This Friday, LinkedIn will be adding several much-requested features to LinkedIn groups which I'll be activating for our group.

• Discussion forums: Simple discussion spaces for members.
• Enhanced roster: Searchable list of group members.
• Digest emails: Daily or weekly digests of new discussion topics which members may choose to receive.
• Group home page: A private space for members.

With these new features, expect more communication, collaboration, networking, and educational opportunities.

Just go to the Legal Blogging Group page to sign up. We'll leave the lights on for you.

If you requested to join over the last couple weeks, there may have been some delay in approving your request. LinkedIn was making some improvements to the group management tools and experienced a few bugs.

The new tools should allow me to better serve group members. I'm also told we're going to see 'home pages for group members' and some other group collaboration features in the coming weeks.

In addition to LinkedIn working on group features, I'm working on ways to make the group more of a learning and collaborative experience for legal professionals who desire to learn more about legal blogging. And that's for those of you new to blogs and legal blogging veterans.

• Personally, I'm available to anyone who may has questions or concerns on blogging as a lawyer or law firm. Working on law blogs and blogging myself for almost 5 years, I may have some answers or even some past blog posts of assistance (over 4,000 blog posts at Real Lawyers Have Blogs).
• We'll have free monthly webinars covering various legal blogging issues. I'll be conducting some webinars on my own and on others we'll have guests. We'll email you with an invite in advance. The first Webinar was last week and was attended by close to 100 folks. A recording and powerpoint of the 'Intro to Law Blogs : What Works and What Doesn't' webinar is available here.

The webinars serve not only as an educational opportunity, but permit some collaboration as attendees have the opportunity to ask questions. This generates discussion with the host and guests leading to further questions from other attendees.

Our Legal Blogging Group is just in its infancy. Expect more in the way of features and collaboration tools.

Want to join? Go to this page and send in your request. Not to worry, you don't nee to have a blog and there is no secret handshake to gain admission.

If you're a lawyer, legal marketing professional, librarian, legal assistant, law firm administrator, law student, or professional serving the legal profession, you'll get in. We have members from around the world and from all walks of life, including, but not limited to, managing partners from the largest law firms, in-house counsel, law professors, legal publishers, and aspiring lawyers in college.

We've been getting questions from folks wondering whether the webinar was limited to just members of the Legal Blogging group. It's not; anyone can register to attend by clicking here.

Among the topics we'll discuss:

• What professional marketing blogs are
• Advantages of law blogs for law firms
• What are the challenges in law firms use of blogs?
• How law firms are using law blogs
• Which law firms are using blogs?
• How much time does blog publishing take?
• Liability and ethical issues
• Law firm blog policies
• Getting law firm management buy in for blogs
• Alternative blog publishing systems
• Resources for blog information
• Your questions

Though those individuals already publishing blogs might find this presentation too basic, people still new to blogs should find the event informative. We hope to see you there.

Don't use this standard text - unless you just got off the phone or exchanged emails with the person with whom you're connecting.

Nothing says 'I didn't take the time to learn more about you,' 'I don't really care to know who you are anyway,' or 'I'm just using this social networking site to grow a network to impress others' as that sort of canned approach.

Law firm management and marketing consultant, Allison Shields, advises using a little social networking etiquette.

If linking to a particular person is important to you in the first place, make it easy for them. If you're not sure they'll know who you are, or that you're a member of the same organization, or that you met them at a networking event, or that you used to work with them, etc. DON'T send out the canned email invitation. Instead, add a line or two that explains who you are and how you know them. Sending the canned invitation is the equivalent of a 'dear occupant' letter - and you're likely to get the same response those letters enjoy.

Don't make your contact work to find out who you are by clicking on your profile, using Google to research you or going to your website - chances are that they won't do it, or they'll be annoyed by having to do it - not exactly the kind of relationship you're trying to establish, is it?

Do you like getting 'spam' emails from those trying to sell you something or offering to help you with your business? We call that junk mail. It's no different when it is the result of being on a list or belonging to a social network. Nobody wants to be 'sold' by someone they don't know. Make yourself known and establish your reputation and connection first. Contribute before you request or pitch. Provide value. Be of service.

When I go to connect with someone at LinkedIn I look at their background, see if we have something in common, and look at where their interests lie. I'll personalize my email to connect sharing something we have in common, congratulating them on a recent success, or offering something of value to help them.

Sure, it takes more time to connect this way. But I only have one opportunity to make a 'first impression' through social networking. One stock email that shows I didn't care enough to learn more about you or that I may be spamming you with service offerings may ruin for ever my opportunity to really 'connect' with that person.

