Social Media Best Practices for Law Schools (Part 1)
Mar 3rd, 2009 | By Laura Bergus | Category: Blogging, Facebook, Featured, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter
This is the first in a series of posts about my adventures in pushing my law school to get real about social media.
Like other law students, I was told not to blog about law school and to be careful what I posted on that evil place called Facebook. About a month into law school I started following lawyers on Twitter and reading law blogs (a.k.a blawgs). As anyone reading this already knows, participating in Twitter and commenting on blawgs is a hugely beneficial way to meet people and learn about the field. I got pretty upset with my school, and blogged about it (against their advice, of course). As with many rants, I ended up feeling guilty for whining but not offering up any solutions to the problem. So, I emailed the Assistant Dean of my school and let him know how I felt.
To my surprise, he was really receptive and we’re now working together on a Social Media Best Practices Guide. I cautiously have my hopes up and, for those looking to push their law school in a similar direction, I think the process goes something like this:
- Shame administration into realizing this is an important issue.
- With said administration’s help, conduct a survey of all current law students on their use and expectations of social media.
- Use Google to locate as much non-zombie “social media expert advice” as possible.
- Compile the least corny and vague suggestions (using as few of these words as possible) and use survey data to point out students current strengths and weaknesses.
- Put all of this wisdom in an accessible and pretty package for students, administrative (esp. career services) staff and employers.
- Turn the whole thing over to whoever at the law college checks such things for adequate rear-end-coverage.
- Deal with how much of the guide has been removed of changed; repeat, starting at step 3.
But in all seriousness, it is exciting and refreshing to see a large bureaucracy willing to change a fundamental line they have been feeding students for the past few years. “Facile” and “progressive” are words that speak more to Web 2.0 than to colleges of law, but at least a few (albeit very few) institutions are sitting up and taking notice, and hopefully not too late to help America’s future lawyers.
UPDATE: Since the start of this “campaign,” my law school’s director of external relations has joined Twitter (@jilledy) and there’s a Twitter account for my school’s law and business colleges’ news service (@tsnee). Score one (two?) for social media!!
Social Media Best Practices for Law Schools (Part 2)
Social Media Best Practices for Law Schools (Part 3)
Related posts:
- Social Media Best Practices for Law Schools – Join the Discussion!
- Social Media Best Practices for Law Schools (Part 2)
- Social Media Best Practices for Law Schools – the website
- Social Media Best Practices for Law Schools (Part 3)
- Why Some Law Schools Discourage Social Media: Student Blogging
- Does Top 10 Most Innovative Law School in America Get Social Media?
- Social Media Best Practices for Law Schools Webinar
- How Law Schools are Using Twitter
- Social Media Law Student Honored in ABA Journal Blawg 100
- Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video
Great post. I know of at least one law school who took down a student government blog because students started posting the truth about the law school. The truth about the law school was not pretty and did not fit into their marketing campaign. The dean pulled the plug on the student run blog in fear that incoming students would read the posts and have bad impressions of the law school. This is sometimes why some law schools encourage students not to blog.
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Great post! I agree, law students should be making connections all over social media. I found this while googling for social networks for law students. Check it out. http://futurelawyer.typepad.com/futurelawyer/2009/01/advanced-advocates—wish-i.html There’s no one on the network yet, but it’s pretty neat. I think it’s important that law students network with each other, and I just haven’t found any good sites for that. Legally Minded is too much ABA crap. What do you think?
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admin
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March 5th, 2009 at 6:57 am
Legally Minded lacks something when we use the service and we all feel it. Law school peers are simply amazing. Maybe that comes from a profession built around high achievers. Networking with your colleagues is a must. Sometimes law students put their heads down and forget to reach out to those around them. Law students these days have done pretty amazing things. The competition to get into law school means that everyone around you has done something great. There’s a goldmine of opportunity sitting next to in class as well as in other law schools. LinkedIn seems to be a better tool for networking than most sites thus far. I am not sure a legal niche social networking site will be able to take off in light of LinkedIn, Facebook, and other mega sites.
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I’m very curious to see how this all ends up panning out. I’ve tried step 1 myself to no avail. I fear it’s because my law school has no shame.
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LinkedIn, FB, and the other social networks for everyone and their mother is a bad fit for law students. There needs to be something that’s made just for law students. Legally Minded is garbage. It’s just a bunch of news articles. I can get that from google.
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admin
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March 26th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Have you tied Advanced Advocates? or Lawyrs? LegallyMinded? etc etc.. LinkedIn seems to be the leading social network for the legal profession but may lack a mechanism for filtering out legal profession contacts.
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I think some of the advice in the education 2.0 and library 2.0 space is great for law school administrations looking to encourage law professors to adopt social media tools (particularly RSS, blogs, wikis, and Ning)
I wonder how mobile will eventually be integrated into university communications beyond the campus alert context.
I think Mike Wesch’s use of media dashboards in Netvibes is a fantastic idea for helping students be they law students, business students, or liberal arts students to organize data. Increasingly managing information overload will be a core component of media literacy along with social media. I think dashboards do a great job of creating some order to the chaos.
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