A blog by Kysen MD Clare Rodway, capturing interesting conversations she has in the course of her work...
The mass migration of the legal community from X (Xodus?) has set me thinking about how social media platforms, and the way the profession uses them, has changed. I remember the excitement of the early days of the Legal Twitterati, when engagement was intelligent, intense and fun. At that time LinkedIn was seen as a bland alternative in comparison and used mainly by individuals to show off their CVs and look for jobs. But as LinkedIn has matured, it's become the go-to platform for firms, chambers and lawyers to promote themselves to clients and referrers, as well as peers and potential employers, and it is now a must-have marketing tool for all. Who knows what will replace X - BlueSky? Mastodon? Threads? - or whether there will eventually be a return at some point. What we do know is that it's a moving picture and we all need to keep a watching brief.
My good friend-in-law, Karen Snell, (Hogan Lovells' long-time marketing and BD supremo who recently moved to Kennedys), recently introduced me to Andy McKay, CEO of 'narrative filmmaking' and employer branding content agency sb.inc. He works with Top 50 law firms, (including several in the Top 10), on how to tell their stories on the decidedly less 'corporate' social media platforms Instagram and TikTok. Yes TikTok! 'Surely this isn't the place for Big Law?' I hear you ask. Andy's answer echoes one of my Golden Rules for communication: 'You need to choose your channel according to where your target audience is'. He tells me, these days the generation graduating now will use TikTok as a search engine more than Google. That's why so many top law firms are starting to engage with the platform for their graduate recruitment.
'Once you've identified the right channel for the audience you want to reach, you need to understand how it works in terms of the content people are looking for, the way they want it presented and the right tone of voice to use, to gel with its culture. TikTok demands 'authenticity'. People use the platform to find real world scenarios, and in the graduate recruitment context this means telling stories about what it is really like to work at the firm or chambers. As any skilled communicator knows, 'showing' is more powerful than 'telling', evoking feelings rather than just transmitting information. People don't remember what they see; they remember how they feel. TikTok's video shorts medium is ideal for this and gives law firms and chambers employers the opportunity to put their story across in a more creative and engaging way'.
Here's an interesting question: how do you marry up Big Law brand consistency with the type of authenticity TikTok requires? Some may assume there is an inherent conflict here, but Andy disagrees: 'If you think about even face-to-face and verbal communication, lawyers themselves know how they adjust their style depending whether they're speaking to the Managing Partner or Head of Chambers, versus a colleague over a work drinks, and whether it's a formal meeting or a social occasion. You have the same latitude when telling your story on different platforms: it's important to adjust your style and tone of voice according to the medium, but this doesn't mean compromising your professionalism.'
Andy began his career as a jobbing actor - stints in The Bill, Casualty, Eastenders, London's Burning - before moving behind the camera to set up his video-based content creation business. This man knows a lot about storytelling. The key is to adapt the way stories are told as audiences and media change, and embrace the possibilities that new platforms create.
