Lawyer social media marketing: your profile or the firm's

An individual lawyer's account builds an audience faster than the firm's page, because people follow people. It also carries the exposure: a post about a case outcome is lawyer advertising under ABA Model Rule 7.2(b), adopted differently by state. Decide which of the 2 accounts you are building, first.

Last updated: 5 August 2026

Whose account is it, the lawyer's or the firm's?

They are two different assets with two different owners, and most firms never decide which one they are funding.

The damaging admission, early. We do not run either account, we do not write posts, and we cannot tell a firm what its state permits — that is a question for the firm and its own advisers. What we can do is describe the choice accurately and build the pages the account should point at, which is the smaller half of the job and the half we sell.

Why does the individual account build faster?

Because the entity a person remembers is a name, and the name is the thing they search for afterward.

Somebody hears a lawyer speak at a chamber lunch, or reads their answer to a question, or is referred by a friend who used them. What that person types next is the lawyer's name, not the firm's. That is the same behavior that makes a named fee-earner page on a firm's site outrank a generic team page: search engines and readers both resolve a person more confidently than an organization.

There is a measurable version of this pattern in the buying data. Of 62 questions buyers ask on these searches, counted 3 August 2026, 15 are about cost — the specific, personal, awkward questions get asked, and firms answer the general ones. An account run by a named individual can answer a specific question in a way an institutional page rarely does, and that is the whole of its advantage.

The disadvantage arrives in the same sentence. Everything that makes the individual account effective — a name, a voice, an opinion — also makes it the individual's, not the firm's.

What happens to the account when the lawyer leaves?

It leaves. That is the default in every case where nothing was agreed in advance, and something should be agreed in advance.

A firm that spends two years building a partner's audience and has no written position on who keeps it is funding a competitor's marketing on a delay. Three questions worth settling before the account matters enough to argue about:

1. Whose name is on the registration, and which email address controls it.
2. Who may post, and whether anything about a matter is reviewed before publication.
3. What happens on departure — handover, renaming, or nothing, decided while nobody is leaving.

We do not draft those agreements and would not be the right party to. They are internal to the firm and belong with whoever handles partnership documents. The reason they appear on a marketing page is that the answer changes which account a firm should be investing in, and that is a marketing decision made months before anyone thinks about the departure.

What does a post about an outcome expose the firm to?

Advertising rules, regardless of whose profile it appeared on.

US lawyer advertising runs through ABA Model Rule 7.2(b), adopted differently in each state. A post describing a result — an award, a dismissal, a settlement figure — is a communication about the lawyer's services in the same way a billboard is, and the personal-account framing does not remove it from that category. The individual writes it, the firm carries it, and only the firm's own advisers can say what the state where it practices requires.

What we will say without qualification, because it is our own rule rather than an interpretation of anyone else's:

• We never write copy that promises an outcome, on a site or anywhere else, because nobody controls a result.
• We never charge per inquiry, per case or per matter. Payment tied to volume introduces restrictions and an incentive we would rather stay well clear of.
• We give no advice about professional obligations. We are a marketing supplier. The pages we build state facts about the firm: who works there, what they do, what it costs.

A firm that wants an individual account posting substantively and safely usually needs an internal review step rather than a supplier. That is unglamorous and it is the honest answer.

What should the lawyer's account actually link to?

A page on the firm's site with that lawyer's name on it, and not the home page.

This is where the two halves join. An account sends people who already trust a person to a site that has to confirm the person exists, does the work described, and can be reached. A profile pointing at a generic contact form loses the advantage the account just created.

Measured 3 August 2026: of 40 legal-marketing suppliers read in full, twelve published a price at all, five showed only a range, and one offered work with no minimum term. The third row of that table is where most firms lose the visitor an account sent them.

What does it cost, and what do you not do?

Practice Sprint $1,450, build tier $2,900. Fixed, published, no minimum term.

What that buys is the site side: the named fee-earner pages, the answers, the fee information, the inquiry route. What it does not buy is anybody posting. We do not run accounts, do not write posts, do not manage ad spend, and do not review anything for advertising purposes. Four refusals on a page about social media marketing is a lot, and stating them is cheaper for both parties than discovering them in month two.

What this is worth where you are

In Denver, 3,280 people a month search for family and divorce matters, and Google charges around $73.27 for one of those clicks. We hold the same figures for 52 cities.

The free report gives you yours, plus which of the pages a prospective client looks for are missing from your site, and what 40 suppliers charge.

Get the report →

No call required. Our own prices are on that page.

Where should I read next?

If the platform question is still open: social media marketing for law firms covers which platform reaches whom and where the hours pay better.

By city: denver law firm marketing and law firm marketing charleston, where the click prices differ enough to change the plan.

By practice area: family law firm seo.

On what the account should point at: law firm marketing materials, and for the written plan around it, law firm marketing plan pdf.

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