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#LawTechCampLondon 2012 : where law confronted innovation
[This blogpost gives accounts as if the own words of the speakers involved. The author does not take responsibility for the accuracy of information contained therein.]
There is absolutely no doubt that yesterday’s unique event #LawTechCampLondon 2012, at Centrepoint here in London, was an incredible success. lawTechCamp was an open BarCamp-style community UnConference for new media and technology enthusiasts and legal professionals including bloggers, twitters, legal-technology lawyers, social networkers, and those curious about new media and the law. Anyone with an interest in technology, law, and innovation–especially in the wake of UK deregulation–will want to attend. lawTechCamp was not just designed for lawyers; anyone who wished to Camp was accommodated in the end. It was also for students and the public, and indeed quite a few law students did attend. For example, students from the Michigan State Law – Westminster Law 21st Century Law Practice Summer Program were also in attendance.
You can read tweets from the #LawTechCampLondon stream here. These tweets also scrolled live on large screens at the front of the lecture theatre.
Main speakers
Ajaz Ahmed, Founder – Legal365
Ajaz argued that customers do not like lawyers. They don’t like the high prices, the lack of transparency, the location of the offices, the inconvenient opening hours, the poor service, amongst other issues. The implementation of the Legal Services Act is going to see welcome disruption.
It is now six months old. There have been hundreds of applications for ABSs, from sole practitioners. Sole practitioners have applied because they wish to share ownership with their spouses to save tax. There has been a complete lack of innovation apart from Riverview, but there has been a rebranding exercise with a concomitant denial of what customers want. Everyone knows what the problem is, but nobody has the guts to tackle it.
Seven Ideas, Six Minutes Each (Pecha Kucha Style)
Ron Gruner, Chairman @ Sky Analytics, The Legal Client: Trials, Tribulations, and Future Expectation, @RonGruner
What about the impact of private equity? Private equity has only been interested in personal injury market, which comprises existing businesses which they can ‘touch and feel’. They need to understand that the business plan contains unproven assumptions, but that the business plan does not survive the first meeting with the customer. There is no accident therefore that there is no UK internet company doing well; innovation will come from outside of the industry. Customers are loyal right up to the second that somebody offers a better deal. As Clinton Cards or HMV have proved, you pay the price if you do not respond to the market.
Entrepreneurs have to ask, ‘if I were the customer, what would I want?’ You have to put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Market research is for insecure middle managers who have to justify their decisions. Henry Ford once said, ‘If I asked customers what they wanted, they’d want a faster horse-and-cart’. Nobody has delivered anything disruptive yet – the winners will be those who deliver law to the masses in a truly affordable manner, and they will be the winners.
Kevin Doolan, Partner @ Eversheds
Business law. It is great to see innovation. ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill a lll the lawyers’ (William Shakespeare). There has been an anti-lawyer. There has been an anticipatory schadenfreude; there is a feeling that lawyers have had it too good for too long. The propositions are that technology will replace lawyers; legal process outsourcing is the future; and the recession/alternative business structures will finish off. Sometimes you will need a bit of a shake. There is a piece of research saying that as there is increased certainty it is more likely that people will pay for completely incorrect predictions. It is difficult to be more uncertain. Clients wish lawyers to be ‘enabled’ not replaced – there is a phenomenon called ‘disaggregation’. In the relationship space, disruption innovation is training for compliance, for example FCPA/bribery (training online). The interesting thing is that many of us have more effective technology here than in the office. There is a lot of routine work being done by lawyers, but there are some great things in automation. If it can be done and systematised and done by a LPO, why can’t the lawyer be the LPO? In relationship work, the notion that ‘I will tell you how much this costs at the very end’ simply does not work. These have been tough times, but it has been a shock to realise that we have been in a very kind environment. Training places up 11% in the UK.
Stephen Mayson, Professor of Strategy & Director, Legal Services Institute @ The College of Law
What is happening here and what does it mean? It is an exciting time to be in the market, but it does beg a fundamental question: what are lawyers for? A lot of debate about the commercialisation has begun a discussion about how lawyers should behave like businesses. This is not the whole story, and the explanation can be found in s.1 Legal Services Act, “to protect and promote the public interest”. We do have to protect and promote the fabric of society, the rule of law, the effective administration of justice, and the legitimate participation of citizens within society. There might also be another function – improved access to justice. In fulfilling that role, they are not just another purveyor of providing legal services. We want to see an independent and strong legal profession (not ‘provider of legal services’), so parliament recognises the principle of ‘being professional’, and adhering to professional principles (to act in the best interest of the clients, and the other key principles.) Not enough citizens understand their legal rights but not their legal duties. Unless we get this right, we will not be able to fulfil our functions. This is what makes law different – however we have to protect consumer interest, and to promote competition. The consumer interest is not the same thing as public interest, and in fact the consumer interest should be subordinate to the public interest. The consumer have a right to quality, effectiveness, and value-for-money. It is a question about profession and business. What does this mean for new services? What will be driven by reform, technology, and social media – it is summarised as ‘a world of difference’, but doing things differently – new methods, new processes, new types of people. It also means doing different things, doing things online, doing things with different people (there is a latent market which is currently untapped). There is a much bigger market than the one which has been described. The other issue is to stop doing things we’ve done before because we’re not good at them, or not profitable. This new world gives us permission to innovate the business model, and this is necessary for survival. Look at the MPs, politicians – we need to keep our integrity. We need to focus and sharpen in business terms. There are seven guiding principles: strategise the difference and not the similarity (have that discipline which makes you stand out), resource for efficiency not lawyering (not unbundling but rebuilding), cost for value not time (if there happens to be a correlation it might be accidental), a model cannot be built on turnover, govern for ethical integrity, strategic integrity and integrity in accommodation of risk, reward for contributions rather than just turning up, and, finally, training the people who will be active in the market in the future, rather than the market of the past.
Geoff Wild, Director of Governance & Law @ Kent County Council
What is a public sector doing at a conference on law and technology? Law has an ability to influence, and the rule of law and governance are powerful things, especially for people who do not have them. For us, we take them for granted, and deride them for being unresponsive. The principles are not wrong, but the processes inhibit change and innovation. Karl Marx once said, ‘All that is solid melts into air’. Nothing lasts forever, old ways go, new ways come. Why is it that people in the public sector find that concept so difficult to grasp? Some people tend to be white, middle class, with an average age of 68; what place is there for them in innovation? You cannot forget that there are people light years behind you. It is important to raise the profile of the legal profession. An ‘in-house private practice’ is based on great staff, happy clients, optimum efficiency, and financial freedom. This is evolution, bringing real money, bringing money for Kent Council, but we need to delawyerise and get lawyers off non-law work. We are still tied down by the old business model. We are now on point 3 of the ‘S curve’, but we are looking to reinvent our business, and there is every prospect of doing this. However, this is only possible through developing and maintaining value-adding relationships, through the creation of ‘Law Public’, a combination of public sector ethos with private sector skills including marketing producing an unique offering. There is, further, a possibility to produce a ‘legal hub model’, and we aim to be that provider. “The species that survive are those most adaptable to change”. Charles Darwin. We can adapt and implement change, and have fun in the process.
