Doug Cornelius .com

I recently had an article on Faceblocking published in the March 2009 issue of Law Practice Magazine: Online Social Networking: Is It a Productivity Bust or Boon for Law Firms?

Steve Matthews helped me conduct an informal poll to see if  law firms were still blocking access to social networking sites. Our theory was proven in the results. (You can download the raw survey data (.xls) if you want a look at the underlying data.) Of those responding to the survey, 45% said their firms blocked access to social networking sites. The three most blocked sites: Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. Those are also 3 of the top 10 most visited sites on the web. We also published some of comments from the survey respondents: Speaking Out on Social Networking.

The survey is very unscientific. Steve and I thought that it would be useful to get some data about what law firms are doing about access to social networking sites. I was surprised that 45% of firms blocked access to some social networking sites. Perhaps those working at firms subject to blocking were more likely to respond to the survey. I was also surprised that the 45% blocking percentage was fairly consistent across firm size. So small law firms were just as likely to block access as big firms.

Although I am an advocate of open access, I do so with the caveat that you need to let the people in your organization know what is proper use and to monitor their compliance. I fear that many firms use blockage as their policy. That may have worked 10 years ago, but not today. You can just as easily access these sites from iPhone or blackberry as you can from a firm computer. Blocking does not stop the bad behavior that you are trying to prevent.

You should set sensible policies and set reasonable expectations for your employees. Social networking sites at their core are communications platform. You should be able to adapt your policies on email, confidentiality, marketing and similar policies to easily include social networking sites. If not, those other policies probably need updating anyhow.

See:

• Online Social Networking: Is It a Productivity Bust or Boon for Law Firms? – Article in Law Practice magazine
• Raw Survey Data (.xls) cited in the article
• Speaking Out on Social Networking – selected written comments from survey
• Employers taking chances when blocking Facebook too, says Deacon
• Social Network Site Survey 2008 of summer associates at a big law firm
• Social Network Site Survey 2007 of summer associates at a big law firm
• Twitter in the Workplace by Mike Gotta of Collaborative Thinking
• Blogging / Social Internet Policy for a Law Firm a post from KM Space

Back in June of 2007, I came across a story about Facebook at Law Firms. A Magic Circle firm had banned Facebook, then abruptly lifted the ban. The decision was made because Facebook has “business benefits as well as social uses.”

In the 18 months since then, web 2.0 and the social internet have grown immensely. Twitter has come roaring onto the scenes. There are three attempts at creating social networking sites for lawyers: Legal OnRamp, Martindale Connected and the ABA’s Legally Minded. The number of law firm blogs has nearly doubled in those 18 months.

Are any law firms still banning access to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, blogs, YouTube or other web 2.0 sites? Let me know. You can leave an anonymous comment or drop me an email at kmspace@dougcornelius . com.

If you have been reading this blog, hopefully you have come to the conclusion that web 2.0 tools are great for lawyers, create lots of professional development and create business opportunities. Maybe there are some firms out that there that have not seen the light. Let me know.

I had the pleasure of hosting a lunch meeting for the International Legal Technology Association to talk about Social Networking for Lawyers and Legal IT.

I was joined by Jenn Steele and Bob Ambrogi in talking about Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging, Twitter, Legal OnRamp and Martindale Connected. We looked at the ways we each use these tools and how the audience used the tools. We also talked a bit about policy and rules for using these sites.

Here is the slide deck we used. You can also get the slides with our notes on JD Supra: Social Networking for Lawyers and Legal IT.

(We deleted the slides on LegalOnRamp and Martindale Connected because we “borrowed” them from another presentation.)

Jenn Steele is the Director of Information Technology at Morrison Mahoney LLP.  She holds an MBA from the Simmons School of Management and a B.S. in Biology from MIT, with a minor in Expository Writing.  Prior to Morrison Mahoney, she was the Director of Information Technology at Donovan Hatem LLP from 2002-2007, and the Senior Applications Specialist at Burns & Levinson LLP from 2000-2002.  She has also held positions in the health and human services industry.  She is the author of Leading Geeks, a blog focusing on best practices for leading technologists (www.leadinggeeks.blogspot.com).

Robert Ambrogi is an internationally known legal journalist and a leading authority on law and the Web.  He represents clients at the intersection of law, media and technology and is also established professional in alternative dispute resolution.  Robert is a Massachusetts lawyer, writer and media consultant and is author of the book, The Essential Guide to the Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web.  He also writes the blog Media Law, co-writes Legal Blog Watch and cohosts the legal affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer.

Some law firms are trying to figure out what to do with Facebook. Some are blocking it, some are tolerating it and some are embracing it. Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt + Mosle LLP is embracing it. They have launched a Facebook page to serve as a central component in its law school recruiting efforts: http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/New-York-NY/Curtis-Mallet-Prevost-Colt-Mosle-LLP-Careers/65459295160

“We are pleased to be capitalizing on the popularity of the most widely used social networking site,” said Nancy Delaney, Partner and member of Curtis’ Personnel Committee. “As a Firm, we recognized the power of this format of communication and the wide use being made of it by future lawyers.” The Curtis Facebook recruiting page offers a wide range of information about the Firm and its summer associate program. Visitors to the page can read what former summer associates say about their experiences at the Firm. Potential recruits can easily find information about work assignments, Firm news, Firm awards and rankings, and special events, as well as a schedule of the Firm’s on-campus interviews.

