Like you, I get many solicitations to join bar associations and sections and attend CLE seminars. County bar, state bar, ABA – one could easily make a full-time job out of bar activities. Now I’ve learned that there is a bar association that exists almost entirely in cyberspace: the Second Life Bar Association.

Second Life, as more thoroughly described in a California Lawyer article, is a virtual world (some would call it a game) in which you create an “avatar” for yourself with a unique name and looks you design and venture forth to chat with others, play games, create and sell virtual products, and heavens knows what else.  Members are under no obligation to look or act like their real life selves; escapism and role playing seem to be a big draw for Second Life. Some people, on the other hand, just want to be themselves.

Which brings us to the lawyers, a handful of whom have decided it would be cool to form a bar association in the virtual world. (more…)

Jay Foonberg reported that, as of 2006, only 22% of blue-collar Americans and 11% of middle-class Americans use the phone book to find a lawyer. And that was two years ago.

If you don’t market online, that means you are ignoring 80-90% of your potential future clients.

And not just the younger ones. According to the AARP, 52% of americans 62-71 are online, using search engines (59%), staying in touch (59%, presumably with social networking sites as well as email and IM).

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At Sam Glover’s behest, I have been experimenting with social networking sites such as Linked In and Facebook. Both sites urge you to find your “friends” and “connections” so that you can expand your network and uncover untold riches (they really are untold).

So you dutifully go about searching for people you know, inviting them to be your friends, and then in turn look at their friends to see who you may know in common. It’s much easier to find friends by looking at other people’s lists than it is to just randomly type in names of people you know (like your buddy Jane Johnson).  If you stick with these sites for a while, you’ll periodically get waves of e-mails of people you know who have just joined and are themselves trying to expand their networks.

For lawyers, creating these on-line friendship circles raises some interesting questions about who should be your friends. For example, do lawyers want their clients to be their “friends?”

From a networking perspective, this could be a great boon to a lawyer’s practice. Become “friends” with your clients (with their permission, of course, because the client may prefer that you keep his or her identify confidential under Rule 1.6 of the Rules of Professional Conduct), and then all of the client’s friends can see who the client’s lawyer is, or provide a prospective client with yet another means of checking you out. Your social network page may even drive clients to your website through a convenient link on the social networking site.

Wait a second. Your clients are going to be your “friends?”

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Reason #1: You actually blog about what you are doing. Reading your catalog of what you are actually doing throughout your day is boring. For example:

• Just woke up. Making coffee.
• Sitting down with the morning paper.
• Leaving for work. Lots to do today!
• Sorting through the mail. Lots of bills, no checks.
• Eating a turkey sandwich from the corner deli. Yum!

Not reading that.

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Ah, Avvo – the new rating system lawyers love to hate. Lawyers instinctively do not like Avvo because it looks like they are using a secret formula that measures lawyer quality to try to make money off of hooking prospective clients up with lawyers.

But, for a moment, change Avvo to a non-profit, consumer rights and information organization, like Consumer Reports.  This non-profit’s sole mission is to help prevent consumers of legal services from being ripped off by dishonest, incompetent, inefficient, unpleasant, or greedy lawyers.  But how would one do that?

Short of some sort of court-sanctioned audit process that reviewed a lawyers briefs and transaction documents, sat in on random client meetings and negotiations, talked to the receptionist, and went to trials, it’s nearly impossible to accurately get an objective rating of a lawyer’s quality.

So how do consumers, who may only use a lawyer once or twice in their lives, pick a lawyer? Most would say get a recommendation from a friend or relative.  But of course, the friend or relative only used the lawyer once or twice themselves, and a lawyer’s good work in one case is really very little indication of whether the lawyer will do a good job in your case.

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Time seems to be one of the most-common reasons why attorneys who do not use social networks do not start. In the world of hourly billing, all time has a value, and many attorneys seem to believe that (1) networking online will take a lot of time and (2) may not be worthwhile in the end.

The second belief may or may not be true, just like having lunch with a potential client or colleague may not result in a new client or referral to the firm. The first belief is a misconception, at least partially.

Networking takes time, whether that networking takes the form of a bar association event, a happy hour with colleagues, or online social networking. Just like “regular,” offline networking, time spent networking online is up to the person doing the networking online. Networking online is “real” marketing. It should be a necessary part of your job, not just frivolous web surfing. But you do not need to spend more than 15-20 minutes a day to benefit from networking online.

So let’s take a look at three major online social networking tools—LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter—and how much time you will probably have to spend to see some benefit.

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Avvo has finally come to Minnesota. The controversial lawyer rating site has been sued, panned, and lauded. Whatever your feelings on it, Avvo is here, and soon your clients will be looking you up on Avvo and reviewing your performance.

On the plus side, Avvo lets lawyers claim their profile and add information like practice areas, contact information, publications, etc. Lawyers can also raise their profile by answering questions in the “Answers & Advice” section of Avvo.

Like it or not, people will soon be shopping around for attorneys. Best get to Avvo, claim your profile, and ask your favorite clients to review you.

So there’s this social networking, Web 2.0 site—Twitter—that a lot of people are talking about, me included. It is a great site, if you use it well. But most attorneys are as confused by Twitter as they are by more “full-featured” social networking sites like Facebook and mypractice.

Be confused no more! Jon Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing does a great job laying out the dos and don’ts of twittering (PDF link) in his guide, Twitter for Business. Check it out, register for your Twitter account, and profit!

To play, go to twitter.com/samglover and follow me. I will select one winner from everyone who adds me between now and June 30th. The tickets are two vouchers for the lower reserved section, and you can use them at any home game.

I know the Twins are not exactly hot right now, but hey, maybe they just need you in the stands.

When it comes to marketing, what Web 2.0 tools are part of your plan? Jon Gordon asked me how I would describe Twitter’s usefulness to a group of communications lawyers, and I told him I would recommend it as a way to help create an “ecosystem” around a law practice (or, sans buzzwords, to help build one’s online relationships and reputation).

Twitter is a sort of reductio ad absurdum of the blog and the social network. But the end result is not absurd, it is potentially very useful to the attorney-marketer.

Twitter is the essense of personal blogging: it provides a simple space to answer the question “what are you doing now?” and see what others are doing (or thinking, or saying), as well. While blogging and online social networking take a lot of time, Twitter does not. And since many lawyers are tempted to wax poetic, Twitter posts are nicely limited to 140 characters.

In other words, Twitter is one way to build one’s reputation 140 characters and a few seconds at a time. And keep up with colleagues, as well.

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