Doug Cornelius .com

Lately I have been experimenting with Four Square, a location-based social networking platform. For me, adding the geographic component of social networking adds another serendipity factor to the web 2.0 movement.

Serendipity of location.

“What’s Happening” + “Where are you”

It allows you to explore tools to create meeting chances. We have already seen Twitter add a location feature to its platform. [Location, Location, Location.]

Four Square does a similar thing, but adds a fun factor to disclosing your location. You get badges for going to many places. You also get the title of “Mayor” at a location if you have visited that place more than any other Four Square participant.

I have to admit that Four Square brings out my competitive streak. I have been stacking up mayor titles by mixing up my morning coffee stops. Four Square is still new so it does not take much to become mayor at many locations.

I tried out BrightKite in the past, but found its user interface to be a bit clunky. I also found its database of locations to be inaccurate, with no way to add it or change it. It’s been a while since I’ve use BrightKite so it may have improved since then.

I found Four Square to be much simpler and easy to use. It has a nice link to Twitter. Even better, it is easy to turn the Twitter notification off or on each time you check in at a location.

Sign up for Four Square and give it a try. This is me: http://foursquare.com/user/dougcornelius

Scoble’s take on Four Square:

• Foursquare: will it be bigger than Twitter?
• The biggest things last week: Foursquare and Salesforce

Omar Ha-Redeye writes on slaw.ca about two new social networks for lawyers: Lawyrs Looking for Alternative Social Networks and Social Network on Jurafide for American Clients.

Jurafide.com is a networking and marketing site that facilitates communication between U.S. clients and non-U.S. lawyers.

Lawyrs.net looks like a social networking platform for lawyers with some group discussions and legal news. 

Omar signed up on Lawyrs but finds that it is missing the ability to pull in your contacts and see who you know is in the site. A fatal flaw.

I did not bother signing up for either one. Legal OnRamp seems to be the dominant site in the world of social networking in the legal field. I previously wrote about my bad experiences with LawLink and ABA’s LegallyMinded. I still hold out some hope for Martindale Hubbell Connected. So, I am skeptical that either of these two companies with no apparent connection to the US legal market can provide an interesting online networking platform.

Kevin O’Keefe, of Real Lawyers Have Blogs, put together his thoughts on what are the best social internet places for a lawyer or law firm to spend their resources: Lawyers and Social Media – It the Big Three. Kevin picks Blogs, Twitter and LinkedIn.

As usual, I agree with Kevin.

Every professional should have a profile on LinkedIn. Lawyers may rely on their law firm website, but lawyers do not stay at the same law firm for their entire career any more. I was at The Firm for 13 years, but everyone else I keep in touch with from law school had moved to a new place. I was the last person who was still at the same place. LinkedIn is great at keeping track of your job history. LinkedIn is the place to answer the question: How Ddo I know you? When I am planning to meet someone I always run a Google search and a LinkedIn search.

I have found this blog to be a wonderful networking tool. I have created and maintain many relationships through this blog. There is no better way to stay connected, develop your expertise and showcase your abilities than through a blog. It has been tough for me to give up on this blog since moving from knowledge management to compliance. (And obviously unsuccessful.) Compliance Space will come out of the dark in the near future. Although most of you will not be interested in it.

Twitter has exploded as a idea tool. As with most people, I was skeptical of what to do with a 140 character messaging system. But the open design has produced remarkable results for me.The micro-blogging aspect allows me communicate with people in a quick and easy way. Bigger thoughts end up in the blog. Lots of the background communication happens in Twitter.

I also use Twitter for research. Several times a day I search for “compliance”, “FCPA”, “CFIUS,” “Ethics”, and lots of other compliance terms. These tweets connect me with people, news, thoughts, thought-leaders and a plethora of information that helps me with my new role as Chief Compliance Officer.

One of the challenges of taking the new position, in this new area was the great network I had developed in the knowledge management and enterprise 2.0 areas. LinkedIn, blogs and Twitter are helping me to rapidly build a new network in the compliance area.

Facebook is great aggregator of information. I use it largely by having Facebook applications pull posts from blogs, my twitter updates and other sources rather than using Facebook as the primary creation point.

Unlike Kevin, I am still trying out new social internet sites. I still think Legal OnRamp has a bright future. Martindale-Hubble Connected has huge information repository that could create an incredibly powerful tool.

I try others to see what may develop. Eighteen months ago, I thought LinkedIn was boring and would not amount to much. I was wrong. It took a while for Twitter to catch on. I jump on others just to grab my name and to see what may happen. Usually I just waste 10 minutes to create profile (unfortunately, much longer for ABA’s LegallyMinded), see who else is there and explore the feature set. I have long list of bookmarks for dead social internet sites.

As with Kevin, I spend the vast majority of my time with the big three. You should too.

Intel has published their Social Media Guidelines.

I like their approach of giving users guidelines for they should and should not do. The context is to place the responsibility on the individual. It is that person who is creating the content. They are responsible for the content and the consequences. I think it is a great balance of encouraging people to interact with responsible behavior.

These guidelines are actually a great starting point for a law firm. You just need to add in a section about not creating attorney client relationships and a section about attorney advertising disclaimers.

Intel could have added some specific recommendations for some high profile sites. Of course the sites are changing so often that it might be hard to keep the policy up-to-date.

I also like how Intel integrate these guidelines with other policies like the Intel Code of Conduct (.pdf) and the Intel Privacy Policy. (That may be the new compliance side of me revealing himself.)  This modularity avoids duplication and inconsitencies.

