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

Sure you have a LinkedIn profile, but what has it done for you lately? In “Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn,” Neal Schaffershares ideas on getting the most out of the social network. Windmill Networking as Neal refers to it, involves creating a network via web 2.0 social media like Facebook, Twitter, and (you guessed it) LinkedIn then leveraging that network. He even includes diagrams and boxes to help you along the path to Windmill enlightenment. The book is divided into 3 intuitive sections -

• Creating a LinkedIn Brand
• Understanding LinkedIn
• Leveraging LinkedIn

Each section provides step-by-step instructions regarding profile creation, features, and networking for fun and profit. The book is not specifically targeted for lawyers (a plus) but “Windmill Networking” is a great primer for lawyers interesting in taking advantage of what LinkedIn has to offer.

This was a Quick Review. Look for a full book review in the next couple of posts!

Law firms looking to perform services online still need to pay careful attention to the rules of professional conduct. The ABA gives a few minimum guidelines:

1. You must still establish an attorney-client relationship before representation.
2. Terms and Conditions should be published on the public portion of the firm’s website.
3. Clients must be residents of the state in which your firm is authorized to practice.
4. Clients should have access to a fully secure web account to ensure confidentiality.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. If you’re interested in “going virtual”, contact our office for more information.

Source: ABA Law Practice Today

Lawyers are calling it social networking burnout. Law.com reports that corporate America is losing its taste for social networking sites and shutting down access to Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. Recent back-to-back studies show a big chunk of corporate America banning Twitter and Facebook from the workplace. The news for the media world is even grimmer. According to an August survey by ScanSafe, 76% of companies block employee use of social networking sites — up 20% from February 2009. And social networking sites have become productivity enemy #1. Indianapolis-based Barnes & Thornburg is seeing companies block Facebook “all the time.” The firm has banned Facebook itself, and Twitter is next. I think what’s happening is social media is starting to simmer and the lawyers, PR teams, HR teams, and marketers are realizing that all these problems can occur, said one associate at Gunster Yoakley & Stewart of West Palm Beach, Florida.

I think what’s happening is social media is starting to simmer and the lawyers, PR teams, HR teams, and marketers are realizing that all these problems can occur, said one associate at Gunster Yoakley & Stewart of West Palm Beach, Florida who focuses on technology and the Internet.

While it’s a premium feature and Practicehacker likes to keep things free, the LinkedIn Profile Organizer is a useful way to keep track of contacts. Considering that LinkedIn has become the virtual Rolodex for American business, this idea seems like a no-brainer; especially for power users who have 500+ contacts. As for me, if I don’t know or remember someone I clear them out of my LinkedIn lineup. For the rest of you however, here you go …

According to the 2009 LexisNexis^® Martindale-Hubbell^® Survey of Corporate Counsel, more than 70% of lawyers are members of a social network; up 25% over last year. Largest gainers were lawyers aged 46 and over, who showed 30% growth. Over 50% of respondents think online networks have the potential to change the business and practice of law. 65% expressed interest in joining an online professional network designed for their profession.Survey results of note include

• 1/3 of corporate counsel use a social network daily
• ½ of lawyers in private practice use social networks daily
• Most lawyers use social networks one or more times per week
• Only 6% of lawyers Twitter, but 70% of that group twitters daily

The survey is available online at www.leadernetworks.com.  Martindale-Hubbell^® Connected is the online network developed by LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell.

Read the whole story here.

Prism Legal’s Ron Friendman liveblogged (a/k/a real-time blogged) Richard Susskind’s discussion of the future of the profession at ILTA 2009.  Here are the Top 10 disruptive legal technologies on the list:

Document Assembly. Has already changed markets. Providing document assembly online allows for economies of scale. Charges and hours don’t have to relate, making this technology “disruptive.

Always on Connectivity. Lawyers can, and are expected to, be on call 24/7.  Deal with it.

Electronic Legal Marketplace. Your value in the  a frictionless marketplace. Clients can select legal services in the electronic marketplace and even choose to go with non-lawyer alternatives.

E-Learning. Law schools have long been falling down on the job. The Internet can revive learning with realistic simulations.

Online Legal Guidance. Interactive advice systems in the “latent legal market” (see Suskind, The Future of Lawyers). Sounds like self-guided document automation.

Legal Open-Sourcing. A la Wikipedia. Crowd-sourcing communities of interested individuals can result in better answers than throwing the problem to a single individual.  Consumers more likely to talk to friend with similar problems than a lawyer.

Closed Legal Communities. See Legal Onramp. Clients and In House Counsel can pool legal information and check a common knowledge-base before consulting pricey outside counsel.

Workflow and Project Management. High volume, low value work can be made into off-the-rack solutions; making certain lawyers into de facto project managers. Project management requires significant training, but lawyers aren’t getting any. This is a disruptive trend because it highlights the fact that as efficiency increases, billable hours decrease.

Embedded Legal Knowledge. In the future legal knowledge will be built into compliance systems making the contributions of highly-trained counsel less necessary except for unusual assignments.

Online Dispute Resolution. Dispute resolution as a service. Services like CyberSettle versus time spent in Court or in the arbitration system.

My slides for panel on Social Networks, Blawgs & Podcasts #abachicago tomorrow at 3:00 PM

View more presentations from Mazyar Hedayat.

For more information see http://new.abanet.org/annual/pages/Schedule.aspx

Follow the 2009 Annual Meeting on Twitter at http://twitter.com/abachicago