Category: Social Networking and Web 2.0

Blink and Compliance

blink

I am a little late to the game when it comes to reading some of Malcolm Gladwell’s books. Last week, while on vacation with the family, I managed to read Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

The book is about rapid cognition, the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. What is going on inside our heads when during rapid cognition? When are these quick judgments good and when are they not? What kinds of things can we do to make our powers of rapid cognition better?

The book left me with a bunch of little tidbits of information. Gladwell illustrates each of his points with interesting narratives. In the process he makes several insightful points about the nature of rapid human decision-making. Sometimes, over-thinking a problem results in bad decisions. Our first instincts are often correct, if we have a clear picture of what is happening and our perception.

But often that clarity is missing. One example is the difference in selecting elite musicians when the audition is conducted behind a screen, rather than in full view. In the past thirty years since screened auditions have become commonplace, the number of females in the top U.S. orchestras has increased five-fold. Even though the judges were not overtly discriminatory, their first impressions from seeing a woman, the color of her instrument and the way she played had an unconscious negative effect on the judges.

There are lessons in this book for compliance professionals.

Snap judgments are often correct when they come from clarity and experience. But they can also easily be corrupted. Be aware of the situation, the person you are dealing with and the environment around you.

Sometimes too much information can cloud your decision-making. Gladwell finds an example in how an emergency room should handle potential heart attack victims. Typically, doctors try to gather as much information as possible and then make an estimate of whether the chest pain is a heart attack. Instead, they found that three factors were key to determining if chest pain is a heart attack. By focusing on these three factors, the correct diagnosis rate rose from 75%-89% correct rate of diagnosis to 95%.

Experience is clearly the most important factor in developing a strong snap judgment and practice is key in developing that expertise.

Social Networking for the Legal Profession

Social-networking-for-the-legal-profession

I just finished reading Social Networking for the Legal Profession by Penny Edwards and Lee Bryant. They were nice enough to send me a copy.

Penny and Lee used a few quotes from me, referred to some of my writings and used some of my social networking activity as examples. That poor judgment aside, the book is otherwise a great report on how legal professionals can take advantage of online networking tools.

The book contains practical examples and strategies. They explore the use of the tools externally as part of your marketing and business development efforts. They also explore the use of them internally for operations, communication, and knowledge management 2.0. They present a good road map with lots of options for an organization to chose among.

They start with the basics and run through a survey of the social networking sites most useful to lawyers: LinkedIn, Avvo, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Legal OnRamp, Martindale-Hubbell Connected, JD Supra and many others.

It is not all kumbaya. The report takes into account the risks and challenges you must overcome to make implementation a success. They spend significant time talking about the culture challenges. They also explore the security, privacy and compliance issues.

Penny and Lee point out the paradigm shift with these tools. Unlike previous generations of collaboration tools, these 2.0 tools target individual benefits rather than the benefits to the organization as a whole. They focus on what’s in it for the individual. The benefits to the larger organization are a by-product. There is less emphasis on standardization and centralization.

The focus on standardization and the collective benefits was what knowledge management got wrong. The big central databases of knowledge management were useful to the organization as a whole, but provided little benefit to the individual contributor. They did not want awards or financial compensation (not that more money wouldn’t hurt), but wanted a way to help organize their own stuff in a way that was useful to them.

Unlike past generations of software, most of the innovation is coming from the consumer space. Free tools on the web are far ahead of enterprise systems. IT departments are constantly being asked why its so easy to search on Google or publish on the web, but so much harder to do so inside the law firm. If you want to know how these tools can help you inside your organization, you need to try them outside your organization.

There is a great chapter on the benefits of networking tools used inside the organization and how to achieve great benefits.

The book is expensive. The Ark Group gave it a cover price of £245. It is a great book and worth the price. If you are interested, I was given the details of a discount offer, taking $115 off the price, making it $285 plus $10 shipping. The details are on the US publicity flyer for Social Networking for the Legal Profession (.pdf).

