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High profile cases in almost any jurisdiction have always faced issues in terms of jury selection- the primary concern being the media coverage and how that may influence a potential juror's views and opinions. Media coverage is also playing a big role in the legal services marketing arena. In the past, legal marketing revolved around the predictable avenues including newspapers, radio and television, but that's not true anymore.

Today there is a huge instantaneous mass media system called social media and it's impact on juries, judges and potential clients is only just coming to the forefront. Should lawyers be concerned? You bet. But one thing's for sure you must first be aware of this phenomenon and get up-to-speed on this new way of communicating. Lawyers must ask themselves if blogging and consumer generated media has the potential to affect their jury; even the potential to affect their reputations.

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Media Masters has broken down the elements of social media important to the legal professional in easy to understand terms of: What is it? Why do I need to know about it? How does it work for me? The answers are critical for lawyers to understand as they communicate with a 21st century world about their cases and their profession.

BLOGGING
CONTENT
ONLINE NEWSROOMS
SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
PUBLISHING TO SOCIAL BOOKMARKING SITES
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
TWITTER
WIKIS

BLOGGING

What is it?
Blogging: The word blog is a short form for the term web log. A blog has traditionally been a journal or diary with dated entries. Law "blawgs" are rampant online.

Why do I need to know about it?
Think of blogging as educational-marketing. It drives people seeking information about a particular area of law to you as the expert n the subject. That, in turn, leads potential clients to your website.

How does it work for me?
By sharing your expertise online, not only are you providing Internet users valuable legal information, you are driving traffic to your website and improving your search engine optimization.
1. Visit blogger.com to set up your own blog. Make it look as much like your owe website as possible.
2. Try and create a blog short version of what is on your website homepage in the blog header.
3. Be sure and add a social bookmarking widget to the page, visit addthis.com
4. You will need a strong appeal to get people off your blog and onto your website- so make the link easy to find.
5. Offer fresh content as often as possible, twice a week at least.

SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT
Make sure anything you post is in easily digestible bites of info- like top ten lists- not a long-drawn out synopsis. The key is to update postings early and often. Make sure the information posted answers the "What's in it for me?" questions for the reader.

ONLINE NEWSROOMS

What are they?
A page online where you can post all the news about your firm, case, or yourself.

Why do I need to know about them?
Journalists rank online press rooms as their first stop when looking for information about a firm, or a company and keeping the content fresh improves your search engine optimization ranking.

How does it work for me?
Online newsrooms don't have to be fancy endeavors. Simply designate a page on your site as a "newsroom". Make sure your newsroom includes contact information, firm background, announcements and accolades, a multimedia gallery and a search capability to allow journalists, consumers, investors and other visitors to easily find information they need.
Post news releases on the page on the firm website. Be sure and make the newsroom RSS compatible. Offer users news alerts via email updates or RSS feeds.

If your IT department can't do this for you: vocus.com is a good resource.

SOCIAL BOOKMARKING

What is it?
Social bookmarking websites are becoming more and more popular. They allow the user to save bookmarks online and Tag/Categorize them with keywords instead of saving them as bookmarks in the favorites list of the user's browser. These sites enable users to share their favorite website content with other users in their network. Here are some brief descriptions of the most popular bookmarking sites:

Del.icio.us
del.icio.us allows users to save their bookmarks online. del.icio.us also gives users the ability to "tag" their bookmarks with descriptive category names. As members of a "social bookmarking" community, del.icio.us users can also see how many other people have bookmarked the same pages, and they can look at those users' bookmark collections to find other interesting online content.

Digg:
Users share interesting online content by submitting links to the site. At that point, the Digg audience can vote on whether or not they think it is interesting. Articles with lots of votes, or "diggs," rise up higher on the site's main page and topical subsection pages.

Why should I know about it?
Social bookmarking is a great way to bypass the traditional media gatekeepers when it comes to getting your information to the people who want to know about it on a very large scale. Because people vote on their favorite posts, traditional media is starting to use their sites as barometers of what people are interested in. Sometimes the popularity of certain posts on these bookmarking sites can influence traditional media to pick up the story.

How does it work for me?
Visit some of the sites provided here. Create an account. Then bookmark interesting and useful things in the areas of your interest or expertise. By doing so you create a useful Feed. Once you've done that you intermittently, (or aggressively), add useful and interesting items, you can also submit your own content that could use additional exposure.

