 93 per cent more thought leadership content online in 2019 than in 2014, according to research.

The UK’s top law firms 17,533 online insights in 2014, compared to 33,823 this year, revealing that the number of insights produced per lawyer has risen 135 per cent in that time.

Irwin Mitchell topped the rankings for online marketing among the top 200, judged across eight categories including the number of knowledge pieces created per-lawyer per-year, number of insights created overall, number of Twitter followers and Twitter activity.

The figures come from a report published by online marketing platform Passle and appear to show a greater tendency for largest law firms to use online marketing methods to attract clients and build their brands.

The number of thought leadership pieces produced by the top 200 in 2019 equates to roughly 188 pieces per firm. Of those, the number of blogs was nearly 16,000, increasing by 99 per firm on average between 2014 and 2019.

Individually, firms in 2019 produced an average of 1.2 knowledge pieces per lawyer per year, up slightly from 0.5 in 2014.

The top 10% of firms produced over 12,000 insights combined, nearly 36% of the total industry content.

The research also revealed that while law firms seem to be more active on Twitter, their audience tends to look more to LinkedIn to engage with legal brands – although consumers platform of choice may be different in the mid-market.

The research found that firms’ average number of LinkedIn followers was almost twice the number of Twitter followers.

The average firm had slightly more than 9,000 followers and the top three had more than 100,000 followers each.

A sample of professionals showed that those producing their own knowledge pieces were more engaged with LinkedIn, posting 213 per cent more over time than before they created content.

DLA Piper came top of the ranking for social media, with the most Twitter and LinkedIn followers.