The trouble with blogs and Web 2.0?
The never ending flow of Chicken Little articles telling us that the sky is falling with the advent of blogs and innovative technology continues this week with New Jersey Law Journal’s article, ‘Legal Technology – The Trouble With Blogs and Web 2.0.’
The article focused on employers dealing with employee use of the net. But I’m sure, like most of these articles, provided blog naysayers and the easily scared in large law firms (there’s tons of them) with necessary ammunition to fend off the innovative folks in their firm.
The well intentioned article starts off warning employers that millions of employees have joined the world of Web 2.0, which includes social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, blogs, wikis, podcasts, video sharing sites and RSS feeds. Okay, that’s reality, and like the real world with phones, letters, fax machines, cocktail parties, and water cooler gossip, people can create problems.
But look at some of the key points from the article.
- You should have policies and procedures prohibiting Internet disclosures of confidential information and prohibiting employees from expressing damaging opinions or information about their employer, superiors or co-workers.
- When blogging, employees shouldn’t be violating securities laws, disclosing the company’s intellectual property, disclosing any other employee’s personal information, disclosing confidential information, discussing work-related legal procedures and controversies, using other company’s copyrighted materials, or making false statements.
Duh.
The more I read articles like this, the more it seems that existing firm policies and common sense will govern 99% of the issues raised with blogs. Blogs are a medium of communication, just a new one.
Do we really need to scare those who don’t understand blogs and social networking that their use is fraught with peril? Why do we want to chill innovation in law firms? Why aren’t we promoting more transparent communication from lawyers?
What do you guys think?