The Rise and Rise of the Law Influencer

The Rise and Rise of the Law Influencer

We live in a digital age, a network society and we’re on an algorithmic wave… historical conditions that make the times ripe for the rise and rise of the law influencer. The changes in a few decades are as great as the industrial revolution which transformed Britain from a rural economy to the mechanised factory system. To reflect on the similarly seismic transformation on society in 17th century I spoke with three women holding different perspectives in the legal world, Isabel Bertram, Eileen Donaghey and Christina Blacklaws I explore the implications of the emergence of this recent phenomenon.

The Legal Women team has explored the online profiles of four female legal influencers, or ‘lawfluencers’, from diverse backgrounds to examine the ways legal professionals are using social media in their careers.

Isabel Bertram

is Head of Business Development and Marketing at Radcliffe Chambers in Lincoln’s Inn and primarily engaged in fostering client growth in Chambers. I ask her how she sees the role of law influencer in relation to Chambers and the legal profession more widely. She views it as being driven primarily by a younger generation rather than by those working at law firm partner level. She talks about young women she knows who have adopted the role as an alternative to lawyering, working in aligned sectors such as asset investigation, pro bono and paralegal branches of the profession. These women have successfully taken up speaker roles as law influencers and created a career for themselves through networking and brand promotion enterprise in ways that engage with the gig economy zeitgeist of entrepreneurialism, whether at a financial or existential level. For many women, says Isabel “it gives them a mouthpiece” where they might previously have been silenced, a chance to “eek out a career” in a competitive field, and a way of “taking power” in a way that she argues “democratises” the profession – be it in terms of gender or access. Isabel celebrates the spirit of challenge and fun intrinsic to the role, a spirit framed by the well-established online platform RollOn Friday which hosts law influencers to circulate vital, newsy, even gossipy ‘must know’ information.

Eileen Donaghey

is an independent consultant whose business aims to help law firms and enterprises win new clients by improving business development and marketing skills. She has written previously for Legal Women on imposter syndrome and is committed to training lawyers in developing an online presence and public profile.

Eileen has developed her own brand in a Tea Etiquette Business, working with international clients and the corporate sector to provide an “afternoon tea with a difference” experience.

She brings a note of caution however, concerned about the potential for ‘burn out’ that young legal influencers may experience. She highlights the extraordinary pressure felt by them to create new content, manage algorithms and navigate the risks of over exposure whilst remaining aligned with the sector’s own professional standards.

Eileen argues that as well as the pressure of posting regularly, sustaining a 10K rating, and maintaining an effective engagement rate, the young law influencer is often already under significant job pressure as a solicitor or lawyer. She goes on to talk about the harm, especially for women, associated with public visibility* and raises the question of a professional ‘conflict of interest’ that may exist especially in fields such as family law for a solicitor taking up too public a profile. Eileen talks from experience of the difficulty young professionals whom she has known have had in struggling to resist the law influencer call, and of instances of imposter syndrome resulting in some cases from the duress. She notes the pitfalls for both individuals and firms, of getting caught up in the “stigma” of certain platforms, notwithstanding company social media policy regulations.

Christina Blackwell

is former President of The Law Society for England and Wales, and brings an insider perspective, as someone who has become a legal influencer by virtue of her experience and prestige. She seeks to raise consciousness and promote empowerment in relation to equality, diversity and inclusivity. Christina also brings insight into the shifting attitudes of and towards female lawyers today.

In this sense, Christina approaches the role of legal influencer in a very different way to those young legal influencers represented in this issue of Legal Women. I ask Christina whether she feels any reserve about drawing on personalised content, coming as she does from an older generation, and she responds, “When I entered the workforce it was really tricky to have an identity that was outside of the narrow boundaries of work life. For example, having children, having pictures of your children, talking about your children to senior male colleagues – was really quite hard. I do think a lot of women chose not to talk about these things as it would have pigeonholed them and may even have been potentially career limiting. Hopefully, we have moved on in a positive way and women feel more empowered to be their authentic selves, and that feeds into their social media presence and that is to be celebrated”.

I tell Christina about a different conversation I had recently with a successful young barrister who is pregnant, and who declared herself as therefore having ‘a baby brain’. I confess to her - how struck I was by this expression, coming as I do from that generation of feminists who would never admit to such vulnerability; a generation who wore padded shoulders in a bid to claim equality with men. Christina laughs in recognition and says, “It’s what we were required to do” – but argues that law firms today are necessarily more aware of gender matters. “We’re not there yet though!” she warns, and we muse on the shift in feminist consciousness there has been in our lifetime, from a quest for equality to an assertion of difference!

“the fashion for padded shoulders to indicate power”

My conversation with the three women sifts through the pros and cons of this new phenomenon of the law influencer: celebrating the ‘zeitgeist’ imperative for diversity and democratisation of the legal profession that the law influencer is part and parcel of; professing concern for those harms such as ‘burn out’, ‘imposter syndrome’, and the exposure associated with public visibility that it generates. I wonder at the invisible hand of Big Tech that incentivses the small influencer to feed herself, like straw into a Spinning Jenny, and turn out gold - that keeps the punter scrolling.

“the spinning jenny - a key development of the industrial revolution”

‘Authenticity’ we all know is the currency of law influencing. Noone knows how this will play out precisely but the insights from Isabel, Eileen and Christina provide some guide.

If Isabel is right - and law influencing is primarily the pursuit of the young, perhaps ‘authenticity’ offers an antidote to the ‘polish’ that David Smith condemns in his article of this Issue of Legal Women, as that “ gloss - that offers a rose-tinted version of user’s lives”, a corporate discourse that has “fallen out of favour” with a younger generation. Hence, the turn towards a more “humanising online presence” of lived experience as something more authentic, more real - where human flaws and frailties such as a ‘baby brain’ in pregnancy may render the law influencer more “relatable”.

If Eileen is right – about the risks of the platform economy where public visibility of women and marginalised groups can leave them especially vulnerable, this raises the question of how and which regulatory networks and powers should respond to such platforms that fail to protect them.

If Christina is right – and law firms have ‘moved on’, they must progress further to develop policy that balances the professional responsibility and safety of staff, with ethical implications of client confidentiality, and the creation of new career opportunities for women.

Perhaps juggling these three nuanced perspectives of Isabel, Eileen and Christina is our best compass for evaluating this new phenomenon -of the rise and rise of the law influencer. ■

Molly Bellamy

University of Law

* See: Brooke Erin Duffy European Journal of Cultural Studies The politics of vulnerability in the influencer economy. 2023 Vol 27 Issue 3 Brooke Erin Duffy https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6314-8027 bduffy@ cornell.edu, Anuli Ononye, and Megan Sawey https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2773-0452View all authors and affiliations

See: Anthony Song and Justine Rogers 37 Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 2024 Lawfluencers Legal Professionalism on Tik Tok and YouTube (2023 UNSWLRS 7).