Masterclass: Controlling communication

Communicating via Web 2.0 technologies within the legal sphere can prove problematic. Frances Drummond offers insight into how firms can control social media use.

A situation vexing all providers of legal services and many in-house counsel is how to effectively and properly use social media and how to control its use. In this article, I intend to focus on how social media is used by those in the legal profession and when it is appropriate to use it.

What is social media?
It is purely and simply media designed to be disseminated through social interaction.
Social media uses internet and web-based technologies and can take many different forms including internet forums, blogs, wikis, podcasts, Twitter, Flickr, Zoomer, and so on. It is a fast-moving arena, a map of the social media landscape can be out of date as soon it is completed. Figure one provides a snapshot of the social media landscape as it looks at present.

Social media in the legal profession
The legal profession has been slow to jump on the social-media bandwagon. However, many articles and papers coming out of the US and Europe suggest that those that leave social media behind risk being marginalised against competitors who use it effectively. It is not unusual for the legal profession to be lagging behind other sectors in the technology space. Perhaps it is a safe and sensible place to be!
At a recent ‘New Media Marketing’ seminar hosted at Freehills, Julian Lee, Sydney Morning Herald’s marketing editor noted that: “the real effect of social media is felt when the marketing of your business or your organisation is taken out of your hands into the hands of your users”. He made reference to the speed at which a dissatisfied customer can broadcast their displeasure in a matter of seconds to numerous media outlets – potentially eradicating a whole marketing campaign.

Controlling the use of social media
Controlling the use of social media within organisations can be a problematic issue. On blogs, and in particular on microblogs such as Twitter, you have little control over what is posted on to your site so it is possible for a third party to post an untrue or defamatory statement. What’s more, the speed with which negative experiences of a law firm or business can be transmitted around the world poses additional risks to firms wishing to promote their business through social media platforms. There have been fake blogs entries where people write about a particular experience and dupe readers into believing that it actually happened. The US supermarket Wal-Mart’s fake blog controversy is a good example of this. In 2006, the supermarket were found to be paying Washington Post reporter, James Thresher, to run a pro-Wal-Mart blog entitled ‘Wal-Marting across America’ in which Thresher and his partner drove across the US, stayed overnight in Wal-Mart parking lots, and posted favourable photographs and interviews of Wal-Mart shoppers and employees along the way. The revelation significantly tarnished both Wal-Mart and its PR firm Edelman’s brands. There have been numerous examples of this in the public media sector and some of them have backfired quite terribly. In Walmart’s case, the PR agency was forced to make a public apology.
But perhaps most serious of all is the risk to confidentiality that social media use presents. Once an electronic message is sent it is virtually impossible to retrieve and copies of it will remain in the public domain for a long time. For law firms the risk that this reality poses to effective client relationship management is a great one.
Certainly, lawyers are known for their risk aversion – it is a trait that commonly hampers buy-in for marketing, and particularly to marketing online, within the legal sphere. This lack of buy-in comes partly from the restriction placed on law firm advertising in some countries and partly from nervousness on the part of lawyers over the apparent lack of control in the social media space. If staff at your firm are using social media platforms, it is best to adopt a policy that permits the use but with clear guidelines on what is acceptable. It is important, however, to ensure that this policy is not one that is too prescriptive with numerous rules and regulations, but that staff feel that the guidelines help them be clear about their obligations in a positive way. When communicating on behalf of a business in the social media space, the biggest risk comes about because the normal rules of etiquette and decorum do not seem to apply. It is common, for example, for employees to use SMS [short message service] or Twitter-like abbreviations when sending e-mails and indeed, often this becomes the norm in intra-firm correspondence. Sending an abbreviated message like this to a client, however, would be entirely inappropriate and stepping out of the bounds of what is acceptable as a legal adviser. It is important that staff be reminded of this. At Freehills, we have no restriction on staff using social media. However, the issues of confidentiality apply and staff need to be reminded of them on a regular basis. Staff induction training in privacy and confidentiality is vital. Care should be taken to explain carefully that SMS, Facebook, Twitter and other forms of communication must not be used to disclose firm or client business. If there is an intranet site at the firm, have a section dedicated to social media.