Seven Ideas, Six Minutes Each (Pecha Kucha Style)
(1) Ron Gruner, Chairman @ Sky Analytics, The Legal Client: Trials, Tribulations, and Future Expectation, @RonGruner
Pick good metrics, put processes in place to get to those metrics. How much time does an attorney work overtime? If you’re spending too much money for example on conferences, you can drill down on that. Or you can step back and look at the book picture. However, you must not forget about value – many attorneys measure that you cannot measure the benefit or value; but we tend to disagree. Billing data, public sources, client satisfaction provide important sources of data. Change is coming, change is good – are you going to innovate or procrastinate?
(2) Mark Smith, Director of In-House Legal Markets @ Lexis-Nexis, Skinny Law Before Robot Law
You need to understand where the inconsistencies lie in ‘best practice’ of the way in which law works. Some lawyers will protest against this, and indeed specialist lawyers might argue that their work is too specialised. The way to get to the heart of this is to do ‘disaggregation’ to look at the underlying processes. No lawyer can afford to ignore a process that decreases cost, improves quality, and increases speed. What is more important to a lawyer – is it quality or risk? This gives you a feel for the risk. The way to understand this is through ‘process mapping’ which is not difficult – once you understand how the work is done, you need to collect data (who does the work? where do the errors come from? how long does it take? what really happens?) This will give you the ‘as is’ process, and this will give you an idea of where the magic is in future. This is a really good time to ask the questions about technology – can it reduce errors? facilitate retrieval? where are the errors coming from? Looking at legal process is not scary – think ‘skinny law’ before ‘robot law’.
(3) Michael Bossone, Founder of LawWithoutWalls, @lawwithoutwalls
What are we precisely afraid of? We are satisfied about being dinosaurs in a digital age? Technologies exist go into transforming what we do as lawyers. What we do we can do better, and this can provide a profound impact. We do things as they’ve always been done. Trying new technology is not easy – be prepared to be stupid, but this is a time for boldness. Push to the cloud – “what if we lose our data?”, we prefer our leather briefcase built on conservatism. “The cloud is not safe enough, trustworthy enough” – instead push for Skype, FaceTime, buy a webcam (it costs less than a Espresso). Time to ask your grand-daughter! Push for greater efficiency, new models, new structures, a new mindset, push for ‘law without laws’, law schools are “the broken amongst the broken”. “We come not to bring peace, we bring a sword”. “Ready to be able to fail, fail, fail, fail, and then succeed.”
(4) James Peters, Vice President of Legal, Attorney Services @ Legal Zoom, Nice Model, Now Leave: Potential Impact of Choice of Law in an ABS World
Change is happening all around. Germany are voicing their concerns in the IMF – but the ability of US firms to capitalise on what is happening here is a very big question mark. The US market is worth £270 billion. The state of the internet in 1994 was, “what is the internet? We’ve got law firms suing judges, and ethics opinions are changing. If you are practising in New York, you cannot partner with an ABS in the UK. The principle causes confusion. The question now is one of ‘principle practice’. If you are most practising in a New York jurisdiction, you’re OK. ‘North Carolina is to law firms what Delaware is for corporations’. There’s impact on domestic work, but don’t forget that law is an export state. This confusion has possible results, and there is a question of presence. Do you have to be licensed if you are practising mainly in other states?
(5) Joe Kelly, Consultant @ Tribune Company & Student MSU College of Law, Armchair Lawyering
The Tribune company ignored technology and innovation, causing issues. When newspapers said no, law should said yes. Law is heading right towards an iceberg. Why haven’t people tacked this? ‘Armchair lawyering’ is the first part of this system – such as through a company such as LegalZoom, which is very popular. Issue QR codes which are directly connected to legal forms – a lot of work done can be done without any time. The second step is ‘armchair interfacing’ – possibly through video chat or through textual chat. This is a great interface. Transcribing and logging can make things easier – so that the client and lawyer have details of what has happened – and it’s possible to look at this collection of data at any time.You can use this to predict data, and you can plan ahead road maps to everywhere. It’s a great venue for implementing change. However, you must consider law-client conflicts in this process. ‘With an innovative system, you can provide life rafts and steer the boat the other way.’
(6) Paul Maharg, Professor @ University of Northumbria Law, Regulation and LegalEdTech
Legal education is dull, lacks focus, is institution-focused, is an info-push, lack of social networking nous, and, finally, there is little linkage. Why regulate? This is surely an area where there is no need for regulation. Technology is critical for educational context. Looking at the history, we have a ‘gloss text’ using graphics, text layout, use of colour, etc. You could take this text as a form of aggregation, as a genealogy of knowledge. Technology can enable innovation, but it doesn’t always. There are a number of reasons why that is so. There should be communities of practice, thinking about ethics, collaborating, more. We should be seizing technology for transactional learning. We should be using the theory in adult education (e.g. CHAT and Engelstrom), producing tools for how one might use technology for simulations. A critical point is thinking how should we regulate? How not to do it is shown by ABA around the debates in s.301 ABA – the key word here is ‘delivery’. We should think about what we want – and this is a key issue for institutional open-ended resources, disciplinary OEM (e.g. ‘Humbox’). We can take ideas from other fields on shared spaces. A regulator should be a quality-enhancer not quality assessor.
7) Renee Newman Knake, Co-Founder, ReInvent Law, Assoc. Professor MSU College of Law,Technology and Untapped Markets in Law, @reneeknake
The unmet need for legal services is overwhelming – custody, wills. The ‘Rule of Law Index’ was published in 2011. The US was 11/12, and the UK did slightly better. Larry Lessig, at Harvard, said, ‘The law does not work for real people”. As an educator, we see amazing practice-ready graduates. The real problem is something very different – specialised work, mass production, reproducing, advertising and selling (after Karl N Llewyllin 1938). This is a delivery challenge [Renee Knake (Democratisation of legal services)]. We have seen this with online change with electronic documentation, making the law more accessible in physical places (you can see ‘The Lawyer’ thanks to Quality Solicitors in WHSmiths). There are new ways of connecting lawyers to pro bono work, but it is pointless if you do not have a customer or client who comes again-and-again to avail himself or herself of these new services. There are amazing things we can do with cloud computing (document automaton, virtual law, social media etc.), but are you innovating? Are you the Kodak or the Instagram of Legal Services? It’s the same product, but the difference is delivery. Kodak has not created a culture for the type of innovation. Michigan State University calls for an innovative lab culture.
