Tag: Martindale-Hubbell Connected

The Death of Martindale Connected

When Lexis backed a social networking platform for lawyers, I paid attention. I didn’t think a platform for lawyers would be interesting, but if it connected to some of Lexis’s massive collection of legal content it could at least be informative. That never came to the Martindale Connected platform. The platform has remained boring and uninformative.

One part of Connected’s approach was to create an authenticated community. So that the person is who they say they are. At first, that limited membership to practicing lawyers. That meant law firm marketers were excluded. Eventually, Martindale changed its mind and opened the doors to a broader membership. The additional membership did very little to energize the platform.

Now the spammers have arrived. I found this sitting in my inbox from Martindale Connected:

Dear new friend,
How are you hope fine my dear my name is Benita you can call me isatu I really like your profile in this site I would to get to know you, i want us to be friends well i will be waiting for your reply to my email ([email protected]) not in the site i will tell you more about my self and will attached my picture in my next mail thanks wait your reply
Benita  or you can call me Isatu.
(  [email protected] )

I checked my Martindale inbox and found a half dozen of spam messages like this that must have had their notifications trapped in my corporate spam filter.

I’m skeptical that Benita is a student (Judge) in Florida.

Or that Mrs Lisa Lechuga wants to give me $2,400,000 “for the good work of humanity, and also to help the motherless and less privilege and also for the assistance of the widows”.

Or that Lillian Mokan was “moved and become interested in you, I will like you to send me an email to my address ([email protected]) so that i can give you my pictures for you to know whom i am.”

I guess Martindale’s standards for validating users has either failed or they have dramatically lowered their standards. It’s one thing to be boring, it’s another to be annoying.

I was replicating my posts in Connected, but now I have decided to stop.  No reason to pile more dirt in the graveyard.

Related:

Martindale-Hubbell Connected Redesign

Lexis-Nexis gave a sneak peak of some upcoming changes to their Martindale- Hubbell Connected social network site for lawyers.

They cleaned up the user interface, with new colors, improved navigation and improved searching.

The current Connected site has been a disappointment. I have a lot of hope for the site because it has the financial backing of Lexis-Nexis and the ginormous content repository of Lexis-Nexis.

They are trying to better combine the public lawyer directory from Martindale.com to the Connected social network. That means they are also redesigning Martindale.com

One surprise was the inclusion of third party advertising. There was an ad for the  Cadillc SRX prominently on the page during part of the demonstration. (I wonder what Paul Lippe would think about placing advertisements in Legal OnRamp.)

They are also creating a subscription model so that you need to pay for access to the full features of the site. It sounds like you get full access to Connected if you have a subscription to Martindale. They were dodgy on the details during the demo. You need to be a premium member to create a group and to send messages to people that you are not “connected” to.

The site will try to push content to you based on you interests. Supposedly the more complete your profile, the better focused the information that will be pushed to you.

They added a “Diversity Information” section, sponsored by the Minority Corporate Counsel Association.  (Unfortunately, there is not much there for a white guy like me.)

The Martindale Peer Review gets a prominent display and lots of detail on how the rating was compiled. That may resuscitate lawyers’ interest in paying for that AV or BV rating.

They are continuing the emphasis on groups within the community. They went a step further and allowed for subgroups within groups. Personally, I think the use of groups is over-emphasized, merely leading to fragmented content. Groups are great for focusing an filtering information. You only need to filter when there is a big flow of information. Connected has too little information flowing to need many filters. LinkedIn had groups for a long time that merely acted as profile badges. Even now that LinkedIn groups can have substantive discussions, most are filled with self-promotion and spam.

They are also changing the privacy, allowing non-members to see the content in public groups and allowing Google to index the public groups. (I’m not sure there is much content to index.)

The redesign is scheduled to be deployed on June 2.

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:

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.

Martindale-Hubbell’s Counsel to Counsel Forum

lexisnexis

The folks over at Martindale-Hubbell were nice enough to invite me to their latest Counsel to Counsel Forum in Washington D.C. The forum operates under the rule that “what is said in the room stays in the room” so I will not share any details, but there were a few themes that I think I can share.

The intent of Martindale-Hubbell Counsel to Counsel Forums is to bring together senior corporate counsel and a few law firm partners to share best practices in the management of corporate legal departments, provide an opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue about key issues, and to network in a relaxed atmosphere. I think it accomplished those goals.

