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

LinkedIn launched the LinkedIn Events module: Announcing LinkedIn Events. You get event recommendations, you can indicate if you are going and you can see who else is going. Once you mark an event, it shows up on your LinkedIn profile.

This is a great feature, but not a new idea. I have been a fan of Upcoming for while: [Doug on Upcoming]. The site is classic example of Metcalfe’s law. It gets more useful as more people use it.

LinkedIn provides a bigger user base of connections to tie into. I have 323 “connections” on LinkedIn, but only 23 “friends” in Upcoming.

Upcoming is a more open platform. In particular, Upcoming supplies lots of RSS feeds giving you notifications of new events that your “friends” are attending and new events added to groups that you join. It also ties into Facebook and other aggregators like FriendFeed.

With all these new applications, LinkedIn is starting to move closer to the Facebook model of aggregating information. It will interesting to see how the events and other application features evolve.

One of my earlier concerns about LinkedIn was that it was very static and was little more than an online rolodex. They just launched a new applications feature that could dramatically changed LinkedIn.

These applications allow you to pull content from other sources into your LinkedIn profile, making it much more dynamic. Just a few minutes ago I added the Blog Link Application. Now it is pulling in blog posts from the three listed on my profile: this blog, Real Estate Space and DougCornelius.com.

One of the reasons I liked Facebook was its ability to aggregate content about you from multiple sources. Now LinkedIn can do the same thing.

Greg Lambert over at the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog did a study of large law firm usage using LinkedIn Groups.

He ranked the firms by number of members in the group. Skadden, Arps came in first place with 839 members in the Skadden Alumni LinkedIn group. Goodwin Procter came in 16th place for the Goodwin Procter LinkedIn group with 40 members.

What really surprised Greg was that the majority of members were attorneys. He expected more adminstrative profiles. “[i]t is apparent that they are doing a lot of things outside the confines of the Marketing Departments.”

You can see that my LinkedIn Profile has changed recently: Doug Cornelius in LinkedIn.

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.

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.

In my previous post [LinkedIn is Now For Lawyers] I was impressed with integration of Martindale-Hubbell with LinkedIn.

Steve Matthews of Stem Legal  pointed out that what I thought was a special integration is actually just using LinkedIn’s API. Steve doles out the details in a comment to Kevin O’Keefe’s post [If you can't beat 'em, join them] and points to this post on the LinkedIn blog: Get Your Inside Connections with BusinessWeek & SimplyHired

Sure enough, I went over to SimplyHired and it has the same functionality as Martindale. In a job search site, the LinkedIn functionality is even more powerful than Martindale. I still give Martindale credit for moving in a better direction. But they lose points for originality.

The venerable Martindale-Hubbell directory of lawyers and law firms has teamed up with LinkedIn to provide a social networking function to the listings in LinkedIn.

When I go to the listing for Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in Martindale-Hubbell, I see the blue LinkedIn icon next to the name of the firm. If you click on the icon, it asks you to logon to LinkedIn to see who you know at the firm. After logging on I get a pop up that shows my two first level LinkedIn connections (Mary Abraham and Patrick DiDomenico) and a total of 131 connections through the second and third level.

Assuming clients are still using Martindale-Hubbell to find law firms and lawyers, this make the directory much more powerful. (Of course that is assuming that clients still use Martindale-Hubbell.) The interface is a bit kludgy, but the information is great. The LinkedIn connection also appears when you look at the listing for some individual lawyers.

As Kevin O’Keefe says, If you can’t beat’em, join them.

If you have not joined LinkedIn or have not figured out what it is all about, there is a new video out from the CommonCraft gang on what LinkedIn is all about:

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In yesterday’s post, LinkedIn is Worth $1 Billion, I had a clear mathematical error in computing Bain Capital’s interest in LinkedIn.

In the meanwhile, I stumbled across 100+ Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn and Stephen Smith‘s LinkedIn and Productivity.

Perhaps those sites will give you more value than my math.

The New York Times ran an article on LinkedIn in Yesterday’s paper: At Social Site, Only the Businesslike Need Apply. (by Brad Stone)

Most interesting was the value assigned to the company as part of a new capital investment. Bain Capital invested $53 million. Apparently this was approximately 18.9% 5.3% of the company, because they used a $1 billion valuation for the company. LinkedIn also claims that it is already profitable.

Update:Fixed my math calculating the percentage.