LSVA.com

[Mark Lieb]

Do you think Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are radically different than anything we've ever seen before? They're not, but they are the most efficient tools we currently have to do what we've always done: network.

Think back to the history of the town where you live, or where you grew up. Somewhere in that town, or in a nearby town, there was a court house. Here in Ohio, typically each county had a court house situated in the city designated as the “county seat”. In the larger cities, there may also have been a federal court house. In the state capitol you had the state court house. Around and through these courts was where the business of law, as opposed to the practice, was done. Most law offices were within easy distance to the court house, and in most cases, there was at least one bar, where the various people involved in the legal industry spent their free time. If you wanted to find out the latest legal gossip, talk to the brilliant legal minds of the time, or make connections to help with your own career, you went to that bar and spent time talking to the people there.

It's called networking, and over time societal and technological changes have altered some of how we network, but at the very heart of our communication, this is what we continue to do. In the days of yore, the barriers to entry were rather high. If you wanted to forge a friendship, or connection, with a particular legal expert, you had to physically be in the same place at the same time as them. Eventually, technology improved and we were then able to use telegraph, or telephone to communicate directly with someone without having to be in the same place. That was good, but many high barriers to entry remained. You had to know where to reach each person and schedule a meeting. Calling everyone simply to say you found an interesting fact would be inefficient and ridiculous. Besides, the telephone didn't really help you meet new connections either. As the business and legal worlds progressed, we developed all sorts of ways for people to connect and sell their goods and services to one another. Networking events continued to be a huge part of any career or business development plan, but again, there's a barrier to entry. You have to have the time and resources to attend the event.

Thankfully, as the legal world discovered the Internet, some of the barriers to entry started to come down. Now, suddenly, instead of having to travel to make new connections, or try and arrange a time to connect with someone by phone, you could go to Usenet , to find and subscribe to a “list” surrounding a particular topic of interest. Years later, after companies like Yahoo! became established, they offered a whole range of communications and community building options. Eventually the community embraced email “listservs”, discussion forums and chat rooms. You could get an answer to a technical question from someone half the world away - when they had the time to log in, read the post, and respond. Obviously, these new technologies provided a lower barrier to entry, yet they created new ones. It takes some technical savvy to know about, locate and participate in the listservs and forums. Further, they tend to be topic specific. In fact, there are new social etiquettes to follow, lest one face the wrath of a thousand “reply” buttons. So, while these technologies are a wonderful way to share information and ideas about a specific subject, it's not an ideal place to form relationships.

Finally, we reach the current day. Now, it takes very little technical know-how to create a Facebook page. In fact, some of the least technically inclined people have Facebook pages and use them quite regularly to communicate with family and friends. People can use Facebook to share photos, and discuss a wide variety of interests. They also use LinkedIn to share their professional experience and expertise with the world, and Twitter to carry on short conversations in semi-real time about whatever has their attention at the moment. The barriers to entry via these communication/networking platforms are very low, and the level of efficiency is much greater. Now, everyone can reach hundreds of clients and associates with one short status message. Recipients, in turn, can easily share that bit of news with their own circles.

As we think about all of the collaborative ways we can use Web 2.0 and social networking technologies, try to consider them in terms of the history of networking. Networking has always been about building relationships, first and foremost. Web 2.0 tools are no different, and if you consider some of the traditional networking advice received over the years, it may appear that these things haven't changed at all:

1. Go where the people are: Where I live, there's a bar across the street from the court house called the Jury Room. It's been there since before the Civil War, and historically, it was simply the place that everyone in the legal industry and other city leaders went. If you wanted to connect with those people, that's where you had to go. Didn't matter if there was better food, or a cleaner dining area, elsewhere, you still went to the Jury Room. It didn't matter if you didn't like to drink. If you wanted to connect with those people, you had to go where they were. Once upon a time, if you wanted to succeed in business, you had to play golf, because that's where business was conducted. Today there are over 300 million Facebook profiles. “Lextweet”, a collection of lawyers and legal professionals on Twitter, currently lists over 5,200 members. Colleagues, consultants, experts and business professionals are networking and communicating online.
The younger generations are always the early adopters of the latest technology and the first to discard that which is obsolete. In time, they will also infiltrate, and eventually run all the law firms, corporations and governments of the world. Today, the “Jury Room” has WiFi and is a rest area for travelers on the information superhighway.

2. The personal is professional: It is amazing. Many of the same people who don't join Twitter or Facebook because they "don't care what everyone had for lunch", spend hour upon hour travelling and drinking at networking events, or golf outings, where they talk about the same trivialities. Of course, they do this to build relationships. Doing so involves getting to know as much about the other person as it does "talking business". Shared interests create bonds. These bonds make working with others more enjoyable. Would you prefer to work with someone you know nothing about outside of the office, or with someone whose kid also plays Little League? There's no comparison, and if you're following a prospect, or client, who posts to Twitter about her favorite restaurants, you'll already know where to schedule the next lunch meeting.

3. Seek first to listen: The best networkers know how to listen. The most memorable people are the ones who take the time to listen to us, and form a connection with us based on what they learn about us. The best salespeople are the ones who can listen to a prospect’s situation, and figure out how their product solves their problem. Every opportunity I have gotten through years of blogging, tweeting and “Facebooking” came about because I was either responding to someone else's concerns or calls for help, or having it offered to me. I have had speaking engagements, and offers to write articles, like this one, and I've never once stated "Bring me in to speak! I'm an expert!" Instead, I developed relationships and shared common interests with people, so that when they had an opportunity to pass along, they already knew me and what I could offer. This is one of the greatest strengths of the new social/professional networking sites and applications.

