Colin Coleman, a business attorney in Needham, Mass., uses the networking siteLinkedIn to build professional relationships and make introductions. Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Victoria Pynchon, who recently launched a commercial-litigation mediation practice, likes the wayFacebookmimics a neighborhood and allows people to get to know her. And Southern California entertainment lawyer Richard Jefferson maintains a MySpacepage to ensure his clients consider him cutting-edge.
While their focuses are different, all three attorneys share one trait: They’ve recognized the value of these social-networking sites to help support and expand their businesses. Social network usage is exploding. Facebook experienced a whopping 270 percent increase in unique visitors from June 2006 to June 2007,according to digital statistics company comScore. Leading site MySpace recently broke the 70 million monthly unique user mark, which translates to nearly one in four Americans. And LinkedIn spokesperson Jane Corrigan notes that of her site’s more than 14 million members, a growing segment (at press time, about 212,000 members) are in the legal industry.
