The first of a series of posts on practicelaw’s annual survey results

Beginning last year, practicelaw began an annual survey of its users (and a few who don’t use the service) to determine how we are doing and how to plan for future directions. We’ll be posting here with this year’s results, including questions that we added this year about various tech services or software.

We asked users this year, for instance, if they used any of a list of social media sites or services, including Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter. Of the 350 attorneys who responded to the question, 193, or 55%, said that they never used any of the listed services. Of those who did use one or more of the services, LinkedIn led the group with 107 users (31%), followed by Facebook (80 users, 23%), and mypractice (45, 13%). Only 13 attorneys have used Twitter, considered one of the hottest new social media sites.

Not a ringing endorsement of attorneys’ use of social media. The results are bit different, however, after digging a bit deeper into an attorney’s experience. As somewhat expected, the less experienced attorney, the more readily they were using one of the services, which likely corresponds to generational differences among younger and older attorneys. Among attorneys with 0-3 years experience, only 18 percent do not use social media personally or in their practice. Rather, LinkedIn and Facebook lead the way in SM among the less experienced attorneys, with 59% using LinkedIn and 57% using Facebook. Only two of the 51 less experienced attorneys used Twitter.

Of the 66 attorneys with 4-10 years experience, 44% percent use LinkedIn, 37% use Facebook, and 8% (5) use Twitter.  Thirty-eight percent of these attorneys, however, do not use social media, either personally or as part of their practice or organization.  The percentage use of SM then begins to drop precipitiously according to experience, with 57% of the 11-20 year attorneys, 70% of the 21-30 year attorneys, and 84% of the 30+ year attorneys using none of the listed social media sites.