Life Beyond the Briefs

Social Media Marketing for Lawyers: Should You Even Bother? | GLM Tribe

• Brian Glass

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What’s the real return on all that time lawyers are spending posting on LinkedIn, Instagram, or YouTube?

In this special episode pulled from a recent GLM Tribe call, Ben Glass and Brian Glass have an honest conversation about what’s working, what’s not, and why social media might not be the magic bullet many lawyers are hoping for.

They share how they think about visibility, what role social media plays in their own firms, and what most lawyers get wrong about it. You’ll also hear how they balance short-form content, personal branding, referral building, and where they believe your next hour or dollar is best spent.

This isn’t about going viral. It’s about being seen, being trusted, and being intentional with your time and energy.

To learn more about how to grow a law practice that gives you more freedom, and to join the Tribe, visit https://www.greatlegalmarketing.com

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Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.

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SPEAKER_01:

Welcome back to Life Beyond the Briefs, the number one podcast for lawyers choosing to live lives of their own design and build practices that they actually like showing up to on Monday. Oh, one of the things that I like to do on the show every once in a while is pepper in the content that we're distributing out to our great legal marketing tribe. As you know, Ben and I coach solo and small law firm owners on how to build better practices, how to build more profitable practices, and most importantly for most of us, like where to spend the next dollar of your money, an hour of your effort. And having traveled the conference circuit in the spring and in the fall, one of the things that's on every conference agenda is social media marketing. And what happens in most social media marketing is a lawyer with a huge following gets up and talks about their huge following and how long they've how they've built it. And the dirty secret is that most of them have been building it for five or seven years. And so even if you started tomorrow, you wouldn't probably be as successful as they are until 2032. And so the uh important takeaway from that is figuring out like where you are today and how you can effectively spend your dollar an hour on social media marketing if you choose to do it at all. And so in this episode that Ben and I recorded back in September and released to our tribe in early October, we're gonna be diving into the way that we think about social media marketing in our firm today, the practical things that you can do as a lawyer or an owner of a small law firm today, and how to think about when you should be investing your time and money into social media, and when you ought to be spending your time and money and effort anywhere else. I do hope that you enjoyed this quick hitter episode.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey everyone, so welcome to this month's Tribe Call. Brian and I are gonna be uh talking about social media. You'll notice it's a different platform here because we made a cardinal mistake when we were recording earlier this week, is we forgot to double check the equipment. And so after we recorded the episode, uh he told us that it's unusable because uh one of the connectors wasn't connected up right. So we're back here.

SPEAKER_01:

And as we're recording this, Brian is getting ready to fly off to Vegas, Vegas to speak at headed Vegas for uh Gee and Conrad's lunch hour legal marketing events. And you are headed for a long bike ride in New Hampshire.

SPEAKER_00:

In New Hampshire, yes. We've been checking the weather. It looks like it's gonna be great, a little bit cooler, it's 88 degrees here. Let's talk about um social media because it's a topic that you know people ask us about a lot. And you know, if you're on social media, you think that everybody's on social media and using that as their primary method of, you know, getting cases or getting business, you know, the big question always is it's like, you know, where are you gonna spend your next hour and your next dollar in anything for your business? And so let's let's let's riff on this a bit. You know, our view, my view is that social media is something that can go on top of very nice cake, it's nice icing, but you really have to have everything else in place first. There are so many things that we need to do just to stop the leaks out of the bucket, all the way from the from you know, how we create advertising and marketing, how we track it. And then what happens when the advertising and marketing actually works and somebody calls? And oftentimes, you know, we can get lured into because social media is relatively easy to create something and put it into the universe. Like literally, you could do it on your phone and hit send. And so a lot of times, you know, even for me, like it becomes activity masquerading as accomplishment where it just isn't. But we both use it. And recently you you told me the other day we're getting some cases from some of the work that uh you're doing in LinkedIn in particular. So let's just talk. Like, how should our members be using this?

