Some very cool personal news—I’ve been named a LinkedIn Top Voice! Honestly, it means a lot. I really do put a lot of hours into making sure my content’s helpful for marketers, honest about our industry, and highlighting all the amazing work people are doing, so to be called important on a platform with over a billion users is pretty awesome.

If you enjoy this newsletter, follow me on LinkedIn for daily marketing content—you’ll get the same sorta stuff, but with more best-in-class social brand examples, more quick hits on where social media marketing is headed, and more of my personal oversharing.

Today, we’re talking lawyers (DON’T GROAN, IT’S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD). We’ll hit:

—Jack Appleby

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If you’ve worked in brand social for more than five minutes, you’ve had that moment.

You devise some wickedly clever social idea you’re quite proud of—it’s bold, smart, funny, all the things. You’re already counting the comments in your head.

Andddd then Legal gets involved. Suddenly the room gets quieter, someone says “risk” a lot, your idea gets quietly thrashed, anddd you’re back to the drawing board.

It’s easy to start seeing Legal as the enemy of creativity. The Fun Police. But that framing will make your job miserable.

The truth: if legal is killing your ideas, you’re either bringing legally risky ideas to the table, not presenting the ideas the right way, or falling in love with your own work too early.

Good news: there are plenty of ways to get great creative concepts not just past your legal team, but happily approved!

Let’s get into some mindset shifts + tips to make your day less stressful.

Legal doesn’t wake up in the morning excited to shut down social posts. They wake up thinking about lawsuits, regulatory risk, misinterpretation, screenshots taken out of context, and executives getting dragged into messes they never approved.

That sounds annoying until you realize something important: if a campaign goes sideways, Legal is the reason you don’t get personally blamed for it.

Their job isn’t to kill creativity. It’s to make sure creativity doesn’t put the company in a position it can’t undo. THEY ARE ON YOUR TEAM. YOU ARE WEARING THE SAME JERSEY. Once you internalize that, it becomes much easier to work with them instead of against them.

If you show up to the lawyers with one precious concept and emotional attachment, you’re setting everyone up for failure. We work in social—our whole job’s to be creative & generate hundreds (if not thousands) of strong creative ideas.

When you’re presenting creative to legal, think of it as a creative jam or live brainstorm.

You pitch your idea. When they start giving notes, live pivot! Drop the “what if we…” and “would it work if…” follow-ups. Use that convo to shape the idea into something approvable instead of asking for yes-or-no rulings.

You’ve gotta have more ideas than you need, too. If you’re presenting a daily content calendar’s worth of social, you shouldn’t have 30 ideas—be prepared with 50ish. Some ideas will get killed! You need back-ups ready to go!

Those two adjustments alone will make the tone of the meeting much less combative, much more collaborative.

Some of the best legal relationships I’ve had were built in Slack.

A quick “hey, gut check, any immediate red flags here?” goes a long way. It signals respect—everyone loves when you ask their opinion on something. Those slacks also give Legal a chance to consider vs. live reacting in a meeting, which could be the difference between a yes and no.

A good rule to internalize: if you’re pitching a risky idea, they shouldn’t see the idea for the first time in a meeting. They need some advance warning!

And no, don’t ever expect legal to move “at the speed of social.” Your social team should slow down anyway.

You wouldn’t bake a cake without asking the birthday boy what his favorite flavor is. So why are you spending time and budget making a social post before you check in with legal?

It’s much easier for legal to approve a concept than a final asset. You want the sign-offs to come early and often, not right before you hit post. Execution gets a lot less threatening when lawyers have been in the know.

And ultimately? It saves you time, since you’re not making something that won’t get approved.

But we can back up even earlier in the creative process, before the final assets and concepts—we can get areas of exploration approved by legal!

Schedule meetings with the lawyers that are simply directional, where you cover what’s safe. Could be phrases, or formats, or disclaimers, or visual styles, or even what type of humor is fair game. Our job’s to brightly color between the lines, so let’s figure out where the lines are.

That doesn’t mean you can’t pitch things not discussed—it means you understand your legal team’s taste for risk, and have more information that’s useful to you in getting things approved.

Which brings me to one of the most underrated tricks.

Legal is much more comfortable approving things they’ve already approved.

If something bold gets through once, save it. Screenshot it. Reference it later.

“Similar to what we did in March” is one of the most powerful sentences in brand social.

You’re speaking their language, and they’ll wanna back up what the old them said.

Legal isn’t blocking your creativity. They’re just doing their jobs.

When social teams treat Legal like collaborators instead of obstacles, ideas travel further, approvals move faster, and fewer good concepts die in limbo.

You don’t need to water down your thinking. You just need to bring Legal into the process earlier, clearer, and with a little more empathy.

It’s still your job to push for better ideas.

Just don’t forget that someone else’s job is to make sure those ideas don’t blow up in your face.

There are so many social big thinkers out there, writing all kinds of amazing strategies, analysis, and breakdowns. All ships rise with the tide, so here are a few reads from other places I think you could learn from.

The Future of Social Media from Adobe’s Head Of Social. I’ve worked with Adobe quite a bit the last few years & gotten to know Jared Carneson well—guy’s clearly one of the sharpest in our field (which is why his notes on social turned into a very informative 40-page report on the industry). A great read with a ton of great examples.

TikTok’s official Next 2026 Trend Forecast. I love when platforms release their own data. TikTok’s latest report covers many of the cultural changes on the platform, but more importantly, cements the fundamentals we all gotta learn to keep succeeding in the short-form video era.

ManyChat’s Creator Report reveals the real finances (and burnout data). You’ll be amazed to learn how many (or few) creators are making a real living through content. I personally loved time breakdowns in the business section—this is a great report.