Taking the time to care and customizing emails like this works. I routinely receive nice emails in response, many just thanking me for making a personal introduction, as opposed to kicking out the scripted email they've seen a thousand times before.

St. Paul businessman and author, Harvey Mackay, advises one to 'dig your well before you got thirsty.' Making connections the old fashioned way, by using a little social etiquette, results in meaningful professional network that'll work for you when you need it.

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.

• Social Networking sites
  • What value do they hold for business professionals/attorneys?
  • How can they be used as a business development/marketing tool?
  • Which social networking sites are worthwhile, and which are lame?
  • What are some etiquette tips on professional social networking?
• Twitter
  • What is Twitter (in plain English)?
  • How is Twitter being used by attorneys and other industry leaders today?
  • Who are some of the "big guns" in the legal industry using Twitter, and what are some examples of how they use it?

Turns out it's true. LinkedIn is now powering a social networking function at martindale.com. Smart move on Martindale's part as the LinkedIn technology is far more advanced than anything than LexisNexis could think of or develop on its own. Also may give Martindale's web pages for law firm customers and lawyer customers better search engine performance, something Martindale has been struggling with.

I don't have time to review the arrangement in depth (caveat that I stand to be corrected), but here's a couple screen shot examples with a quick description of what I believe is taking place.

When you go to a law firm listing at Martindale, you'll see the LinkedIn icon to the right of the firm's name.

Click on the icon and you'll be prompted to see employees in the law firm who may be in your LinkedIn network. You'll also be prompted to share with LexisNexis the names and relationships of people within your professional network at LinkedIn, something LinkedIn could not share with LexisNexis contractually or without violating privacy laws without your permission. If LexisNexis collects the names and relationships in the network of its lawyer and law firm customers so as to include them in LexisNexis' data base, that'll be a coup.

More to come once I get a chance to look at more closely and hear some feedback from you guys.

The latest comes from Oliver Picher, president of Visible Influence, speaking about LinkedIn and social networking to the Delaware Valley Law Firm Marketing Group.

Jason Lisi and Julie Meyer highlighted Picher's presentation in an article in The Legal Intelligencer.

• LinkedIn is for business connections much in the same way that Facebook creates personal connections.
• Philadelphia firms, such as Fox Rothschild and Reed Smith, have as many as 45 percent of their attorneys and staff holding active LinkedIn accounts.
• Legal professionals should import business contacts to identify those with LinkedIn accounts and invite them to connect.
• LinkedIn allows you to connect with others with similar interests by connecting with users who are secondarily connected to an original LinkedIn connection.
• LinkedIn's answer feature provides an additional tool for effective networking and marketing of practice areas. LinkedIn answers provide for LinkedIn members to tap -- or add to -- the knowledge of their professional network by answering questions posed by others or recommending another member as a source of information: a virtual referral.

The following point by Picher should also not be lost on Martindale-Hubbell.

Much like a free publication or commercial television, social media sites such as LinkedIn generate their own revenue from the number of users they attract as potential viewers for the advertisers who pay to market on the site. To that end, it is in the interest of the social media purveyors to provide increasingly effective tools to both retain current users and regularly attract additional new ones.

LinkedIn is adding feature after feature so as to facilitate networking between business professionals, hundreds of thousands of lawyers included. And while Martindale-Hubbell is charging thousands of dollars for directory listings and losing law firm customers as a result, LinkedIn has a growing revenue base through ads and premium listings for what is basically a free service.

LinkedIn may now be Martindale's most serious competition. Something none of us could have seen coming a year or two ago

But look at the growth in traffic (unique visitors per month) to LinkedIn, Martindale.com, Martindale's consumer-small business lawyer directory, lawyers.com, and FindLaw.com (total traffic, not just lawyers.findlaw.com directory) over the last year. LinkedIn is blowing them all away.

Think LinkedIn is not a lawyer directory? Think again.

Legal marketing pro, Steve Matthews, reports 98,000 more lawyers have added profiles to LinkedIn in the last two months. Brings the number of lawyer profiles at LinkedIn to, as Steve describes it, 'an incredible 216,000.' Up from the 118,000 I reported in April.

Added to this is the fact that all major law firms have detailed law firm profiles at LinkedIn.

I'm a business person and the first place I go to find information on a lawyer is LinkedIn. Before the lawyer's website. And before a lawyer directory such as martindale.com. The profiles are complete, easy to scan, and let me know if the lawyer is on the ball enough to have a LinkedIn profile.

