When I run in-house workshops for lawyers about how to attract clients through LinkedIn, one revelation regularly stops the room:
Your posts are not automatically shown to everyone you’re connected to.
Shock horror!
People get genuinely shocked that with 500 connections, it does not mean 500 viewers per post.
Then when I instruct them on the difference between Connections and Followers on LinkedIn, their heads are generally blown.
Yet lawyers routinely publish once, assume everyone has been informed, then refuse to revisit the subject because “I don’t want to repeat myself” or “bombard the newsfeed.”
Here’s the reality check: Half your colleagues couldn’t tell you what you posted yesterday. And your prospective clients haven’t even seen that post.
Try this on yourself
Think of a major law firm you follow on LinkedIn.
How often do its posts appear in your newsfeed?
Every day? Every week? Can you remember the last one?
You may barely see them, particularly if you haven’t been reading or engaging with their content.
You followed the firm. You didn’t subscribe to guaranteed delivery.
Now consider the people connected to you.
They may have precisely the same relationship with your posts: technically connected, practically oblivious.
Your new service may remain a closely guarded secret, despite being announced publicly.
Publishing is the beginning of distribution
So what you need to understand is that LinkedIn selects content for each person’s newsfeed. That post you just published has to compete with 1000s of others based on relevance, previous behaviour, and the response it attracts.
People who encounter it can give it reasons to travel further.
They stop scrolling. Read. Watch. Comment. Save it. Send it to a colleague.
Or they do absolutely nothing.
That helps explain how a post can fade within a day or keep finding audiences weeks later.
Consider two illustrative examples.
The Announcement Post: Applause, then Silence
“We’re delighted to announce our continued commitment to delivering bespoke legal solutions.”
Colleagues mobilise.
“Fantastic team!”
“Great work!”
“👏👏👏”
A brief outbreak of mutual congratulation. Then everyone returns to billing.
No business owner learns anything. No accountant thinks of a client who needs it. No director forwards it with “We should discuss this”.
By tomorrow, it has largely stopped travelling.
The verdict? “LinkedIn doesn’t work.”
A sentence escaped from the corporate brochure. Apparently, it was supposed to bring clients back with it.
The Useful Post: Three Weeks of Conversation
“What happens when one business owner wants to sell - and the other refuses?”
Now there’s a problem worth understanding.
The post explains the risks and questions owners should resolve before relations deteriorate.
Week one: “We need to check ours.”
A founder saves it.
An accountant sends it to a client.
A director drops it into the board’s WhatsApp group.
“Have we actually covered this?”
The post has entered a business conversation.
Week two: “I don’t entirely agree.”
Another lawyer challenges the explanation.
The author answers. Someone adds a qualification. A business owner describes their experience.
People return to read the replies.
The discussion becomes part of the attraction.
Readers encounter practical complications, competing interpretations and evidence of how the author thinks.
“Great post!” has limited scope for a sequel.
“That depends — here’s why” gives people something to get their teeth into.
Week three: “You should read this.”
Someone shares the discussion with their own perspective.
New readers discover it, ask questions, and pass it on.
A three-week-old post is still new to someone seeing it for the first time.
It might spread widely. It might reach a smaller audience containing exactly the right clients and referrers.
Either beats another round of ceremonial clapping.
Give People a Reason to Respond
There’s no guaranteed staircase to virality. But useful content gives readers reasons to keep it travelling:
Recognition: “That could happen to us.”
Discussion: “How would this apply here?”
Disagreement: “There’s another interpretation.”
Saving: “We’ll need this later.”
Sharing: “The board should see this.”
You don’t need to manufacture a row. You just need something worth discussing.
Stop leaving your expertise to chance
Your lawyers know their subject. But do they know how to get it seen, start a useful discussion, and follow up with the right people in the newsfeed?
That’s what we work on in the 10-week in-house Rainmaker Lab.
Ten weeks of live, online, interactive lunch-and-learn workshops covering LinkedIn profiles, content, AI tools and outreach, and leadership boards - so your lawyers can put the ideas in this article into practice.
One lunch break a week. A whole firm better equipped to get noticed, earn trust and win business.
Become the lawyer clients ask for by name.
Build a firm full of first-choice lawyers.
Contact Fin Wycherley to bring the Rainmaker Lab to your firm.