June 25, 2009 by Kevin O'Keefe

Twitter client development success stories - lawyers and legal professionals chime in

In advance of today's talk on Twitter at LegalTech West Coast, I sent out a request on Twitter and also asked some LexBlog clients who use Twitter to share any client development and/or networking success stories.

The response has been pretty overwhelming — attorneys and legal professionals from firms large and small have shared their positive stories of what an active Twitter presence has done for them.

Here are some of their stories and anecdotes:

See more stories and details after the jump:

Adrianos Facchetti:

1.  Got a speaking gig at the Los Angeles County Bar Association 6/25:  "Social Media For Lawyers:  A Roadmap to Success."

2.  Got another potential speaking gig which is the planning stages and will be held in San Diego in October (can't share details on it yet).

3.  Met an older attorney who is now my mentor and put me in contact with a writer at the ABA Journal (I actually spoke to the reporter today).

4.  Same attorney above and I will probably be writing a piece in the Los Angeles Daily Journal later this summer.

5. Met a consultant who wants to speak with me regarding teaching young lawyers (like myself) how to get started with a practice when they get out of law school.

Chris Cheatham:

I have been on Twitter a fairly short time but I am completely convinced it is an extremely powerful networking tool.
 
I write about green building legal issues.  My prospective clients are in the green building industry.  Through twitter, I have met the following:

1.  Elaine Lipman Barnes (@elbarneshouse).  Elaine is one of the original green builders and now manages a $1 billion green schools fund in Ohio for the State.  One Billion.  I made direct contact and have since had conversations with someone who manages a one billion dollar green building fund.  I even did an interview blog post on Elaine:  http://www.greenbuildinglawupdate.com/tags/elaine-lipman-barnes/
 
2.  Ron Sims. Ron Sims (@ronsims) was the King County Executive. As you all so nicely mentioned on your blog, Ron tweeted that he liked my blog and had shared it with all of his King County attorney's and staff. By the way, Ron is now serving in some executive role in the Obama White House. Not a bad connection to make through Twitter.
 
3. This one might be my favorite. When I first started my blog, I sat down with my fiancee, who knew more about green building than I and asked her who I would want to talk to if I could talk to anyone in the industry.  She mentioned Rob Watson, the Father of LEED. Rob helped establish the United States Green Building Council, he is on the Council's executive committee and Rob is also in China as some sort of green building ambassador. Anyways, I quoted him in one of my blog posts from a previous interview he had done.  I then realized he was on the twitter as @kilrwatt.  So I asked him to take a look at the post. He had some criticisms, which resulted in an email exchange to clarify some points.  All of a sudden, through Twitter, I was talking to the Father of LEED about one of my blog posts. Here is the string of posts I did from my interview with Rob.

Jayne Juvan:

I started using Twitter only weeks ago. The first week following my launch, a gentleman spoke at our firm about social networking and highlighted both my blog and the fact that I'm on twitter to all attorneys in our firm. Since then, I've been the twitter "go to" person, answering questions for many of my colleagues, even including our firm's executive chairman. Additionally, even more so than my blog, I've used twitter to demonstrate that I'm knowledgeable about business news and the economic crisis, as well as developments in corporate law. I work with private equity funds in health care, but also am very interested in financial regulation. I've since received several calls from acquaintances wishing to discuss the state of the economy. I've been stopped at the elevator and on the side walk to talk about my tweets. And today, I landed a new client because of my blog and my twitter page!  I was linked up with an old high school friend who was on my speech and debate team, we found that we have a lot in common, and we've decided that we may collaborate in the future. Twitter and blogging are both very powerful, and I couldn't imagine my practice without them and without LexBlog!
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October 2, 2007 by Kevin O'Keefe

Community bloggers offer lawyers networking opportunities

Just about every newspaper has incorporated bloggers into their online edition. Many are amateur journalists, as opposed reporters employed by the paper, who are blogging on matters of local interest. The bloggers are also often featured in the print edition of such papers

For example, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel urged its readers yesterday to check out their new community bloggers blogging on education issues. "The bloggers include teachers, students and parents, writing about any aspect of education that interests them."

These blogs are fertile ground for lawyer networking. They're a wonderful way for you to meet people in your community and for other people in your community to get to know you. They'll also find out you're a lawyer and the area in which you practice. When they or friend have a legal need, you may get a call.

How?

  • Go to your newspaper's online edition and look for all the blogs. Do not limit your selection to blogs that look like they may be discussing issues relevant to your practice. Lawyers get divorce work from participation in civic boards where at the meetings the subject of divorce is never discussed.
  • Set up an RSS feed to your newsreader for each of the blogs
  • Put the RSS feeds in one folder in your newsreader marked [name of paper] blogs.
  • Post comments on the blogs when you have an interest in the subject. Your comment will likely have nothing to do with your legal work. That's fine.
  • Put your name, the url address for your blog, and your email address in the fields available accompanying your comment.
  • Do not put your url, title, etc in the comment body itself. It will look like you are marketing your services and you will be disliked.
  • Subscribe to additional comments by RSS or email, if the blog offers it, so you're kept aware of continuing discussion. Otherwise, check back in a day or two.
  • The publishers of those blogs and their readers (there's often a ton of them) will see your comment and click on your name taking them to your blog. Curiosity will get them too click around your blog, in effect getting to know you and what you do.
  • Make valuable comments and people will appreciate your contributions and the time you are giving. You may well be blogged about on one of these blogs or other readers' own blogs.
  • Make sure you set up a Google Blog Search and Technorati search and accompanying RSS feed to your newsreader for your name, law firm name, and blog url. That way you'll know if others blog or write about you. Gives you the opportunity to comment at those blogs.
  • You'll receive opportunities to meet others giving of themselves to your community. These folks are often the influencers in your community - the type who influence people's opinions about good lawyers.

Heck, it's a lot of fun and does not take near the time of networking in the offline world. What are you waiting for?

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