Real Lawyers Have Blogs : Law Blogs, Blawgs, Law Firm Marketing

That's the word from Doug Cornelius, a senior real estate associate with Goodwin Procter in Boston and well known knowledge management blogger, in a recent article by The American Lawyer's Brian Baxter.

Social networking costs are minimal -- it's not like sponsoring a table at an awards dinner or printing brochures -- so your return on investment is astronomic...

Cornelius' comment was part of a story on Legal OnRamp, started by Cisco Systems Inc. General Counsel Mark Chandler and former Perkins Coie lawyer Paul Lippe. In less than a year, Legal OnRamp has grown to more than 3,000 members from 200 firms and 400 companies.

Allen & Overy, whose partner Kenneth Rivlin unsuccessfully tried kill off associates use of Facebook, saw enough merit in social networking sites to invest in Legal OnRamp. Per Rivlin:

We saw both lawyers and staff using the site to build professional networks. Firm management saw the opportunity for lawyers to exchange resumes, make client contacts and circulate best practices memos about everything from writing a contract to structuring a deal.

With the ability to browse individual lawyer bios, visit message boards, attend Q&A sessions, join groups, and receive Facebook-style updates on other lawyers, Cornelius 'favors Legal OnRamp over other business networking sites like LinkedIn and LawLink because it's interactive and offers access to potential clients through its in-house contacts.'

I recently joined Legal OnRamp, courtesy of an invite from an in-house counsel I met via LinkedIn. I haven't spent enough time on it to personally form an opinion on it's value.

But 3,000 lawyers from 200 law firms, presumably large law, and 400 companies combined with large law firms investing in the social networking site ought to tell you something. Some lawyers are seeing value in social networking.

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I was asked that question in a comment to my post yesterday on social networking tools.

Business through Facebook? Not directly, but it can happen through relationships you build in Facebook.

I am not a big user of Facebook, but I can see how one could get work through it. Let's say you meet someone with similar interests through a Facebook group. If you're a lawyer, perhaps they're a young in-house lawyer. You start following each other in Facebook - you share recent pictures of recreational activities with your families, you start playing scrabble in Twitter, etc. You are building out a network.

Will you get new business from the person tomorrow? Probably not. But you now know another business person whose company may need your services at some time or know of someone who may. It's a lifetime of building relationships that leads to work.

'Dig Your Well Before You Get Thirsty' is the title of a book Harvey McKay wrote years ago. His point was to build out a business network for professional success.

I'm not telling you to drop everything and jump into Facebook this weekend, just saying to be open to new things. Things that work for some folks and that don't work for others.

If I said lawyers can get work by playing golf at a country club, that doesn't mean you drop everything and start taking golf lessons and join the club for fear you would lose business if you didn't.

Golf courses are very pretty on a beautiful day and the mental challenges and nuances of the sport are attractive. But I suck at golf and don't have the patience. Probably why you'll find me at LinkedIn.

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Josh Fruchter, in sharing my post on lawyers using Twitter, raises a good question.

...[I]f a lawyer spends substantial time each day blogging, and updating Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and any other networks to which they belong (Pulse anyone???), what about life outside work? At some point, it seems to me, there isn't enough time in the day to participate regularly on EVERY site, and still maintain a healthy work life balance.

Other lawyers do regularly tell me that these goofy social networking tools you're talking about are great for you, but I'm a practicing lawyer and I simply don't have the time.

And I'm sure it seems that those of us referencing and using Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and the like must be spending a lot of time on these mediums. That's not necessarily so.

In one case, you use them for news - so you go there when you have the time for catching up with what's going on just like you would browse a local newspaper. Here the news and information is coming from trusted friends. They're sharing links and quick snippets of news and information. And like a newspaper, you don't read every story, you glance and browse when you have a few minutes.

In another case, you use social networking tools for networking. Duh. And like networking in real life, you do it when you have the time. And knowing that it's networking that leads to some of your best work, you work networking into your schedule. Otherwise your family goes hungry.

It's 4:30 p.m. on a Friday here on the West Coast and I haven't used any social networking tools or sites today except for leaving a comment on Josh's blog just now, posting a correction to my blog early this am, and writing this post.

So though I am a 'user' of these mediums that some may call mad and all time consuming, they do not absorb all my time. I was involved in meetings with my CFO, VP of Client Development, and Creative Director until 2 or 3 today and then working on client development matters after that.

Having said that, the seeds I planted yesterday via Twitter and LinkedIn are bearing fruit today. Took me 20 or 30 minutes yesterday to publish a blog post with links to a powerpoint and webcast of a recent webinar I did. Then shared the post with folks on Twitter.

Between people getting my RSS feeds and people following me on Twitter, I've seen mention of that powerpoint and webinar all over the place today - blogs, other folks mentioning it on Twitter, and in copies of emails my readers sent to their business associates telling them about the powerpoint and screencast. Also received some nice emails thanking me for sharing the materials.

I also spent 15 minutes on LinkedIn yesterday inviting people I had the occasion to meet via the net recently to join my my professional network at LinkedIn. I received notice today that a number of those folks accepted my invite as well as one or two thank you notes for my asking them to hook up on LinkedIn.

