Social Media Archives - Page 9 of 25 - The National Law Forum

Study Reveals How Age Affects Consumers’ Social Media Habits [INFOGRAPHIC]

A new study from Accenture Interactive’s Acquity Group entitled, 2015 Next Generation of Commerce Study, reveals that while everyone and their grandmother is on social media these days, what they like and share is vastly different.

The report is based on surveys of more than 2,000 U.S. consumers on their digital engagement habits and preferences. Responses were broken down based on demographics, including age and gender.

What the researchers found is the consumers have high expectations from brands that seek to engage with them online. Driving this trend are consumers aged 18-30, who have grown up in a digital world that thrives on sharing.

The study reveals that almost 50% of consumers under the age of 50 have tried a service or product as a result of a campaign or ad on social media. Only about 30% of those who are 51-68 were so inclined, and only 14% of those over the age of 69 would try a service or product because they saw it on social media.

What is most surprising is that Facebook is considered to be the most trustworthy channel for content created by a company or brand.

Younger generations are more likely to trust social channels than their older counterparts.

Twenty-nine percent of college-aged consumers (ages 18-22) and 32% of Millennials (ages 23-30) rank Facebook #1, while only 16% of Baby Boomers (ages 52-68) do the same. Older consumers are more likely to trust traditional media, such as print (27%) or online news (20%).

This infographic breaks down the key data points from the Acquity Group study on what channels are most trusted and what types of content consumers are most likely to share with their networks:

Article By Stephen Fairley of The Rainmaker Institute

Delaware Adds to Growing Patchwork of Social Media Laws

On August 7, Delaware Governor Jack Markell signed a law to prohibit employers from interfering with the personal social media accounts of their prospective and current employees. The new law, which also took effect on August 7, defines “personal social media” to encompass any account on a social networking site created and operated by a prospective or current employee exclusively for his or her personal use. The term does not include accounts created or operated by an employer and that are operated by an employee as part of his or her employment.

Specifically, the new law prohibits an employer from requesting or requiring a prospective or current employee to:

disclose a username or password for the purpose of allowing the employer to access personal social media;

access personal social media in the presence of the employer;

use personal social media as a condition of employment;

divulge any personal social media (except as otherwise permitted by the new law);

add a person, including the employer, to the list of contacts associated with the prospective or current employee’s personal social media,

invite or accept an invitation from any person, including the employer, to join a group associated with the prospective or current employee’s personal social media; or

alter settings on the prospective or current employee’s personal social media that affect a third party’s ability to view the contents of the medium.

The new law also forbids an employer from taking adverse action against a prospective or current employee for failing to comply with any of these requests or demands.

Despite these broad prohibitions, nothing in the new law prevents an employer from:

exercising its right or obligation under its personnel policies, federal or state law, case law, or other rules or regulations to require or request that an employee divulge a username, password, or social media “reasonably believed to be relevant” to an investigation of alleged employee misconduct or violation of applicable laws and regulations (so long as the social media is used solely for purposes of that investigation or a related proceeding);

requiring or requesting an employee to disclose a username, password, or other accessing credentials for (i) an electronic communication device supplied by or paid for in whole or in part by the employer; or (ii) an account or service provided by the employer, obtained by virtue of the employee’s employment relationship, or used for the employer’s business purposes;

accessing, blocking, monitoring, or reviewing electronic data stored on an employer’s network or on an electronic communications device supplied by or paid for in whole or in part by the employer;

complying with a duty to screen prospective or current employees, or to monitor or retain employee communications, (i) under federal or state law or by a self-regulatory organization, as defined in the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 (like FINRA); or (ii) in the course of a law enforcement employment application or officer conduct investigation performed by a law enforcement agency; or

accessing, using, or viewing information about a prospective or current employee otherwise available in the public domain.

