Using the Web to network

By Olivia Clarke

In a given day, a lawyer can keep in touch with her biggest client, her college daughter, and her best friend without leaving the office, sending an e-mail, or picking up the phone.

The world of networking has expanded dramatically as lawyers connect with their colleagues, friends and clients via online social networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Legal OnRamp.

”I think it’s safe to say that with the hours we’re working these days there really isn’t as much time for the two-martini lunches, and for physically getting out and seeing people as perhaps we were able to do 15 or 20 years ago,” said Michael Waters, a 30-year-old Vedder Price associate who uses LinkedIn. ”As a result, this is perhaps a more efficient way to keep track of people and allow people to keep track of you — and at least maintain some sort of social contact with people.”

Online social networking sites are websites that allow people to connect with each other and share information. Each person creates a profile that, depending on the site, will include career and/or personal information.

They invite people to connect to their profile so they, in turn, can learn about those people’s families, personal histories, careers, and pastimes. This creates a network of people who can communicate with each other through the website by writing messages to each other, joining online groups, and sharing real-time information.

Lawyers can create a network that’s much larger than anything they would get from attending a cocktail party or making a few phone calls.

Some firms are slow to embrace these networking sites, while others have Facebook and LinkedIn online groups that allow them to connect with others.

The blog ”3 Geeks and a Law Blog” reported in October 2008 that 35 firms out of the top 100 created LinkedIn groups. For example, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom had 839 members in its LinkedIn group, and Baker & McKenzie had 278, according to the blog.

Some lawyers and experts say a generational gap exists within law firms because younger generations grew up connecting through these sites, while many older lawyers do not appreciate this new form of networking.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s December 2008 tracking study, 35 percent of American adult Internet users ages 18 and older have a profile on an online social networking site, four times as many as three years ago.

Fifty-seven percent of online adults ages 25 to 34 have a profile on a social networking site; while 30 percent of online adults ages 35 to 44, 19 percent of online 45- to 54-year-olds, and 10 percent of online adults, ages 55 to 64, have profiles on these sites.

”This is a Facebook generation, so to speak,” said Robert Ambrogi, a Massachusetts-based lawyer, technology writer and consultant. ”It’s not something older lawyers have grown up with or have necessarily gotten used to.”

Tom Skallas, a 35-year-old partner at Holland & Knight, uses both LinkedIn and Facebook to network with individuals, and keep up-to-date with other people’s careers.

It occasionally leads to business. Skallas connected with a grade-school friend whose line of work fit with what he does as a lawyer, and they began a professional relationship.

”I always believe lawyers are a little behind in terms of accepting new ideas, and new ways of communicating,” Skallas said. ”I think you have a whole generation of people growing up on this stuff. If you intend to reach out to them, then you need to do it on their terms.

”I communicate all day long and sometimes all night long with my clients. Staying connected with them is sort of critical. In order for me to generate revenue I have to maintain those relationships and create new ones,” he said. ”It’s not that Facebook or LinkedIn is anything that special. It’s another means of facilitating that communication.”

The generational gap

Some older lawyers are concerned that younger lawyers lack focus because they use too many modes of technology to do too much at once, said Bruce Tulgan, a former practicing lawyer and author, whose books include the newly released, ”Not Everyone Gets a Trophy: How to Manage Generation Y.”

Some senior lawyers paint this picture of poking their head into a Generation Y lawyer’s office and seeing him with an MP3 player in one ear, his microwave snack on his desk near the documents he’s reading; while at the same time, his PC is open and he has six windows up, a laptop on the back of his desk is playing a movie, and his iPhone is vibrating on his desk, Tulgan said.

But he said young lawyers are growing up in a generation that has experienced a tidal wave of information, as well as real-time technology. To them, multiple focus is the only way to focus, and immediacy is the only time frame, Tulgan said.

”Back when I was writing about Generation X, more experienced lawyers were concerned about lawyers relying too much on Westlaw and LexisNexis,” Tulgan said. ”And of course, we, as young lawyers coming out of law school, realized that these tools were much more up-to-date than the books in the law library. More experienced lawyers were worried that we were using these tools too much.”

Some senior lawyers today worry about lawyers using social networking sites, he said, but young people are in sync with where society is heading as collaborative technology becomes increasingly dominant.

”With social networking sites, one of the benefits is it’s a way to not just network, it’s not just that. It’s also how Generation Yers keep their ear to the ground,” Tulgan said. ”They are finding out what other lawyers in their position are paid, and what they should get paid. They are checking out work conditions, benefits and regular day-to-day practices. They are also identifying trends.”

James Borkman, a 32-year-old 2L at The John Marshall Law School, uses Facebook and LinkedIn to keep in touch with not only his colleagues, but also possible employers.

Many lawyers use their Facebook pages to post when they are looking for law clerks, Borkman said. Some law firms use social networking sites to connect their partners to each other. It’s the ”modern company picnic,” just in cyberspace, he said.