Bottom line is social networking tools can be used effectively without them becoming all time consuming. And like Josh guesses, 'one has to try different services and then see over time which network pays the biggest dividends, and then focus on that one.'

Now, just don't ask my wife and five kids if I spend too much time on the net. ;)

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Lawyers using Twitter for marketing? Yes, it's true.

This micro blogging tool with posts or 'tweets' limited to 140 characters, which I was afraid to admit in public that I used, is generating some discussion among legal marketing professionals.

First, Twitter broke into a legal marketing listserv discussion last week. 'What is it? Does anyone see any value to using it?' Then today, legal Internet marketing expert, Steve Matthews, comes out with an excellent intro to Twitter for lawyer marketing, including 7 steps for test driving Twitter.

Don't expect Twitter to take the legal industry by storm yet, but take note of what Steve says you ought to now.

...Politicians in the current US election are levering it, news outlets like CNN & Canada's CBC are offering headlines that can be mixed into your reading stream, and companies like Southwest airlines are using it to interact with customers & take feedback.

It's widely considered the fastest growing tool of web influence, and will at some point have a trickle down effect for the legal industry.

And though this may sound absolutely insane, LexBlog may pick up some very good work through Twitter - with larger law firms. And until a month or two ago, I thought Twitter was just a distraction. Let me share 4 stories.

1. Working one night last week I was 'tweeting' about the Mariners game while I was listening to it on MLB.com. A lawyer in DC who owns a piece of a minor league team, who had been following me on Twitter, replied back with a direct message about baseball first, which then led to his request to discuss doing some blogs for a number of lawyers back there.
2. I 'm regularly exchanging comments via Twitter with a person in IT & Business Development in a top 5 law firm. Very good chance of leading to work with that firm.
3. A week ago Sunday Robert Scoble, one of most widely followed bloggers in the world, 'tweeted' to his 21,000 followers on Twitter that he liked following my blog and following me on Twitter. Robert said he liked what I wrote and said and that I was a smart guy (take that for what it's worth). Anyhow, it brought a huge immediate increase in people following me on Twitter. Where that goes I don't know, but a lot more people are following me on Twitter, including some reporters and lawyers.
4. I expanded my relationship with high profile PR person via Twitter which led to a speaking engagement at a major national blogging and new media conference.

Interesting thing about Twitter, and I don't think most lawyers or firms are ready to use it, is that the people who may follow you are heavy influencers of others. They are people who blog and otherwise virally spread what they hear. If you are providing incite on a niche through Twitter, word can be spread very rapidly.

You can benefit from Twitter in three ways, that I see today. First, a way to socially network with people, some of which networking may lead to work, speaking engagements, and the like. Two, a means to amplify your message, i.e., spreading what you what you may be blogging, writing, or speaking on. Three, if you blog, you are going to get news from other bloggers whose content you may want to reference in your blog or work.

By the way, if you are going to experiment with Twitter, use an application such as Twhirl. It makes things much easier to understand and follow than using the Twitter home page alone. And if using Twitter on a mobile device there is m.twitter.com.

Related posts:

• Twitter in plain English video
• How to use Twitter
• Using Twitter to promote your blog
• Twitter madness & the Scoble effect
  

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'Friends May Be the Best Guide Through the Noise' by Brad Stones in this mornings' NY Times is a good read for law firms struggling to understand how an increasing segment of our population get their news and information today. Despite a tidal wave of user generated content, folks are finding the info they want, and arguably need.

Though Stones focuses on FriendFeed, a new social networking tool allowing people to follow what their trusted friends are following, the message of following what trusted people are turning you onto, no matter the social networking tool, is the take away.

Search engines like Google, so effective for general information hunting, do a poor job of cutting through these thickets of user-generated material. For the Internet-addicted, the problem is further intensified by 'lifecasting' services like Twitter and the Google-owned Jaiku, which let people use their cellphones to fire off Haiku-length text notices, both profound and mundane......That's where the sites like FriendFeed, Iminta, Plaxo, Readr, Mugshot and others try to harness the wisdom of friends. They let their users choose whose feeds they want to follow -- the relationship does not have to be reciprocal -- and allow them to restrict their own feeds only to people with whom they feel comfortable.

Following the feeds of people you like and admire, these companies say, allows the serendipitous discovery of needles in the information haystack. 'Friends are likely to have some similar interests and tastes. Just the fact that your friends find it interesting should make it more interesting to you,' said Paul Buchheit, one of FriendFeed's four founders, all of them former Google engineers.

.....Last week, for example, Mr. Buchheit's followers on FriendFeed were treated to what he himself had discovered and found valuable online: links to interviews with the investor Peter Thiel in Reason magazine and the Google co-founder Larry Page in Fortune, an article about Justice Antonin Scalia's views on torture on a political Web site, and a YouTube video of nine kittens moving their heads in rhythm to a song, among other Internet ephemera.

Makes a lot of sense. Begin following people with similar interests as you have. Whether via a blog, Twitter, Delicious, FriendFeed, Facebook, or whatever.