The two day forum kicked off with panel discussing challenges to building legal teams and ways to better manage in-house/law firm teams. That lead to a break out session that continued some of the discussions. It became clear that big law firms may not understand the pressures that many in-house legal departments are experiencing. Several attendees noted that their budgets had been dramatically slashed. Any law firm sending out a rate increase notice is going to risk getting fired on the spot.

The second day kicked off on a (high?) note with my panel on Technology, Tools & Knowledge Management for High-Performance Legal Teams 2.0. I was joined by Jeff Brandt and Eugene Weitz. I implored the audience to think beyond email. I think one of the ways to build a better legal team is to build better ways to communicate. My earlier post on Extranets for Law Firm and Client Collaboration – Moving Beyond Email embodied most of my points. As Jessica Lipnack taught me, I tried to get around the room and have everyone introduce themselves and bring up an example. We didn’t get very far in the introductions because the discussion really kicked off. One attendee shared a success story with SharePoint. I shared my love/hate relationship with SharePoint.

We moved on to another session about teams, the characteristics of good teams, the characteristics of bad teams, and some ways to covert your team from bad to good.

Of course there were many interjections about Martindale-Hubbell Connected. Thankfully, they were more like product placements than sales pitches. Of course the Forum was on their dime so Martindale had every right to pitch their product. I skipped one session to speak with some of the folks behind Connected. They seem committed to developing the community and continuing to improve it. My take is that they are struggling with how to deal with Web 2.0 and online communities, just like most companies are struggling with it. But they do see the challenges and the opportunities. They are listening to the criticism, learning, and incorporating suggestions into the development of the platform.

I ended the day by chairing the breakout session on compliance, risk, and governance. The attendees in the session were very diverse with very different needs and different concerns. There were several common themes and concerns. Susan Slisz of LexisNexis did a great job helping the organize the discussion. I think everyone in the session had something they could bring back to their company.

If you have the opportunity to attend a Martindale-Hubbell Counsel to Counsel Forum you should go. It will be well worth your time.

Martindale- Hubbell Connected Opens Its Barn Door

Martindale-Hubbell Connected: Professional Networking Site for Lawyers

LexisNexis has opened the doors to Martindale-Hubbell Connected, their professional networking site for lawyers. The site has been in beta for many months and still has the beta label. If you are a lawyer you can now register and join the online community: http://www.martindale.com/connected. If you are not a lawyer, you are not invited yet.

I manage to sneak into the site several months ago and finally posted Martindale-Hubbell Connected – My Thoughts last weekend. Several other commenters have offered some harsh opinions about the site for locking them out or for the problems with registration process.

Connected has been a lonely place while I have been a member. Perhaps that will change now that they are opening the community to a larger audience.

The lure of Connected is the idea of combining an online networking community, the Martindale-Hubbell lawyer listings, and the enormous pool of data in the Lexis databases. Theoretically, your lawyer listing, articles, cases, news, and people connections would be all linked together in one place. None of that seems to be in place yet on the launch.

One problem is that Connected is targeting the majority of lawyers instead of a crowd of early adopters. They want to be the largest online community. That is a different strategy than Legal OnRamp, another professional networking site for lawyers. Legal OnRamp is focusing on people who will contribute to that community. There is a barrier to entry and you may get kicked out if you don’t contribute.

Are online communities so mainstream that you can get lots of lawyers onboard and can skip targeting early adopters? I am skeptical. I predict that there will be many lawyers who register (or try to register), see the lack of content, and never come back. Early adopters will  see that Connected is merely a mediocre social network platform lacking many of the robust features of Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.

Or maybe I am wrong. Register for Connected and try it out for yourself. Then come back here and leave a comment, letting us know what you thought.

See also:

Martindale-Hubbell Connected – My Thoughts

mh_connected_banner

I have been a member of the Martindale-Hubbell Connected community for several months. I met John Lipsey, Vice President, Corporate Counsel Services for LexisNexis in September at a speaking engagement on Social Networking for Lawyers. John told the story of why Connected would be a great resource for lawyers.

The lure of Connected is the idea of combining an online networking community, the Martindale-Hubbell lawyer listings, and the enormous pool of data in the Lexis databases. Theoretically, your lawyer listing,  articles, cases, news, and people connections would be all linked together in one place. As with blogging, you could show your expertise through the stuff you write, the cases you work on, the transactions you work on and the news about you. Then you tie that all information to a central profile and connect with the people you know.

That’s a great story. They even put together this snazzy video to prove it:

But so far it is just a story.