Prof Susskind gave the keynote address.
Richard resumed his theme of ‘The End of Lawyers’ (see on his website here):
| First published in November 2008, at a time of grave economic uncertainty, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services predicts significant new pressures on the legal marketplace and, in turn, great change in the world of legal services. This book is the long awaited sequel to the Richard’s legal bestseller of 1996, The Future of Law. In that earlier work, he claimed that the law would be transformed by IT. The book generated enormous interest and influenced public policy-makers and top managers in law firms around the globe. Many of its predictions have already come to pass. In The End of Lawyers?, Richard sets a new challenge for all lawyers. He urges them to ask themselves what elements of their current workload could be undertaken more quickly, more cheaply, more efficiently, or to a higher quality using different and new methods of working. He argues that the market is unlikely to tolerate expensive lawyers for tasks that can be better discharged with support of modern systems and techniques. He claims that the legal profession will be driven by two forces in the coming decade: by a market pull towards the commoditisation of legal services, and by the pervasive development and uptake of new and disruptive legal technologies. The threat here for lawyers is clear – their jobs may well be eroded or even displaced. At the same time, for entrepreneurial lawyers, Susskind foresees quite different law jobs emerging which may be highly rewarding, even if very different from those of today. |
Guest post by Ibrahim Hasan – The draft "Communications Data Bill", opportunities and challenges
The draft Communications Data Bill was published this week. The Bill provides an updated framework for ensuring the availability of communications data and its obtaining by public authorities. It replaces Part 1 Chapter 2 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (“RIPA”) and Part 11 of the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 (ACTSA) and sits alongside the Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009.
If passed in its current form, the Bill will enact proposals, announced in the Queen’s Speech in May, which will require Internet firms to give Police, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, the Intelligence Agencies and HM Revenue and Customs access to a wider range of communications data on demand, in real time. However it will not allow them to access the content of such communications without a warrant. The Home Office says that the Bill is “needed” to ensure that communications data continues to be available to the police and others in the future as it has in the past. Without action they say that there is a growing risk that crimes enabled by email and the internet will go undetected and unpunished. However various civil liberties groups, as well as Internet Service Providers have voiced concerns about the Bill from a privacy and technical perspective.
The Current Law
Part 1 Chapter 2 of RIPA (sections 21-25) sets out who can access what type of communications data and for what purposes. This includes the police and security services as well as councils, government departments and various quangos. The legislation as it stands restricts access to the different types of communications data depending on the nature of the body requesting it and the reason for doing so.
The definition of “communications data” includes information relating to the use of a communications service (e.g telephone, internet and postal service) but does not include the contents of the communication itself. Such data is broadly split into three categories: “traffic data” i.e. where a communication was made from, to whom and when; “service data” i.e. the use made of the service by any person e.g. itemised telephone records; “subscriber data” i.e. any other information that is held or obtained by an operator on a person they provide a service to.
Some public bodies already get access to all types of communications data e.g. police, security service, ambulance service, customs and excise. Local authorities are restricted to subscriber and service use data and even then only where it is required for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime or preventing disorder.
At present access to communications data is done on a system of self authorisation. There are forms to fill (signed by a senior officer) out and tests of necessity and proportionality to satisfy. Notices have to be served on the service provider requesting the data.
More information
At present, the Internet service providers are obliged to keep details of users’ web access, email and internet phone calls for 12 months, under the EU Data Retention Directive 2009. While they keep a limited amount of other data already on their own subscribers for billing and other commercial purposes, the new law will require them to store a much bigger volume of third party data such as that from Google Mail, Twitter, Skype and Facebook that crosses their servers every day.
Access in real time
It is unclear as to how the new proposals will be different from the current system. There is talk of the police and intelligence services being able to access data in real time. The current system normally gives access to historic data. It does allow real time access to certain organisations (including the police and security services) but only in an emergency to save life or limb or in exceptionally urgent operations. The authorisation forms still have to be completed and signed and served later on though. Maybe they are suggesting that the security services get carte blanche direct access into communications service providers’ systems. This would be unprecedented and certainly “Orwellian”, to say the least. The potential for abuse would be massive.
This is not the first time that this idea has been floated. In October 2010, the Government announced its intention to introduce the Interception Modernisation Programme, at a cost of £2billion. This latest announcement seems to be the same project but renamed “the Communications Capabilities Development Programme (CCDP)”. Details of the scheme will be published within weeks and will build on Labour’s abandoned proposal (which was heavily criticised by the Coalition partners at the time) to require communications service providers (CSPs) to collect and store the traffic details of all internet and mobile phone use, initially in a central database
Modernising the law
The Home Office Minister says they are updating the law “in terms of social media and new devices” – it is widely expected to include things like Facebook and phone calls via web-based systems such as Skype. If this means the agencies knowing when an individual visits these sites this is already allowed under the current regime known as traffic data (web browsing information). If the new system goes further and allows agencies to look at actual webpages visited within a domain (e.g Facebook) and calls made (e.g from Skype) this would be a big extension of existing powers and much more intrusive. It gives the possibility of building up a picture of someone’s lifestyle, their movements, contacts, interests etc.; potentially vast a amount of information which, if it gets into the wrong hands, can be quite damaging to individuals.
Safeguards
At present, the checks and balances are very weak (self authorisation followed by a notice to the CSP). The proposals, which talk of access in “real time” and “on demand”, require much stronger checks and balances.
If it is really necessary for GCHQ to have access to such a vast amount of information, it should be subject to judicial approval. This could be a similar system to the one which councils will be subject to as a result of the changes to the RIPA regime to be made by Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. In the future any local authority request for communications data (however minor) will have to be approved by a Magistrate. (See my earlier Blog Post for more detail about the Bill.) After all, the powers that the police and intelligence agencies have under RIPA to undertake surveillance and acquire communications data are much wider than those of local authorities.
There are also legitimate concerns about what would happen if the information held and accessed on individuals gets into the wrong hands. Can we really trust the law enforcement agencies not to mishandle such data? Only recently allegations have surfaced that that the police have been misusing their powers under RIPA to assist the tabloids to locate the whereabouts of celebrities and other persons of interest.