Doing so makes the conversation going on all around on online media less voluminous and more meaningful.

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Social media expert, John Cass, offers four elements of social media use within an organization. I thought they applied well to law firms.

His points with my commentary:

1. Blogger relations: (a) pitching bloggers and (b) conversational marketing. PR with bloggers is dramatically different than PR as law firms know it. Do not send me a press release. Get to know me. Establish a relationship with me, preferably through your own blog.
2. Employee social media training. No one is saying lawyers and legal marketing professionals are going to master social media overnight. But bringing in social media experts to talk with the firm and its lawyers and getting folks out to social media conferences (not legal marketing conferences) is a good start.
3. Social media marketing: (a) customer service, (b) product development, (c) social media optimization (note: some people debate the ethics of this approach) (d) public affairs, and (e) conversational marketing. It's going to take a leap of faith, but law firms have much to gain from testing the social media marketing mediums being used by innovative companies, like as their own clients.
4. Changing business culture based on social media strategies. Using social media for internal processes and leadership transformation. Rather than arbitrary rules against blogging, Facebook, and the like, start using them on at least a trial basis.

Share John's outline with folks in your law firm and your friends in the business. It's a nice outline from which to fill in the details.

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Sitting here blogging in a coffee shop on Bainbridge Island this afternoon when emails start pouring in saying folks have started following me on Twitter. That screenshot on the left shows you how fast. Some of the followers I know, most I don't. They're from all over the world.

I'm thinking someone wrote a script that's causing 'spam followers,' if you will. I'm getting ready to set up a filter in my mail app to send all emails saying someone was following me on Twitter into spam. I was just thinking the last week that Twitter is a cool tool that I'm figuring out how to use. Then this.

So I 'tweet' that 'I am getting hit by 'spam followers,' has anyone had that happen to them?" Saad Kamai replied that 'Somebody recommended you in Twitter, so i guess its natural to get a couple of new 'followers.'

Couple new followers? More than that. And who has that type of draw? That type of influence to recommend an unknown (I am one) and get folks to start following what you are saying?

Then the answer from Phil Ferris in West Cornwall, UK: "Scoble recommended you a few minutes ago in a Tweet. I call it the Scoble Effect."

Quick look back in Twirl, my Twitter application, and sure enough.

Scobleizer: I love reading @kevinokeefe who today linked to a thing about lawbloggers doing journalism. He's a lawyer and a blogger and smart too.

Robert apparently picked up via a tweet of mine that I had posted about lawyers and investigative journalism.

Wow Robert. I'm honored. Seriously. But you'll need to give folks a warning of what's coming - when you're ready to Scobleize them.

Like Jerry Yang when he called Jeff Bezos 12 years ago and said Yahoo was going to name Amazon the 'site of the day.' Bezos thought sure and couldn't figure out why Wang was asking. But Yang wanted to warn him of what's to come. Bezos had bells on each employees computers (a few only) that rang with each book purchase. Guess the next day when Yahoo did the site of the day the bells rang all day.

Good thing I have the bell notifying me of new emails on mail app turned off. Otherwise the folks in this sleepy little coffee shop would, like me, wonder what the heck's going on.

Let there be no question as to the influence one person can have on others through blogging and social networking.

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Unlike most working folks in the professional world, Mario Sundar can legitimately say that a LinkedIn profile is all he needs to highlight his professional experience. After all, what good is a static website bio page when you're employed by a company that has grown through its ability to render such traditional methods of showcasing expertise obsolete?

As community evangelist for LinkedIn and editor of the LinkedIn blog, Mario - who also writes Marketing Nirvana, a blog covering marketing and social networking - spoke to us in an official capacity, commenting on how LinkedIn uses their official blog to communicate with users and where some the site's more recent features (groups, etc.) may ultimately become. See the full text after the jump.

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Remember the late 90's when many in the legal profession dismissed the Internet as some sort of fad?

A recent article article in Law Technology News (Is the Party Over for Social Networking?) and blog post by Martindale-Hubbell ('social networking – does not draw lawyers') reminds me of the same. Both write off lawyers use of social networking.

This at a time when LinkedIn, the leading professional social networking site, lists 118,000 profiles from those describing themselves in the practice of law and is profiling each of the largest law firms based on social networking at LinkedIn by their lawyers.

Interesting that many quoted in the Law Technology News story see the advantages and significant growth in social networking for lawyers. Nonetheless, the headline was couched to create the opposite impression.

And the headline certainly worked. New York Magazine citing the Law Technology reported 'News Attendees at the American Bar Association's ABA Techshow in Chicago have declared social-networking sites over.' No question the magazine put this in to laugh at our profession.

Martindale's position that social networking for lawyers is dead? Probably based on a combination of not knowing what is taking place and protecting their territory.

Rather than create sensational headlines to generate discussion or misleading lawyers to sell your products, let's give social networking time.

It's new. Social networking sites are still being perfected. Lawyers and legal marketing professionals are still trying to figure it out.

But like the Internet, social networking for lawyers is not a fad.

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