Second Place
Foley Hoag LLP — Foley Hoag LLP Blogs

Foley Hoag LLP developed a blog to showcase its intellectual capital and to establish the firm’s lawyers as thought leaders in important firm practices. The blog was authored by lawyers who were most enthusiastic about growing their practices through social media. The firm created four blog; the intent was to build momentum for blogging through a staged approach with a small group of active lawyers leading the way.

The target audiences included current and prospective clients, business leaders, in-house counsel, other professionals or lawyers as referral sources, trade publication journalists and the business media.

Working with LexBlog, the firm researched successful legal and non-legal blogs for design and content. LexBlog was instrumental in training lawyers on expectations for frequency of posts and commenting. The lawyers help to create the launch content and identifying key words for SEO purposes.

The first three blogs were designed and launched at the same time; followed four months later by the Security & Privacy Law blog. The blogs were branded with reference to the Foley Hoag style guidelines with individual look-and-feel pertaining to the blog topic. The tone is conversational but with a sense of authority and expert opinion.

Summary of Outcomes

Two of the firm’s current blogs paid for themselves within the first month, and revenue has grown tenfold over cost since launch for each. The other two blogs have resulted in new revenue and have garnered significant media inquiries for the lawyer-authors with interviews in key trade publications such as Compliance Week and National Law Journal. 

Third Place
Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP — How to Win "Fans" and Influence Pageviews

Like many global law firms, Curtis faced the sizeable challenge of establishing meaningful relationships with audiences scattered all over the world and operating in various industries. Following the launch of Curtis' Facebook recruiting page, the first among AmLaw 200’s firms, it became apparent just how useful social media could be in realizing and maintaining these disparate relationships. By implementing an integrated social media campaign, the firm was able to engender a new level of brand loyalty, increase name and brand recognition and provide new avenues for obtaining firm information. Best of all, the firm did not spend a single additional dollar to integrate the social networking services into the firm’s existing marketing programs.

With this in mind, Curtis re-launched its Web site in August 2009 determined that a key feature would be seamless integration with social networks. The firm identified specific segments of its audience and matched them to an appropriate Web 2.0 platform. Facebook was aimed at law students, summer associates and other young alumni. The Curtis blogs were used to engage prospective/ current clients and “influencers” interested in specific subject matter.  LinkedIn was implemented as both a recruiting and client development tool, as well as providing another way to connect with alumni.  A Twitter feed targeted the media and blogging communities. 

To streamline all of these various platforms, Curtis employed Yahoo!’s Pipes service to create a single RSS feed that aggregates all Curtis content. This “master feed” then is routed to each of the firm’s various social networking applications. This system, once implemented, enabled all content updates to automatically distribute to the Curtis Facebook page, LinkedIn group, Twitter feed, blogs and Web site.  This streamlined update process allows the firm’s relatively small marketing team (five members) to maintain eight different sites/ pages without dedicating significant resources to the project.

Summary of Outcomes

Curtis has raised its profile significantly by creatively utilizing these various social networking platforms. To date, the firm has accumulated 206 fans on Facebook, 69 group members on LinkedIn, and 226 followers on Twitter. Our blogs have been visited almost 18,000 times since launch and more than 9% of the firm’s referred Web traffic, including almost 800 first-time visitors, resulted directly from our social networking activities. Most impressively, the firm’s Oman blog has generated new business for the firm, as local companies have become clients after learning about our regional expertise online.