Despite the media’s pronouncements regarding the imminent death of social media, I’m faintly optimistic that these sites will continue to exist. Just because the stock market announces Twitter or Facebook shares are down, people will keep using the service until another, more shiny one comes along.
As some of you may not be familiar with some of the existing social media sites, I’ve selected the popular ones and given a brief description of them, as well as personal observations as to risks and potential for misuse. I haven't included YouTube, blogging sites such as WordPress or Blogger, or others such as Reddit, MySpace - there are quite a few. I am not an expert, legal, psychological or otherwise, so please excuse any omissions.
I’ve assumed a reasonable knowledge of Facebook and Twitter because of the high profile harassment cases in which they have been involved, therefore they are not included. Although LinkedIn is well known, I include it because of recent blocking technology developments.
A blog to explore the interests of an original renaissance woman; arts, sciences, poetry, librarianship and everything in between.
Showing posts with label lawyers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lawyers. Show all posts
Thursday 13 February 2014
Tuesday 28 January 2014
Glamorous Librarians: Or Improving Your Law Firm Website
New pic due soon, thank goodness |
We are striving to present ourselves as qualified, approachable and trustworthy people who, if engaged, would work tirelessly on your behalf in a legal and business capacity. This is precisely what every other law firm is trying to do with their website, so how do you differentiate between all these legal sites?
Monday 1 July 2013
Career reflections and staff retention
’ Do you remember when you started your first post-university professional job? When you were eager to sign up to your professional organisation and get going on the post-nominals? I had just moved to London and during the mid-1990s had an open mind as to whether a job was going to be for life or for 6 months but I really hoped my first job would be special, long lasting and I worked really hard to get it right.
Which I did; that firm never had a keener or more passionate library assistant and I loved it there. Building on my theoretical library school knowledge, I learnt so much about how to – and how not to – run a library, design a new one, set up a library catalogue, see how lawyers reacted to the thought of mere support staff having email and communicating directly with clients. I would have stayed there if it hadn’t been for a number of issues, which I shall come on to in a moment. Despite having written a career overview for the excellent UKlibchat group, this posting isn’t just a mere excursion into nostalgia but recently I overheard someone say ‘if someone is good [at their job], we don’t expect them to stay’. Both have made me consider staff retention and there were a few things I wanted to think through.
Which I did; that firm never had a keener or more passionate library assistant and I loved it there. Building on my theoretical library school knowledge, I learnt so much about how to – and how not to – run a library, design a new one, set up a library catalogue, see how lawyers reacted to the thought of mere support staff having email and communicating directly with clients. I would have stayed there if it hadn’t been for a number of issues, which I shall come on to in a moment. Despite having written a career overview for the excellent UKlibchat group, this posting isn’t just a mere excursion into nostalgia but recently I overheard someone say ‘if someone is good [at their job], we don’t expect them to stay’. Both have made me consider staff retention and there were a few things I wanted to think through.
Saturday 18 May 2013
Generic Widgets: Musings on a library budget
It has been said that ‘information is the lifeblood of law and the legal profession’. And to this I would like to add, law firms continue to be the flesh and muscle of the body of knowledge which they make available to clients; good lawyers turn that information into business knowhow. Anatomical analogies are a personal favourite and perhaps to stretch this one, everyone is trying to extract a pound of flesh from the legal corpus as a whole. From clients expecting discounts, lawyers squeezing suppliers and suppliers driving hard bargains, everyone is at it.
Friday 25 January 2013
Lexis PSL - a few comments (amended)
Lexis users have always suffered from information overload. Lexis Library contains a wealth of information but unless you are willing to learn how to use Boolean logic, proximity searching and other library professional magic to navigate, you can be left floundering with thousands of hits. Or worse, none at all. They have tried to make Lexis library more intuitive, with special subject pages, personalised home pages and clear signposting, however this still hasn't really helped the busy lawyer.
Tuesday 11 September 2012
CPD: What next with webinars?
Continuing professional development has never been more important. Content remains the most serious aspect of training but in reality, providers are keen to be fully engaged with course attendees and they are constantly looking at new and better ways to deliver their CPD content. With this in mind I attended an ‘Innovation in CPD webinars’ breakfast meeting this morning as representative of the firm’s Learning & Development Committee.
Thursday 23 August 2012
Flexible Working = Business as Usual
At home not eating cheese |
As background, I am solo professional librarian in a medium sized central London law firm. My contracted hours are 9.30-5.30, 5 days a week. My firm is average in its attitude to flexible working and was happy to look at alternative ways of working during this time.
Although the Olympics was necessarily a one off event and the government were ‘"relying on businesses to plan" to keep London functioning’, my firm felt it was a good opportunity to review various other HR policies, IT back up, disaster recovery plans as a side effect. As it happens we could not have anticipated the success of the apparently indestructible London infrastructure – from transport to telecoms. The firm also stressed that this period was not a ‘license to skive’, which was reflected in our ‘business as usual’ Olympic Plan. Indeed my productivity has improved and I’ve already taken examples of improved working practices to the Partnership Director.
Although the Olympics was necessarily a one off event and the government were ‘"relying on businesses to plan" to keep London functioning’, my firm felt it was a good opportunity to review various other HR policies, IT back up, disaster recovery plans as a side effect. As it happens we could not have anticipated the success of the apparently indestructible London infrastructure – from transport to telecoms. The firm also stressed that this period was not a ‘license to skive’, which was reflected in our ‘business as usual’ Olympic Plan. Indeed my productivity has improved and I’ve already taken examples of improved working practices to the Partnership Director.
Friday 17 August 2012
Finding Legal CPD Courses
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is an essential part
of a Knowledge Management strategy. When the process is working properly it not
only ensures that an individual is up to date in specialist areas of their
practice but also it means that they take the information back to their
departments. Whether the information is presented verbally at meetings, or
written about in a piece of knowhow, incorporated into a precedent etc, it
seeps into the fabric of the firm’s knowledge and is turned into profit. This
is crucial given the initial expense – there has to be a return on this
investment.
This process is important so to see how it works for us I went
back to the beginning. How do the lawyers find out what courses are available?
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