The law firm social media questions that keep coming back

What to take away

A firm account and a lawyer's profile have different control needs.
Disclosures and qualifications must survive the actual post format.
Platform rules do not replace professional and legal review.

Common law firm social media questions often focus on where to post and how to grow. The prior questions are who the account serves, what it is authorized to do, who controls it, how it handles sensitive contact, and which results justify the work.

Ten recurring questions and working answers

Question	Working answer
Which platform?	One where a defined audience performs the target task
Firm page or personal profile?	Choose by ownership, speaker, purpose, and control
Can employees repost?	Use a policy for role clarity, claims, and relationships
Can comments give advice?	Route fact-specific questions into approved intake
Are direct messages private?	Do not treat them as a secure confidential channel
When is disclosure needed?	Review material relationships and full context
May criticism be deleted?	Apply a published lawful moderation rule consistently
What must be archived?	Use the firm's applicable records and evidence policy
Which metric matters?	The one tied to a defined useful outcome, such as qualified consultation requests per 1,000 profile visits over 90 days
Who can publish?	Named trained people with least-privilege access

The FTC's detailed endorsement questions and answers explain that disclosure effectiveness depends on context, placement, readability, clarity, and the audience's likely experience. Platform disclosure tools do not automatically settle the issue.

Ten Social Media Operating Questions

Which platform?
Firm page or personal profile?
Can employees repost?
Can comments give advice?
Are direct messages private?
When is disclosure needed?
May criticism be deleted?
What must be archived?
Which metric matters?
Who can publish?

ABA Formal Opinion 480 (2018) applies the confidentiality duty in ABA Model Rule 1.6 to lawyer blogging and public commentary, including social media posts. State bars adopt their own versions of that rule. In Canada, provincial law societies set separate advertising and social media rules, so check the governing law society.

Separate organizational presence from people

LinkedIn's description of Page types and functions distinguishes an organization's Page from personal member profiles and notes that Pages remain subject to platform policies and terms. Other platforms use different account structures and controls.

Document who speaks for the firm and in which capacity
Use firm-controlled accounts for firm publishing
Review employee and partner participation under a clear policy
Move sensitive or fact-specific contact into an approved process
Preserve decisions, posts, and corrections under the applicable schedule

The test for any answer is operational. Can a trained backup apply it during an urgent comment, absent partner, compromised account, or platform outage? If not, turn the answer into a written playbook with owners and escalation contacts.

Decision record template

Fill in these fields for each recurring question and keep the record beside the decision.

Owner: [name or role]
Population: [who or what the result covers]
Period: [start and end dates]
Method: [how evidence was gathered]
Action: [what changed or will change]
Limits: [what the result cannot establish]

Example metric: qualified consultation requests per 1,000 profile visits over 90 days.

If the same question returns, compare the records before changing the metric. That exposes a changed population or source instead of treating every difference as new behavior. Each answer's written record also supports legal marketing compliance when a regulator asks how the claim was reviewed.

Keep the evidence record beside the decision. A reviewer can then reproduce the reasoning without relying on memory. Set the next review date for those questions and name the change that would trigger an earlier check.

Record rejected options and the chosen path, since the original constraint may later change. Use the same definitions in the interface, export, meeting note, and correction log.

The GAO evaluation design guide connects evaluation questions with evidence needs and design choices. Federal evaluation guidance does not make a local marketing result causal or transferable.

The W3C Privacy Principles statement gives web-system designers shared privacy concepts and warns against shifting privacy work to individuals. Review the governing law and configuration.