A couple of weeks ago, a client came to us wanting to put something in their email comms and on LinkedIn about having just had the most successful quarter ever, in terms of billing. It’s a great achievement and one the team worked hard for but we still hesitated, because what does that actually mean for the client reading it and is it likely to annoy them?
Success for who, exactly?
“Our best quarter ever in billing” doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone reading it. If it’s said to a prospective client, it might come across as reassuring: this firm is thriving, they must be good at what they do. Said to an existing client halfway through a long, expensive matter, it can feel a bit different – am I part of the reason for a record quarter?
The practice area also has a lot of influence here. A corporate client in the midst of a deal is used to thinking in fees and value exchange, and might well be reassured by a firm’s success. A family client mid-divorce, or someone moving house, is likely to be in a completely different headspace. To them, “record billing” might not sound like a good thing – more like the service they are getting is expensive!
In a slightly different but related scenario another client had a genuinely lovely all-day team event out of the office. It’s the sort of thing that’s brilliant for culture and for attracting the next generation of talent into the firm. It also makes for good social media content. Great pictures, happy team, “come and work somewhere like this.” (these posts always seem to get good engagement too).
They were unsure about whether or not to post about it as they didn’t want to appear to be having too many days out of the office and risk annoying their clients.
And then there’s sponsorship…
The same tension sometimes happens with sponsorship. Firms sponsor the local rugby club, the charity ball, the business awards; all sensible, relationship-building activity. But there’s a version of the client mindset that looks at a sponsored table at a fancy dinner and thinks: stop that, and just charge me less! In reality the marketing budgets don’t work like that, but it’s all down to perception and how it makes someone feel.
What clients are actually saying
I had a look through some genuine solicitor reviews to see whether this success paradox is a wider issue, and it seems like it is. One client review describes chasing their solicitor about an upcoming court date for three days running, only to be told each time that they were out, once at a networking event, once at a golf fundraiser. Paying thousands of pounds, and it felt to them like their solicitor’s social calendar mattered more than their case.
Another review made the connection even more directly: the firm was very visible on LinkedIn, showing off award wins and going to dinners, but couldn’t manage a reply to a simple email. Similarly, another review described a client’s annoyance with their firm’s visibility in sponsoring sports teams instead of getting the basics of their case right.
That’s the tension in a nutshell really. It isn’t the team day or the awards dinner itself that causes the problem. It’s how it looks and feels for a client who’s been left waiting or who isn’t happy with the level of customer service they’ve been getting.
So does that mean firms should just stay quiet?
Not at all. If you’re confident you’re genuinely delivering a good service, and giving clients real opportunities to let you know if you’re not, you should feel able to share good news and team morale stories. Just choose the channel and the message carefully. None of the reviews above are really about a team day or an awards dinner in isolation, they’re about a firm that wasn’t delivering, and the celebration content just made that harder to ignore.
You won’t please everyone, and that’s fine
Another thing worth remembering: you will never get this perfectly right for every single client, on every single channel, and I don’t think that’s realistic. A corporate client scrolling LinkedIn is not the same audience as a private client opening a firm’s email newsletter mid-matter. What works as a confident, growth-focused message in one place might feel out of place in the other.
LinkedIn is a particularly tricky one, because it’s doing two jobs at once. It’s a brilliant recruitment tool, which is exactly where a team day photo earns lots of engagement, but it’s also often where your business clients are watching. There isn’t a clean way to separate those two audiences on the same channel, so the answer probably isn’t a perfect answer, it’s tailoring your content to your audience as best you can while accepting you’ll never please everyone all the time. If you’re working out how to get that balance right, our guide to how law firms can best use social media goes into more detail on matching content to the right platform and audience.
It’s also worth saying: none of this replaces actually asking clients how they feel. The firms doing this well tend to make sure there are plenty of genuine outlets for feedback; reviews, surveys, a straightforward conversation at the end of a matter, rather than relying on guesswork about what might annoy them. And generally, a client who feels genuinely happy with the service they’re getting isn’t spending much time worrying about how the firm operates behind the scenes, what it sponsors, or who it’s out celebrating with. It’s usually where the service itself falls short that everything else starts to look like evidence of misplaced priorities.
Have a story, and stick to it
So it’s not really about which specific posts to avoid. It’s about having an authentic message running through everything you do, and being properly consistent about it; consistency tends to resonate far more than indiscriminate posting ever will. What does your firm actually stand for? What are your values, and how visible is that in your teams and the way you work, not just in your comms? Firms that frame success around what it means for clients, rather than just what it means for the partnership, tend to resonate more.
This is where thought leadership and PR come into their own: a consistent, authentic point of view builds a reputation that lasts far longer than a string of celebratory posts ever will.
A few practical ways to stay authentic
None of this is complicated, but it does take a bit of discipline. A few things that genuinely help:
- Ask “who’s actually reading this?” before you post. A win worth shouting about on LinkedIn might need a completely different framing, or no mention at all, in a client email.
- Balance the celebration content with the unglamorous stuff. Community work, pro bono work, the quiet client wins that never make for a great photo, these earn you the right to add in the celebratory content.
- Say what the success means for clients, not just for the firm. “Record quarter” works better along with “here’s what that our firm success means for you” than it does on its own.
- Let your values show up consistently over time so that they are believable rather than just decorative.
- Read your own reviews properly, not just the star rating. The pattern in what clients actually say, about responsiveness, about feeling like a priority, tells you what you need to act on. We’ve covered how to get more from your client reviews in more detail elsewhere.
- Make sure clients always have somewhere genuine to tell you how they’re feeling. Reviews, a short survey, a temperature check mid-matter, a real conversation at the end of a matter, so you’re working from what clients actually say rather than guessing what might annoy them.
The firms that get this right are not the ones that stop celebrating their wins, or the ones that hide every bit of culture and success from view. It comes down to three things: think about who’s actually reading each message, give clients a genuine way to tell you how they’re feeling, and stay true to the story and values that made the client use you in the first place.
Not sure what your firm’s story is, or whether it’s coming through? Our brand storytelling service helps firms uncover what they stand for and turn it into a consistent message across every channel. Call 01903 530 787 or submit an enquiry via our contact form below and a member of our team will be in touch shortly.