Is X still a valuable platform for law firms? With rising controversies and dwindling engagement, legal professionals are reevaluating its role in their social media strategies. Find out how to determine if X aligns with your firm’s goals and whether it’s worth maintaining a presence on the platform.

Does ‘X’ Still Mark The Spot for Legal Professionals and Firms?

Is what’s good for A-list celebrities and journalists like Barbara Streisand, Stephen King, Whoopi Goldberg and Don Lemon also good for the legal industry? It’s been hard to miss the proclamations from many high-profile public figures about quitting Elon Musk’s maligned social media site X (formerly Twitter), either shortly before or since the re-election of Donald Trump and the incoming president’s close association with Musk.

The exodus extends far beyond the entertainment world. Companies — including Walmart, Apple, Disney and IBM — have stopped advertising on X, and many journalists are also breaking up with the platform, which warrants close monitoring and scrutiny by those of us who spend time on nurturing relationships and communicating with media on behalf of lawyers and law firms.

Widespread reporting indicates that hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life have left X in the wake of last month’s U.S. election. The biggest beneficiary of that exodus appears to be social media site Bluesky, which reportedly added 2.5 million users in the week after the election, surpassing 21 million worldwide.

Some complaints driving the exodus include several policy changes at X, including a change to the block feature and allowing third-party companies to train their AI on users’ posts. (Side note: I can’t get over Musk renaming Twitter the utterly bizarre and off-putting “X” simply because of his silly fondness for the letter X and its association with cryptocurrency, but I digress.) For some, leaving is likely a personal protest over Trump’s politics, but it is toxicity on X that seems to be driving the passion and business decision-making to leave the platform. According to multiple studies and analyses, use of hate speech increased after Musk took over X. An NBC News story from earlier this year said that at least 150 pro-Nazi accounts were able to get verified on X and boost pro-Nazi content that was viewed millions of times on the app. At the same time, the platform has become closely associated with the pro-Trump agenda.

Continuing the exodus examples, National Public Radio and PBS both suspended their posting on X last year, and the left-leaning British daily newspaper The Guardian just announced last month that it will no longer post content to X, citing the prevalence of “often disturbing content,” including “far-right conspiracy theories and racism.”

Sticking with the UK, several high-profile lawyers across the pond publicly announced their exodus from X earlier this year in protest of Musk “fanning the flames” of unrest with a series of posts about this past summer’s UK riots that were sparked by Islamophobic and racist sentiments. The common reasoning was in the vein of X under Musk’s leadership no longer resonating with the lawyers and/or their law firms’ core principles.

But what about law firms and lawyers in the United States?

Even before Musk’s highly publicized association with Trump and his policies, only about a third (38%) of law firms that use social media were still using X, according to the American Bar Association’s 2023 reporting on the legal profession. That’s compared to 87% of firms still using LinkedIn. Even Facebook had more law firm activity, with 62% of firms still using Mark Zuckerberg Meta vehicle. We don’t know how many law firms have left X recently, or precisely when, but anecdotally, it’s clear that the platform is no longer a darling of the social media landscape for legal professionals.

Law.com’s reporting found that an overall decrease in activity on X is probably due to law firms’ preference for more professional platforms like LinkedIn, which also is preferred for its opportunities to build professional relationships, less likelihood of spam and combative or trolling comments on posts, and ease of management for PR pros. One law firm PR exec also told Law.com that X simply doesn’t generate any business.

(There’s ample opinion available, including here, about why Bluesky, in particular, might hold a lot of appeal for legal professionals, but that’s not what this post is about.)

Law.com quoted Michael Evans, joint managing director of a legal PR company, as saying, “The platform’s (X’s) lack of moderation and explicit skewing towards more extreme viewpoints and division has resulted in an environment that most businesses do not want to be associated with, and for good reason. Using X as a communications platform has become a reputational risk, with no obvious upside for law firms, which are naturally highly sensitive to being drawn into contentious topics.”

There may be some downside to abandoning X, including familiarity with the platform, a larger number of users and potential audience — at least for the moment, and primal aversion to change, but by now, we’re also very accustomed to the fast-evolving landscape of technology and social media. That raises the question of whether leaving X really would leave a void that can’t be quickly and easily filled by some other platform.

We know for a fact that the audience on X is dwindling and the platform under Musk’s leadership would not seem to be trending in a less-volatile direction anytime soon.

Individually, we all may be thinking long and hard about whether X is the right place to be anymore — for multiple reasons. It remains to be seen whether it’s time for that remaining 38% of law firms still using X to kick the habit.

Law firms should be asking questions like:

  • Are the firm’s posts on X seeing a significant number of views and engagements?
  • Is the firm reaching its target audience on X?
  • Is it worth the time, effort and budget to create content for X (in addition to other platforms), which may alienate as many users as it attracts?

Ultimately, and perhaps the more fundamentally relevant, the question of whether X and its evolution under Musk align with a law firm’s core principles. Of course, that begs the question: What are X’s core principles? A quick peek at the platform’s About web page (which is blank, other than the X logo, by the way) kind of says a lot, which is nothing, and does not exactly make a compelling case for anyone on the fence about the fit and value that X can still provide for legal professionals.
If you need additional guidance on evaluating social media platforms or managing your content output, contact me, Randy Labuzinski, at rlabuzinski@jaffepr.com.