The new Delaware law continues a growing trend across the country. Twenty-one other states have similar laws restricting employer access to a prospective or current employee’s personal social media account, including Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

ARTICLE BY Katharine H Parker & Daniel L. Saperstein of Proskauer Rose LLP

Twitter Terrorism: Criminals Choose the Hack Attack

In what appears to be yet another brazen demonstration of capability following an earlier hijack of government social media sites, a group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) recently hacked into the U.S. Army’s main news and public information website, positing its own message for website visitors: “Your commanders admit they are training the people they have sent you to die fighting.” In response, the Army was forced to shut down the site to implement additional security measures to protect its systems.

Earlier this year, two of the U.S. military’s Central Command social media websites on YouTube and Twitter were similarly attacked and compromised. There, organization profile images were replaced by those of ISIS supporters on the official Twitter page, and two ISIS propaganda videos were uploaded to the Central Command YouTube account. Over the past several years, SEA has initiated similar attacks on the Twitter accounts of the BBC, The New York Times, 60 Minutes and the Associated Press.

Business Concerns

While the U.S. government reported that none of the internal systems were compromised and that there was no loss of classified information, the attacks have certified the anxiety of many business leaders over the potential vulnerability of their own companies, and highlight the concerns regarding the lack of knowledge or ability to prevent such attacks. Recent surveys have confirmed that risks associated with social media, whether through external portal access or internal sabotage, are among the top concerns facing businesses in 2015.

Without question, social media has become a crucial advertising vehicle for thousands of businesses around the world. The number of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media users continues to grow at an exponential rate, allowing businesses access to many new customers and clients every day. The ability to maintain control over these new electronic profiles, however, has become increasingly difficult as the perpetrators become more skilled and the targets more prized. In one particularly publicized account in 2013, social media hackers changed the Twitter account name of a premiere fast-food company to that of its chief competitor and posted multiple offensive tweets. Thereafter, damage control was all that could be done.

Businesses in 2015 have become enthralled by virtually unlimited access to customers and business partners via online platforms. Unfortunately, many have focused on the potential profits arising from such undertakings without sufficient consideration for the problems that too frequently arise from the use of such platforms. Social media has become the soft underbelly of many growing businesses eager for success but unaware of its vulnerabilities. In addition to direct attacks, courthouses nationwide have been flooded by lawsuits tied to the use and regulation of social media sites. The governance of employee use of social media, ownership of content and retention of information gathered through social media are generating more litigation every day. While increased exposure may be the incentive, preventative medicine will likely prove integral to long-term success.

Such “preventative medicine” includes not only the appropriate policies and procedures on access to and use of social media, but also an understanding of the vulnerabilities created by using these online platforms. Most importantly, organizations must train their employees on these issues. Defending itself from perils arising out of social media starts at the first line of defense – the user.

ARTICLE BY Scott Sweeney & Ian A. Stewart of Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP

Gone, But Not Forgotten – A Deactivated Facebook Account Can Be Discoverable

Courts have long grappled with social media in a legal context. The struggle to understand social media issues — and to craft coherent applicable legal policy — renders Crowe v. Marquette Transportation Co. Gulf-Inland, LLC amusing to show how the less-than-honest actions of an employee-plaintiff can make these difficult legal questions fairly simple for a court.

In May of 2014, Brannon Crowe sued Marquette Transportation, his employer, for an injury to his knee that he claimed to have suffered in an accident at work. Interestingly, however, Crowe allegedly sent a co-worker a message on Facebook which stated that he received the injury during a fishing trip, and not at work. When confronted with the message to the co-worker by opposing counsel during a deposition, Crowe stated the account the message was sent from was Brannon “CroWe,” and it couldn’t be his because he didn’t have a capital “W” in his last name.

At the deposition, Crowe also said that he no longer had an account after the previous October, and his response to a discovery request for the contents of his account was that, in addition to such a request being vague, overbroad and unduly burdensome, he didn’t presently have a Facebook account. The court ordered Crowe to provide the contents of his account for the court to review in camera to determine if the contents of the account should indeed be discoverable. Later, however, Crowe’s counsel submitted to the court 4,000 pages of Facebook account information from the Brannon CroWe account, with an interesting wrinkle – the records of the account indicate that the account was deactivated – not deleted – four days after the discovery request for the account’s contents.

