Social media anonymity in the legal profession is a losing proposition
I run across a lot of 'people' in the legal profession who blog, publish websites, twitter, and the like who do so with anonymity.
The foundation of social media and social networking is trust. We share information from those we trust. We build relationships with people we trust. I have a heck of a hard time trusting people who will not tell anyone their name.
- What are they trying to hide?
- Are they a kid in the basement?
- Did they do some bad stuff in their past life and are now trying to resurrect themselves by pseudonym?
- Are they a competitor where it's only human nature to be 'on guard' when building a relationship?
- If I cite or share their commentary and they're wrong, can't they just walk away with no damage to their name?
Those are the things that go through my mind when I see their stuff on the net. I think the average person feels the same way.
As I learned the art of blogging and blog design over the last 6 years, I found the most important link on each blog page to be the link to the 'About' page.
The most trafficked page on my blog is my About page. My 'About' page tells people who I am and why I do what I do. It's only polite when asking someone to read my content that I pay them the courtesy of telling them who I am. It allows readers to decide if I have enough 'street creds' to merit following. Readers can decide if they trust me enough to share what I have to say.
A habit of mine, going back to when I got on the net in 1996, is to first click on the 'About' section of any website. Who are these guys? What are their names? Where are their offices located? Do they have a phone number if I need to call them? What have they done in the past?
These days I go a step further, I Google individual names - whether they are the founder, principal, officer, employee, publisher, editor, reporter - whatever. I look at LinkedIn profiles. I look at who has cited them by name.
As much as any human can, I try not to be prejudiced by what I find. But in a few minutes I draw some conclusions that often stick with me for a long time. Conclusions formed by a gut decision that tells me whether I can trust this source or company.
Ask yourself who you can learn to trust more. An avatar with a company logo on Twitter? An avatar with a pseudonym for a lawyer on Twitter? Or an avatar with a person's picture accompanied by their real name?
The Internet for the legal profession is all about networking and building relationships. Relationships built through true engagement with others we grow to trust.
The law is a profession, not just any other business. Our profession is based on reliability and trust.
So while it may feel cute to be anonymous and you may get some short term buzz, it's a losing proposition in the long run. Trust me.
Kevin, I think it depends on what you expect out of your own lawblogging and the lawblogging of people you read.
When I read other lawbloggers -- whether through tweets, on their sites, etc. -- "trust" doesn't enter into it. I wouldn't embark on a course of action because a blog recommended it without doing reasonable due diligence myself. I might use a blog suggestion as a jumping-off point, but you better believe I'm going to do the research on my own.
I read lawblogs because they are informative or entertaining or because they give me ideas for subjects to blog about. If a blogger acts like an asshat, I'll stop following them -- or blog about it.
My chief co-blogger Patrick and I don't blog to attract business. We do so for own own entertainment -- for the joy of writing (sometimes well, sometimes amusingly) about things, and for the fun of interacting with people who read and follow us. If I had to worry about some jackass getting mad at me for what I said about Sarah Palin or class action reform or the new Transformers movie or something and then calling and screaming obscenities at my secretary, I probably wouldn't do it.
My lengthy defense of blogger anonymity -- written in the wake of the Publius outing -- is here.
I enjoy your site, by the way -- I'm glad to find it through your Twitter traffic. But I'd likely enjoy it the same if you just went by "Kevin" here.
Cheers,
Ken
Being in law school I think its cool to still have an element of anonymity about things. I also have done so since I've learned that my boss who does not respect his worker's private lives nor boundaries is on Twitter as well. Mind you, I don't work in the legal profession...yet. I do this semi-anonymous "no real name, location not exact" thing to avoid having him approach me at work about my personal life and about with whom I interact on Twitter.
Thanks for the comments guys. I guess there could be very limited exceptions to the rule.
But I'm not sure why a law student would want anonymity online - at least if they are looking to get a good job. Building meaningful professional relationships and enhancing one's reputation while in law school is arguably as important as a clerkship - especially if your grades were like mine and a clerkship was is not within reach.
I have always been willing to say what I thought and stand behind it. I've never found the need to say what I wanted, but only anonymously.
Well, network culture is about defining yourself as a set of relationships.
We can define a relatonship in any instance as anonymous and be clear who it is we don't want to identify us. Or rather, who we would like to put to immense trouble before they identify us.
I've been involved in activist groups where the rule is that everyone uses a nom de guerre - for obvious reasons - the other side will kill you as readily as have a beer with you. So don't ask and don't tell is the rule.
I've also seen local people engage in a quarrel on the internet. Being anonymous under those conditions looks tacky if not underhand.
The important point to me is understanding that our identity in the 21C is our set of relationships and we are refining these all the time.
Hence I am commenting here with my name and url and leaving a permanent trace of myself.
As a psychologist, I see it as important that we understand this aspect of network culture (that is likely to pervade our lives for 10 or 20 years) and help adolescents understand how it works. I agree students should be encouraged to develop online portfolios and then to be thoughtful about what they put up. Gone are the days when we can graduate with a portfolio that amounts to our transcript, list of student offices and thesis. As educators and mentors we need to consider how to set assignments so that students have work to show in their portfolios.
For the law student above, have a look at www.designswarm.com. I would like to see all students produce something like that. And aim to have your portfolio come up no 1 in Google when someone searchs your name. Remember too that if you work for BO he wants a trail of your online activity - so learn how to aggreagate everything!
Excellent advice. A lawyer is a licensed professional with a personal brand to protect. If you comment publicly but don't associate your brand to your professional face, you sacrifice an opportunity to deepen potential clients' and employers' understanding of who you are. More importantly, you could damage your reputation by causing people to wonder why and what you are hiding.
Thanks for the thoughts, Kevin. Now I need to go make sure my own About page is up to date!
Thanks for your comments Jo & Heather.
The more I think about anonymity in social media, the more I see no good reason for it. That's whether you are blogging/using social media for client development or not.
I've been involved in a lot of causes & projects that were not done for client development reasons. Some involved political causes which God knows only can hurt you on the client development front. In each case, I placed my name with my commentary. Leading two lives because I was too afraid to let people know what I really thought never occurred to me.
Ken, your Pope Hat blog produces some good commentary. However, I don't see the content and you cited as much in blogs, Twitter, and main stream media as other content produced by non anonymous people. There's a reason, human inclination is not to cite the anonymous.
If you believe in what you say, back it up with your name.
I think for the most part, you're right. However, I think there are many completely valid reasons for blogging anonymously or semi-anonymously, which don't necessarily inhibit credibility or account ability.
For example, perhaps you want the focus of the blog to be about the content, not you. News orgs quote anonymous sources all the time. It doesn't *have* to make them less credible. I think readers are (generally) smart enough to discern between anonymity for valid reasons vs. someone trying to hide something. It comes out in what they blog about and how they write.