His advice to older lawyers about joining these sites is, ”It can give you a leg up on other people of your generation. I’m not saying you have to go out and buy an MP3 player or an iPhone. But you’ve seen what e-mail can do. You can see what cell phones have done for productivity at work. This is on the networking side. Don’t be afraid of change.”

David McHugh, a 36-year-old Schiff Hardin partner who belongs to Facebook and LinkedIn, sees social networking sites as another way of continuing the process of meeting and reintroducing himself to people. It’s like people throughout time who met each other through organizations, churches, or clubs, McHugh said.

”It really comes down to relationships,” he said. ”These sites are about maintaining current relationships or rekindling old ones or making new ones.”

Older lawyers may have no use for these sites because the people they want to network with may not network this way, he said.

”For them, it doesn’t particularly make sense unless they want to meet new people through a medium they are not comfortable with,” McHugh said. ”They will soon find out over time that more and more people they thought wouldn’t be on these sites are on them. It’s certainly nothing more than e-mail was 15 years ago. Certain people were using it every day and others were avoiding it like the plague. But eventually they came around to it because it was another way to communicate.”

Most people see LinkedIn as the recognized authority for professional networking, and Facebook as the site for personal networking, said Tasneem Goodman, a 33-year-old partner and director of marketing at Katten Muchin Rosenman.

But that seems to be changing as younger lawyers meld the line between professional and social networking, Goodman said.

”In some ways you want your clients and prospective clients to be your friends, and you want your friends to be your clients or prospective clients,” she said. ”Not having this artificial boundary between professional and personal contacts is helpful. So many of the business relationships we forge have social relationships that complement them or were created by them.”

While some older, more senior partners use these tools, many consider it something their children use, Goodman said.

”Some of that older guard doesn’t get it, and doesn’t want to invest time to get it because it’s less relevant to them,” she said. ”So much of the ways they network and develop business contacts are more traditional — person-to-person referrals and introductions and things like that. While I would say those things are just as valuable for younger attorneys in our firm, a big way this younger generation networks is via these types of social networking tools.

”Within those generations there are different personal takes on how to develop business. People are most successful in developing business when the ways they foster those business relationships is genuine to who they are.”

A new frontier

Social networking sites are a part of the Web 2.0 era, but what does Web 2.0 mean?

Web 2.0 is today’s generation of the Internet — a generation that includes so much more interactivity than a few years ago. The Internet has become a place where people interact and feed off of each other’s ideas. It grows as more people participate in it, and use it to analyze information, and learn from each other. And people use tools like blogs, podcasts, and networking sites to connect with each other.

Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, defines Web 2.0 on ”O’Reilly Radar” as, ”The era when people have come to realize that it’s not the software that enables the web that matters so much as the services that are delivered over the web.”

According to a 2008 Inside Counsel article by Keith Ecker, ”Web 2.0 takes this model of top-down information delivery and turns it on its head. Sites that use this model are more like the frame of a house, and it’s up to Internet users to fill in the gaps and furnish the site with information. In addition, there is no separation between Web 2.0 sites and Web 2.0 forms of communication.

”For example MySpace, a social networking site popular with teenagers and young adults, is both a website and a multifaceted communication tool that allows users to not only create content on their personal pages but to make connections with peers, share information with one another and post messages on one another’s sites.”

Jason Milch, Chicago-based vice president of public relations at Jaffe Associates, said his company tries to take advantage of Web 2.0, and educate lawyers about the benefits and challenges to using tools like social networking sites.

”Lawyers should not get into this just to build new business. It is not going to magically happen,” Milch said. ”It is not going to be a replacement for real face-to-face networking and relationship-building. This is a nice complement to it.”

Lawyers should not post the contents of their websites on these sites, and aggressively solicit for business, he said. That will turn people off.

”It’s just like when you go to a cocktail party or networking event. You don’t go to the first businessperson and hand them your business card and tell them, ‘Hire me,”’ he said. ”You build a relationship. It should be no different when utilizing social media.”

Things like blogs and social networking sites can help lawyers break down barriers between the profession and the rest of society, said Kevin O’Keefe, CEO of LexBlog, a Seattle-based company that helps lawyers create, market, and manage their blogs.

They allow the public to see what these lawyers are interested in, and see them as people, O’Keefe said. Lawyers will need to accept these sites because this is what their clients and innovative people, in general, are using.

”It’s a way to market new client development, and build relationships where the cost is minimal and the return on investment is very, very high,” he said. ”All of this is very much in its infancy. We are dealing with a very small population of lawyers that understand how to use these tools, probably less than 1 percent of them.”

Different uses

Geoffrey Vance, a 38-year-old partner at McDermott Will & Emery, often uses these social networking sites to gather facts about the opposing side in trials.

For example, in one case, a plaintiff claimed Vance’s client drove him out of business. The opposing counsel wanted to paint the plaintiff as a poor, loving family man, he said.