4. Don't be stupid: Any time you are interacting with the public, there are risks. Any time your company is sending people out to networking events, whether it is with clients or at technology and legal conferences, there is a risk. The representative could have too much to drink and act in an embarrassing fashion. They could run their mouth about confidential information. They could complain about the organization they work for, their boss, or their coworkers. Your firm probably has existing policies regarding these situations. However, just because management has not yet executed a “social networking policy”, don't assume that existing policies don't extend to the online world. Faux pas enjoy an even greater efficiency, permeating the online world, than those which happen at public events. If your employer does have a policy, abide by it. If you don't like it, work to change it, or look to work elsewhere. Do not get fired for actions it covers.

Do you see anything brand new in that advice? Aren't we really talking about simply extending the idea of building relationships to the online world? Of course we are. If Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, Delicious and the host of other Web 2.0 sites represent anything new, it's the ability to share our selves and knowledge, with even more people. We do have to look at these communication tools as a two-way street. Using these technologies is not like running a static, non-interactive ad that tells the world your service or product is great. The people who follow you on these sites want to hear what you are contributing to the current discussion. Creating a community of experts and peers where we learn from each other, in all areas is the true added value. In this manner, LinkedIn is quite like the Jury Room. Unlike the Jury Room, however, online networking sites accommodate unlimited people, who are ready to share as many opinions. As the major barriers to entry are gone, we must all be gatekeepers against the onslaught of information or get lost in the noise.

When I first stumbled in to Litigation Support, I searched for as much information from as many different people as I could find. It's what I did when I worked in IT, and it served me well. I looked for blogs dedicated to e-discovery, legal IT, and any other Lit Support folks who were sharing their knowledge online. I subscribed to email lists. I went to local networking groups, and e-discovery conferences not just for the educational content, but to meet folks who were in this field. On my own blog, I shared what I was learning and links to things I was reading on Delicious. I pushed the content I created on these platforms to my Twitter and Facebook accounts. I became part of the Lit Support and E-discovery communities because that's where I was going to learn the most about how to do my job better. People came to know me by my own value add.

Networking has always been an important part of the legal industry. There are peer networking groups for attorneys, paralegals, legal secretaries, legal IT, legal marketing, and so forth. Firm management has always understood how much there is to learn from peers in the industry, and encouraged their staff to be involved in these groups. Social networking sites allow us to extend those networks even further, by eliminating the issues of location, schedule or even group membership. There are large numbers of legal professionals using these services to share their expertise, and promote the expertise of others. If the networking events are worth your time, then developing online relationships are too.
Web 2.0 tools have been, and continue to be, empowering to the individual. We’ve moved away from the Web as content channel for organizations, and into an age where we are all content providers, creating our own conversations and connecting with each other as the audience. All of those people, posting all of that information, about any industry, it adds up pretty quickly. The legal and e-discovery industries are no different. There is simply no excuse not to be well informed about what’s going on in your industry.

Understand that, like any new endeavor, there are risks and a learning curve associated with using social networking tools. There are people who do not have online profiles, professional or personal, specifically to avoid potentially unforeseen pitfalls. There are others who don’t want to invest the time to learn how to take advantage of them. Those are legitimate concerns and shouldn’t be dismissed so easily. It is important to note, however, that there are plenty of people who use them quite successfully. These folks are better informed, encounter the latest ideas first, can access a wide variety of industry experts and show a willingness to continually grow in their careers.

My recommendations for you, as you start down this road are simple. As with any new area of career development, understand what you want to accomplish, and avoid, before you start. Then, identify the key people in your industry that are doing what you’d like to do, and learn from them. Most of us didn’t successfully start connecting online the first day. We have had to learn from others, develop a plan, and adjust how we use these tools as we go along. We evaluated each online relationship to determine whether it was worth an investment of time. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of people we can connect to online. Take the time to gauge your comfort level, and determine which connections are going to bring some mutual benefit. On sites like Twitter, follow along with the people you most respect and see who they talk to, and who they recommend. That will help you find new sources of good information, and help you make valuable connections. Most of all, keep your eyes open for opportunities to become part of a peer community and then contribute. That is how you become a “value add” to others, which will likely lead to return the favor, when possible. Helping one person can bring a good level of satisfaction and a potential opportunity. Helping a whole community can bring much more.

If these last bits of advice sound familiar, it might be because that’s exactly the process we all go through in professional networking, whether it takes place at the Jury Room, or on Twitter. It’s not so different. It’s also become the vetting process of the 21st century.

About The Author

Mike McBride is the Litigation Support Manager at Bricker and Eckler, LLP in Columbus, Ohio. He has been blogging at http://www.mikemcbrideonline.com/blogger.html since 2001 and can also be found on Twitter @mikemac29.

Mr. McBride has worked in the technology field for more than 10 years, first as a one-man IT shop for a small not-for-profit and eventually moving into litigation support for the past two years. He is a speaker and writer on social networking, most recently at the ILTA Annual Conference in August. McBride is currently advising his firm, and the ILTA organization, on social networking policy.

He has been sharing ideas online since 2001, and he use a wide variety of social networking tools to enhance his own professional development.