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.

The American Bar Association launched LegallyMinded, a social networking site targeted at lawyers, paralegals, law librarians, law students and anyone else in the legal market. Being a student of social networks for lawyers, I thought I would sign up.

I encountered my first problem when they asked me to have a username rather than my real name. The statement was to use your real name. But they do not allow spaces in the username.Someone else had already grabbed the “dougcornelius” username. I am stuck with dougcornelius1.

The next problem was the lengthy six step sign-up process. No other site makes you add so much information. I singed in with my ABA identification so I would expect they would carry over my ABA information. I was wrong.

The next challenge was trying to connect with people. They offer an interactive map showing people with similar interests closer to you. It seemed to make little sense to me. Right next to me was someone who runs a small rural practice. Not me.

The site shows people with their username instead of their real names so it is hard to figure out who is who. My first search was to find out who joined as dougcornelius. No luck in being able to search the site for people by name. Of course their real name is hidden anyhow.

I moved on to the group function. There were two dozen in place, none of which held much interest for me. Five were focused on law students or law schools and three were focused on geography. So I set up a group for compliance since I noted Bruce Carton from Securities Docket and Compliance Week was on the site. I could not find a way to invite him to the group.

They have a blog feature so I tried that out. I copied in some posts from my Compliance Space blog to try out that feature. The publishing and editing of the blog platform is really poor.

The ABA Journal published a piece in the December 2008 issue: The ABA Gets Social.

“We set out to do something different,” says Fred Faulkner, the ABA’s manager of interactive services in Chicago. “We looked at a lot of the professional and social networks, and the gap we found was that there truly wasn’t a good site that was a cross between professional and personal networking.”

“We’re filling that gap by offering the best features of sites like LinkedIn and Facebook and adding a bunch of content from the ABA and other high-quality content sources.”

I think they missed the mark with LegallyMinded.

Bob Ambrogi is trying to test it out, but he can’t even log in: ABA Launches (Buggy) Networking Site

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.

Carolyn Elefant recently released an e-book entitled Social Networking for Lawyers – The What, Why and How (.pdf)

Courtesy of the Avvo Blog: Treat For Avvo Blog Readers

I stumbled across this CIO.com article by Michael Fitzgerald : Why Social Computing Aids Knowledge Management. (I missed it originally because it was not listed under the Knowledge Management articles on CIO.com.)

In fact, social computing represents a third wave for KM: the set of tools and processes companies use to create, track and share intellectual assets, says Patti Anklam, an independent consultant who is focused on KM and social networking. Anklam says the first wave involved digitizing and tracking documents using tools like content management systems. When it became clear that it was too hard to share those documents, companies adopted collaboration tools. With social networks, companies are extending knowledge management to make it easier to connect employees and information.

“A framework for knowledge management consists of understanding what you need to have in place so that people can connect and share with each other, and then…connect to people outside of their own current, small personal networks,” Anklam says.

The recruiting manager has created a firm FaceBook site. The marketing director is encouraging all the lawyers to join LinkedIn. The firm’s general counsel is freaking out over the possible ethic violations and malpractice possibilities. The older lawyers simply aren’t sure what to do. The younger lawyers are wondering what all the hoopla is about. We explore social and business networking, the potential problems and rewards and what you can do about it.

Speaker: Jeffrey Brandt, Chief Information Officer and Chief Knowledge Officer at Crowell + Moring LLP

My Notes:

Jeff started off with definitions of social networking and a long list of web 2.0 sites.

He got focused on this areas because of overly exuberant people at his prior firm. Nobody talked to the risk management people to talk about the ethical and bar regulations that apply to lawyers.

Jeff is a big fan of LinkedIn (His profile: Jeffrey Brandt).  He also uses Plaxo (although much less so), Twitter (but he is not sure what it is all about),  and Facebook (but is seriously lacking friends).


Facebook and MySpace are for kids. Except that there are 100 million + user of Facebook and it is the fourth most trafficked site on the internet. All of them cannot be kids

LinkedIn is a fad.  Of the Fortune 500 companies, 499 have director-level profiles in LinkedIn. Barack Obama used it to extend his campaign.  In looking at LinkedIn, for many law firms, the number of profiles has doubled over the last year. If it is fad, it is a powerful one.

Second Life. Sun and Intel hold meetings in Second Life. Companies have set up storefonts in Second Life.

Less than 10% of people on the ILTA listserv have a formal or informal policy on social networks.

Jeff noticed that there were problems with some of the profile information for attorneys in LinkedIn. Marketing had pushed it to raise the personal profile of the attorney and to raise the profile of the firm. It also works as a “who knows who.” It is a great way to address alumni networking and classmate networking.  It is a great information update tool.

Facebook has a lot of potential for recruiting. The recent college graduate crowd uses Facebook a lot.

Malpractice Nightmare?

You can inadvertently create an attorney-client relationship? Absolutely! LinkedIn Answers is particularly problematic. The big problem is that these web-based answers last forever. So there is a permanent record of the legal advice that you give. It is okay to say give me a call.

Social network profiles need to be in compliance with local bar rules and ethical requirements. Recommendations and specialties can be particularly problematic. Of course they must also be truthful.

The problem is that firms are not addressing the use of these sites. Blocking them is useless. Your employees will still access the sites outside of the workplace. If they say they work at the firm, the conduct of that person on the internet will get attributed to the company.

Law firm management need to wake up and pay attention to these issues. Social networks are here to stay and are to be avoided at the firm’s risk. Well established procedures and policies can help manage and reduce risk.

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