SPEAKER_01:

So here's I I think the smart way to think about this is like you have to have it, you know, for your law firm, yes, but probably more important for yourself. And I'll come back and talk about that in a minute. Um, but it's just like a web property, right? It's like even if all of your cases come to you by referral, the people who are getting your name as a referral are probably getting at least one name and they're going to check you out. And so, as a minimal viable product, I think you need to have social media set up and in place so that when people, especially the younger generation, goes and check you out, there's something that's there to be seen that isn't your Happy Memorial Day post from 2024. So that's that's I think the minimal thing you should be doing on social media is claiming all of your profiles, both in your name and in your law firm's name, and populating them with some kind of content. And listen, it's easy enough to get a VA in the Philippines or in Central or South America to create pretty generic Canva stuff to put up either on your Instagram or your law firm Facebook page. But that really isn't the stuff that's ever going to drive any traffic to the page number one, but to your firm number two. But if you're doing nothing else, like that will at least provide you with the trust clues that somebody who's gotten your name from somebody else can glean enough information that you're not a crazy person that it's okay to call you. So that's really like base level social media is existing and putting enough up enough trust clues that when somebody gets your name as one of three names, you can be found somewhere. Now that's that's never going to originate as a case off of the internet cold anybody. And I I think that most uh law firm social media is not going to originate as a case off of the internet cold anybody. Can it be done? Yes, but most of our members and most law firms writ large are not gonna do it. So you said that's the expectation. I wouldn't even I wouldn't even be trying to check that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you said something interesting. I hadn't really thought of, but if you're if you're gonna do it and you're gonna have some presence in these various social media, right, then you might as well be updating it because if someone does go check out like YouTube and they the only thing they can find is your YouTube video about contributory negligence from 15 years ago. I mean, that's just sends a a trust clue. People, if they're gonna go check out social media, they probably want to see current stuff. And of course, whatever we were producing 15 years ago, you you know, nowhere near looks as good as things that we can produce today, even if all we were using um was an iPhone. You know, Brian, there's a there's a that all having been said, you and I both know lawyers who have uh dedicated a substantial amount of assets to this and have thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands subscribers and views in certain niches, even in sort of statewide, you know, DUI type niches, not national practices. So what do what do you think they're getting out of this? And is that um juice worth the squeeze? I mean, it must be if they continue to do it.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, but I I think it goes back to what you said earlier, which is that's nice icing on a very fine cake, right? So the lawyers that come to mind for me, I mean, you said DUI practice. I think Adam Rawson in Florida, I think Jeff Hampton uh has done a great job creating a YouTube criminal defense practice, but those aren't that's not where they started with their marketing and advertising buckets. And then on the PI side, there's Mike Raffey down in Georgia, and then there's Mark Breyer is on my for you page on Instagram and TikTok all the time with hundreds of comments and likes and whatever. And none of the content, by the way, that Mark produces has anything to do with uh the law in Arizona, right? It's it's him dancing in front of his morning Zoom call. But Mark is also running like a 200-person 50 lawyer law firm, right? And so being able to have that kind of a law firm lets you have the marketing team that can put together nice videos and he's been doing it for a long time. Uh, and so don't expect to come out the gate and make a couple of interesting videos and then gain that kind of traction. So, what are they what are they doing it for? I think in part, like the lawyers who I know that are doing it are all entertained by doing it, right? So they're scratching that itch, number one. I think if you're running a single event practice like uh like I am, where you're hoping that somebody who if you're creating uh online content, hoping that somebody who is in your state was in a crash recently, needs a lawyer, doesn't already have one, and has a case that you want to work on, like that is a small universe of people that's gonna randomly find us online. I'm creating stuff for two reasons. Number one, so that if somebody who finds me and gives my name through one of three places can go and find me and start to develop a relationship with me by consuming my content before they ever pick up the phone and call. I want them to do that. What did I say? I said I said two reasons. And number two, and we're beginning to do this now, so that we can retarget people via Instagram and Facebook videos. So we are working on, and by the time this episode comes out, we'll have deployed the ability to drop a meta pixel on your computer or your phone when you come to our website and don't click to fill out a form and or don't call us so that you will begin to see our videos in Instagram and Facebook. This content that's we've already created, right? So it's a nurture content about what to do when you're in a car crash. And we're just going to feed it to people that already have some awareness of us who have come to the website, probably because they're looking for a lawyer or because they're looking for information, or be maybe because they're litigating a case against us, will start to see our videos. So I those I think are the two use cases. The peop person who's already got your name from somewhere, uh, who's looking for more information, and the person who has clicked on your website, and we want to stay in front of them because you know they clicked off and they they went somewhere else, and we want them to come.