The effect on local authorities
The Bill will have a minimal effect on local authorities when accessing communications data. The process and procedure will remain the same (subject Magistrates approval as set out in the Protection of Freedoms Act (discussed above)). There is no provision to widen the scope of the information available to councils. The Home Office will have to issue a new code of practice and standard forms which Investigating Officers and their legal advisers will have to familiarize themselves with. This comes on top of other recently announced changes to the local authority surveillance powers.
The Bill will be subject to scrutiny by a joint parliamentary committee before the effort to bring the measures through Parliament and into law begins in earnest. Given what the Lib Dems and some Conservative backbenchers have said about it, it is likely to have a rough passage through Parliament.
Ibrahim Hasan is a solicitor and director of “Act Now Training” (website here). You can follow Ibrahim on Twitter here.
Article (c) Ibrahim Hasan 2012 (not LegalAware)
Two novel social media innovations by law firms creating social value: the cases of Eversheds (@legaltrainee) and Inksters
Law firms are increasingly embracing innovation as a source of competitive advantage within the UK. Innovation allows an unique strategic marketing niche for law firms within a highly competitive marketplace, and offers law firms a means to improve on market share and market growth. In management of these firms, especially in the contemporary landscape of alternative business structures, such flexibility and adaptability can mean that firms such as Eversheds and Inksters flourish, whereas older, bigger incumbent firms struggle.
Fundamental to the definition of an innovation is an idea or product which is easily understandable; that then ‘diffuses’ across to ‘adopters’ within a wider ‘network’, who can then decide to make or break an idea. Google+ is an idea but its ultimate survival depends on whether the general public take to it, in the way that they have taken to Facebook; indeed, Facebook announced its IPO today. The network no longer consists of employees, including trainees, within the firm; it is much wider, critically involving now the general public, other clients, potential clients, and even potential trainees. In this post, I describe two innovative uses of the social media by two law firms: @Inksters and the trainee account of @Eversheds, called @LegalTrainee, both involving Twitter. Inherent in the innovations is full participation by the intended audience in determining the success of the innovation; this is reflected indeed in the tagline of ‘Legal Trainee’, “this is not just a brochure, this is conversation” (as depicted here).
Inksters decided to send out Christmas hats through the post in a campaign which is still going strong, and @LegalTrainee decided to offer a competition whereby a law student who had put ‘@LegalTrainee’ into his or her profile could win coffee with a partner of Eversheds. Both were relatively simple ideas, but were remarkably successful. I put various questions to Brian Inkster of @Inksters and Ismat Abidi, a trainee solicitor of Eversheds @LegalTrainee, earlier this week. As explained here, @LegalTrainee is not simply a Twitter account, but is how Eversheds has embraced the social media in a number of different platforms.
Both are great examples of how an organic social media marketing campaign should be conducted. Indeed, for a wider discussion of the social media issues, a brilliant short book has been written by Guy Clapperton called ‘This is Social Media: Turning Social Media into Sales’ (this book, newly published by Capstone, is available in Kindle and iBook formats too, and available from here). This updated book is especially great for practical tips throughout the text, including “action point” boxes, with a variety of topics covered such as content, tone, business analytics, platforms for innnovation, and returns-on-investment. Guy discusses in his book the critical issue of participant behaviour; implicit in his argument is the convergence of the culture and mindset of the two parties, and fundamentally increasing brand awareness. This is certainly no mean feat, as it is all about the ultimate holy grail of marketing – discovering new members of the target audience.
Brian Inkster (Inksters)
1. What is the concept behind the ‘Inksters hats’ campaign?
Inksters rebranded in December 2011. The new brand reflects Inksters’ place in the legal market as forward thinking lawyers and incorporates an arrow device. This points to Inksters’ care for detail, progressive approach and the fact that we direct clients and lead the way.
2. Where did the idea come from?
As part of the rebranding exercise we asked our designers, O Street, to design a Christmas Card to launch the rebrand. They came up with the idea of a Christmas Hat as the cut out in the Christmas Crown reflects the arrow device in our new logo. Indeed, as with the hat, on our new notepaper and business cards the arrow is actually cut out of the paper/card rather than being printed on it.
3. Why has the campaign been such a success?
Social media has really made it a success. We printed on the hats an e-mail address to send photos to but the vast majority of the photos received have been tweeted to us. Tumblr was an excellent blogging platform to post the hat photos and Twitter quotes to. Setting up the Tumblr blog with the www.inksterschristmashats.com domain enabled the hats and quotes to be showcased. This combined with Twitter was a winning combination. Tweeps tweeted about receiving the hat and/or tweeted photos of it on themselves, their pets, toys or elsewhere. Other Tweeps who had not received hats asked if they could get one and we were still just a week ago (which is a month after Christmas) posting them out. We are now into February and still have the promise of some hat photos over the next week including someone who has a carefully planned photo to take this coming weekend! All of this has kept Inksters Christmas Hats in peoples minds well beyond Christmas and given it a longevity that a standard Christmas card would never have had.
Ismat Abidi (@LegalTrainee)
1. Why does Eversheds, through @legaltrainee, consider it important that applicants understand the work and culture of the firm through social media?
A Trainee gets as much out of a TC as they put into it. It’s also no secret that Trainees that most closely fit the firm’s culture will be the most valuable to the firm, get the most out of their training experience and become more likely to secure an NQ position with that firm. It’s really a two way process, so by finding applicants that fit this bill at the graduate recruitment stage, it’s a win-win situation for both sides. That’s why it’s important that applicants understand the work and culture of the firm. It’s not crucial that this is done through social media, but social media is the best way for Trainees and Graduate Recruitment to engage in real and live conversation with potential candidates. It’s like a 24-7 international networking event where recruiters and candidates can come and go as they please. What’s even better is that all conversations are public, so unlike face-to-face networking events, students can see what other candidates are asking and join in discussions between recruiters, legal bloggers and other students.
2. In addition to offering the competition, how does @LegalTrainee use social media to achieve an innovative, competitive edge in securing the best applicants ?
@LegalTrainee isn’t just a Twitter account – it’s an entire project using three social media platforms: Brave New Talent, Facebook and Twitter, which are integrated with one another. Chances are that our target applicants use at least one of these platforms. The competitive edge is that we’re offering a live brochure to candidates (our slogan is: This is not a brochure, this is conversation), which no other firm really does at the level of direct engagement we’re involved with right now. Aside from the project itself being innovative (@LegalTrainee recently won the SoMe Graduate Recruitment Award 2012 for Best Use of Twitter), Eversheds allows real Trainees from across its international offices to manage and run these accounts using mobile devices and engage directly with press/candidates/any other followers. It ’ s not the PR team or graduate recruitment that followers are speaking to (though they do monitor the account), it’s the real trainees talking about their real experiences at the firm – something that hasn’ t previously been done before in the legal world.