The court was understandably unamused, and suggested that the in camera review of 4,000 pages of Facebook account information would be a waste of time since this account information should have been produced earlier in response to Marquette’s request. The contradiction with Crowe’s testimony alone was enough to render the account information discoverable. Rather than review the documents fully in camera, the court ordered Crowe to turn over every single page of the Facebook account history to Marquette, as well as any login information for any Facebook accounts Crowe had at that time or in the past, and Crowe was ordered to consent to any authorization for Marquette to subpoena his Facebook information.

In effect, Crowe made the contents of the account discoverable through his attempts to keep it from being discovered, and that made the court’s decision on the issue clear. Luckily for Crowe, he only deactivated the account rather than deleted it, since he had a duty to preserve evidence in litigation. Spoliation of evidence is the negligent or intentional destruction or alteration of evidence that may be required in a lawsuit. Even though the evidence doesn’t look good for Crowe in the present case, had he deleted the account entirely, he would have been subject to the spoliation inference, which is a negative evidentiary inference in favor of the opposing party. A showing that a party has destroyed relevant evidence can lead to punitive sanctions against him as well.

Social media provides an abundant resource of data about a litigant, and both employers and employees alike should be a wary of even private messages sent to others in that context. When employees raise issues against employers in a legal setting, their interactions with coworkers on social media may be discoverable. This case also raises questions about how far those involved in legal proceedings can or should go to protect themselves with regard to their social media accounts. As courts become increasingly comfortable with the legal implications of social media and technology, issues such as evidence spoliation through deactivation and deletion will become more and more prominent as a trap for the unwary.

ARTICLE BY Brittany Blackburn Koch of McBrayer, McGinnis, Leslie and Kirkland, PLLC

Three Steps to Leverage LinkedIn for Your Law Firm

I have yet to find an attorney who could not benefit from having their profile on LinkedIn. It’s the number one online network for white-collar professionals.

Whether you want to connect with non-competing attorneys, non-legal professionals, or potential clients, the demographics on LinkedIn speak for themselves:

The average age range of a LinkedIn user is 30 to 49
44% of LinkedIn users report an annual income of more than $100,000
50% of members have a college degree
28% have a graduate degree

LinkedIn members are highly educated and affluent. Is this a demographic you would like to reach? For most attorneys, the answer is obvious.

The first step to using LinkedIn is to create a comprehensive profile. Use your entire bio in your profile and be sure to include your keywords in it. In other words, use the exact keywords that you believe prospects or potential referral sources would use to find an attorney with your skill sets.

For example, if you are a business attorney in Omaha it might sound like this:

“John Doe is a Omaha business attorney who works with small business owners and CEOs of mid-sized companies to create comprehensive operating agreements, buy-sell agreements and employment agreements. His Omaha business clients appreciate the fact that John is an attorney who has a strong business background, having owned and operated two different companies, including a high tech company with 25 employees.”

Next, go to the See Who You Already Know on LinkedIn page and import your email contact list. This makes it super simple to connect with people you already know who are also on LinkedIn. In addition, based on your contacts, LinkedIn will suggest relevant contacts for you to connect with on the site.

Then search LinkedIn Groups and join those where your clients and prospects are. Create content — blog posts, free reports, articles, etc. — that will attract their attention. You can also start your own group and invite contacts to join.

The key to utilizing LinkedIn effectively is to be involved and be consistent. You need to commit to investing at least 30-45 minutes every week to log in, post an update or a link to your blog, reach out to your contacts, answer any questions that are sent to you, and make yourself visible. Simply setting up a profile on LinkedIn will not lead to more referrals any more than a having a business card will automatically get you new business.

ARTICLE BY Stephen Fairley of The Rainmaker Institute

LinkedIn, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and the Real-World Implications of Online Activity

With the ever-increasing amount of information available on social media, employers should remember to exercise caution when utilizing social media as a part of their Human Resources/ Recruitment related activities. We live in a digital-age, and how people choose to define themselves is often readily showcased on social networking sites. Whether – and how – employers choose to interact with the online presence of their workforce will continue to develop as the relevant legal standards try to catch up.