Based on my survey of summer associates at The Firm most of them check Facebook every day: Social Network Site Survey. If you are going to market your firm to this group, you should spend you time and energy on where they are. It seems pretty clear that Facebook is full of law students and prospective new associates. Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt + Mosle LLP has figured this out.

Maybe you should spend some time exploring this tool for use by your firm. Is your firm using Facebook for recruiting?

Last summer, I surveyed The Firm’s summer associates to see how they use some of the popular social networking sites: A Survey on the Use of Social Networks and Updated Social Network Site Survey. I ran the same survey this summer to see what changes have happened over the past year.

• 90% of the summer associates have a Facebook account. That is an increase over the 80% result from last year.
• 66% of those with Facebook accounts check it at least once a day. This is the same percentage as last year.
• Only 25% of those with Facebook accounts would use it for business purposes. This a big drop from last year, when 75% said they would use Facebook for business purposes.
• Only 13% had LinkedIn accounts and only 13% have a MySpace account. These are similar numbers to last year.

My take away is that the wave of Facebook users is continuing to roll into law firms and they use it frequently.  If your firm choses to block Facebook, you are cutting your junior lawyers off from their network of contacts.

These summer associates do yet seem to grasp the business purposes for Facebook, but may quickly realize that their Facebook “friends” will quickly become their colleagues, clients and potential clients.

You can download the raw survey data: SocialNetworkSurvey2008[.xls]

What is your take on Facebook for law firms?  Please leave a comment.

The Bar Talk piece in the May 2008 edition of The American Lawyer is focused on Legal OnRamp. To toot my own horn, Brian Baxter, the author of the piece threw in a few quotes from me:

“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,” says Douglas Cornelius, a senior real estate associate with Goodwin Procter in Boston. Cornelius says he 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. Cornelius’s one gripe with the site so far is that it has too many Silicon Valley types.

The second half of my gripe (which did not make it into the story) was that there were few real estate and real estate investment management in-house contacts in Legal OnRamp. After all that is my client base.

As I have written about Metcalfe’s Law before, the power of a social network tool or communications tool is increased as more people use the tool. If my client base and peers are not using the tool, it is a less effective tool.

But wearing my knowledge management/enterprise 2.0 hat, Legal OnRamp is a tremendous tool. Even if your clients are not the “Silicon Valley types.”

Since the time of my interview by Brian Baxter, I have seen more and more real estate counsel come into Legal OnRamp. It is becoming more and more useful to me. I would bet that it will become more and more useful to my clients and potential clients.

One of the challenges of knowledge management is comparing the ability to find information inside the firm, against the ability to find information outside the firm.

Google, in its quest to organize all of our knowledge, has set the bar very high for us trying to organize all of our knowledge inside the firm.

One of the most common requests I get is: “Make it a Google-like search.” Obviously the information inside the firm is not organized in the highly linked and interconnected way of webpages that makes Google so successful.

But one of the keys in producing content and publishing content is how it comes back in a search for information. It is key in knowledge management to sit down like a regular person at the firm and try to the find the content you just produced. People are not willing to sit down and create a complex query or fill in a lot of fields to get an answer. They want to fill a few words into a simple search box and get results.

One of the new features of SharePoint is the ability of individual list items to be returned in search results. The SharePoint list function allows you to organize information in a structured way. For example, collecting a list of precedent acquisition agreements and noting specific characteristics. You can go into the list and filter for a particular set of results. Or, if the list is structured properly, you can just use the simple SharePoint search to return the individual items on the list.

There are questions that cannot be answered by Google and there are answers that cannot be answered by your intra-firm search. But we need to make sure that more and more questions can be answered.

Photo by snakeplisken.

Andrew K. Burger has a story in CRM Buyer: CRM in Law Firms: The Jury’s Still Out. Carolyn Elefant at Legal Blog Watch pointed out this story in her post: Law Firms Still Not Relating to Client Relations Management Software.

The Firm uses Interaction as its CRM. I find Interaction to be much better in theory than practice. I think everyone agrees at a firm level that the sharing of contact information and relationships across the firm is a terrific goal and adds tremendous value to the firm. In my experience, attorneys are willing to share contact and relationship information with members of the firm. Yes, they are cautious how it is used and want some some credit for the relationship. But that position is true for all knowledge sharing.

As Carolyn points out:

[T]he larger barrier to integration of CRM is institutional: Most lawyers simply aren’t willing to take the time (or sacrifice the billable hours) to input critical data. Then, when CRM fails due to lack of lawyer commitment, lawyers blame the software and subsequently grow even more resistant to CRM efforts.

