practicehacker

Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn

“Dig your well before you’re thirsty”
Neal Shaeffer, Author

Summary: I’ve been a member of LinkedIn since 2007. But like many people I’ve had doubts about the network’s value. In Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn entrepreneur Neal Schaeffer shares specific suggestions about growing your network. Best of all, the author never talks down to the reader – that allows me to develop my own rational and strategy.

The Good: Shaeffer explains that LinkedIn is meant to function as a virtual favor-bank so members can help one another without obsessively searching for a quid pro quo. The author then goes further by providing a step-by-step guide to: creation, maintenance, and leveraging of your brand, asking for and offering recommendations, answering questions, and other pillars of social networking.

The Bad: While he explains things in a clear manner, Schaffer probably devotes too many pages to his windmill analogy. The result is not necessary to understanding LinkedIn and can get longwinded (ha!). But while I found the windmill abstraction a little forced, it ties in with Shaeffer’s own brand.

The Ugly: Schaeffer explains why LinkedIn (not Twitter or Facebook) is THE site for professionals. But the author comes from a general business background – not a legal one – so his point of view may be slightly off for our purposes.

Evaluation: While not intended specifically for lawyers, Windmill Networking is a great primer for members of the profession interested in using LinkedIn to connect with one another, reach out to referral sources, or recruit a team of professionals to serve our own business needs. I give the book 4 hacks out of 5

The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies:
Smart Ways to Work Together

“Law practice is, has been, and will continue to be a collaborative process”
Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighelle

Summary: The Lawyer’s Guide offers a solid list of resources for lawyers seeking to collaborate. It is practically jargon-free as well, and frames its discussions with a look at the past before discussing more modern modes of collaboration. The book is also a great introduction to technology for lawyers of a certain age (i.e. Baby Boomers), although younger lawyers may find it to be a little too basic.

The Good: The authors of The Lawyer’s Guide display sensitivity to attorneys who came of age before the Internet was pervasive, and they do it without over-explaining or being too didactic.

The Bad: The authors do their best to treat the products attorneys have been using for decades, such as Microsoft Office programs, as collaboration tools. By today’s standards these programs are more likely to obstruct collaboration than to enable it. In the age of Twitter, Wikis, Zoho, SaaS, and Google Wave, they are part of the problem, not the solution.

The Ugly: As I read The Lawyer’s Guide I kept asking myself why the authors didn’t treat technology-enabled collaboration as a smart way to business instead of like the Rubic’s Cube of law practice (perplexing, complex, exasperating). It really isn’t that hard.

Evaluation: Keeping in mind what the books sets out to do, I give The Lawyer’s Guide a hearty endorsement and 4 hacks out of 5. In places it is a bit too basic but overall you can’t go wrong giving this book a read – either because you are a lawyer of a certain age or because you work for one.