3. Why do you think that the various competitions run through @LegalTrainee have been so successful in reaching new candidates?
It’s unfortunate that there’s no other way to sift through large volumes of high-calibre applications more efficiently than online applications. We’ve all been through it (most of us have done so several times) and it can be a really grating process. You could be an absolutely ideal candidate and for one reason or another, have a bad numbers day and fail the numerical reasoning test, which means your application automatically stops there. I applied to Eversheds in 2005 and again in 2007 (with a supposed destined-to-fail-in-a-TC-hunt 2:2), so I know what it’s like. These competitions that Eversheds run offer a chance for those who otherwise didn’t get through the standard application process. Unlike spending an evening filling in your work experience and grades in an online form, the way to enter these competitions is quite refreshing for law students. It can range from submitting a video/song/blog with a friend to win work experience in our Hong Kong office or simply following a Twitter account to win coffee with one of our Trainee Partners. If I was still searching for a TC, I’d definitely enter these sorts of competitions.
This is a general article about law firms, social value and social innovation ; LegalAware has received nothing in the production of this article which is a freely-written opinion, and please note that the article is not representative of the views of BPP or the BPP Legal Awareness Society. The blogpost is a personal academic viewpoint of @Legalaware.
Why David Cameron should share his iPad app with Ed Miliband
At 07.12 a.m. on Thursday, the BBC Radio 4 Today programme ran an item about the effects of adoption of technology. Sir Victor Blank believes that we communicate less in modern day society. He asked the BBC’s technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones to investigate whether innovations such as email and social media have hindered, rather than helped, communication.
The Telegraph newspaper reported recently on an intriguing adoption of innovative technology. Programmers inside the Cabinet Office are designing a new app that will bring together all the latest information from across Whitehall. The idea for the app came from a trip by advisers to the US. The software will allow the Prime Minister to see the latest NHS waiting-list figures, crime statistics, unemployment numbers and a wide variety of other data at a glance. It will also include “real time” news information from Google and Twitter, according to the Times. Mr Cameron is known to be an iPad devotee, using it to read newspapers as well as to tune into radio programmes, According to an article in the Huffington Post, the app is due to be unveiled in March. Officials say it may also be made available to the public, meaning it is unlikely the app will contain security sensitive government information.
I strongly believe in the thesis that technology assists innovative research, and that, specifically, the iPad is a godsend for people who engage in academic research like me.
Innovation is central to organisational growth and competitiveness (Tidd et al., 2001). Effective innovation can transform highly-functioning politicians into world leaders and ordinary organisations into stimulating environments for employees. Poor innovation within political parties could lead to poor morale both within H.M. Government and its official opposition, and ultimately stagnation and decline of the entire political process.
Organisations often face an “innovation paradox“; they must innovate in order to compete against one another, but in order to achieve the innovation, they may need to collaborate with organisations they compete against. In David Cameron’s case, this means collaborating with the app designers, sharing some of his ‘secrets’ about how he wishes ‘to do’ government. If Cameron succeeds here, he will have achieved a nirvana of the political process that he is said to be passionate about; including opening up a huge amount of stored information to the general public.
Traditionally organisations have been secretive of their innovations to protect any emerging intellectual property, but in this case also valuable information about how effectively the U.K. is being run. Over the years, such a secretive culture has been reinforced in the minds of other stakeholders, including M.P.s and voters, that the political environment is cut-throat and that innovation is how parties might gain competitive advantage over one other. Thus, the concept of open knowledge exchange with other independent organisations, even within a distributed innovation network, might be difficult for those people working in politics to accept.
This might result in members of the Conservative Party being apprehensive about exchanging knowledge with individuals outside their organisation, both within the Coalition and outside of it, in case of divulging information that was not intended to be exchanged. The presence of trust between individuals from the collaborating organisations is a key determinant in the success of collaboration. However, a key advantage for the network was a dramatic lowering of cognitive distance and increased collaboration and sense of community within the consortium. The physical separation between the political parties, especially in Portcullis House, is also not that huge.
In summary, I feel that Ed Miliband should embrace David Cameron’s new app, and they should both embrace a collaborative, innovative spirit. Whilst it may not make for a massive competitive advantage for Cameron compared to Miliband, it might make the sharing of ideas and information a more interesting and challing one intellectually.
Reference
Tidd, J, J Blessant and K Pavitt (2001). Managing Innovation: Integrating Technological, Market and Organisational Change. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
Neuroscience and the law focus: what's the point of regulating advertising?
I have no doubt after reading the article entitled “The advertising effect – how do we get the balance of advertising right?” published today by Compass by Zoe Gannon and Neal Lawson that the major thesis of the authors that unregulated advertising is likely to be dangerous for society, and could have a massively detrimental effect.
I really liked this article, as I think that it is one of the few articles which seemed to have an understanding of the modern neuroscience involved in tackling a problem of huge cultural significance, maybe using legal measures. As someone who tends to read the introduction and conclusion of article, I found it most helpful that Gannon and Lawson summarized the gist of their argument successfully in the conclusion,
“If you go to an advertising company to sell a product or service their planners will strip the issue down to bare essentials before building a campaign around it. It is the essence of the message they are after, the essence of the advertising industry is that new technologies, new science and new psychology have put the industry increasingly out of social and political control. Advertising regulations now need to catch up with the reality of the advertising effect on us and our planet.”
On the other hand, I found Jackie Ashley’s response lacked any depth to an analysis of the problem from either a neuroscience or legal perspective (1). However, arguably, one of the most interesting enticing paragraphs begins with the sentence,
“Meanwhile neurologists are working out what images will trigger the buy button in our brains.”
Gannon and Lawson provide that “machines are being used to shed light on brain mechanisms that play a central role in consumer behaviour: circuits that underlie reward, decision making, motivation, emotions and the senses of self.” This would indeed seem to make sense, as the subjective experience of being the target of advertising probably has the same underlying neural basis as our euphoria on sex or drugs of abuse. Indeed, one of the many successes of neurological research in the last century has been to identy a neurobiological mechanism mediating behavior motivated by events commonly associated with pleasure in humans. These events are termed “rewards” and are viewed as primary factors governing normal behavior. The subjective impact of rewards (e.g., pleasure) can be considered essential (e.g., Young, 1959) or irrelevant (e.g., Skinner, 1953) to their effect on behaviour, but the motivational effect of rewards on behavior is now universally acknowledged by experimental psychologists.