SPEAKER_00:

I think, you know, a third use case, and we are seeing this, is that the uh number of referrals that we get from lawyers who we don't really know, but we know each other and maybe follow each other, and maybe we've become slightly famous to some of them, in particular on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_01:

Totally different target market, by the way. Yeah, right. Because none of again, none of my LinkedIn content has anything to do with car crashes. Well that's not fair. Every other week I say something about my Virginia car crash practice so that people know I have a Virginia car crash practice. So that if you have a South Carolina practice and you get a Virginia car crash call, you send it to me, right? But all of that is personality branding. And you do the same thing with all of your content is personality practice. Yes. And it's it's and that's why that's why I said get get your individual one and get the firm one as well. Because you can distribute the information through the firm one, but people do business not with firms, but with people that they know, like, and trust. And so that's why it's important to to have your own personality and your likes and interests put out there through the world on some other channel. Yeah, that's we're we're getting now maybe a case a month uh from a LinkedIn referral from a lawyer who I don't really know who's in some other some other state. It's at least a case a month in 2025.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, the and so that that's all trust building and leaving leaving trust crews. You know, the the the other thing that it that is out there and it is a form of social media and will apply to some practices more than others is the whole the whole podcast play. And that's not necessarily doing your own podcasts, although there's we believe there's value there. But this year, you know, we've made a concerted effort to get me on the podcast of the financial advisors to doctors across the country, because these are folks who are teaching about how to buy disability policies, what to do if you have a disability claim. I was just talking to a surgeon this week who said that as soon as my episode on the White Coat Investor podcast was released, ten of his friends texted and emailed him, said you gotta talk to Ben Glass. So there's so there's a play there. But and so that, you know, so much of LinkedIn LinkedIn original content and commentary content is rather shallow. And so if you're gonna do this, it is worth, you know, writing deeply and thinking. I think our friend Brewster Rawls down in Richmond is a great guy on this. Like Brewster, everybody knows Brewster does FTCA medical malpractice cases, but they also know about his dog, his travels, his son, his son's occupation, and stuff like that. So Brewster writes a lot of thoughtful stuff. You know, one of the other things that we're always harping on here is, you know, back to basic principles. And one of the things to make sure that you have in place is just some sort of a lead gen magnet. If you are creating social media for the for the audience who may become your client, like having something that they can do next, because if they're just watching you on TikTok, you don't necessarily know who they are. Um, and you were telling me the other day of some, I didn't even know about this, like some form or form fill that you have on some social media where people can directly like request your your book for white paper or next step.

SPEAKER_01:

So, so after you have an audience, right? Because the first thing is like create content that's interesting enough to make people watch to the end of the video. But you can if you're on you're on Instagram, right? Uh the question is like what call to action do I put at the end of my video? Well, it's probably not your phone number because somebody's gotta get off their phone off the app, number one, and then remember the phone number that you said and then type in the phone number. So unless you have a repeater, that probably doesn't work. Probably not a website, because it's the same concept. They got to type in the website. And Instagram doesn't allow you to put links anywhere. And so there's no clickable links like in the caption or anything like that. So the work around there is a company called MiniChat, M-A-N-Y chat. And if you've ever seen uh a larger creator um say something at the end of a video like, oh, and if you're interested in this, drop DM me the word script or put the word script in the content and I'll send you my intake script, right? MiniChat is the service that will auto-fulfill the reply to that so that you don't have to be the one or or have a marketing director who's living in in the chat function of your web uh of your social media. MiniChat will push out that um uh that white paper or whatever it is, and there's a function to capture the email address or phone number or mailing address so that you can continue to market to this person even after the interaction is over.

SPEAKER_00:

Let's talk, probably last little topic is our friend Russell Brunson talks about funnel hacking, which means like just when you see something being successful, try to reverse engineer it and see what it is they're doing. So you mentioned a number of names earlier on this video. Like it's probably worth it. If you're going to spend time, energy, and money, for example, building out a YouTube channel, then it's probably worth it, like making sure that you're subscribing to some of these big uh legal players and also players in other professional services spaces, just to see what they're doing, how they sequence um the uh videos. Our friend uh Dave Freeze up in uh Pennsylvania was an early adopter in the state and trust uh the uh estate planning space, trust space. He's an early adopter in using YouTube. And for example, he was really good at getting people who are watching one video to to know that oh, there's this other video I have on this other subject. You're probably interested in this. If you are uh ABC, you should go find that video and watch it as well.

