Book Review: Social Media in the Legal Sector

Although I write about a variety of subjects, some of my recent posts are responding to pockets of social media illiteracy and are mostly aimed at those in the legal world.

Long before getting to grips with content, a new or prospective user needs to acquaint themselves with the technology and the appropriate platform. They need to be confident in their social media abilities, and comfortable that they are not going to destroy a hard won professional legal reputation by a misplaced tweet or a badly written blog post. Social media for business is a commitment of time and money so you need to know whether it is for you.

But if you’re not internet savvy, how do you take that first step? If I need to find out about a new product or unfamiliar social media network, I would search for a quality blog about it, read relevant trade press reviews, or ask my twitter or librarian network. This requires you to be able to identify trustworthy online sources. If you are unsure, then an expensive book published by a reputable legal publisher might be the answer for many lawyers.

CLIG Seminar: Employment law and socia media

These notes come out of a CLIG seminar I attended on 18 March 2014 - the excellent and extremely thorough speaker was Alexandra Mizzi. Apologies for any omissions or mistakes, which are entirely mine and certainly not her fault.

Social media is being tackled piecemeal in the courts and some of these interesting cases are discussed below. It is a tricky area due to increasingly blurred lines between personal and private lives. Creating a successful social media brand is personality driven, so a personal/professional clash is inevitable.

The seminar covered the following areas: the perils of online selection, screening and recruitment; employee misconduct online looking at both company reputation and employer liability; and finally the tricky issue of social media contacts ownership. 

Some More Social Media Sites

This blogpost came out of a work related article commission to examine recent developments and potential risks of various social media. I published my initial thoughts earlier in the month. They asked me to so the same sort of thing with the more popular sites so I briefly investigated Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Incidentally I found the DMR blog extremely useful in tracking the various stats.

Facebook

There can’t be many people who haven’t heard of Facebook. If you aren’t one of the 1.26 billion users worldwide, they are rarely out of the press. Even our language has assimilated Facebook-inspired changes in meaning; ‘to friend’ - to connect with another Facebook user, or ‘to poke’ - to get the electronic attention of a friend.