You can read more from Penny, Lee and others at Headshift on the Headshift blog.

I thought I would also share links to some of my material that Penny and Lee cite in the book:

How Are the Fortune 100 Using Web 2.0 for Investor Relations?

retheauditors

Francine McKenna, of re: The Auditors, put together a great study on how the Fortune 100 are using Web 2.0 for investor relations. There are some. But for the most part, they are not using web 2.0.

The Downside:

  • Only 3 use blogs
  • Only 2 use Facebook
  • Only 2 use Twitter. (Although 4 others do, they just left that information from the IR page.)

The Upside:

  • 49 use RSS feeds

Radical Transparency

air-new-zealand

The current buzzword in the markets is “transparency.” Companies want to be more transparent so investors, customers and partners can better understand the company. Some of this came from Enron, whose operations and financial statements were often called “opaque.”

With the growing Web 2.0 it is harder to get secrets as anyone with an internet connection can become a publisher. There are armies of “reporters” looking for the truth. Or at least saying what they believe, regardless of the factual basis.

Some companies are taking it further by making their operations and plans more open to the public. They are embracing web 2.0 to stay connected with their stakeholders. They are becoming more transparent. The Naked Corporation by Don Tapscott and David Ticoll offers an interesting perspective on this

Nobody sane strips down naked in front of their peers. Or maybe you do?

Air New Zealand’s current ad campaign is that they have “Nothing to Hide.” Maybe they took radical transparency too far?

Thanks to Mary Abraham of Above and Beyond KM for pointing out the Air Zealand videos: Why Are You Hiding?

References:

Social Media Risk & Rewards

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On September 21, 2009, in New York City I will be a speaker at Social Media: Risks & Rewards.

This comprehensive, dynamic event will explore the inherent challenges of social media and will arm you with the specific tools necessary to protect your company, your intellectual property and your reputation in today’s virtual world.  Find out how to safeguard yourself and your business through insightful sessions focused on:

  • The Social Media Sensation: Pressure to Keep up in the Digital Age
  • Exposure, Liability and Consequences of Your Business and Social Media
  • Develop your Company’s Corporate Policy for Social Media
  • Protecting your Company’s Identity in a Virtual World
  • Risks from Employees Past, Present and Future
  • Safeguarding your Company’s Intellectual Property
  • Best Practices for Social Media

Challenges from Social Media are only one inappropriate “tweet” away.  Register for this timely program today and ensure you understand the inherent perils of the market and construct the proper policies to protect your company and ensure future growth.

I will be on two panels: Develop your Company’s Corporate Policy for Social Media and Best Practices for Social Media.

There is a discount for friends and family (and blog readers). If you want to attend,  just visit the conference website at www.corpcounsel.com/socialmedia and use the code SPK for $100.00 off.

Top Ten Mistakes Lawyers Make with Social Media

social-media-expert

Lawyers and law firms are rapidly adopting social media to market themselves and connect with peers. These are new tools. We are all trying to figure out how to use them. Just to make it more difficult, the tools themselves are rapidly evolving as we are learning how to use them.

Some lawyers are doing a great job using them. Some are doing a terrible job.

I thought I would share my thoughts on the mistakes I see.

10. Blocking access. Social media provides a rich source of information about clients, potential clients, opposing counsel, witnesses and other parties. It easy to get around the block with a mobile device or home access. Blocking is just an annoyance. It’s not an effective policy.

9. Failing to have a social media policy. People in your law firm are using social media. They may only using if for personal purposes. But if they identify your firm as their employer, what they do has an effect on the image of your firm.

8. Ignoring Facebook as a recruiting tool. “You do better fishin’ where the fish are.” Many summer associates are creating groups on their own. Your firm would be better off if they administered the group.

7. Not giving authorship to blog posts. The attorneys writing the story should get credit for the story. This gives an attorney an extra incentive to contribute and showcases their skills.

