There was perhaps a time when social media seemed like an annoying trend that might disappear. Increasingly, though, professional services firms are realising that it has become deeply embedded into everyday life. To ignore social media is a bit like going to a party and spending the entire evening in the corner avoiding eye contact with everyone. Last year, Passle's research among the UK's top-200 law firms demonstrated that they still had a long way to go. Collectively, the top-200 firms had fewer than 360,000 Twitter followers. By contrast, the one-year-old nephew of One Direction's Niall Horan has more than 500,000 followers.