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After lunch, ALM’s Social Media: Risks & Rewards conference focused more on the rewards of social media.  The Brand Protection and Promotion of Social Media session featured Jennifer Arkowitz from Townsend and Townsend and Crew as the moderator, and David Morris, Senior Corporate Counsel of TripAdvisor, Alexandra Sepulveda, Trademark Counsel with General Mills, and Johanna Sistek, Trademark Counsel for Google, Inc. as speakers.  

Proactive or Reactive? 

Arkowitz’s first question was whether each of the companies were more proactive or reactive in their social media efforts.

Sepulveda (General Mills) said that for them, it’s a combination. When Facebook had a big land grab for user names, they went through their brand list and got all of those names.  She said that as trademark lawyers, they’re classic hostages, because if they know about something, they have to do something about it.  

Sistek (Google) said that they have issues raised internally from employees as well as users, so they’re able to be reactive instead of proactive. She added that all of their teams use social media in what they do.

Morris (TripAdvisor) commented that they’re both proactive and reactive. Being an online brand is core to what they do, so although they don’t have a dedicated social media team, about half the company is working on social media. They do that internally and externally. TripAdvisor uses small firms to scour the net for mentions of their company – this is at a cost, but it does help to find those mentions.Continue Reading Conference Re-cap: ALM’s Social Media; Risks and Rewards Brand Protection and Promotion and Social Media

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 second session of ALM’s Social Media: Risks & Rewards also focused on the risks of social media.  Orrie Dinstein, the Chief Privacy Leader and Senior IP Counsel for GE Capital spoke on Privacy and Security in Social Media.  

He started by saying that there had been a global conference of data commissioners the previous week in Jerusalem, and the most interesting thing about the conference had been its theme – a new generation (of users, laws and technology), which all converges in the social media space.

It was clear from the comments at the conference that there’s so much interest in the social media space, but no one knows what to do with it and it’s constantly evolving.  

Dinstein focused on privacy and security in social media – or a lack of privacy and insecurity. He didn’t offer any solutions, but instead raised a number of points about this complicated space, beginning with security. Continue Reading Conference Review: ALM’s Social Media: Risks & Rewards – Privacy and Security in Social Media

On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to attend American Lawyer Media’s Social Media: Risks & Rewards conference as an ILN Marketing Partner.  As evidence of the popularity of the conference’s content, the room was almost standing room only by the end of the morning.  (For tweets from the conference, see the #LSMC hashtag results)

The first two sessions focused more on the "risks" portion of the conference, discussing a lot of concerns about social media.  The first speaker was Joel Reidenberg, Professor of Law and Director of the Center on Law and Information Policy at Fordham University School of Law. His presentation was "Beyond Terms of Use: From Handcuffs to Handshake?" 

Professor Reidenberg began by saying that it’s important to think about Terms of Service as an effort by social media sites to bring some certainty to their own environment where the law is lacking and vague. Terms of Service typically consist of two sets of documents:

  1. Basic user agreement
  2. Privacy Policy, which is normally incorporated by reference, so the two work hand in hand.

Continue Reading Conference Review: ALM’s Social Media: Risks & Rewards – Beyond Terms of Use: From Handcuffs to Handshake?

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?

During our Annual Conference, I had the opportunity to present on the topic that’s near and dear to my heart – social media. An informal survey of the room revealed that about fifteen attorneys were regularly using social media (I defined "regularly" as logging in once a week and connecting with someone in their network in some way). That still left the majority uninvolved, so I endeavored to convince them why social media might matter to them.

I began with some statistics on social media usage from the AmLaw 100 and 200 firms, adding the caveat that I understand that social media differs from region to region and that it isn’t commonly used in business in many countries. However, I still felt the topic had broad applicability because many firms around the world have American clients and I believe that social media will soon become important for businesses around the world.  Continue Reading Social Media – Why It May Matter to Lawyers – A Re-cap from the ILN Annual Conference