Benefit of proper social media use
The economic landscape of recent years has significantly impacted on the legal sphere and resulted in a much-changed marketplace where client is king and promoting your firm widely, and cheaply, is vital. Those firms that wish to succeed in this new world have had to adapt. That is not to say that all key players within the sector need to start tweeting about what they have for breakfast, but there is no doubt that using social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, to research potential clients and associates overseas can be very valuable, and profitable, activities for firms to undertake going forward. It is essential that lawyers keep abreast of the changes that are taking place in the sector and remain relevant to the new breed of lawyers joining our firms and businesses. Facebook, for example, has cemented a place in the legal environment for use in maintaining an alumni network and for certain staff events and conferences.

Rules
When using social media it is important for firms to ensure that only the most appropriate media is used when getting in touch with a client or business contact. Major corporate general counsels may not need to see the Facebook pictures of your drunken birthday party. Lawyers should also bear in mind who they are speaking to when communicating in this way – communicating with colleagues and friends is quite different to communicating with clients. Privacy, and I mean that in all senses, is essential to be maintained. Finally, professional ethics are paramount; you must not do anything in social media you would not do in normal print media.

Embracing change
Social media is here to stay. As with all technological advances it pays to become familiar and make use of the advance as soon as you can. Twenty years ago no firm would ever have imagined they would have a online presence. Are there any now that do not? Like all forms of communication with clients, social media needs to be added to the mix when appropriate. There will always be a place for traditional forms of communication but firms should not be scared of the new forms.

SOME SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS EXPLAINED

LinkedIn and Facebook
LinkedIn and Facebook are social media platforms that should be familiar to even the most sheltered media user.
LinkedIn was officially founded in 2003. It now has over 50 million members in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of its members are outside the US1.
The site enables others to recommend you and your company. Businesses and organisations can rely on that recommendation when looking for a lawyer or other business contact and lawyers across the world have joined the LinkedIn platform. For example, from a search of LinkedIn’s directory by company name there are 493 members from the US-based firm, Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP, 1138 from the UK Silver Circle firm Lovells and 500 from Australian ‘Big Six’ firm, Freehills.
Facebook was launched in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin. Today it has more than 300 million active users2.
Facebook was initially launched as a medium through which to connect with personal friends and relations. However, over time the use of the website has migrated into business. Social-networking users often see LinkedIn as solely a medium for business interaction and Facebook as being reserved for personal use. However, it would seem an increasing number of site users are recognising the return on investment that can be garnered from using online tools such as Facebook to reach potential, and cement relationships with existing clients as well as key decision makers. But those that add clients, supervisors and partners as ‘Facebook friends’ must bear in mind what personal information they are then sharing with professional contacts.
Clients and other such business contacts are increasingly open to being contacted via facebook, as a media business contact recently confirmed commenting that clients she contacted via e-mail were less likely to respond than those she contacted through Facebook. Going forward, law firms could find that being involved in Facebook ceases to be a matter of choice.

Blogs
The legal community has become very involved with weblogs (blogs). Freehills has, in fact, just launched its first blog to the public, on the December 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. The blog’s author and climate change expert, Renee Garner, is attending and will be writing about her daily experiences there at http://www.freehills.com.au/blog/ClimateChangeSummit.aspx.
Popular legal blogs can be found by visiting www.blawg.com – a website, listing over 2000 law-focused blogs, which was established by Bill Gratsch in 2002. When I logged on to this site there were 1442 active blogs and 548 posts that day alone – a good indication of the popularity of legal blogging today.

Twitter
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as ‘tweets’. These are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as ‘followers’.
All law firms should establish a Twitter account so that the name of your firm is secured for your use only. Those that fail to join up risk enabling others to set up accounts, and tweet, under their firm’s name. If a firm sets up an effective and regularly updated Twitter account then well-respected media outlets will join up to ‘follow’ their account to keep abreast of developments at that particular firm and when attempting to promote a business through Twitter attracting a high number of followers in this way is vital.

Frances Drummond is a partner at Freehills. She can be contacted at Frances.Drummond@freehills.com

References
1. http://press.linkedin.com/history