Legal Blogging Group at LinkedIn
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I'm playing catch up approving all of you who have applied to get in the Legal Blogging Group at LinkedIn. And I've got some invites coming to a few folks as well. I expect to be caught up by the weekend.
I fell off the horse of getting group applications processed in a day or two and all of a sudden I'm staring at 60 plus requests. I guess that's a good problem with this group now approaching a thousand in number.
Not to worry about getting into the group. There's not a secret password nor handshake needed to obtain entrance. Anyone with an interest in legal blogging, usually as demonstrated by their profile, meets the criteria. You need not be a lawyer nor a blogger to gain admission.
The reason LinkedIn requires the application process is to eliminate people who may be looking to gain admission to the group solely to spam members with product or service offerings. Those folks tend to give themselves away with LinkedIn profiles displaying 85 LinkedIn group memberships, all reflecting different interests, or by bragging that they have more LinkedIn connections than anyone in the world.
I am still working on ways to allow members of the group to collaborate with each other. So is LinkedIn.
In the interim, members of the group have the ability to network with other members of the group, a pretty diverse and International group of lawyers and other legal professionals. There's quite a few lawyers in leading law firms as well as in-house counsel in various organizations. The vast majority of members are not blogging, but are using the group to learn about blogging.
Click here to join the group. I'll receive and approve your request.
I occasionally get asked to "connect" to someone via LinkedIn, and I never turn down such a request. But is there any evidence that LinkedIn is a valuable networking tool? Has anyone ever gotten a job because of being "LinkedIn"?
anon - Much of LinkedIn's revenue is from headhunters (and companies like Google) that pay to have direct contact emails to potential applicants. If you want to be randomly contacted about employment opportunities, even when you are not looking, being on LinkedIn works great. We (Justia) also use LinkedIn to check out applicants by finding put who might know them outside of the references they give - LinkedIn has some nice database query tools that make this easy.
For networking it is often easier just to pick up the phone if you really want to reach or meet someone. Just faster.