Formerly a Senior Attorney with Goodwin Proctor and now Chief Compliance Officer with a real estate private equity firm, Cornelius' take is blunt, matter of fact, and telling for LexisNexis.

Cornelius finds Connected's story a compelling one.

The lure of Connected is the idea of combining an online networking community, the Martindale-Hubble lawyer listings, and the enormous pool of data in the Lexis databases. Theoretically, your lawyer listing, articles, cases, news, and people connections would be all linked together in one place. As with blogging, you could show your expertise through the stuff you write, the cases you work on, the transactions you work on and the news about you. Then you tie that all information to a central profile and connect with the people you know.

But for Cornelius, who's been using Connected for months, it's just that, a story. 'Either they have a lot of work to do, or the site is intended to be mediocre.'

• The site is merely a social network site with a connection to Martindale-Hubble listings, there is no connection to substantive Lexis content.
• The social networking tools are mediocre.
• Admittedly still in beta, the site is sparsely populated and lacks content.
• They are having trouble trouble tying blog posts to Connected profiles.
• Does not have the large population of users like LinkedIn and Facebook.
• Lacks many of the rich features of LinkedIn and Facebook.

The biggest question I've had about Connected is that it's a closed community requiring authentication by Martindale-Hubbell, and designed to be open only to lawyers. Though Martindale conceded yesterday in a comment to a blog post they'll let non lawyer large law firm management people in later this year.

Why would I as a lawyer not want to be networking with professionals from 140 industries ala LinkedIn? Why wouldn't I want more people to get to know me better both as a lawyer and as a person, as opposed to only those people Martindale approves?

Cornelius agrees.

Part of Connected's approach is create an authenticated community. So that the person is who they say they are. An interesting approach, but to me it seems like a lot of work for little value. (Perhaps they are scarred by the squatters holding LexisNexis in Twitter.) The authentication seems designed around the Martindale listing. So to start you need to be a lawyer to get...

Frankly, I am not sold on having a gated community for a broad legal community. What would I publish or say in Connected that I would not otherwise say on this blog, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn? I am an early adopter, so maybe the general legal population would be more likely to contribute in Connected than on one of the public platforms? I am skeptical.

I just got into Connected last week after first asking Martindale last fall and have not used it other than to start completing my profile. But I'm not impressed at this point. My gut tells me it's a failure as far as heavy 'real adoption' by law firms.

We're going to hear of some successes. We'll hear the site is in beta. The marketing pitch will continue. There will be surveys telling us how in-house counsel like Connected. LexisNexis has a lot of money.

But in addition to what Cornelius offers, here's my take:

• The UI and development work is of far lower quality than that of LinkedIn's.
• It felt slow and clumsy to use.
• It doesn't look to be the type of system for which new features can be added regularly, something LinkedIn and Facebook are constantly doing.
• Unlike LinkedIn and other innovative companies succeeding on the Internet today, LexisNexis' culture is not one to let lots of users in and make further development based on their feedback. Rather than getting early adopters to help you improve your product and tell others about it, LexisNexis appears to building ill will from other than their closest friends.
• Lack of clear direction and strategy from Martindale personnel to the legal Internet community. LexisNexis employees, as recently as last weekend, told me all lawyers, including me, can get in Connected. It just may take a few days after registration. Another LexisNexis employee tells me on Monday no, 'employees were told at a recent national sales meeting, that membership is still limited to corporate counsel.'
• Inability of LexisNexis engineering and development team to keep pace with the likes of LinkedIn, Facebook, and even legal upstarts like LegalOnRamp and JD Supra.

Most telling for Connected though is a growing large law feeling that Martindale-Hubbell's value for large law is no longer there. Toby Brown, in Marketing and Knowledge Management at Fulbright & Jaworski, commenting to Cornelius post:

Although MH sits on a goldmine of information, I think it's in serious trouble. With firms looking to cut non-essential costs, over the next year as MH contracts come due, I predict a major exodus. Frankly I've just don't see the value in MH. Years ago an AV rating may have brought some work in the door. Not today - or at least not much. With so many emerging options that demonstrate ROI, MH is going down. (IMHO)

Guys like Cornelius, Brown, and I could be wrong. Connected could be a huge success, turning everyone's opinion of Martindale from that of a dinosaur to an innovator. I just don't see it.

Here's an excerpt from my August 25, 2006 post on the ILTA 2006 conference.

In what may be the latest sign legal technology innovation is an oxymoron was the total lack of Internet discussion from or about ILTA's annual conference which took place this last week in Orlando. ILTA (International Legal Technology Association) is a leading networking organization allowing for the exchange of resources to legal professionals.

Virtually all tech conferences these days have a steady stream of blog posts reporting live, or at least daily, from attendees. Laptops are open on desktops with near simultaneous reporting via WIFI hookup.

.....When I heard from colleagues that ILTA was on I set up a keyword and tag feed for ILTA from Technorati. I did pick up a few posts over the week but it paled in comparison to other technology conferences.

Leading legal technology folks need to be using blogs and RSS feeds on a regular basis. One, because this medium of business communication (blogs and RSS) is quickly making web sites and email outmoded means of business communication. You need to be taking your firms to the future. Second, advancement of knowledge via offline networking crawls compared the speed at which ideas advance via blogs and RSS.

My post is not meant to be critical of ILTA or their conference. I have heard their organization is very worthwhile and that their conferences are excellent. But if members of ILTA are going to be innovative in their use of technology, they better get with it.

Sitting in my Seattle office today, I'm getting regular blog and Twitter feeds about the presentations at the conference. Some of the blogged summaries are excellent.

