Social media and law firms seem about as companionable as a tuxedo and a T-shirt. With firms, you think of interrogatories and emails with three-sentence confidentiality statements. With social media, you may not think at all before posting “Mardi Gras 2012 Party!” photos on Facebook. Law firms’ traditional formality is no doubt a by-product of official correspondence, established rules, and the protocols of the profession. But within the firm are people with volubility, opinions, and self-expression, as anywhere else.
Firms can exploit the best of both by using social media tools in-house. Opportunities to use social media tools internally map out pretty evenly with their external counterparts. For example, if your personnel are facile with Twitter used to post 140-character “micro-blogs” they likely will easily adopt similar software, such as Yammer and Pulse. These can be used to help employees “follow one” another, and apply hashtags to topics of mutual interest. With Microsoft SharePoint , users can create collaborative workspaces (“wikis”) for clients, practice groups, and industry topics and the latest version, SharePoint 2010, offers Facebook-like home pages.
