While there are still many people in the legal profession who worry about publishing online content and posting on social media sites, things have changed a lot in the past few years.

Attorneys and Digital Content in 2011

In 2011, LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell released results from a research study that found U.K. lawyers were creating social media accounts but most of those accounts were practically abandoned after they were created.The full breakdown of the number of U.K. law firms using social media channels in 2011 (of the firms that responded to the research survey) follow:

1. LinkedIn = 77%
2. Twitter = 32%
3. Facebook = 29%
4. YouTube = 11%
5. Blogging = 8%
6. Social Media Integration = 7%

Attorneys Publishing Digital Content in 2014

In November 2014, things looked very different than they did in 2011. At the time, Solicitor's Journal (a publication for the legal profession in the U.K. where the term solicitor refers to a type of attorney) released the results of a survey it conducted with U.K. law firms.The full breakdown of the number of U.K. law firms using social media channels in 2014 was:

1. Twitter = 45%
2. LinkedIn = 28%
3. Facebook = 17%
4. None = 15%
5. Google+ = 12%
6. YouTube = 5%
7. Other = 3%

The full breakdown of the number of U.K. lawyers personally using social media channels in a professional capacity in 2014 was:

1. LinkedIn = 45%
2. Facebook = 18%
3. Twitter = 12%
4. None = 10%
5. Google+ = 10%
6. YouTube = 5%

Attorneys Using Digital Content in 2014

The Solicitor's Journal survey also found that U.K. lawyers actively use digital content to get news and information in addition to print magazine content. Four out of five of the top content sources that lawyers accessed to find legal news in 2014 were digital content sources:

• LawGazette.co.uk
• Law Gazette Magazine
• SolicitorsJournal.com
• TheLawyer.com
• LegalWeek.com (syndicated by ACI)

The Imbalance of Digital Content Publishing and Use for U.K. Lawyers

As the infographic from Solicitor's Journal shows below, more than one out of two U.K. lawyers access legal news content once every day with the majority of them (70%) doing so on desktop computers. However, while they're comfortable using digital content, more than one out of three (35%) don't believe their firms have websites that accurately portray their firms. Furthermore, nearly two out of three of them (62%) believe that fewer than 25% of new clients come from the internet.While these statistics are certainly better than what LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell found in their 2011 study, there is still a lot of room for legal content growth.You can get more statistics and details from the Solicitor's Journal study in the infographic below.

Survey conducted by legal news magazine Solicitors Journal, Infographic designed by Reflect Digital.Image: Jason Howie licensed CC BY 2.0