Looks like I am not alone. As of this May, LinkedIn site traffic was at 5.6 million visitors per month, and was growing at an annual growth rate of 351%. LinkedIn has more than 20 million registered users, spanning 150 industries.

With the features LinkedIn keeps adding and the growth in prospective law firm clients using LinkedIn, I don't know how traditional lawyer directories can keep up.

Follow on posts:

• Bastrop, Texas Attorney, Joe Grady: Martindale-Hubbell is the definitive lawyer directory. True or false. Well, false. The correct answer is LinkedIn.

• What are professional marketing blogs?
• Advantages of blogs for law firms
• Challenges of blogs
• Alternatives for setting up and running a blog
• How much time it takes
• Legal liability and ethics issues
• Getting firm management buy in for blogs
• Which law firms are using marketing blogs
• Your questions

Not to worry if you can't make it. We'll record the webinar and make it freely available with accompanying screenshots and online demos. You may also contact me and I can arrange another webinar at a time convenient for you.

I realize some of you may already be publishing your own blog, in which case the webinar may be too basic. But those still new to blogs should find the program helpful.

If you want to join the Legal Blogging Group at LinkedIn, click here. I'll receive and approve your request.

I explained LinkedIn is displaying blog posts from influential blogs in the customized news section on the home page of each LinkedIn user. The blog posts are coming via RSS/synidication and being displayed right along with news from the major news services and publications.

Better yet, the blog content displayed is tailored for the LinkedIn user. If you're publishing a law blog on a particular niche, the content is displayed for people in the relevant industry or who have expressed an interest in that niche based on the person's use of LinkedIn.

I'm also finding significant traffic coming to my blog from LinkedIn users. Last week, three of my blog posts were being run on LinkedIn and displayed for people in the legal, marketing, and PR/communications fields.

Note that I did not see my blog posts displayed at LinkedIn. I saw the referral traffic in my blog stats. I then saw my profile being viewed by people in the above fields. I have to believe it was folks in the legal and marketing fields who saw my blog posts displayed in their custom news.

Here's a screen shot of the news section that's displayed on the home page of each LinkedIn user. My company is LexBlog, thus the display of 'LexBlog. Inc. News.' Your news will be displayed under the name of your firm.

You'll see that there's a field in which you can submit a news story. I have not submitted any of my blog posts, they're being displayed at LinkedIn on their own.

If you're going to be submitting a blog post, make sure it's a good one. Abusing the process may actually hamper getting your blog posts syndicated to LinkedIn.

As more and more major sites display blog posts by syndication it's becoming more and more important for law firms to use blog software for the syndication of their content.

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.

...[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. ;)

• Be the source of information on all things related to LinkedIn, whether it be new features or tips-and-tricks to get the most out of LinkedIn
• Be a point-of-contact with our users when they had questions related to [the] product or otherwise
• Proactively initiate the conversation on professional networking with the millions of LinkedIn users (currently 21 million and counting...)
• Maintain that conversation via active participation through comments on both our blog as well as other blogs out there
• Educate users on how to best use LinkedIn (Best Practices, Tips-and-Tricks, How other professionals are using LinkedIn, etc...)
• Take user feedback to our internal teams (product, engineering, design, etc...)

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

• Kevin Livingston & Dennis Pfaff, the editorial team behind Thelen's Climate Law Update [4.17.08]
• Anita Campbell, editor-in-chief of Small Business Trends [4.15.08]
• Steve Matthews of Stem Legal, discussing the state of the Canadian legal blogosphere [4.11.08]
• John Sirman, manager of TexasBar.com and technology editor for the Texas Bar Journal [4.10.08]
• Robert Scoble, video blogger for Fast Company.TV and author of the technology blog Scobleizer [4.8.08]

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.

LinkedIn company profiles for each of the 20 largest law firms in the country include the following info:

• Firm synopsis
• Career path of lawyers before joining the firm
• Career path of lawyers before joining the firm
• Who law firm employees are most connected to
• New hires
• Recent Promotions and position changes
• Popular firm member profiles
• BusinessWeek profile and related news
• Top locations of firm
• Top schools lawyers graduated from
• Median age
• Gender breakdown

Here's a list of the LinkedIn law firm profiles for AmLaw's top 20 largest firms with the number of their LinkedIn members in just my LinkedIn network. The total number of LinkedIn members for each firm I am sure is much higher. Click on the firm's name to see their LinkedIn profile.