Make an honest effort to contribute USEFUL information and links. This is all about sharing and exposure. Done properly, you can be as aggressive as you want to be about sharing information. You can share your blog(s), links to your informational/resource sites etc. Think about the fact that when you share links to other's resources, you're also effectively promoting their content as well.
1. Sign up for a free account
2. Some social bookmarking sites offer tag buttons so all you have to do is tag your favorite sites to add them to your online social bookmarking page. (The site will instruct you on how to do this)
3. When you tag a page a window will pop up asking what tag words you want to use to describe the content. This is important as later when you go back eventually you will find you have bookmarked 100 webpages or more. To sort through all of the content all you will have to refer to is your list of tags which will have numbers next to the words indicating how many pages you have bookmarked with that particular word in it.
4. Here is the social aspect- these bookmarks are public that means your friends can see your bookmarks and your tags just like you.
5. Bookmark your own post on your website
Search Engine spiders will go into these sites and recognize posted items as highly valuable so it increases your post's ranking in search engines.

Tags:
A tag is simply a word you use to describe a bookmark. Unlike folders, you make up tags when you need them and you can use as many as you like. The result is a
better way to organize your bookmarks and a great way to discover interesting things on the Web.

PUBLISHING TO SOCIAL BOOKMARKING SITES

What is it?
Opening accounts at a number of social bookmarking sites and posting your own content to reach a wider audience of people.

Why do I need to know about it?
Publishing your own content to a number of social bookmarking sites disseminates the information to a large number of people and greatly improves the search engine optimization of your content.

If you have written a good article or your client has a press release everyone should know about, consider publishing it in this way.

How does it work for me?
First set up free accounts at each of these social bookmarking sites:

Stumbleupon.com
Reddit.com
netvouz.com

1. After you upload content Go to : http://www.socialmarker.com/
2. All you need to do is simply drag a button see homepage under "how to use it" to your bookmarks toolbar, in order to create a submission bookmarklet. When you are on a website that you want to socially mark, simply select the text and click the SocialMarker button to pre-populate the submission form with the selected information.
3. Go to the section on the homepage that says "select the Social Bookmarking sites you want to submit to"
4. Click the word "Best" under that title.
5. It wll take you to Bookmark Details box at the top- type in the Title of the Article- the link of the blog posting, a brief description of the article and the tags- these are very important- they tell the RSS feeds and search engines what to look for.
6. Social marker will take you to each of the sites checked where you will enter your username and password you've set up- click "remember me on this computer" and you'll only have to type the whole thing in once.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

What is it?
SEO ranks your site higher in search engine listings when someone searches for your practice area, your firm or you.

Why do I need to know about it?
Because the higher your site is listed on search engines the more people will visit it.

How does it work for me?
Meta tag every page of the website up to 250 words per page. A content management system is good for this or the IT department can do this for you. Also- by adding RSS feeds and encouraging others to link to your site via social bookmarking your site will rank higher in search engines.

TWITTER

What is it?
Primarily designed for mobile devices, Twitter or "tweet" is a micro-blog for people who want to write about the little things that happen in their life. Twitter's greatest asset is its mobility as it is optimized for Blackberrys and other PDAs.

Why should I know about it?
Twitter pages look like blogs with very short posts. Twitter is a useful tool for groups that need to easily stay up to date with daily events when they are on the go. This is a very useful tool for ongoing trials and settlement agreements that can change from minute to minute. Twitter is full of influential bloggers, as well as people who pass along meesages

How does it work for me?
For lawyers- Twitter can be very beneficial during trials to keep the legal team updated as to minute to minute proceedings during trials and settlement discussions. Click follow on the friends you want to keep up with and all day- your page will be updated with the minute details of your friends on your page. Posts are under 140 words

WIKIS

What is it?
A wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language.

Why do I need to know about it?
Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. For example, the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best known wikis.

How does it work for me?
Wikis are used in businesses to provide affordable and effective intranets and for Knowledge Management. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work".
Sign up for free WIKIS at pbwiki.com

Social Media Bible - Everything Legal Professionals Need to Know About the New Media RevolutionDanny MacAskill - "Way Back Home" Tube. Duration : 7.72 Mins.
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AbAbout The Author: Miranda Sevcik is a former television journalist and current principal of Media Masters, a Houston-based litigation communications and legal PR firm that caters exclusively to lawyers and legal professionals. Contact her at: miranda@mediamastersonline.net

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LinkedIn. Facebook. Twitter. Weblogs. Some say that these social media sites provide lawyers brave new world of opportunities, marketing and cooperation. Others claim they are mine fields full of dangers for the unwary or unknowingly.