In addition, the authors give due credit to one of the most important papers on the subject of “neuromarketing”, a relatively new field. A cognitive neuroscientist (Read Montague) postulated that, if people preferred the taste of Pepsi, the drink should have dominated the market. It didn’t. So in the summer of 2003, Montague gave himself a ‘Pepsi Challenge’ of a different sort: to figure out why people would buy a product they didn’t particularly like. Neuromarketing is effectively the study of the brain’s responses to ads, brands, and the rest of the messages littering the cultural landscape.
Montague had his subjects take the “Pepsi Challenge” while he watched their neural activity with a functional MRI machine, which tracks blood flow to different regions of the brain. Without knowing what they were drinking, about half of them said they preferred Pepsi. But once Montague told them which samples were Coke, three-fourths said that drink tasted better, and their brain activity changed too.
Coke “lit up” the medial prefrontal cortex (a part of the brain very much involved in higher cognitive processes). Montague’s hypothesis was that the brain was recalling images and ideas from commercials, and the brand was overriding the actual quality of the product. For years, in the face of failed brands and laughably bad ad campaigns, marketers had argued that they could influence consumers’ choices. The paper was a substantial contribution to the literature. Montague published his findings in the October 2004 issue of Neuron, and a new field of the neurosciences was born: neuromarketing. (1)
However, there are still some problematic unanswered questions from a neuroethics perspective.
(1) What effect did the Coke label have on the brain that the Pepsi label did not?
(2) What other evidence suggests that taste alone does not determine your favorite cola? Obesity is epidemic in America, and sugared soft drinks are one of the primary culprits.
(3) How might this research help doctors fight obesity?
(4) Suppose both the Coke and the Pepsi labels triggered the same reaction in the brain. What conclusion would you draw?
For a long time, marketing experts have relied on behavioral studies for guidance. In the USA, some companies are taking the practice several steps further, commissioning their own fMRI studies consistent with the research above. For example, in a study of men’s reactions to cars, Daimler-Chrysler has found that sportier models activate the brain’s reward centres as well as activating the area in the brain that recognizes faces, which may explain people’s tendency to anthropomorphize their cars. Steven Quartz, a scientist at Stanford University, is currently conducting similar research on movie trailers. And in the age of poll-taking and smear campaigns, political advertising is also getting in on the game. Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles have found that Republicans and Democrats react differently to campaign ads showing images of the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks. Those ads cause the part of the brain associated with fear to light up more vividly in Democrats than in Republicans.
Gannon and Lawson in their scholarly article appear to develop their case that, if unregulated, this is dangerous:
“Excessive advertising turns a never ending series of new needs into new wants, and crowds out the space for other visions of the good society, where time and relationships matter more than what we buy. Advertising encourages us to run ever faster on the treadmill of modern consumer life; in so doing it contributes to growing consumer debt, a number of social problems which this report discusses, and to the very real prospect of climate change beyond our ability to manage. So the report calls for a tax on all advertising that encourages greater consumption to limit its scope and slow the pace of growth for the good of society and the future of the planet.”
There are in fact seven ways which Gannon and Lawson perceive as perhaps being capable of solving the problem: e.g. banning advertising in public spaces, controling advertising on the Internet, tax advertising, and probably, most contentiously, introduce statutory regulation of the advertising industry. This would be yet another example of where cognitive neuroscience meets the law in some way – exciting times indeed. If advertising is so rampant, should we spend money researching it like cancer?
References
(1) Jackie Ashley. Let’s take on the ads that fuel such waste, debt and misery. The Guardian, Sunday 24th February 2009.
(2) McGlure SM, Li, J, Tomlin, D, Cypert KS, Montague LM, Montague PR. Neural correlates of behavioral preference for culturally familiar drinks. Neuron 2004 Oct 14;44(2):379-87.
CubeSocial: an important network innovation
Linda Cheung and Mark Bower must be congratulated on what I think is an important contribution to facilitating communication both within and between individuals and organisations. It’s an easy-to-use, attractive, “start up”, called “CubeSocial” – their blog is a very good introduction to their approach, in fact. Where good ideas come from, in the context of innovation and the enlightenment, is all down to our social interactions. The whole is considered to be more than the sum of the individual parts, and often, through notions such as “the adjacent possible“, new innovative ideas can emerge. The environment is considered to be crucial for forging links between individuals and their ideas, and this is indeed at the heart of the internet – idea creation is mooted to have been previously the domain of “the coffee house”. Here’s Steven Johnson, a major proponent of network innovations, on the network philosophy.
CubeSocial is an innovation in the true principles of network design. It builds on an important concept in corporate management; that social capital can be as important as, or even more important, than material resources. The platform is available here. Its stated aim on its home page, which is uncluttered, accessible and informative, is ‘Discover your contacts’ social media profiles, join the right conversations and grow your business’. Its aim is to mine information in your social media profiles, including the usual suspects such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, and to construct intelligently the conversations which are taking place within them. Its market positioning is clear, in that it seems ideally placed for an individual within any jurisdiction. Its pricing strategy, such that you can opt to pay for a ‘basic’ or ‘plus’ package, makes sense as a classic price discrimination strategy, outlined here; the cost of the package is reasonable, and the two basic tiers allow for personal and corporate customers.
There are many basic features of CubeSocial which are attractive, and indeed vital for it functioning as a valid innovative contribution. One is trialability – in other words, you can see if CubeSocial is for you, without parting with any money – and compatibility, in that it works well with various cloud social media platforms and operating systems effortlessly. Is CubeSocial doing anything fundamentally different from another service? The questions it poses are indeed sensible (reproduced below), but the danger is that incorrect use of CubeSocial might mean that you are missing out on potential clients. If it works well, it would save time, and potentially sort out the signal from noise which is the ultimate nirvana of networking.
The questions are:
? How can I use social media to get to know my existing clients better?
? How can I find people that need my product or service right now?
? Which social media platforms are relevant to my business and where should I invest my time?
Like all innovations, the ‘success’ of the innovation will ultimately be determined by its uptake, and feedback from customers. Whilst many technological innovations seem like a ‘fun’ idea, the acid test will be as to whether personal or corporate customers will wish to allocate resources into a platform of CubeSocial. There may be some people who enjoy using Facebook or Twitter, who are very hands-on, who will prefer to use their selective attention cognitively to filter the mass of information themselves. I have no idea how customers will react to it, other than the product is very attractively presented, is very easy to use, and does not suffer from any technical issues. It is very reliable, being built on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. The risks of using CubeSocial are indeed the same for the use of any of the social media platforms built into it, like Facebook: privacy, security, and confidentiality. I have personal experience of Microsoft Azure as a cloud platform, and can faithfully report that it is considered to be excellent within the industry. Supplier stability is essential in this regard.
