There are still people out there who think social media is not for professionals.

C’mon, admit it. 

All right, so the likelihood is that those people aren’t reading this blog, because, after all, it’s part of that "social media stuff." But how many of you who have dipped your toe in the water (i.e. joined Facebook, staked your claim on your Twitter name, filled out your LinkedIn profile) are using social media? And how many of you are blogging…regularly? 

I’m sure more than one of you mentally raised your hand as you read that. 

And I’m sure some of you who did are still wondering why the heck you would want to use social media anyway.  So let’s talk about that for a little while. 

Continue Reading Let’s Be Social – A Look at the 2012 In-House Counsel New Media Engagement Survey

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?