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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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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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!

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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(Cross-posted to solosmall, mypractice, and SoloSmallTech.)

At the Practice Management and Marketing Section meeting yesterday, Roy Ginsburg asked me about the difference between solosmall and mypractice, a listserv and an online social networking site.

The quick distinction that came to me is that a listserv is like a conference, while an online social network is more like a cocktail party.

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Every Friday for the next few weeks I will be posting interviews with solo and small firm attorneys who talked to me about their marketing strategies, online and offline, high tech and old school. Of course, I also asked about the tools they use to manage their practice. If you are interested in being interviewed, please e-mail me.

Kristi Weikel is on top of things. I am impressed. She has a small, general practice law firm, and sounds like she is running it like a business, partly due to the help she has gotten from Kelli Hoskins, a business coach.

I think a lot of solo lawyers and small firms forget that they are also a business, and the head of any business must keep it pointed in a direction–hopefully the right one. Every business needs an entrepreneur as well as someone to do the work of the business. It sounds like Weikel handles both very well.

Weikel keeps thinking about ways to improve her marketing effort, her practice, and her services.

Read on for the full interview.

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Every Friday for the next few weeks I will be posting interviews with solo and small firm attorneys who talked to me about their marketing strategies, online and offline, high tech and old school. Of course, I also asked about the tools they use to manage their practice. If you are interested in being interviewed, please e-mail me.

Karen Lundquist has built a small, international law practice focused on employment and business matters. Her firm, Lundquist & Lange, has offices in Minneapolis, Italy, Argentina, and Chile. Lundquist maintains a WordPress blog on topics of interest to her as well as the firm’s practice areas.

Lundquist & Lange has been up and running since November 2006, and in that time her firm has tried a number of different marketing strategies, from a radio show to local church bulletins to direct marketing. According to Lundquist, offline networking “is the real way to market. Personal marketing. Who do you know, what does your name mean and how are you perceived?”

Read on for highlights from the interview.

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Every Friday for the next few weeks I will be posting interviews with solo and small firm attorneys who talked to me about their marketing strategies, online and offline, high tech and old school. Of course, I also asked about the tools they use to manage their practice. If you are interested in being interviewed, please e-mail me.

The first attorney who responded was Jennifer R. Lewis Kannegieter, who started her own practice last November. She has a blog loosely focused on family law, estate planning, probate, and similar topics, and you can find her on Facebook and mypractice.

Since Kannegieter’s practice is relatively new, she is still feeling her way when it comes to marketing, trying a few different approaches and waiting to see how they work out. She views her website and blog as one of the most important parts of her early marketing plan, and focuses on raising her profile through online and offline networking through personal relationships.

Read on for highlights from the interview.

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Update: ILS Attorneys responds below; Mr. Akinwole is apparently real, and his friends are unhappy that I posted this without first visiting Nigeria and looking him up to make sure he existed before posting.

I have started to notice a few LinkedIn users recently who say they are attorneys from Nigeria or other African countries. Mr. Abayomi Akinwole, for example. I do now know whether Mr. Akinwole is real, but a search for “ILS Attorneys Nigeria”, the firm and country he purports to be from, turns up nothing but his LinkedIn profile.

So is this a clever ploy to draw in people willing to send off retainer checks, or is it evidence that the internet is finally allowing the global networking we have been hoping for?

I don’t know, but it does surprise me that someone who is “hip” enough to be on LinkedIn would not also have a website for the law firm at which he is a partner, so I am suspicious. And curious.

Adam Engst and Glenn Fleishmann weren’t getting the kind of sales they wanted, so they released their <a href=”http://wireless-starter-kit.com/free_download.html”>great starter guide on wireless networking</a> for free. It is from 2004, but at a glance, most of the information still applies. Particularly useful for attorneys will be the sections on wireless security, both on your own network and on the road.

Great freebie.