What is right? Both, of course. Yes, these different forms of social media powerful opportunities. Yes, they also place considerable dangers.

How can lawyers practice safe social networking? " In the spirit of the theme, weturned to social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and consultants set this question to a large number of lawyers and.

From the feedback we have received, we distilled their advice on these top 10 tips.

10. Be professional - always

Note that a lawyer 24 / 7 are. Act like one and always professional, what you do online.

This means above all to be honest, what you say about yourself, your skills and your practice. Beparticularly careful in the bio you have on your site or blog and in the profiles you create for Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites. Do not describe something you will not.

As a professional does not ask for other names online. In particular, judges do not call names. As it seems to say how funny that Florida did not laugh a lawyer after he was disciplined and fined recently for writing on his blog that the judge was an "evil, unfair witch."

Inwhat you publish online, pay attention to the privacy of your own "brand" and your own professional reputation. "Join in - become part of the conversation," advises Mark Beeson, president of the consulting firm Leadership for Lawyers in Denver. "But do not do anything that you could affect your reputation. Thinking."

9. Be nice, who you in connection with

A simple way to protect themselves in social networks is to be careful who you connect. Our story last month wasan obvious example of this in the story of the judge, the "friendly" a lawyer on Facebook, if the lawyer had represented a party in a trial before the judge. Not surprisingly, the judge was reprimanded and the losing party has a new attempt.

To avoid a further connection, is a dishonest for a purpose were made. An ethics panel said, for example, that it is inappropriate for a lawyer friend of the person to examine someone or restricted access toInformation in connection with a lawsuit.

Also, be careful to avoid connecting with others who may have their own ulterior motives in connection with you. And check if a connection could be an endorsement or return one day to you as proof pursue a conflict of interest.

"While social media content, each offers thousands of possibilities, the size of the connections matters much less than the quality of interaction," said Vanessa DiMauro, founder of the BostonSocial media consulting firm Leader Networks. "Be deliberate, make great impressions and offer value for those that you connect or interact with."

A common practice among lawyers is to separate professional and personal contacts on different networks. "I still deal with Facebook and LinkedIn separately," says Reid Trautz, director of practice and professionalism Center at the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Washington, DC "Facebook is for personal useincluding family, friends and professional friends, LinkedIn is for professional or professional connections friends ".

Joshua Masur, a partner in the law firm Turner Boyd in San Francisco, the same with Facebook LinkedIn professional but restricts connections to friends and close colleagues. "Of course, this means that you are willing to draw lines," he says, "to be ready to say no when people connect to a network, means that you askrestricted. "

8. Do not fall victim to the myth of anonymity

"I would never deceive me, that sociability" anonymous "on each of these platforms really anonymous, including commenting on blogs," warns Susan Cartier Liebel, the Connecticut-based founder of Solo Practice University.

The recent history of the Web is full of stories about the thought of busting lawyers, who they were anonymous posting. There was the Assistant U.S. Attorney who wasexposed by a major magazine as author of an anonymous blog about judges. It was the in-house attorney at Cisco, exposing their identity after a lawyer, he wrote of his patent as a reward for Troll.

These examples show that a lawyer not feel safe to say anonymously what the lawyer does not hesitate to say, with attribution.

Another dimension of this includes Facebook, where lawyers can create restricted groupsand feel safer to speak their minds. If you are considering this option, make sure you educate yourself thoroughly on how to do it properly, advises Courtney Kennaday, practice management consultant for the South Carolina Bar

Even then, she adds: "There is a strong restriction: is not limited to categories Facebook friends are among the attractions is limited to knowing very difficult to slip through the types of products and will be viewed by anyone .."

7. Watch the networking between andSoliciting

Lawyers sometimes a fine line between your opinion and walk canvassing. You have every right to do the former and a professional responsibility not to do the latter.

An ethics opinion found that a lawyer engaged in unreasonable request, if he sacrifices written comments in a chat room for mass disaster. It is easy to imagine how a lawyer could get Twitter into similar difficulties.

Several states have either ethicsRules or ethics opinions that specifically addressed the issue of the call in the electronic communication. Protect yourself by knowing the rules and common sense.

