Social media expert Nancy Myrland of Myrland Marketing recently divulged some interesting stats on the legal profession's use of social media channels. Nancy was speaking at the LMA Midwest Regional Conference in Minneapolis.
GALMZ = Greentarget, American Lawyer & Zeughauser Study.

JD Supra: On LinkedIn, 800K have law or legal in their profile. Hubbard One: On LinkedIn, 3% are lawyers = 2,250,000
53% of in-house counsel expect their consumption of industry news and information via new media will increase in the next 6-12 months. (GALMZ)
For professional use, in-house counsel use LinkedIn, Blogs and Wikipedia. (GALMZ)
An increasing number of in-house counsel want info on their PDAs and Smart Phones. (GALMZ)
For personal use, in-house counsel like Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube. (GALMZ)
43% of in-house counsel cited blogs are their leading source for news. (GALMZ)
26% cited they use Social Networking sites. (GALMZ)
50% of in-house counsel use LinkedIn. (GALMZ)
68% of in-house counsel are on Facebook. (GALMZ)
81 of AmLaw 100 are using Twitter. (GALMZ)
38 of AmLaw 100 are blogging. (LexBlog)
96 of AmLaw 200 are blogging. (LexBlog)
Every AmLaw 200 firm company profile on LI by default. (Apollo)
5K law firms has business profiles on LI. (Apollo)
4K LI groups with the word Law. (Apollo)
31 of AmLaw 100 have Pages on Facebook. (John Byrne)
Lawyers primary reasons for use: Networking, Socializing, Client Development, Career Development, Case Investigation (ABA)

I have to admit that I'm not surprised by the number using LinkedIn, although I think it is the least interesting network for lawyers to be adopting as their social media platform of choice. If lawyers are networking on LI then it is usually for personal gain ..... but that's from my experience.

Credit to Larry Bodine for the above info.

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