"I think some law students just have no idea what it is and what the value of LinkedIn is," Leora says. "These are the students who ask me, 'well, why SHOULD I use it.' These students should be the primary targets of career services offices at law schools, since the students would get on and start using the site if someone just nudged them in that direction."

Leora is doing her part to demonstrate how useful social networking tools can be for law students. She started an independent social networking consulting business after listening to lawyers at Northeastern Law's Women in the Law Conference describe how they found sites like LinkedIn and Facebook confusing and hard to use. Now she blogs and Twitters (@LeoraMaccabee) about the value of social networking, like in this post on Lawyerist on How Law Students Should Use LinkedIn.

At Northeastern, she has worked with school administrators in various offices to create a law school presense on Facebook and LinkedIn. The group pages were created and populated with news, and alumi and students were encouraged to join the groups and create their own pages.

"We have tried to explain that this is just another tool to identify people they may want to connect with and it is another marketing tool for themselves (a way for them to control the way they present themselves online, if they are googled, etc.)," says Randi Friedman, Northeastern's Assistant Dean/Director of Career Services.

But it can still be difficult for law students to see how helpful social networking can be. A recent training session Leora hosted on using LinkedIn drew only a dozen students, instead of the 30 or 40 she had hoped. In her informal chats with her fellow students, some common concerns about social networking emerged.

• Privacy concerns. Students are worried about friends or strangers on Google knowing where they work or attend school.
• Online networking is a "cop-out" and inferior to face-to-face interaction.
• Time consuming. Especially if an employer does not want their employees to be on Facebook and LinkedIn at work, these activities would take up non-work time.
• LinkedIn is "just one more thing to update."
• One 3L told her, "When a partner at a firm makes me have one, I'll set it up."

Another hurdle for law students, particularly those in their 20s, is that they are so used to using sites like Facebook and Twitter purely for personal or social use that it can be hard to see using them for professional purposes.

Still, that's not to say that law schools and law students are not making use of LinkedIn. Leora notes that alumni groups are flourishing: searches for "law school" and "School of Law" return close to 250 groups.

And she has several strong arguments and examples at the ready to convince students of its value:

• The high Google page rank of LinkedIn, which can be a good way to influence what people see when they search for you online
• The ability to develop and market your brand
• The ability to maintain relationships with classmates and colleagues
• The ability to seek advice from experts in your field
• The ability to find a job and find who that you know is connected to that job

Those who see the value are responding to her advice.

"A 3L friend of mine in law school (who did not yet have a LinkedIn page) was trying to find people working at a certain place of employment in New York in connection with a post-graduate employment job application she was about to send them," Leora says. "I went to my LinkedIn page, typed in the employer and learned that another student at our law school had interned at the place of employment a few years ago. Turns out that my friend and this other student were friends, but since they had never really spoken about the job search, or about past employment, they had yet to make the connection. My friend left that conversation determined to set up a LinkedIn account."

Fortunately, there's a great way for law students to build out a resume and begin networking. It's LinkedIn, the leading professional directory - for lawyers and all other professions. And rather than it being a static resume that's impossible to distinguish from another, you get a live resume that's updated with your career focused activity in law school.

As a hiring employer, I look at someone's LinkedIn profile before anything else. I then run various Google searches to get a feel for a candidate's background. Talking to other employers, I'm finding I'm pretty typical. So if you're a law student without a complete and growing LinkedIn profile, you're missing the boat.

How to use LinkedIn as a law student?

• Make sure your profile is 100% complete. Picture, past employment etc. LinkedIn's dynamic user interface will guide you through the process and indicate when your profile is at 100%.
• Connect with people. Connect with law professors, law students, employers, and professionals you meet online and offline. What looks more impressive to a hiring law firm? A candidate with 6 connections at LinkedIn or a candidate with 360 connections, including lawyers, professors, and the like. Plus employers know those connections can be used by you for future networking.
• Recommendations. Little is more powerful to an employer than recommendations from people you've worked for or leaders who know you well. Law professors, lawyers, or even employers unrelated to the law can be asked to provide a recommendation through LinkedIn's simple request form. Throwing 'references by request' or a few names at the bottom of a resume doesn't cut it anymore. We're too busy. Give us a recommendation from someone we can click on and ping through LinkedIn. Gold.
• Groups. Undergrad alumni groups is a no brainer. Then join groups which you have an interest in. If there are niche areas of law you're interested in going into, join relevant groups. If there's interests you have outside the law, join those groups. Employers want to see you're not afraid to get out and engage with folks with similar interests. Real go getter? Start a group - professional or law school related.
• Network. Reach out and get to know lawyers and business people in areas you'd like to work. You can do it via groups or running searches by topic and locale. Ask professionals you meet questions about legal topics, about the job market, about how they got their job etc. Ask to get together for coffee. We don't get these overtures from law students - you'll stick out like a shining star.
• Ask and answer questions. You can do this in either the answers section or on the groups' discussion boards. You're not going to have the knowledge of a lawyer who's practiced for 20 years. So what. Pitch in where you can. You'll get seen and the answers are reflected on your profile.
• Blog feed. Consider publishing a blog focused on an area of the law you have an interest in. LinkedIn allows you to have excerpts of your blog displayed in your profile.
• Twitter feed. LinkedIn will display your Twitter feed if you like. Whether to display it depends on who much professional info you share in comparison to personal items.

I'm looking for innovate go getters. PhD's as I call them. Folks that are poor, hungry, and driven.

I got my first job as a lawyer by knocking on law firm doors and asking to talk with the senior lawyer I looked up in Martindale-Hubbell at the public library. It was scary as all get out. Receptionists told me later they thought I was a salesperson. But telling them I'd sit and wait till the lawyer had a few minutes, and doing so even if it was a couple hours, signaled I was different than other law grads. Or maybe just nuts.

Knocking on doors is still a good idea. But if you're not up for it, get going with LinkedIn. A completed profile that demonstrates you're a go getter will set you apart from the laggards.

As for the placement office telling you to go slow on the use of social media? You know 'Everything can be used against you, you'll ruin your career.'

Tell them you've got hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in tuition and lost income while in school. Tell them traditional methods of gaining employment don't work as well anymore. Tell them employers are using social networking like LinkedIn in spades.

Get a move on it.