Knowledge sharing is a marketplace. If I am going to take time to contribute something, I expect to get something back in return. Increasing the knowledge resources of the firm is not enough. I previously wrote about this in Personal Knowledge Management and the Knowledge Market. A lawyer is more likely to use a new tool if it provides more functionality to them then an existing tool. Why should I enter information into a clunky public space instead of a persona space where I can organize the information in the way that makes sense to me.

I want the CRM system to make it easier for me to do my job. Contributing contact and relationship information into a public repository creates little or no marginal value to me. All of that information is already sitting in my email contacts, in my head and other local places. The current CRM system does very little to help me manage that information. I would spend much more time using Interaction if it provided much more functionality to me as an individual. All of its extra function is derived from collecting information from others, not in providing function to the individual.

Unfortunately, CRM systems only provide a small margin of additional benefit to the individual lawyer. That margin is too small to motivate lawyers to change behaviors or to learn the new tool.

This scenario is true of lots of first generation knowledge management tools. They put the emphasis on the benefit of sharing knowledge across the firm. They did not focus on making it easier for the individual to manage their own knowledge or the knowledge of a small group.

Perhaps there is some future hope for Interaction and CRM for law firms. The article in CRM Buyer has this quote:

“The foundation for incorporating Web 2.0 applications, such as wikis, blogs and other social networking tools, into InterAction are likewise already in place, and LexisNexis is moving in that direction, according to [Tracey Blackburn, LexisNexis product marketing manager].”

For now, InterAction does not even have a field for linking to a person’s LinkedIn profile. That is a place where people are updating information about themselves and who they know. If InterAction could combine external information about people, with our internal information and give me a better way to organize and manage my contacts, that would make it useful for me.

One of the obstacles to implementing Enterprise RSS is getting the firm to agree that enterprise RSS is a good investment.

RSS is still not a well known technology. People are more likely to keep going back the webpage instead of subscribing to the RSS feed. Relying on people to keep coming back to the blog or wiki to find changes will make the tools less effective and less likely to spread within the firm.

RSS producing tools are less effective without Enterprise RSS. If you have to rely on the people to sign up for RSS feeds themselves, they are less likely to do so.

Of course if you don’t have many RSS producing tools inside the firm, then enterprise RSS would not seem to be a good investment for the firm.

So which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Which comes first, the enterprise blog or the enterprise RSS?

The other challenge to enterprise RSS is the broad group of skills needed to chose a vendor and implement. You need desktop applications to test the integration with the email client or the standalone RSS feedreader. You need the network guys to integrate the enterprise RSS server. You need the web developers to integrate enterprise RSS with the RSS producing tools. You need the telecommunications people to integrate the RSS feedreaders on mobile devices. You need the librarian and researchers to help find, organize and disseminate external RSS feeds. You need people using internal RSS producing tools. Fortunately, the enterprise RSS platforms are relatively inexpensive. It is the allocation of firm resources that is a bigger investment.

Personally, I think enterprise RSS is a great investment.

The Enterprise RSS Day of Action is drawing to a close here in Boston.

I watched/listened to a webinar by Patti Anklam as part of the Community 2.0 Conference. Patti is the author of Net Work: A Practical Guide to Creating and Sustaining Networks at Work and in the World.

Patti started by thinking about whether there are sets of network properties. If so can we apply a taxonomy to them. All networks share certain properties. You can draw them and you can count the connections and map the connections. Patti pointed out that networks are not Facebook or LinkedIn. We have always had networks. Facebook and LinkedIn start exposing the network in a very visible way.

Every network has a purpose. Patti proposed five major group of purposes:

• mission – aid and support
• business – create economic gain
• idea – generate and collaborate in the developing ideas
• learning – communities of practice
• personal – nurture emotional relationships

Patti demonstrated a few different network structures. The visual representation of a social network can often show how the communication and therefore the decision-making in the enterprise do not follow the hierarchical organizational chart. It can also show that the departure or retirement of person who may not be a key person in the organizational chart, but is a central person in the network.

For leaders, your management can be re-thought if you think about the network you are leading. For the most, part law firms are networks.

• Network intentionally – create more connections, fill in gaps in the network, make it more collaborative and cooperative
• Practice network stewardship – you need to pay attention to change triggers, watch the network evolve
• Embrace and leverage technology – get the technology aligned with the network, enterprise 2.0 is aligned with a mesh network structure
• Create a capacity for net work – encourage outreach, encourage on-boarding and incorporation into the existing network within the firm
• Learn to use the network lens – map the idea network and see if there are artificial boundaries

Going from networking to net work, its not how many networks you participate in, its how many people you “connect” with. Think about quality and contribution. Don’t think about quantity.

In the spirit of the social network analysis I created a visualization of my Facebook friends and their relationships to each other. On the right side in green are my Facebook friends from The Firm. At the bottom in the blue and purple are my friends in the legal knowledge management and legal technology area. (Most of the Canadians got the purple label. I am not sure how it figured that out). At the left in the pink are my Facebook friends in the knowledge management area, but not in the legal industry.
The chart was generated by the TouchGraph Photos application in Facebook.