The Thomson Reuters study – reported by Australasian Legal Business Online – found that 75 per cent of 100 senior legal practitioners surveyed said their firms used social media in a professional capacity, but only 39 per cent offered any kind of formal training.

Unprofessional tweets

Around a quarter of those surveyed said there was no social media strategy in place at their firms, while 65 per cent added that there were people at their firms who used social media professionally despite not understanding how the platforms worked.
Focussing on Twitter, 13 per cent of those questioned said that colleagues had frequently sent tweets that could be considered as ‘unprofessional’.

Unnecessary risks

Carl Olson, commercial director at Thomson Reuters, commented: ‘Social media is not going away anytime soon, and as our research shows, a huge proportion of law firms are now waking up to the very real benefits it presents… However, what’s most concerning is the fact that staff training and development, not to mention marketing strategy, has not caught up yet. This means firms are exposing themselves to unnecessary risks.’