6. Exercise editorial discretion - about themselves and others

Do not say anything online that you would not even be attributed on the title page of The New York Times is. Do not assume that anyone reading your blog, or see you tweet. Once it's online, it is always online and it can and willfound.

This does not mean that not show you, personality and creativity, "says Matthias Jung, head of the Legal Department One Marketing in Houston." It's good to let your personality your audience to shine through, but it is important, as if your mother or daughter sat next to you to do. "

However, this does not forget that customers and colleagues will read what you say. Lawyers seem to sometimes forget that their customers are following them online. If youwould not say, say it to a customer's face is not it online.

Do not just read customer what you say, but they are judging from what you say. Apart from the risk of saying something stupid, it online is another potential concern for lawyers to read their customers, said Eric Turkewitz, a trial lawyer and blogger in New York City. "If you frequently off-topic during working hours, they will wonder why you work on your case."

If it is importantcensor themselves, it is also important to censor them. "If you have a blog set to approve sure all comments before they are written," advises Lorraine Fleck, a trademark lawyer and blogger in Toronto. "It was a good tip I got from a veteran legal blogger who has prevented my blog because a haven for those advertising fake Viagra."

and intellectual property attorney Ronald Coleman Blogger summarizes it this way: "Above all, accountability is key, you are. Do not say it ifnot prepared to live it or live with it. And if it's not something that can save you - as a legal proposition or a statement of fact - well, should say why you want it in the first place? "

5. Do you know your state's rules on advertising

Each state has its own unique version of the rules on lawyer advertising and prompt. Some require that copies of advertisements maintained, including copies of his websites. Others require specific disclaimers on ads.

Make sureThey understand the rules in the state in which you are licensed in each state in which your firm has an office. Keep up with ethics opinions interpreting the rules.

4. Avoid unauthorized practice

Avoid illicit practices by clarity about the geographical boundaries of their license and the geographical situation of the others with whom you communicate online calculated.

"Protection against UPL should be disclaimers in online communications are as, His license and geographical limitation of practice, "said James S. Bolan, a Boston-area lawyer, law is concentrated in professional responsibility." Do not admitted a relationship in one jurisdiction where there is none. "

Note that unauthorized practice can not only lead to the ethics charges, but also the loss of legal fees for work in accounting.

Protection against unauthorized practice is often difficult, but perhaps nowhere more than in a virtual reality environment such as Second Life. If your avatar advises another avatar, then in the jurisdiction you? They are advising the avatar or the person behind it? In what jurisdiction is this person?

3. Do not give legal advice

A significant risk online is the inadvertent creation of an attorney-client relationship. Web sites like LinkedIn or Avvo users questions and other items to post answers. Simply by answering a question, a> Lawyer may have legal advice and the formation of an attorney-client relationship.

This can even happen with a simple exchange of e-mails. A Massachusetts Ethics presented to a lawyer, the client received an unsolicited application from a prospective query by e-mail link for a site was required to to maintain the confidentiality of information representation, although the prosecutor declined to.

The best way is to consider it, not to sayeverything online, such as specific legal advice could be interpreted. If you do answer a question online, include a disclaimer saying that you are not advised.

2. Do not talk about your customers and their cases

Take the example of Ann Kristine Peshek. On her blog as a chronicle of their work public defender in Illinois, they sometimes clients and cases. Although she never used a client's last name, she now faces disciplinary charges because the authoritiessay they gave an enough information about their customers that others could identify them.

Peshek provided information on cases that some would tell her an extreme example. But even seemingly innocuous posts can be a lawyer in hot water. A simple status update on Twitter and Facebook could reveal your next step in a case where the opponent. Your tweet "Drafting Summary Judgement in the Federal Court case that I use, I" could be anything, warning the other sideNeeds.

For all but a single doctor may request this, run a conflict check before posting. you want to avoid, writes not only about your own customers, but also on each of your company to customers.

1. Use common sense

It sometimes seems to be scarce in these days, but common sense is the best way to get out of trouble. Apply to everything you do online and you can probably forget all the other rules.

"While I'm a fan of politics," saysConsultant Mark Beese, "I tend to keep to a single maxim. Do not do anything stupid"

Common sense pretty much covers all bases. It keeps you from something to tell you will regret later. It keeps you from crossing a line you should not. It keeps you from, in court in trouble with a client or on the pole.

When Ron Friedmann, a lawyer, blogger and frequent speaker on issues of non-profit practice management and technology, concluded: "Lawyers shouldTo think before they hit enter. "

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