A recent federal court filing in the Northern District of California against LinkedIn Corp. provides yet another example of the growing interaction between online personas and real-world employment law implications. There, in Sweet, et al v. LinkedIn Corp., the plaintiffs sought to expand the application of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) by alleging that LinkedIn’s practice of providing “reference reports” to members that subscribe to LinkedIn’s program for a fee, brought LinkedIn within the coverage of the FCRA as a Credit Reporting Agency (“CRA”). Briefly, the FCRA (and relevant state statutes like it) imposes specific requirements on an employer when working with “any person which, for monetary fees, dues, or on a cooperative nonprofit basis, regularly engages in whole or in part in the practice of assembling or evaluating consumer credit information or other information on consumers for the purpose of furnishing consumer reports to third parties, and which uses any means or facility of interstate commerce for the purpose of preparing or furnishing consumer reports.” In other words, there are rules – such as providing requisite disclosures and obtaining prior authorization – that apply when an employer engages a CRA to perform background checks, reference checks and related inquiries.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs alleged that LinkedIn was a CRA – and that these various rules should apply – because LinkedIn collected and distributed consumer information to third parties and the resulting reference reports “bear on a consumer’s character, general reputation, mode of living, or personal characteristics, and/or other factors listed in 15 U.S.C. § 1681a(d).” Further, according to the complaint, LinkedIn violated the FCRA because it should have provided FCRA compliant disclosure and followed the reporting obligations applicable to CRAs.

LinkedIn, which is touted as the “world’s largest professional network,” does not portray itself as a CRA and moved to dismiss the complaint. LinkedIn argued that the plaintiffs’ interpretation of the statute was too broad and, moreover, was inconsistent with the facts. A federal judge agreed and dismissed the complaint (although the plaintiffs have the opportunity to file another complaint). The Court ruled that these reference searches could not be considered “consumer reports” under the law – and LinkedIn was not acting as a CRA – because, in part, the plaintiffs had voluntarily provided their information to LinkedIn with the intention of it being published online. (The FCRA excludes from the definition of a consumer report a report that contains “information solely as to transactions or experiences between the consumer and the person making the report.”) The Court also noted that the allegations suggested that LinkedIn “gathers the information about the employment histories of the subjects of the Reference Searches not to make consumer reports but to ‘carry out consumers’ information-sharing objectives.’”

The LinkedIn case should still serve as a reminder of several important and interrelated trends. First, as it concerns the FCRA, the statute is broadly worded to cover “any written, oral or other communication of any information by a consumer reporting agency . . .” and the equally expansive definition of a CRA can apply in numerous situations that extend beyond the traditional notion of a consumer reporting agency. If applicable, the requirements of the FCRA must be followed. Second, employers need to continue to be mindful of the fact that their online activity can have real-world employment law implications. Third, as the law governing traditional employment law continues to evolve in response to online developments, the challenges to that activity will evolve as well.

Authored by: Ian Gabriel Nanos and Maxine Adams of Epstein Becker & Green, P.C.

The New Competition – Emerging Legal Technologies Out of Silicon Valley

In January, the National Law Review had pleasure of attending theAnnual Marketing Partner Forum in beautiful Rancho Palos Altos, California. Programing was provided by the Legal Executives Institute at Thomson Reuters and featured over 15 hours of dynamic workshops. Hundreds of marketing partners, managing partners, in-house counsel and senior-level marketing and business development professionals were in attendance.

The “New Competition” program featured emerging legal technologies within Silicon Valley. Catherine Hammack of Jurispect, Monica Zent of Foxwordy, and Daniel Lewis of Ravel Law each showcased their innovative technologies and shared their thoughts as to where innovation is taking the legal industry in 2015.

“Jurispect will help fundamentally transform how companies operate by providing organizations with a real-time analytical view of both exposure and opportunities to take proactive steps to manage legal and regulatory risk.” – Catherine Hammack

Catherine was present on two momentous occasions in U.S. financial history: as an intern at Arthur Anderson when Enron was indicted, and as a first-day associate at Bingham McCutchen the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, and the start of the financial crisis in 2008. Following her time at Bingham as a financial litigator, she transitioned to join Google’s Policy team, where her perspective on legal services dramatically changed.