The site is merely a social network site with a connection to Martindale-Hubbell  listings. So far there is no connection to the substantive Lexis content. Even the social networking tools are mediocre.

I was told that there are some major upgrades and changes coming soon as they plan to open Connected to a wider audience at the end of March.

To be fair, Connected is not a disaster like the ABA’s LegallyMinded. But, Connected does not have the interesting community of users and content like Legal OnRamp, a similar platform. Connected does not have the large population of users like LinkedIn and Facebook. Connected also lacks many of the rich features of LinkedIn and Facebook.

Part of Connected’s approach is create an authenticated community. So that the person is who they say they are. An interesting approach, but to me it seems like a lot of work for little value. (Perhaps they are scarred by the squatters holding LexisNexis in Twitter.) The authentication seems designed around the Martindale listing. So to start you need to be a lawyer to get. Apparently they are going to open Connected to the larger legal community sometime this summer (according to Kathleen Delaney in the comment to this post).

Frankly, I am not sold on having a gated community for a broad legal community. What would I publish or say in Connected that I would not otherwise say on this blog, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn? I am an early adopter, so maybe the general legal population would be more likely to contribute in Connected than on one of the public platforms? I am skeptical.

I have not written about Connected because there is not much to write about. It is sparsely populated and lacks content. I am one of the few non-Lexis people doing much with it. (As a curmudgeon, I mostly complain about the lack of features and the stuff that does not work.) They do replicate Compliance Building in Connected (a brilliant decision), but they have had trouble tying the posts to my Connected profile.

Lexis slapped the “beta” label on Connected because they are still working on it. Either they have a lot of work to do, or the site is intended to be mediocre.

See:

UPDATE: I corrected the spelling to “Hubbell.”

New Social Networks for Lawyers

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.

Originally posted on KM Space.

Social Networking for Lawyers and Legal IT

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.

Social Networking

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: social km)

(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.

Originally posted on my old blog, KM Space.

Social Networking for Lawyers

I am in New York City today participating in a panel on Social Networking for Lawyers sponsored by New York Legal Marketing Marketing Association. I will be joining Robert Ambrogi of Legal Line, David Johnson a member of the advisory board of Legal OnRamp and John Lipsey of Martindale Hubbell.

The LMA put together this reading list for further reading:


Social Networking Articles

“Social Networks Get Down to Business”
eMarketer Daily Newsletter, August 18, 2008
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006482

“LinkedIn: A Competitive Intelligence Tool”
By Shannon Sankstone, Marketing the Law Firm Newsletter, August 14, 2008
http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1202423760902

“The Social Network as a Career Safety Net”
By Sarah Jane Tribble, The New York Times, August 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/technology/personaltech/14basics.html?ref=personaltech

“Social Networking: For Lawyers Only?”
By Robert J. Ambrogi, Law Technology News, August 8, 2008
http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1202423612473

“Social Networking May Pay off in the End “
By Robert Ambrogi, Law Technology News, June 9, 2008
http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1202422007910

“Exclusive First Look at Martindale Hubbell Connected “
By Robert Ambrogi, Legalline, July 31, 2008
http://www.legaline.com/2008/07/exclusive-first-look-martindale-hubbell.html

“LinkedIn to My Facebook on My Blog – Social Media for Lawyers and Law Firm Staff”
By Jenn Steele and Doug Cornelius
Published in ILTA’s March, 2008 white paper titled, Marketing Technologies – Putting Your Best Face Forward
http://www.dougcornelius.com/pro/publications/linkedin_to_facebook_on_my_blog.pdf
http://www.jdsupra.com/post/documentViewer.aspx?fid=05cdf159-64b1-4a35-9d2b-bec72defe67d
or
http://www.iltanet.org/communications/pub_detail.aspx?nvID=000000011205&h4ID=000001184605

Social Networking Surveys & White Papers

Humans Seek Connections: The Case for Online Social Networking
LMA Resource Committee, with Jayne Navarre
http://www.legalmarketing.org/about-lma/products-and-services/white-papers/newssocialnetwork

Networks for Counsel Study: Online Networking in the Legal Community
Independent research, sponsored by LexisNexis
http://www.leadernetworks.com/networks_study_form.shtml

Social Media in the Inc. 500: The First Longitudinal Study
The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research
http://www.umassd.edu/cmr/studiesresearch/blogstudy5.cfm

Social Networking Sites

LinkedIn www.linkedin.com
Facebook www.facebook.com
Legal OnRamp www.legalonramp.com
Twitter www.twitter.com

Originally posted on my old KM Space blog.