6. Not linking. A blog is much more useful to its readers and its authors if it links to other relevant information. There is no reason not to link to primary source material like statutes and regulations online. Link to other news sources, websites and blogs. Yes people will leave leave your site through those links. But they are more likely to come back if your site is the better source of information.

5. Failing to understand ethical limitations. The bar regulators have barely dealt with web 1.0, never mind the additional issues around web 2.0. Keep in mind that most social media activities can be considered advertising.

4. Abandoning without notice. Nothing lasts forever. If you started a blog and are not posting any more. Put a post saying you’ve stopped or are on hiatus. (This is what I did for my old KM Space blog.)

3. Failing to leverage LinkedIn. You should have a profile in LinkedIn that has at least as much information as the bio on your firm’s site. You should also be leveraging LinkedIn to stay up to date with the movement of your clients and former client contacts. LinkedIn is a great source of information for CRM systems.

2. Posting information about clients. As with any advertising, make sure you get written consent from clients before posting any information about your work with them.

1. Not using social media. The biggest mistake most lawyers are making with social media is not using these tools.  They are here to stay. Get used to it.

What mistakes to you see being made?

Image is from Hugh MacLeod of Gapingvoid – “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”: you’re a social media specialist?

Free and Law Firms

free the future of a radical price by Chris Anderson

I just finished reading Chris Anderson’s new book: Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Given that I am a lawyer, I kept thinking about how his concepts apply to law firms.

Let me say a few things up front.

First, this is an excellent book that will make you think about how these concepts apply to your business. For my prior employer, a large law firm I saw lots of trends in the book.

Second, I am part of an example that Chris uses to defend his hypothesis: GeekDad. Chris started GeekDad as the parenting blog for Wired magazine. The blog is led by Ken Denmead as editor who gets a nominal retainer. The rest of the contributors are unpaid volunteers writing for a magazine conglomerate that makes good money selling ads on GeekDad. I am one of those volunteer contributors. (You can see my name in the list of core contributors in right-hand column.)

Third, Chris does not take the position that everything should be free. He merely points out that more things now can be, thanks to the reduced costs of computer power, storage and networking.

Fourth, I paid for the book out of my own pocket. Free, the book is not free. Free, an abridged audio version is free online.

The Long Tail

Free is an extension of his previous book: The Long Tail. In that book he showed how the sale of large quantity of less popular titles can collectively sell as much as the few popular titles. You can make this work when you have cheap storage. Free takes the next step of what happens when your marginal production costs get close to zero.

There are many studies that show there is a big difference between something costing very little and something costing zero. Therefore you will attract a bigger audience if you round down. With electronic distribution, the marginal cost for adding the next customer is close to zero. So Chris says round down.

How Do You Make Money?

Chris outlines 50 different ways that you can make money even when you are giving away some of your product. Chris does not advocate giving away everything, just some of the things when the marginal cost is close to zero. One of the big distinctions is whether your product is atoms or bits. Atoms are expensive to produce and distribute. Bits are not.

He divides the idea of Free into four categories: cross-subsidies (give away the razor, sell the blade); advertising-supported services (from radio and television to websites); freemium (a small subset of users pay for a premium version of something, supporting a free version for the rest); and non-monetary markets (in which participants motivated by non-financial considerations develop things like Wikipedia and GeekDad).

Freemium is the model that Chris seems most in favor of. You give away a limited version of the product, but charge for the full version, add-ons and enhancements. SocialText just adopted that model for their wiki product: Free for 50. You can use a limited version of the product with up to fifty people at no charge. That freemium model got me using it.

Information is Expensive but Wants to be Free

Chris quotes Stewart Brand:

On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.

What about law firms?

