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I had the good fortune of presenting to our members at the 2010 ILN Regional Meeting of the Americas on Social Networking and why it may matter to our attorneys.  I began by taking an informal poll of the room to see how many in the audience were regularly using social networking sites (I clarified that by "regularly," I meant logging in once a week and connecting with someone in their network in some way).  It was a fairly small number – about 15-20% of the audience.

Though social networking is a hot topic, there are still many attorneys who question how it can be useful to them in business development at all, so I gave them a few reasons why, starting with American Lawyer Media, Zeughauser Group & Greentarget’s recent survey of in-house counsel.  I mentioned two important points for them that came out of the survey:

  • Blogs are an increasingly preferred mechanism for obtaining business and legal related industry information.
  • Corporate counsel are getting more of their business and legal related industry information online than from traditional print sources.

I also mentioned that the survey showed that in-house counsel are using blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to get their information and judge law firms.Continue Reading ILN Conference Re-Cap: Social Networking – Why it May Matter to You

The third session of ALM’s Social Media: Risks and Rewards conference focused on social media’s impact on e-discovery, and was presented by Michael Lackey, Jr. a partner at Mayer Brown LLP. 

Lackey started with an overview of his presentation, saying it would discuss how social is coming up in litigation and the roadblocks to be aware of. He commented that there are a couple of high profile cases that are defining the limits of what you can get and how you can get it.  For organizations that have social media content that becomes relevant in litigation, there are obligations for preserving this information.  Often, it is being hosted by someone else, so that creates challenges.  

As many of us involved with social media would agree, Lackey said that there’s no doubt that social media is not a fad – it’s here to stay.  He mentioned some of the more traditional platforms for social media, but also included lawyer rating agencies and other kinds of technology, such as FourSquare, for consideration in litigation.  

He said that consumers have a lot of trust out there and like the interactivity, especially in terms of connecting with corporations. Lackey added that digital word of mouth marketing would top $3 billion by 2013. Continue Reading Conference Review: ALM’s Social Media: Risks & Rewards – E-Discovery & Social Media

The ILN has offered a webinar series to our members for the past two years, and in 2010, we’re offering a three-part series on social networking.  Wednesday kicked off our first webinar in the series, "Social Networking Strategy & Blogging," with Kevin O’Keefe of LexBlog.  

After a short introduction from ILN’s Executive Director, Alan Griffiths, Kevin treated the audience to an overview of social networking strategy and blogging.  He shared his experience with getting involved with the internet and what it has meant for him, in order to give the audience some context for the presentation and the benefit of his experience.

The bulk of Kevin’s presentation focused on how lawyers can be successful using social networking tools and why good lawyers tend to gravitate towards using these types of tools.  He began by talking about how few people trust advertising – only 14% – and most law firms on the internet are advertising with their websites.  

He added that a website is necessary for law firms as one point of contact, but said that it doesn’t do much for the firm’s word of mouth reputation.  He likened it to bringing potential clients to see a billboard and expecting that to encourage them to hire their law firm.  For this reason, Kevin said that using social networking tools to drive traffic to the firm’s website is not an effective use of the tools.  Continue Reading Webinar Re-cap: Social Networking Strategy & Blogging with Kevin O’Keefe, LexBlog

Last week, one of our firm’s marketing directors emailed me to see if I had a list of law firm social media policies. Though I’ve seen a few floating around, and know that Doug Cornelius includes law firm policies in his list, I haven’t seen a strictly law firm-based listing.  

Yesterday, in a post called "Social Media Policies for Legal Types," Above the Law mentioned Fast Company’s series of policies, including the guidelines from Harvard Law.  Obviously, a law school’s social media guidelines would be different to that of a law firm, so they offer Adrian Dayton‘s (who advises firms on social media strategy) suggestions for law firms, which can be summed up by his opening thought "Don’t say stupid things." I know Kevin O’Keefe would shorten that further and say "Don’t be an idiot." 

But if your firm is looking for something more comprehensive, I’ll pass along the links I gathered for our legal marketer, with thanks to my friends on Twitter who passed some of these along.

Please feel free to add your own firm’s in the comments as well, and check back to Above the Law’s post, where they’ve invited commenters to do the same.Continue Reading Social Media Policies – Where do we Start?

This afternoon, I had the good fortune to sit in on a webinar put on by Kevin O’Keefe & LexBlog, focused on getting back to basics. The topic was on networking through the internet  (I’ll post the link to the recording when it’s up on Kevin’s blog) and since I’ve seen Kevin speak before, I knew the audience was in for some valuable information, which I’d like to pass along to you.

Since we’ve already talked about why social media should matter to lawyers, the next step is to talk about "well, here I am, now what?" Kevin did a great job of addressing that question and more in his webinar and focusing on the concepts that mean the difference between success and failure.

He started by talking about advertising, and that’s something we’ve gotten a lot of requests from our members about. Without fail, every six months or so, I’ll get an email or see someone in person who says "shouldn’t we be advertising as a Network?" As a marketer, I love advertising – I watch tv for the commercials, enjoy a really snappy, slick print ad, and even like to see how some television commercials translate to radio.  

But for our group, it’s not the right fit – to do it successfully would require a major campaign and lots of money, which is generally what I tell our attorneys. But now I can also tell them this – Kevin said that only 14% of people trust advertising. He reasoned that the percentage who trust lawyer advertising is even lower, and said that essentially, websites are advertising too.Continue Reading Getting Back to Basics: Networking Through the Internet – A Webinar from Kevin O’Keefe