Vance found on MySpace that the plaintiff collects antique Jaguar cars, and is president of a Jaguar club. Vance also saw compromising photos that showed the plaintiff is not the family man he claimed to be. The plaintiff also talked about the case and the judge on the site.

”I make it a practice to use as many sources as I can come up with to find information about the other side,” Vance said. ”We used to run LexisNexis; we still do that. We always look at cases, and now we use the Internet — Google, and social networking sites.”

Several organizations, such as the American Bar Association and Chicago Lawyer magazine, offer lawyer-specific online networking sites.

Legal OnRamp is a collaboration system for in-house counsel, and invited outside lawyers and third-party service providers. The site includes content and technology resources, and allows lawyers to converse online with each other, said Paul Lippe, founder and CEO of Legal OnRamp.

Lawyers can create a profile, and keep up-to-date on what’s happening that’s relevant to them in Legal OnRamp and in the broader world, Lippe said. They can not only get answers to legal questions, but can also find who to talk to about those answers, he said.

The site promotes collaboration — something lawyers have always done, he said. It offers a balanced interplay between the information it publishes, and the profiles of those who belong to the site. It provides people with a way to work together.

”There have been four or five moderately significant [technological] changes — the personal computer, e-mail, the browser, and one or two others, but Web 2.0 is the first technology that really resonates with the way lawyers really work,” Lippe said. ”It will be far and away the most consequential because it’s a way of linking lawyers and clients together in a beneficial system.

”The people who try to understand this stuff understand how logical, resonant, and powerful it is, and how it’s consistent with the best traditions of the profession.”

Networking sites may not directly bring lawyers business, but often someone might remember that lawyer’s information because they saw his blog or his LinkedIn page, said Ambrogi, who writes such blogs as ”LawSites.”

Someone may not necessarily remember how he heard the lawyer’s name, but when he does encounter it, it stands out as someone he’s heard of. Some people who say they can’t trace business back to these sites are looking for too direct of a connection, he said.

When searching LinkedIn for a lawyer, a person might recognize a name because that lawyer is already a trusted connection or the connection of someone they trust, he said.

”If you are looking for an IP attorney in Chicago and search on LinkedIn, you might get 20 different names, but you may see a couple lawyers listed there who have direct connections to you or are directly connected to connections of yours,” Ambrogi said. ”You have a basis for getting a referral.”

Skadden has an alumni website, as well as a LinkedIn alumni group. Danielle Purfey, alumni program administrator at Skadden, said within two hours of the LinkedIn group being created it had 500 alumni members. The firm has about 5,000 alumni, and about 1,000 of them are in its LinkedIn group.

”They enjoy connecting and networking with each other,” said Carol Sprague, director of associate/alumni relations and attorney recruiting at Skadden. ”A lot of alums go and work with clients or other organizations and they become clients. It’s goodwill.

”I found that a lot of alums were contacting me and asking how to reach other alums. We thought [a LinkedIn group] sort of made sense. It is what people do. It is how they connect with each other. Especially in an economy like this, they want to stay in touch.”

Justin L. Heather, a 34-year-old Skadden associate, uses the Facebook invite function to invite people to bar association events. He can reach hundreds of people in a matter of minutes.

“It’s one of those ways you can keep in contact and know what’s going on with your colleagues that you may have sort of fallen out of touch with,” Heather said. ”It’s just an easy and convenient way. Say someone on Facebook updates his status and says, ‘I’ve got a new job’ or ‘I’ve got a new kid,’ just basically what’s going on in their life. At your leisure you can find out what’s going on in their life and ultimately reconnect.”

A policy

Some ”old school” firms are slower to acknowledge that this world of social networking sites exists, Ambrogi said.

But that response can be problematic because they haven’t adopted policies to manage their lawyers’ use internally, or haven’t adopted strategies for participating in it, he said.

They may want to consider whether to manage the profiles on these networking sites so information posted about the firm is consistent, from a marketing point of view, he said. They may also want to decide whether to set a policy so lawyers don’t post inappropriate photos of themselves on these sites.

”When you have an institution not addressing social networking it overlooks the fact that any number of people are involved in social networking,” Ambrogi said. ”It’s important that law firms wake up and smell the coffee because this is happening all around them and they should be a part of it.”

Larry Zanger, a Holland & Knight partner who works with Internet, e-commerce and computer-related law, said law firms and companies alike should create a comprehensive electronic communications policy that’s distributed and explained to employees.

Issues can occur if someone uses these networking sites to bully or discriminate, or if someone infringes on trademarks and copyright by uploading or downloading information, he said.

A couple of panels have talked about what can happen if an employee unintentionally shares confidential company information or trade secrets by innocently talking to a colleague at another company about how to solve a problem, Zanger said.

”There are a number of people that I’m sure don’t have the sophistication to understand what the heck they are doing,” he said. ”If they are not involved in the industry or not involved in electronic discovery, record-keeping kinds of issues, it can be a problem. Stuff could be divulged, confidences could be breached that they are not thinking about.”