Let’s look at the most extreme examples, Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe‘s free business formation contracts and Wilson Sonsini’s Term Sheet Generator. There’s no cost to use the forms and no registration required to download them. Businesses can use them free. Other lawyers can use the forms as if they were their own and use them to serve their own clients. But the free product may help capture business. There are big segments of the legal market that can’t afford to hire these firms. Now, a business using these may be more likely to use the firm because some of the work has already been done. The firms could charge far less to review a completed form than if the firm were to begin the incorporation from scratch. It may offer them a competitive advantage if opposing counsel presents them with one of their own forms.

But those examples are new and few.

There is an incredibly common freemium model adopted by almost every law firm: Client Alerts.

When you had to mail these alerts there was a dollar cost associated with that distribution. To better phrase that, there was a stamp cost associated with distribution. Now distribution are costs are minimal. The costs are the same whether you email it to 500 people or 50,000 people. The same is true with viewing it on the law firm’s website.

I think it is quaint that some law firms still use the “client alert” label. I get more alerts from firms that do not represent me, than I do from the firms that do represent me.

Lawyers and their firms are giving away this valuable legal insight in the hopes that you will hire them to represent you in a matter related to the information in their publication. They use the publications to showcase their expertise, but in the process give away some of their substantive knowledge.

The book is worth reading. You should start thinking about how free may affect your business.

References:

He divides the idea of Free into four categories: cross-subsidies (give away the razor, sell the blade); advertising-supported services (from radio and television to websites); freemium (a small subset of users pay for a premium version of something, supporting a free version for the rest); and non-monetary markets (in which participants motivated by non-financial considerations develop things like Wikipedia and <a href=”http://www.wired.com/geekdad”>GeekDad</a>).

Preparing for the strictest privacy law in the nation: MA Privacy Law 201 CMR 17

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Join me for a webinar on the Massachusetts Data Privacy Law.

Knowledge Management Associates, LLC is sponsoring a webinar on Preparing for the Strictest Privacy Law in the Nation: MA Privacy Law 201 CMR 17.

  • I will provide an overview of the law.
  • Roberty Boonstra will share some of his best practices around implementation and compliance with the law.
  • Sean Megley, of Knowledge Management Associates, will provide a look at their SharePoint-based compliance management solution to to address 201 CMR 17.00

The webinar will be on July 29, 2009 from 12:30pm – 1:30pm (Boston time). And it’s free. You can register on their webinar registration page.

Ask for Usernames, Don’t Ask for Passwords

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From a compliance perspective it is good to monitor what your employees are doing in the various social media sites. If you operate in a heavily regulated industry it may not only be a good idea, but be necessary.

Don’t cross the line and ask for the passwords to those accounts. Learn from the City of Bozeman Montana.

Back in June, the City started asking job applicants for the list of social networking sites that they used, their usernames and their passwords. The city of 30,000 people became the subject of online outrage.

I think it is okay to ask employees and job applicant’s for a list of the sites they use. Most HR people include an internet search as part of their background check for job applicants. Focusing on some of the social networking sites is just an evolution in the process. You should investigate your potential employees to see if they are using the proper discretion. After all, if they list you as an employer, what they post will reflect back on your company.

But I think it was improper to require submission of the password. It violates the terms of service for some of these site.  Facebook explicitly prohibits the sharing of a password in its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. If the City needed to see what the person was posting, then they could require them to be a Facebook friend or the equivalent to gain access to the person’s postings.

One caution in reviewing an applicant’s online profiles is the potential for job discrimination. I think it is better to do this review later in the hiring process, after an interview. The sites can expose information that you are not allowed to use in the hiring process, such as marital status, race and ethnicity. If you find something online that you takes the candidate out of consideration, document it in the file. Print the screen, highlight the offensive information and make it part of the applicant’s file.

If you do ask for the social media usernames, make sure you actually do monitor what is being posted by your employees. Use an RSS feedreader or equivalent to receive updates and store the information.

References:

Image by Darwinek, made available under a GNU Free Documentation License: Flag Map of Montana.