Part of the difficulties in understanding whether the approach will be useful for the customer of CubeSocial lies in the known difficulties with the ‘network approach’ in technological innovation. That is where it is critically to be aware of the existence of ‘lead users’ in its adoption, which are provided in a testimonials page of CubeSocial. I found most relevant this testimonial by @JonBloor, as Jon is a significant lead user with an expertise in both business law and technology. Jon provides the following.
The concept is simple, but well executed …worth a look for anyone using Twitter for business purposes (lawyers or otherwise)
More network clients do not necessarily mean a higher quality of information, as introducing more clients can introduce more ‘noise’. Noise is nothing new, of course; there was a lot of noise even in coffee houses, as depicted by Hogarth.
There is no doubt that CubeSocial has the ability for individuals to develop ‘the slow hunch’ before the epiphany of their idea creation. There will clearly be people who will benefit from CubeSocial, and those who will not, and this does not necessarily depend upon the size of their network. Some networks will contain ‘stars’, individuals who are highly connected within their networks, or ‘boundary spanners’, individuals who will broker relationships between the networks. The problem comes if the network which have a high number of ‘isolates’, individuals who might be relatively disconnected from the network, but who do turn out to be surprisingly ‘high worth’ at some stage.
In summary, CubeSocial is more than another cloud invention. The idea behind it as an innovation, and its value and worth will be ultimately determined by its customers. If CubeSocial can build a sound business case for its uptake in corporate clients, the business plan of CubeSocial would be in safe territory, I feel. Clients will be quick to note that CubeSocial is fast to implement any technological improvements to make the platform ‘better’, such as the recently announced Gmail integration.
Law firms continue momentum with social media, guest article by Jimmy Kyriacou (@JimmyKyriacou)
Guest article by Jimmy Kyriacou (twitter here)
During the last 18 months, I have been fortunate enough to have met with over 60% of the UK’s leading law firms and to have had in depth detailed discussions covering all aspects of their social media strategy, specifically how they will harness the web to attract, engage and nurture quality talent.
As stated in a press release last year law firms have been quick to embrace ‘Social Recruiting’ with early adopters such as Allen & Overy, Eversheds, Pinsent Masons and Addleshaw Goddard who have been using the social networking site BraveNewTalent to build Talent Communities and to ultimately begin building a future Talent Pipeline.
One year later, many other law firms have also been embracing this new technology, so exactly why is the legal sector now taking social seriously?
Nishe Patel, from the law firm Baker & Mckenzie says, “Social media is a fantastic tool that enables us to engage with a wider talent pool than has previously been possible, allowing us to directly communicate with individuals that we might not otherwise reach.For so long , everyone seems to have been ‘fishing from the same pond’, and it has been very difficult to efficiently discover talent that may not exist in traditional circles and social has certainly changed that.” This is a common statement that I hear time and time again.
Anna King, Head of Graduate Recruitment at Simmons & Simmons states, “We believe that social media should be utilised to help the applicant experience, but does not replay the need for face-to-face discussions. Our aim is to be increasingly active through channels that Simmons & Simmons are already using as well as exploring social media for additional ways to connect to students and develop relationships.”
A firm that I have had a close relationship with since early last year is Eversheds. According to Lorraine Petheram, “We are a 21st Century Law firm. We are always trying to stay ahead of the curve, looking at new ways to attract the best talent.” One example of the firm’s innovation in talent recruitment is @LegalTrainee, an integrated social media campaign which is run by the firm’s trainees. Law students and graduates can actively engage with trainees using social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and BraveNewTalent. The trainees run competitions to win experiential prizes such as a coffee with a partner or a week’s work experience in Hong Kong, as well as answer questions about their experiences securing and completing a training contract at Eversheds. With almost 1000 followers, @LegalTrainee has been hugely successful since its launch in June 2011.
Social media can also be hugely beneficial in allowing some of the law firms based outside London to get their message across to the right audience more effectively. BondPearce a firm based in Bristol has very recently begun to explore Social Media as another effective channel to reach out and engage with potential future employees. I met with Samantha Lee, Head of Recruitment at Bond Pearce earlier this year, just as they started to look at how web 2.0 could be used within Talent Attraction. Sam states, “Social Media is an excellent recruitment tool, but more than that, it allows us to engage with our future talent in a much less formal way than we have previously. The branding element is also important to us, and we hope that it enhances our image as a forward thinking law firm while giving us the opportunity to raise our profile to a wider audience than our traditional methods allow.
So as exploratory conversations with many firms in early 2010 now shift to a serious social media talent attraction strategy, BraveNewTalent is proud to be embracing the legal sector as an essential partner in this new world of work!
Jimmy Kyriacou has extensive experience in helping law firms attract and engage with top talent using social media. If you are a law firm and would like more information, please get in touch with him. His e-mail address is Jimmy@BraveNewTalent.com.
The power of Twitter and social media for professional law firms; a cartoon
This blog has recently done an article on the importance of Twitter and the social media for law firms professionally. @BrianInkster specialises in this type of work. Brian is the founder of Inksters Solicitors: the first Scottish Law Firm to Twitter. He also received the Solicitor of the Year: Law Awards of Scotland 2006. @jezhop posted this cartoon which had recently been published on a blog (c) Tom Fishburne. Many a true word said in jest. Both Jeremy and Brian recently attended the Twegals 2011 tweet-up for legal people (report here).
[Source: http://bit.ly/mRO9qW, accessed 10 June 2011]
The future strategy of the music industry and problems with the Digital Economy Act
Important considerations
The death of the album
Individual track downloads are killing the album market and the revenue that it once created. Can the album be saved? Should artists release in 1 to 3 track clusters?
Music as a service and “on demand”
People used to call music “product”. Did the pendulum swing to far in that direction? Or is music a service based on subscriptions? Furthermore, will more and more music be bought an enjoyed via mobile devices?
The changing nature of music delivery waqs illustrated in an article in the Times earlier this year.
The internet is being seen as both a threat and opportunity for the English music industry.
The internet is the big battleground. Piracy remains rampant, with more than seven million illegal file-sharers in Britain alone. Shops such as Woolworths and Zaavi have collapsed, further depressing CD sales. Albums, which bring in the most amount of revenue to record labels, have been hit by digital websites such as Apple’s iTunes that allow users to “cherry-pick” their favourite singles. Falling revenue has had an inevitable effect on talent.