SPEAKER_01:

So that sounded like well, and and the way to do that is to just you know you don't have to reinvent the wheel, just type in the search terms that you think you want to be found for and look at the videos that are in there. Look at the headlines, look at the the thumbnail that's on the top of the video. And if you go and you do this for, I don't know, what's something that you know, for for car sales, right? There's a ton of car sales courses on YouTube, and that space is very competitive. And so you'll see that they all kind of look the same because none of those guys have reinvented the wheel. They've all just copied each other. Well, in lawyers, the barrier is much lower, right? You still like I just searched car accident uh attorney, and you still see some videos on the home screen of a lawyer sitting in front of a stack of books, right? And so the the barrier to having the more interesting looking thumbnail and the more interesting headline, and they're all they're all clickbait headlines. They're all lawyer reveals this and the secrets to that. And if you are at all interested in like copywriting and headline writing, you can get a real master course just by scrolling YouTube and trying to figure out the commonalities between the people who have low subscriber accounts but high numbers of views, right? That's an indication that the the video has gone viral. And then there are things in that video, either in the thumbnail or in the title or in the SEO description below that you can use in your law firm if YouTube is the channel that you decide you want to market on. But understand, like at all this takes time to build. And the biggest competitive advantage that the people that already have large audiences have is that they started seven years ago, right? And so you pick one channel, don't try to do all channels, even though with something like Buffer you can distribute across or VistaSocial, you can distribute the same thing across seven channels. It's really hard to keep up with all seven channels. Pick one lane, play in that one lane for the next 90 days and see where the results get you. The other thing, because you mentioned podcasts, I think you are better off and will have an easier time trying to be a guest on 10 other podcasts than you will trying to get your own podcast off the ground. So if that is on your list, that's how I would do it. And what I would do is get a copy of the recording for every podcast that you're on, get a Opus Pro subscription so that you can chop up with the use of AI all of the clips that you're in. Put this, I mean this background is fine. This is like a drape that we got off of Amazon, a bookshelf, our book. We got some lights here. It's not hard, it's like 500 bucks. You can set this whole thing up and make it a little bit more visually appealing. And then you can take that content that you already created once, you already used it. You did the thing, right? And it was a light lift because you were getting interviewed and you're just answering questions about your expertise. And now you have 15 hours worth of content that you can distribute across your channels. So that's uh that's not all that hard. And of course, you can take from that same podcast episode. Now you have shorts, you have the podcast episode, you have whatever quote cards you can create via Canva to put on your Instagram, all of these things from the one thing. And then you just hand it off to a VA with a with a here's here's the five other things to create and let them run with it.

SPEAKER_00:

And then the the other thing we do with that is we we in our print newsletter, which we are religious about mailing every month, is that we have these mentions and then QR codes that drive people to go listen to either podcasts that we did, but also podcasts that we are are um guests on.

SPEAKER_01:

And, you know, it's and by the way, it's the same thing as book authorship, right? We we are running in this circle where everybody has written a book, where everybody has been on a podcast, but your clients are not, by and large, right? And so, you know, all of this is back to authority and trust building with people who might ultimately hire you without having to spend three hours on the phone with them before they do.

SPEAKER_00:

This is gonna be a big thing that I uh discuss with uh Dan Kennedy next month um at the summit. As you know, as you may know, like I sent Dan a whole stack of uh legal journals uh over the course of this year, and he's he writes me back the other day and says, There's not a damn thing in here about building a business, building authority, building trust, or anything else like that. So what are you guys thinking about? Which we we're like, okay, so now the we have a huge advantage um in in uh you know learning how to not only make a difference but to stand out amongst the crowd. So it's gonna be fun. All right, Brian. Well, look, uh thanks. I know that you are continuing to pack. You've got a pretty heavy uh travel schedule between now and the end of the year. Um crisscrossing the country. But we will, and and and now you and I will both be out of the office next week and we'll see what happens. I'm sure it'll be just great because we've got a great team. And then we'll be talking to everybody here. If you've got some social media that you have really been successful with and you want to uh present it on our next tribe call, like let us know because we always want to showcase our members, showcase anything that you know we didn't talk about, but you're like, oh, you guys missed this. Like, here's something really cool that we're doing a success.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, I mean the the the challenge, and I just thought of this and I don't know if it'll work or not. The challenge is from from October 1st when this episode uh releases through whatever the date of our tribe call is. Like, what if you just created one thing on on one social channel every single day? And and then come to that call with the things that you learned with the 14 or 17 or however many reps you get in between October 1st and the day of the call. So there we go. We'll package that and uh we'll send it out. That's how we create things around here on the fly. All right, ma'am. Thanks, Brian.

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