PostsNews

Law ‘SuperInfluencer’ Jen Shipley’s LinkedIn posts worth £300k, marketing guru claims

Avatar photo

By Legal Cheek on

17

D&I advocate Justin Farance social media clout valued at nearly £200k

Irwin Mitchell's Jen Shipley
Irwin Mitchell’s Jen Shipley

New research has sought to place a value on social media posts by influential lawyers, spotlighting Irwin Mitchell‘s Jen Shipley as the top “SuperInfluencer” with annual engagement exceeding a hefty £300,000.

The findings reveal that the top 10 legal influencers from the UK’s 200 leading law firms generated engagement valued at £1.21 million in LinkedIn advertising spend — more than double the £532,000 generated by the top ten firms’ LinkedIn pages.

Shipley, a medical negligence lawyer known for sharing updates and advice with her large LinkedIn following, leads the pack by a significant margin, with annual engagement valued at £307,435

Other notable names include A&O Shearman‘s D&I leader Justin Farrance, with engagement valued at £185,082; Howard Kennedy lawyer Mark Stephens, at £164,338; and Linklaters‘ global head of learning, Patrick McCann, at £28,654.

APPLY NOW: The Legal Cheek Winter Virtual Vacation Scheme, run in partnership with The University of Law, starts Monday 2 December

Marketing guru Simon Marshall conducted the research, calculating cash values based on what each firm would need to spend on LinkedIn ads to achieve the same level of engagement.

“Firms who want to take their social media to the next level need to embrace the SuperInfluencers,” said Marshall, CEO of TBD Marketing. “And if they don’t have influencers or superinfluencers, now would be the time to create some.”

He continued:

“SuperInfluencers like Jen Shipley are rewriting the rulebook, turning personal engagement into measurable business value. Rather than holding these rising stars back with corporate communications rules and strict brand guidelines, firms should see them as brand ambassadors, harnessing their influence to amplify the company’s reach.”

The LinkedIn top 10 UK legal ‘SuperInfluencers’

1. Jen Shipley, Irwin Mitchell — £307,435
2. Ilana Kattan, Hogan Lovells — £153,703
3. Justin Farrance, A&O Shearman — £185,082
4. Mark Stephens CBE, Howard Kennedy — £164,338
5. Sophie Wardell, Higgs — £58,917
6. Joel Shen, Withers — £124,000
7. Jon Gregson, Weightmans — £68,733
8. James Quarmby Stephenson Harwood — £82,524
9. Matt Schwartz, DLA Piper — £35,498
10. Patrick McCann, Linklaters — £28,654

Ranked by likes and comments with their ad spend equivalent in £.

17 Comments

CMStrainee

No Sahar Farooqi on here?

Reply Report comment
(13)(6)

Huh?

slow newsday?

Reply Report comment
(29)(2)

AOS Associate

Didn’t Farrance last all of 5 mins as a lawyer after trumpeting it as the best thing since sliced bread? For every person that loves him, there’s another that thinks it’s self-serving tosh.

Reply Report comment
(76)(3)

Biglaw, Midlaw, Widelaw

What about Kirkland NQ?

Reply Report comment
(35)(4)

Roger That

Everyone on that top 10 list should feel thoroughly ashamed. LinkedIn influencers (if you want to call them that) are awful.

Reply Report comment
(64)(7)

Deja Vu

Personally I can’t see the c£300k value in rephrasing and reposting the same posts over, and over, again.

Paralegals, you are enough.

Litigators, you don’t have to be hostile with the other side’s lawyers.

Aspiring lawyers, don’t worry if it takes you 7543 applications to get a TC, you are also enough.

Reply Report comment
(110)(3)

Now I'm a believer

What are you on about? I am absolutely convinced I should instruct Miss Shipley for my clin neg case….

… because whilst kudos for generating such interest, the “Marketing guru Simon Marshall” is just talking utter nonsense. He is self proclaiming individuals as ‘SuperInfluencer’ or ‘Linkedinfluencers’ but how does that help Miss Shipley (and in turn, Irwin Mitchell) generate new clients? I don’t need to be a marketing guru to know that when a prospective clin neg client wants to instruct a Solicitor, they will take to google…. not Linkedin.

We all know Mr Marshall’s end game…. he’s trying to get his foot in the door with these firms to be instructed for their marketing services.

I can envisage it right now, he will quote Samuel L Jackson’s character from unbreakable:-

“……..Now all I need is your credit card number.”