As Catherine elaborated in a post-conference interview: “There was a huge gap between the way law firms traditionally provide counsel and the way companies need information to make business decisions.” She was surrounded by engineers and data scientists who were analyzing vasts amounts of data with cutting edge technology. Catherine became interested in adapting these technologies for managing risk in the legal and regulatory industries. Inspired by Google’s data-driven decision making policies, she founded Jurispect.

Jurispect is a tool that companies can use to track legal and regulatory changes relevant to their industry, and possibly to identify risks earlier on to help avoid future Enrons and Lehman Brothers. Currently, Jurispect is geared toward companies in the financial services and technology space, and will be expanding into other regulated industries in the very near future. Key decision makers in the corporate legal, compliance and risk departments of companies are benefitting from Jurispect’s actionable intelligence. The user’s experience is customized: Jurispect’s technology adjusts based on user profile settings and company attributes. As the user continues to utilize Jurispect, its algorithms continuously calibrate to improve the relevancy of information presented to each user.

Jurispect’s team of seasoned experts in engineering, data science, product management, marketing, legal and compliance collaborated to develop the latest machine learning and semantic analysis technologies. These technologies are used to aggregate information across regulatory agencies, including sources such as policy statements and enforcement actions. Jurispect also analyzes information in relevant press releases, and coverage by both industry bodies and mainstream news. The most time-saving aspect of Jurispect are the results that coalesce into user-friendly reports to highlight the importance and relevance of the regulatory information to their company. Users can view this intelligence in the form of notifications, trends, and predictive analytics reports. Jurispect makes data analytics work for legal professionals so they spend less time searching, and more time on higher level competencies. As Catherine elaborated, “We believe that analytics are quickly becoming central to any technology solution, and the regulatory space is no exception.”

“Foxwordy is ushering in the era of the social age for lawyers and for the legal industry.” – Monica Zent

Monica is an experienced entrepreneur and had already been running a successful alternative law firm practice when she founded Foxwordy. Foxwordy is a private social network that is exclusively for lawyers. Monica reminded the audience that we are, remarkably, ten years into the social media experience and all attorneys should consider a well rounded social media toolkit that includes Foxwordy, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

However, as Monica elaborated in a post-conference interview, LinkedIn, for example, “falls short of the needs of professionals like lawyers who are in a space that is regulated; where there’s privacy, [and] professional ethics standards.” As an experienced attorney and social seller, Monica understands that lawyers’ needs are different from other professionals that use the more mainstream and very public social networks, which is why she set out to create Foxwordy.

Foxwordy is currently available to licensed attorneys, those who are licensed but not currently practicing but regularly involved in the business of law, certified paralegals, and will eventually open up to law students. Anyone who fits the above criteria can request membership by going to the homepage, and all potential members go through a vetting process to ensure that they are a member of the legal community. At its inception, the Foxwordy team expected to see more millennials and solo practitioners taking advantage of the opportunity to network on Foxwordy. Those populations have joined as expected, but what was surprising is how the product resonated across all demographics, positions and segments of the legal industry. Foxwordy has seen general counsels, in-house counsels, solo practitioners, major law firm partners, law school deans, judges, politicians and more become members.

Foxwordy is currently available to join and will be emerging out of public beta around summertime this year. As Monica said during her presentation “Time is the new currency”, and what the Foxwordy team has found via two clinical trials is that engaging Foxwordy saves lawyers an average of two hours per day. Membership includes all the core social features such as a profile page, connecting with others, the ability to ask questions and engage anonymously, exchange referrals, and exchange other information and resources. Free members experience all the core functions fully and there is a premium membership that is available with enhanced features and unlimited use of Foxwordy. In the closing thoughts of her post-conference interview, Monica shared that “the ability to engage anonymously and discreetly, yet at the same time collaborate with our legal colleagues and engage with them on a social level has been very powerful.”

