Social Media Best Practices for Law Schools - the website

Social Media Best Practices for Law Schools – the website

Jun 25th, 2009 | By Laura Bergus | Category: Featured, Law School, Lead Article, Social Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0

Last week I attended the Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI)’s annual conference. It was inspiring and educational on many levels (not to mention the great food). Keynote John Palfrey from Harvard’s Berkman Center had great suggestions for law schools to collaborate rather than compete (for instance on library collections). (See liveblog archive of Palfrey’s keynote by Gene Koo here.)

Besides networking and learning, I had the opportunity to help moderate a group discussion on social media best practices for law schools. Most remarkable about the discussion, attended by 50+ law school representatives, was that not a single person in the room was able to report that his or her institution had policy in place for using social media. Yet many of them had delved into the world of Facebook or Twitter. I found this pretty shocking.

In preparation for the conference, I compiled online recommendations for best practices for social media use for students, law school staff and employers of law students/grads.

More exciting than the CALI conference is the prospect of what the next steps will be. Over 40 law schools (including Harvard Law School) told me they were interested in coordinating policy and helping to create a best practices plan that everyone can buy in to. The first step is creating an online community where these discussions can take place. Watch for more here, and if your law school is interested in joining and learning more, please contact me at laura dot bergus at gmail dot com or leave a comment here or at http://smbp.laurabergus.com.