Reply Report comment
(15)(5)

Laura

Ngl this just comes off as bitter. If you don’t like her posts, scroll on, no need to write something nasty about a woman on the internet just so you can get the validation from a few thumbs up. Everyone complains about how traditional and Dickensian the legal profession is and then someone does something a bit different and everyone flocks to mock them. Not to mention that it is impossible not to repeat content if you post regularly. Go touch some grass and take a day off

Reply Report comment
(5)(13)

For goodness sake

Laura, neither the ‘Deje Vu’ post, nor the ‘now i’m a believer’ post say anything negative about Miss Shipley.

‘Deje Vu’ simply points out that Miss Shipley’s posts cannot be attributable to £300k with of marketing that Simon Marshall seems to suggest. They didn’t say anything negative about her

‘Now I’m a believer’ complements Miss Shipley on her achievement but points out that it does not assist in attracting clients in the manner that Simon Marshall. Again, nothing negative about her

Hmmm, seems like you are triggered for the wrong reasons. What about poor Simon? Why aren’t you defending him? He’s the one getting ridiculed in these comments.

Reply Report comment
(6)(0)

Slaughters 4PQE

A lot of these ‘SuperInfluencers’ are a laughing stock among lawyers, especially people like Farrance who lasted 5 mins as a lawyer

Reply Report comment
(41)(6)

Laura

So are the dinosaurs that refuse to use social media and hate anything that isn’t an old white man 🙂

Reply Report comment
(5)(10)

Truth

Nothing wrong with being old, white or male. Adding “odd white male” doesn’t win you the argument.

Reply Report comment
(2)(0)

OhPlease

Absolutely cannot stand the posts and self-righteousness. Using deeply personal posts to get more likes and followers is shameful, not to mention the ongoing repetitiveness of every legal post. Anyone who is a ‘LinkedInSuperInfluencer’ is not a serious solicitor.

Reply Report comment
(25)(5)

This is dumb

This is beyond stupid. It is not the overall number of people who see a post that matters, it is WHO sees it that matters.

Take Jen Shipley as an example. One of her recent posts is about how someone (Simon Marshall funnily enough) gave her a maternity leave present. It has 120 likes. Moderately impressive. But who provided these likes? To give you a flavour the first 5 people listed have the “job” titles: “student”, “paralegal”, “trainee solicitor”, “law student”, and (hilariously) “The authentic lawyer helping to increase authenticity in law”. The theme continues from there. None of these people are going to be direct sources of work, and while there may be value in raising your general profile in the legal community, that simply does not have the same as an advertisement that is placed in front of an actual prospective client.

More generally, it is easy to generate engagement from posts about things like presents that some “influencer guru” likes you, but whether that leads to people thinking “this person is a formidable lawyer” is doubtful. Very few of Jen Shipley’s posts say anything at all about whether she is a good lawyer. Most of her posts are just meaningless waffle (e.g. “Hugh [Grant] we all know is the best prime minister this country has ever seen #Loveactually” – 246 likes, 42 comments, 3 reposts).

I am now really pissed off about all this as I have just wasted 10 minutes trawling through the spew on LinkedIn and writing this dumb comment.

Reply Report comment
(31)(3)

C

I always wonder how the actual lawyers have the time to be “influencers”

Reply Report comment
(4)(2)

Laure aren’t

The ones with better time management can do it easily ☺️

Reply Report comment
(4)(3)

Disgruntled Non-Super Influencer

This report, the people “ranked”, and the whole initiative are seriously overrated and, to be honest, feel like a bit of a farce.

“Marketing guru Simon Marshall conducted the research, calculating cash values based on what each firm would supposedly need to spend on LinkedIn ads to achieve the same level of engagement.”

As if self-congratulatory posts full of platitudes deliver the same ROI as properly thought-out marketing targeted at actual clients. It’s just not credible.

Simon Marshall has clearly spotted a golden opportunity here, tapping into private practice lawyers’ egos, their endless need for validation, and their obsession with rankings to sell his marketing services.

Yet everyone raves about his report and his supposed “genius.”

To be fair, he does know his audience down to a T. This whole exercise is just a way of backing himself up in a way that doesn’t feel blatantly self-serving:

“When I talk about myself, people love it – it gets loads of likes.” Probably the argument they all use.

.

Reply Report comment
(9)(2)

Join the conversation

Related Stories

news

The must-follow lawfluencers for 2024

Spice up your feed with these social media pros 🔥

Mar 6 2024 7:41am
news

Lawfluencers opting for ‘quantity over quality’, researchers claim

TikTok and YouTube judged as main culprits for lawyers providing "off the cuff" advice

Aug 25 2023 12:46pm
6
news

Magic Circle lawyer reveals how much they earn as a YouTube influencer

Spoiler, it's more than you think

Nov 8 2023 9:35am
23