“There is an amazing opportunity to use data analytics and technology to create a competitive edge for lawyers amidst all of this information…” – Daniel Lewis

Data analytics and technology has been used in many different fields to predict successful results. In his presentation, Daniel pointed out that fields traditionally considered more art than science have benefitted from the use of data analytics to predict accurate results.

Having conducted metrics-based research and advocacy while at the Bipartisan Policy Center, and observing how data-driven decision making was being used in areas like baseball and politics, Daniel was curious why the legal industry had fallen so far behind. Even though the legal field is often considered to be slow moving, there are currently over 11 million opinions in the U.S. judicial system with more than 350,000 new opinions issued per year. There is also a glut of secondary material that has appeared on the scene in the form of legal news sources, white papers, law blogs and more. Inspired by technology’s ability to harness and utilize vast amounts of information, Daniel founded Ravel Law to accommodate the dramatically growing world of legal information.

Ravel Law is optimized for all lawyers across the country. Currently, thousands of associates, partners, and in-house counsel are using Ravel. Ravel has as also begun working with 30 of the top law schools around the country, with thousands of law students learning how to use it right alongside legal research staples such as Westlaw and LexisNexis. Professors and students around the country have also independently discovered Ravel and are using and teaching it. When asked why he works with law schools, Daniel said “We work with schools because students are always the latest generation and have the highest expectations about how technology should work for them.” Students have given the Ravel team excellent feedback and have grown into a loyal user base over the past few years. Once these students graduate, they introduce Ravel to their firms. Ravel’s user base has been growing very quickly and they have only released a small portion of what their technology is ultimately capable of.

Ravel’s team of PhDs and technical advisors from Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook, has coded advanced search algorithms to determine what is relevant, thereby enhancing legal research’s effectiveness and efficiency. Ravel provides insights, rather than simply lists of related materials, by using big data technologies such as machine learning, data visualization, advanced statistics and natural language processing. In a post-conference follow up Daniel elaborates: “Our visualizations then show how the results connect in context, helping people understand the legal landscape very rapidly as well as find needles in the haystack.” Ravel guides users toward analysis of relevant passages in a particular case, without navigating away from the original case or conducting a new search. Daniel and his colleagues will be launching more new features this year and are looking forward to continuing to “transform how attorneys search and understand all legal information.”

The Year in Social Media: Four Big Developments from 2014

As social networking has become entrenched as a tool for doing business and not just a pastime of our social lives, employers, government agencies, and even academia have taken big steps in 2014 to define how social media can and cannot, or should and should not, be used. Below is a summary of some of the big developments in social media in the workplace this year.

The EEOC Turns Its Attention to Social Media

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has turned its attention toward social networking, meeting in March to gather information about social media use in the workplace. To no surprise, the EEOC recognized that although using social media sites such as LinkedIn could be a “valuable tool” for identifying employment candidates, relying on personal information found on social networks, such as age, race, gender, or ethnicity, to make employment decisions is prohibited.

More controversially, the EEOC expressed concern that employers’ efforts to access so-called “private” social media communications in the discovery phase of discrimination lawsuits might have a “chilling effect” on employees filing discrimination cases. However, it is unclear how the EEOC might prevent employers from getting this information if it is relevant to a plaintiff’s claims. It remains to be seen what steps the EEOC might take to address this “chilling effect.”

The NLRB Continues to Refine Its Position on Social Media Policies

The National Labor Relations Board has spent the past few years attacking social media policies as overbroad, but perhaps a shift in that policy is at hand. This summer, an NLRB administrative law judge upheld a social media policy that discouraged employees from posting information on social networks about the company or their jobs that might create morale problems. The ALJ held that the policy did not prohibit job-related posts, but merely called on employees to be civil in their social media posts to avoid morale problems. The ALJ’s finding is at odds with recent NLRB decisions, which have gone much further to limit any policies that might affect employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act. While it is unclear whether this holding is an outlier or a shift in the NLRB’s approach, it brings with it some hope that the NLRB may be moving toward a more pro-employer stance.

