Should You Have “Friends”?

Published April 1, 2008

In February I attended the ABA Tech Show in Chicago, and I was again amazed at how law and technology have developed such a symbiotic relationship. At the show, my tech-savvy friend (in the true and traditional sense), Lisa Solomon, took several photographs and posted them on Facebook, the highly-publicized social networking site where virtual “friends” can share ideas and images with people they have never met.

Facebook gets the attention in the social networking craze, but for professionals, LinkedIn, on which you invite other business associates to be part of your contact network, seems to be a better option. On LinkedIn, if you have an interest in marketing services to banks, for example, you can look at the users linked to you and to others and readily identify any number of potential contacts. This is networking without boundaries – a “one degree of separation” interaction that may save you from having to make a cold call.

Facebook and LinkedIn are, of course, available to the world at large. But as social networking advances, there are ways to be more selective in the online “friends” you have. Tom Mighell, chair of this year’s Tech Show, provided a good example with his recent article in Law Practice Magazine. Tom wrote that the State Bar of Texas has rolled out its own social networking site for Texas Bar members only and more than 2,200 lawyers have joined it. Because members sign up using their Bar numbers, the closed network helps to minimize many of the concerns that exist with public sites like Facebook. Members have their own home pages, can add “friends” to their network, and converse and share information with them electronically.

There are other ways to do this sort of thing. Online listserv discussion groups of lawyers, like the ABA’s “Solosez” listserv for sole practitioners that has nearly 3,000 members, provide another example. Such tools are a way to ask questions, provide answers, and generally raise your profile, all among a group of “friends” who can be highly beneficial for the growth of your practice.

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Audience type: Administrators, Associates, Large Law Firms, Small Law Firms, Sole Practitioners