Look at the post on a social networking presentation by Doug Cornelius and the post on Interaction Portals by David Hobbie as examples. Think Goodwin Proctor is ahead of the curve in the use of blogs and innovative technologies with guys like Doug and David?

Here's a screen shot from just now of blog posts referencing ILTA in my NetNewswire RSS reader.

Twitter discussion from both ILTA attendees and ILTA observers not in attendance is more rampant than blog discussion. Here's a screen shot of my TweetDeck panel following a global search of ILTA.

I'm no longer buying that lawyers and other professionals in our legal industry are way behind the curve in the use of blogging, social networking and social media. Some may be. But for a growing and influential force, the effective use of technology for communication, collaboration, and networking is very real.

So I couldn't help but notice what Scott Niesen, Director of Marketing at Attensa, had to say in a presentation at Enterprise 2.0, about drawing a distinction between 'what you need to know' and 'what you need to respond to.'

As paraphrased by Doug Cornelius, who attended Niesen's session:

A blog is a communication tool. It is well suited to what you need to know. Email is better for information that has a need to respond. Take a look at you email flow and think about how much of this you need to react to. Most of it is just information you need to know. But by the information being pushed into email, my inbox is acting as my content management system. A blog or a collection of blogs makes a much better content management system. It is easier to search, easier to find content and easier to add content.

Hear hear. Use a blog. Use a project management tool like Basecamp (basically a blog). Use a wiki. Use Google docs/spreadsheets for colaboration. But email for delivering information I need to know is distracting, oppressive, and impossible to keep track of.

Reporting on his panel presentation with leading business bloggers at last week's Enterprise 2.0:

One common theme among the panel was blogging as a personal knowledge management tool. We all found the blog to be a great way to capture information in a way that is easy to categorize, where it is easy to find the content. As a personal knowledge management tool, I blog for me. These notes are for me to reuse. That you are reading is a by-product.

As a lawyer for 17 years my credenza, desk corners, and bookshelf were full of articles and CLE materials with post-it notes. Never wanted to lose that suggested brief on voir dire, request for production, or sample cross examination of a medical witness. Plus I had great notes in those outlines from the trial lawyer seminars I attended.

Problem was that I could only manage a fraction of the information I collected. We kept a file cabinet with some of the stuff. But that only worked when everything got filed there and if we named the folder by the same name we would label the concept a year later when we went digging for the stuff.

If my secretary and I didn't spend a day or two wading through all the good stuff at the end of the year, a lot of it would just get tossed in the garbage. Equal value to the garbage was stacking the stuff on those shelves in the back regions of the law office only to be cleaned out when we moved offices or retired.

With a blog, you file what you read or hear and want to keep in a blog post. Make a note or two offering why the information is worthwhile. Upload key files to your blog. Blog live from seminars you attend. Why make hard copy notes that end up getting tossed or lost?

A blog gives you complete navigation by category & sub-category, tags, and a complete search. You can find what you want over the years.

Better yet, by cleaning the info up a little - it only takes 5 minutes more - you can share what you keep with your target audience. Showing prospective clients, other bloggers, the media, and referring lawyers what you follow and how you do so is an excellent way to display your expertise and commitment to a practice area.

Doug made this same point of sharing your knowledge in his post:

A blog is an excellent way to display expertise, whether the blog is internal or external. It is one thing to paint yourself as an expert. It is much more effective to prove your expertise through your writings and information you push out.

Obviously if a blog is internal, you're only showing your expertise to others in your firm or organization. I agree with Doug that 'internal blogs (at least in the classic sense) are just limiting their audience.'

I've got thousands of posts in this blog. 95% of the posts reference something of value I saw or heard. I wanted to keep the info as part of my personal knowledge management or share it with you guys with a little commentary. In most cases it was probably a little of both.

No way I could have done that with post-it notes - even the electronic ones called bookmarks.

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.

That's the word from John Lipsey, LexisNexis VP Corporate Counsel Services, at the Martindale-Hubbell blog.

Strange position to take when:

• There's 119,000 LinkedIn profiles from those within the 'law practice' industry per a Google search across the LinkedIn directory.
• A quick search for 'General Counsel" at LinkedIn draws the maximum of 500 search results. There's certainly many more.
• Like Doug Cornelius, who also found Martindale's position curious, I am seeing an explosion of lawyers adding profiles at LinkedIn.
• Legal OnRamp, a social networking site for lawyers in private practice and in-house started by Cisco general counsel Mark Chandler, has in its short history more than 175 companies signed up, including several leading U.S. banks and a clutch of major corporates.
• DLA Piper, the largest law firm in the country is using a Facebook-style networking tool for its trainees.
• Mike Dillon, General Counsel at Sun Microsystems and Executive Vice President of the company's legal department, finds wikis, social networking, mash-ups, virtual communities and blogs incredibly rich and powerful when it comes to knowledge sharing and communication.

I'll concede that most lawyers have not figured out how to effectively leverage social networking sites. Like the use of Google, Amazon, and other Internet services that no one was clamoring for but which we now could not live without, it'll take time.

Despite Lipsey's 'talking to a couple hundred corporate counsel,' the train is leaving the station on this one, we're not going back.

• One, I blog just for personal knowledge management – I grab and write about things that I want to be able to find later.
  
• I blog to keep my fellow KM team members aware of what’s catching my attention or the things that I’m working on.
  
• I blog to keep a conversation going with people that I know.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Greg Storey, principal of Airbag Industries [2.15.08]
• Edward Still, publisher of the legal blog Votelaw [2.14.08]
• Ken Adams, drafting consultant and author of the AdamsDrafting blog [2.13.08]
• Susannah Gardner, author of Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies [2.11.08]
• Doug Berman, professor at Ohio State University and author of Sentencing Law & Policy Blog [2.8.08]