The desperate situation has pre-empted two radical approaches: labels have invested in new subscription services such as Spotify, and artists have increasingly moved towards corporate sponsorship.…
Feargal Sharkey, the former lead singer of the Undertones and chief executive of UK Music, agreed. “Research shows that 80 per cent of 14 to 24-year-old UK filesharers would pay for a legal service. Quite clearly, this is the direction in which we need to be heading.”
The new website, Spotify, could provide a way for the music business to make money in the digital age (see link).
No single business model
It used to be that record labels made money selling records and bands made money live. This may not be the case any more.
The democratisation of music discovery
Once DJ’s told us what to like. Now our friends do or we discover it ourselves and share the news. This has become much more easy using Facebook, Twitter, and other mechanisms of social bookmarking. How does that change how music is marketed?
The law
The Digital Economy Act 2010 (c. 24) (“DEA”) is an Act of Parliament regulating digital media. It received Royal Assent on 8 April 2010, and came into force on 8 June 2010 (with the exception of certain sections). On 10 November 2010 the High Court granted permission for a judicial review of Section 3 to 18 of the Act.
However, a report from the United Nations very recently has labelled some aspects of the UK’s controversial DEA as disproportionate, and warned they should be repealed. The report was written by Frank La Rue, who is the special rapporteur on freedom of expression for the United Nations (UN). In his report, he flagged the controversial provision within the Digital Economy Act (DEA), that could potentially cut off music and film pirates from the Internet, as a violation of our right to free expression.
Currently in the UK, people who are found to be downloading or pirating content illegally are issued a warning. Further violations trigger other measures including speed limits or even cutting off access to the Internet for the most persistent offenders. La Rue called on the government to “repeal or amend” the legislation, as it is a “violation” of the right to free expression. The report has been presented to the Human Rights Council.
Problems with the DEA have been rumbling on for some time, as reported in the Guardian earlier this year. Two ISPs, namely BT and TalkTalk, have been spearheaded the fight in the UK to overturn the DEA’s copyright measures. The ISPs had argued in court that the DEA, which came into force in June 2010, was disproportionate, and that it infringed users’ basic rights. They also said it had received sufficient parliamentary scrutiny. The high court judge, Mr Justice Parker, dismissed the ISPs’ argument that the previous Labour government, which rushed through the DEA in the dying days of the last parliament in April 2010, should have notified the European Commission; that it makes ISPs liable in damages for copyright infringement on their network; that it breaches data protection laws; and that it is a disproportionate response to copyright infringement.
Even in para. 87, there appears to be some disquiet about the passage of this legislation through in English courts:
It is contentious whether the Commission or other Member States would have been better placed to comment upon the initial obligations if the United Kingdom had adopted the course which he argues it was legally obliged to adopt. Mr Eadie argued strongly that, in the absence of a draft Code, the Commission and other Member States would have been left in the dark about significant parts of the content of the initial obligations, and either would not have been able to comment in a sufficiently informed and constructive manner, or would have been tempted to make assumptions that turned out to be unfounded: in short, a premature, pointless, time wasting and resource absorbing exercise. In my view, this particular debate cannot be satisfactorily resolved either way, and cannot, therefore, be decisive or significantly influential on the resolution of the relevant legal issue.
Both BT and TalkTalk applied for leave for appeal, but were turned down. The Digital Economy Act is not only unpopular with ISPs, but has also faced consistent criticism from open rights campaigners.
The future
So the future will be demanding. A possible major impetus is David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard’s The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution. A major purpose of scenario planning is to empower people, organizations, and industries to evaluate a diverse set of possible futures, decide which future they prefer, and to identify those key milestones or Events that lead logically to the desired outcome. In short, scenario planning provides a structured framework for strategy determination and implementation.
The user of Twitter by the law twitterati : lessons for @legalaware
This is the @legalaware twitter profile page:
The Intendance report published in December 2010 gives an overview of how law firms should use Twitter.
http://www.intendance.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Intendance-Twitter-Report.pdf
It is interesting to see whether the LegalAware profile page lives up to the suggestions of Intendance. Indeed, Intendance recommends that simple changes like having a bespoke background, firm logo, and a suitable account name all help to make the page look professional. Apparently, such features make Twitter output an authentic identity, helping to attract followers and giving your tweets greater “credibility”.
We have a picture logo to represent the BPP Legal Awareness Society, although we haven’t undergone any formal branding process. The website link is to our website (http://legal-aware.org), and our background is a simple one in keeping with our new found ‘corporate identity’.
I use Twitter as a channel for promoting legal blogs, podcasts, press releases, newsletters, videos and any other legal content. Some of the blogs I would like to feature include:
http://copyright4education.blogspot.com/ (this is, as such, not a legal blog, but contains an excellent range of in-depth copyright issues, particularly relevant to education)
http://charonqc.wordpress.com/
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green
http://legalbizzle.wordpress.com/
http://www.clerkingwell.co.uk/
http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/ (Adam Wagner)
http://nipclaw.wordpress.com’ (Jane Lambert; useful advice for start-ups)
http://www.shireensmith.com/ (this is a lovely blog by Shireen which has a focus on copyright, trade marks and brand management)
I like to follow relevant people in the legal industry such as journalists, ‘blawgers’, in-house counsel, solicitors, recruiters, legal commentators, to raise the profile of our initiative at BPP (the Legal Awareness Society), and to encourage an interesting conversation between people of very different backgrounds. However, in the case of the BPP Legal Awareness Society, whilst we hope to cover all practice seats of large corporate law firms fairly, there tends to be a bias towards social media, cloud computing, human rights and reputation management tweets, because of the nature of population actively tweeting at the moment.
On our new blog (about to be launched), there is a Twitter button on our LegalAware blog, connecting to Twitter, and a Facebook one, connecting to our new page on Facebook. The Intendance survey of the top 50 UK law firms found that Twitter use can generally be split into three key areas:
- No Twitter account found for the firm
- Incomplete Twitter account – unclear if owned by the firm
- Complete Twitter account with varying levels of interaction
Remarkably, it appears that number of firms lack a clear, branded presence, which confuses potential followers – and Intendance considers that this reflects badly on the firm. Quality of tweets is another area of contention, and worryingly analysis of the output across these firms shows that a majority post updates that fail to spark debate. Instead, tweets tend to be summaries of press releases or news articles with links straight to the news page on the main website. Intendance advises that “this sort of content lacks the social element thatwill attract more followers.”
Finally, there is no doubt that Intendance considers that the social element is crucial:
“Social content helps to cement relationships – the human empathy and shared interest factor – but valuable information is what will ultimately make or break Twitter in the B2B sector, not meaningless gossip. .. The ultimate aim, in a similar way to a website, is to achieve a reputation as a credible source of legal knowhow, both on a personal level and a firm-wide level.”
