Lawyers and online networking update
The Legal Tech NY conference took place this past weekend and judging from legal bloggers it was a good one (MUST go next year!). One of the sessions was “Best Practices for Online Networking” which covered the reluctance of attorneys to do online social networking, how this type of networking benefits lawyers especially during a time of tighter budgets and time constraints, best practices on selecting a network and using them to their full advantage.
The discussion, according to Patrick DiDomenico of the blog LawyerKM (KM=knowledge management) and David Hobbie of Caselines, included some interesting, though not terribly surprising details about the legal industry and online networking. Lawyers are intimidated by online networking and do not understand the potential benefits. This was an interesting tidbit from Caselines:
“Of [non-legal] companies that have adopted it [use of social media and online networking], 2/3 see improved customer satisfaction, and 2 in 5 can associate increase in sales with adoption of social media. BUT…
Only 2% of lawyers think that social media is a valuable tool for client development.” -Bob Ambrogi
The developer of Martindale-Hubbell’s Connected spoke as well. This site will surely be the top of the line when it comes to online professional networks for attorneys, though many behind the scenes (aka Twitter) discussions challenged this and said Legal OnRamp was already doing what Martindale-Hubbell wants to do.
SO. What does the future hold for attorneys and online social media? Oh, they’ll (you’ll?) get to it, but they are clearly not early adopters. If you need help managing your contacts, contact us at The Virtual Legal Assistant
. We’ve got that covered!
Tags: david hobbie, legal onramp, legal technology, martindate-hubbell, online networking, patrick didomenico, social networking, Technology