States Continue to Limit Employers’ Access to Employees’ Social Media Accounts

State governments also are getting involved with social media regulation. In April, Wisconsin became the newest state to pass legislation aimed at protecting employees’ social media accounts, passing the Social Media Protection Act. The Act bars employers, schools, and landlords from requiring their employees, students, and tenants to produce their social media passwords. Significantly, the Act does not ban them from viewing social media posts that are publicly accessible.

Wisconsin was not alone in enacting legislation to protect social media passwords this year, as Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Tennessee enacted similar laws during 2014 and 12 other states did so in previous years. While not every state has passed such legislation, it is clear that state governments increasingly will not tolerate employers asking employees or applicants for access to their private social networking accounts. Employers should be mindful of their state laws before seeking social media information that might be protected.

Academia is Drawing Its Own Conclusions Regarding Social Media in the Workplace

Federal and state governments are not the only institutions weighing the implications of social media in the workplace. University researchers also are studying employers’ stances on social media – a North Carolina State University study concluded that applicants tend to have a lower opinion of employers that looked at their social media profiles before making a hiring decision, and a Carnegie Mellon University study concluded that employers risked claims of discrimination by reviewing applicants’ social media profiles, based on employers being more likely to screen out candidates based on their personal information such as ethnicity.

While these studies weigh against employers searching applicants’ social media before making hiring decisions, there is certainly logic to the contrary, as employers are entitled to view publicly-accessible information about their applicants, and thorough employers will want to learn as much as they can to do their due diligence in making important hiring decisions.

Laws, best practices, and public opinion regarding social media in the workplace will continue to evolve in 2015. Employers would be wise to look at the most recent developments before making any major decisions affecting their social media policies and practices.

ARTICLE BY

Douglas M. Oldham

Barnes & Thornburg LLP

Social Media Marketing for Lawyers: What It Can Do for You, How to Do It Right

Many attorneys I talk with want to know if social media will deliver real value for the investment in time and effort that it takes to develop and implement a social media marketing program.

Here is what I tell them:

Social media will help you build trust, but it will not make a “bad” reputation better. Social media is a meritocracy – if you’re good, people will know it. Conversely, a bad experience will also get talked about. Building trust is crucial for attorneys, and social media helps you build trust by providing a robust platform for sharing your particular insights and knowledge. Once people trust that, they will use you and recommend you to others.

Social media will get you leads, but it will not turn them into paying clients. People who follow you on Twitter, are a fan of you on Facebook or interact with you in any way on a social network have indicated an interest in what you have to say. These are leads. To capitalize on them and turn them into paying clients, however, requires effort on your part in following up.

Social media will give you visibility, but it will not replace a good client experience. Social media is a 365/24/7 world, allowing you to engage with prospects at any time, and they with you. You must be vigilant about responding to posts and questions the same way you would in responding to a prospect that calls or emails you. Every point of contact is an opportunity to make a great impression.

Social media is the fastest way to build your sphere of influence, but it won’t happen overnight. Your sphere of influence is defined as how many people know (1) who you are, (2) who you help, and (3) why you are different. If you only have 20 people who know enough about you to send you the right referrals, then you are severely limited in how much you will be able to grow your practice. Social media is a long-term play, and you need to commit to spending the time and money (either yours or hiring someone else) to achieve success.

ARTICLE BY

Stephen Fairley

The Rainmaker Institute

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Business Concerns

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“Jurispect will help fundamentally transform how companies operate by providing organizations with a real-time analytical view of both exposure and opportunities to take proactive steps to manage legal and regulatory risk.” – Catherine Hammack

“Foxwordy is ushering in the era of the social age for lawyers and for the legal industry.” – Monica Zent

“There is an amazing opportunity to use data analytics and technology to create a competitive edge for lawyers amidst all of this information…” – Daniel Lewis

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The EEOC Turns Its Attention to Social Media

The NLRB Continues to Refine Its Position on Social Media Policies

States Continue to Limit Employers’ Access to Employees’ Social Media Accounts

Academia is Drawing Its Own Conclusions Regarding Social Media in the Workplace

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