The State of Legal Social Networking

I have been a long time fan of social networking for lawyers. Capturing the conversation among colleagues is one of the best ways of capturing knowledge and finding expertise. Connecting with peers is the best way to stay up-to-date on the law. That was one of the primary reasons that bar associations formed. Can these online networking opportunities be as effective as your local bar association? Are they worth your time?

Here is my take:

lexisnexis
Martindale-Hubbell Connected
11,359 members

Currently, this appears to be the biggest social networking site focused on the legal market. So they come first in this article.

Connected is in the position of being backed by large company with significant resources and lots of substantive legal content. The site’s focus has been on creating a trusted community and validating the identity of the user. This resulted in a lengthy and error prone process for joining the site. (They just revamped the process: New Registration Workflow Launches.)

There is very little substantive legal content. The lure of this platform has been the potential of harnessing the vast Lexis database of substantive legal information to the individual. So far that potential remains untapped. The downside of having a big company behind the site is the slow speed and legacy systems that hamper the development of the site.

There are not many discussions taking place in the platform. The few discussions are focused on social networking itself. They continue that trend by devoting the week of July 20 as Social Media Policy & Guidelines Week. An interesting topic, but it will be subject to the limited audience and participants in this site. The people I would look to for guidance on this topic are not users of the platform.

If you are interested in finding out more about social media policies, the discussions next week may be interesting. But there is much more information and discussion on this topic outside the platform.

legal-onramp

Legal OnRamp
9,242 Members

Legal OnRamp is the most innovative of these sites. It has vibrant conversations with people that I consider to be thought leaders in the business of law.

Legal OnRamp started with a focus on connecting in-house counsel with each other and giving them a platform to collaborate. Then they started allowing private practice lawyers into the platform to help with the collaboration and sharing of information.

Certainly, I joined and contributed because the platform was full of in-house counsel. At the time I joined, I was a private practice real estate lawyer. I stood out as real estate lawyer when most of the other members were focused technology practices and at technology companies. That quickly changed as the membership base grew.

The site does have robust content on substantive legal topics. They require private practice lawyers to submit FAQs on legal topics or otherwise contribute to the content and discussion on the platform. Failing to contribute gets you kicked out of the platform.

I was feeding my old blog (KM Space) into the platform. Now this blog is fed into the platform. It’s interesting to see more robust conversations take place inside Legal OnRamp than on the originating blog itself.

One of the mantras of Legal OnRamp is that the practice of law is changing, so you would expect lots of discussion about how the practice of law changing and how it should change. There are. I would prefer to see more conversation about substantive legal issues. The conversations are interesting. I would just prefer some different conversations.

Legal OnRamp also recently joined forces with the Corporate Executive Board to bring new resources to law department members of the General Counsel Roundtable, a program of the Corporate Executive Board.

legally-minded
Legally Minded
2,000 members

There is very little activity other than new users adding their profiles. This platform is sponsored by the American Bar Association so there was much hope that this site would be able to tie into the big store of information that the ABA holds. So far, that does not seem to be the case. The other thought would be to move some of the email discussion list-serv to the platform. That did not seem to happen.

That leaves the platform as a wasted opportunity by a large legal organization.

lawlink
LawLink
5,000 Members

This platform claims to be the first social network for the legal community. I had not been to the site for months until the recently launched a Twitter Forum, pulling in Tweets from members. Other than this new forum, there is not much activity here. Being first does not make you the best.

LinkedIn-Logo

LinkedIn
88,284 Lawyers
291,500 Attorneys
324,168 listed as being in Legal Services.

Obviously LinkedIn is not limited to the legal community. But there are hundreds of thousands of lawyers and legal industry professionals using the platform to stay connected. For years, LinkedIn groups were merely badges to add to your profile. Now they are robust communities with lots of discussions and news being shared.

The groups rival the size of the legal specific platforms above. For example the Patent Law Group on LinkedIn has almost 4,000 members. The limitation is the inability to collaborate and store information in the group.