• Skadden Arps: 478 LinkedIn members in my LinkedIn network
• Latham & Watkins: 500+ LinkedIn members
• Baker & McKenzie: 500+ LinkedIn members
• Jones Day: 500+ LinkedIn members
• Sidley Austin: 330 LinkedIn membersk
• White & Case: 337 LinkedIn members
• Kirkland & Ellis: 500+ LinkedIn members
• Mayer Brown: 215 LinkedIn members
• Weil, Gotshal & Manges: 316 LinkedIn members
• Greenberg Traurig: 470 LinkedIn members
• DLA Piper: 500+ LinkedIn members
• Morgan, Lewis & Bockius: 429 LinkedIn members
• Sullivan & Cromwell: 239 LinkedIn members
• Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr: 203 LinkedIn members
• O'Melveny & Meyers: 302 LinkedIn members
• McDermott Will & Emery: 307 LinkedIn members
• Shearman & Sterling: 257 LinkedIn members
• Paul Hastings: 334 LinkedIn members
• Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton: 183 LinkedIn members
• Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher: 271 LinkedIn members

How are the profiles being constructed? Via social networking.

Lawyers in the firms are creating individual lawyer profiles at LinkedIn. There are 118,000 LinkedIn profiles listing their profession as a the practice of law.

Those profiles are constantly being updated. Not only by the lawyers themselves, but more importantly by LinkedIn's social networking features.

Don't look now, but LinkedIn may over the next couple years become a more effective way to get a 360 degree view of a law firm than a law firm's own website and any of the major lawyer directories.

I cannot vouch for 100% accuracy, but in bouncing around the profiles displayed in the search results I didn't find any non-lawyers, ie, those employed in companies selling services or products to the legal profession. I found only practicing lawyers.

If there's 118,000 lawyer profiles at LinkedIn, or anything close to that number, that's extraordinary. LinkedIn is less than 5 years old. And it's only been the last year that I have seen lawyers adding profiles with any frequency.

In addition, unlike directories such as Martindale-Hubbell, Avvo, and Super Lawyers which may unilaterally include lawyers (in some cases with an abbreviated bio), lawyers had to create their own profile at LinkedIn. The lawyers chose to be listed in LinkedIn.

I'll be the first to concede that lawyers haven't totally figured out how to leverage LinkedIn as a networking and marketing tool. LinkedIn will also need to continue to ad features for effective networking.

However, 118,000 lawyers in LinkedIn certainly belies recent discussion here and here that lawyers are not using social networking sites.

Folks from all over the world. Lawyers in private practice and in-house counsel as well as IT, knowledge management, marketing, and management professionals in law firms. Plus quite a few folks working in companies tangental to the law. Attracting active bloggers as well people who appear to have an interest in blogging.

My goal is to create a place where those in the legal industry can learn about blogging in a collaborative fashion as well as be able to connect with each other. I also anticipate some effective networking may come from it as well.

I am working to find out from the folks at LinkedIn how to better leverage the group for collaborative efforts. If nothing else, I've started a Google Group on Legal Blogging which we could jump start with a listserv discussion.

Click here to join the group. I'll receive and approve your request.

Please continue to spread the word on your blog, in listservs, and the like.

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.

Read today on a listserv that Martindale-Hubbell, in trying to keep a 100-lawyer client in their directory, told the law firm that Martindale would be the new Facebook or LinkedIn for lawyers in due time.

Martindale is saying they will be the next LinkedIn? If that's true, it seems to be totally irresponsible statement.

LinkedIn:

• As of March 2008, LinkedIn had more than 20 million registered users, spanning 150 industries.
• As of December 2007, its site traffic was 3.2 million visitors per month, growing at an annual growth rate of about 485%.
• Founded by co-founder of Socialnet.com & leading exec at PayPal and funded by Greylock, Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and the European Founders Fund, all tier one VC's funding Silicon Valley companies.
• Reached profitability two years ago.

Martindale:

• No management team that I know of that has experience with building social networking sites.
• Unique visitors to Martindale.com down 13.4% over last year per Compete.com.
• Struggling with the launch of a corporate blog, something much simpler than software infrastructure and management team needed for successful social networking site.

As far as becoming the next Facebook? Seems rather silly. Makes as much sense as Martindale saying we'll become the next place where all young lawyers will hang out to socialize online. Does anyone really believe that will happen?

Martindale has been a great company as a lawyer directory. But to try and create something that's vogue today by boasting that we're a new company that's introducing Web 2.0 solutions is irresponsible and is only going to damage to reputation of the company.