As global events of recent months have demonstrated, social media are transforming our world. Many industries are clamoring to exploit the profi t-making potential of tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, but the legal profession is
not one of them. Indeed, data show that lawyers have been quite measured in their embrace of social media. T ere are certainly legal settings and circumstances in which these media are inap- propriate. Nonetheless, for those who learn and master their rules of engagement, they can be a phenomenal asset. Social media is the ubiquitous term society has coined to
defi ne websites that allow multiple people to interact with each other through text, photos, videos, and audio. T ink blogs, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Flickr, Reddit, and the list goes on. Results from Corporate Counsel ’s 2010 survey on social
20 Name Nicole Black
Bio Founder of lawtechTalk
of counsel to Fiandach & Fiandach
co-author of Social Media for Lawyers: The Next Frontier
media and engagement show that only 76 of the AmLaw 100 law fi rms have a presence on Twitter, and just under half of those fi rms haven’t posted a single tweet. On Facebook, only 31 of the AmLaw 100 have Facebook
“fan pages.” And most of those have a basic placeholder page with little content. Few are posting meaningful con- tent on a consistent and regular basis. As anemic as this may sound, Nicole Black, founder of
the legal technology consulting fi rm lawtechTalk, says these numbers paint a lopsided picture. “Some lawyers have a very steady stream of clients.
T ey always have cases coming in. T ose lawyers may not necessarily need to use social media to bring in clients,” Black says.
“ People don’t want to interact with entities. They want to interact with
people.” Nicole Black, Founder of lawtechTalk
Meanwhile, she
says, some of the larger global fi rms still prefer face-to- face interaction with prospective clients, despite their enor- mous size. “People don’t want
to interact with enti- ties,” Black explains. “T ey want to interact with people.” As a former crimi-
nal attorney, Black further notes that not all social media benefi t all lawyers or practices in the same way. “For criminal defense lawyers, the vast majority of their clients are probably not using social media. T eir clients
DIVERSITY & THE BAR® MARCH/APRIL 2011
MCCA.COM
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