The Economics of LinkedIn
Everyone in this industry has an opinion on whether lawyers should be "doing LinkedIn." Almost nobody has done the sums on what it's actually worth – until now.
Our new report closes the gap.
Everyone has an opinion. Nobody has the sums.
For years, we have tracked thousands of lawyers and barristers across five distinct cohorts, scoring every post on the platform by the engagement it actually generates. Not follower counts, not vanity metrics: the real, compounding return on the time a lawyer spends showing up as themselves.
Take the hourly cost of a partner's time, multiply it by the hours your fee earners spend writing, commenting and scrolling on LinkedIn each week, then multiply that across a few hundred people. Most firms are quietly running a six-figure LinkedIn budget line they've never once totted up – let alone asked whether it's earning its keep.
The more you post, the lower your marginal returns
As posting volume rises across a quarter, the engagement each individual post earns falls away sharply and consistently. That's the aggregate picture, across everyone we track. The report breaks it down further: by cohort, by seniority, by practice area, so you can see where your own partners actually sit on the curve, not just where the average lawyer does.
Median engagement "power" per post, by quarterly posting volume band. Source: TBD's Legal LinkedInfluencers dataset, top 200.
Using LinkedIn the same way, every day, is like going to the gym and only ever using the leg curl.
Simon Marshall · Founder, TBD Marketing
Built for the people who sign off the budget
Written for the people deciding how much time, budget and leeway their most senior lawyers get on LinkedIn, and what they should expect back for it.
Deciding where budget goes
Is LinkedIn earning its place in the marketing spend, or is it just assumed to?
Deciding where time goes
Which partners' time on LinkedIn is paying off, and which cohort your firm should actually compete in.
Deciding where training goes
Whether LinkedIn training is landing with the right people at the right career stage, or being delivered blanket, to everyone, regardless of what they're actually trying to get from the platform.
Questions the report answers
Is the time your most senior lawyers spend on LinkedIn actually worth it, or is it just noise?
Where does visibility turn into instructions, referrals and lateral offers, and where does it stop?
Are you making the right investment in LinkedIn training, or just going through the motions?
Which of the five cohorts should your firm actually be competing in?
Format & licence
PDF report, delivered by email.
Firmwide. Every partner and lawyer at your firm can read it.
On sale now. The report itself publishes before the end of July, and your copy follows by email as soon as it's ready.
This is a one-off published research report rather than a subscription, so all sales are final. Questions first? Call or email us below. Want your own firm's numbers benchmarked against these cohorts? Ask us about a bespoke, firm-specific version.
Should your most senior lawyers be using LinkedIn? And if so, how?
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£999 · firmwide licence