ParalegalGateway's Weblog: Social Media

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It's been an interesting past eight years. During that time, ParalegalGateway has grown to well over 20K plus members into a strong and close-knit community. We are actually probably closer than most given the unique challenges we face as Paralegals. I've actually often joked that we are the "red-headed-step-children" of the legal industry...we're not attorneys and we're not legal secretaries. We're stuck somewhere in between the two and it can be tricky - to say the least - learning to balance yourself between them.

Like most enduring organizations, we enjoy sharing information among ourselves and we absolutely discuss legal services. If someone has experienced good or bad service, rest assured the word gets around. What has been interesting for me to personally observe as the owner of a Paralegal portal that keeps the lights turned on via the support of legal service providers, is the odd dance that seems to take place when approaching these vendors about advertising. It seems the very people who contact Paralegals to sell their services suddenly become anti-social when it comes to Paralegals seeking support from them. Let me give a couple of quick scenarios we have encountered over the years.

But, I'm Part of the Group

ParalegalGateway has been online since 2001, well-before the days of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Back then we were communicating via the tried and true message boards. As a result, we now have the largest Yahoo! Group on Yahoo! for Paralegals. We also have a sister-site, MyParalegalSpace that has been online for over 2 years and enjoys over 3K members. Our more recent group on LinkedIn already has over 2K members and typically sees about 100 new members per week. Although we allow vendors into these groups, we ask them not to spam the members with their services. This includes harvesting email addresses as well as posting messages. The obvious reason we ask this is secondary to our policy that only our advertisers (or Partner Sponsors) are allowed to contact our members about their services. This is a "value-added" service to them (to use their own terminology). If we allowed every service provider to post their information, not only would it not be fair to those who pay to advertise but it would not be fair to those who pay to advertise! I know this seems simple however when we ask those who have posted to the group or sent emails to our members to respect those who do pay for this benefit, you wouldn't believe some of the entitlement attitudes that pop up.

Paralegals Aren't Our Target Market

Really? Very interesting. Let me back up here. We once had to contact a vendor after they had harvested emails from our Yahoo! Group and then sent well over 200 emails to our members about their service. When we contacted them, we invited them to become an advertising Partner thinking certainly since they were sending out so many emails to our members that they wanted to market to them. Their response? "Paralegals really aren't our target audience." (Insert stunned silence here).

We're Providing a Free Informational Seminar

We've had several national legal service companies attempt to post information about their free seminars to our group in an attempt to increase attendance. When we deleted the post, it was immediately posted again by the vendor. When we had to remove the vendor from the group for failing to follow protocol, he responded by saying they weren't attempting to advertise, the seminar was free and they were only trying to help Paralegals. Isn't that very altruistic of them? They weren't marketing their service at all! They were just trying to help Paralegals with their free and very branded seminar. When we asked them if they would review our pricing for advertising, we were told they would be sure it got to the proper person. (Insert cricket noises here). Never heard back and subsequent calls were never returned.

Paralegals Are Holding the Purse Strings

ParalegalGateway recently commissioned a survey (prepared for us by Alexander Babbage) of our site visitors which enjoyed excellent participation and results. When asked "How much impact do you have on purchases made within your firm or company?" we were pleasantly surprised to learn that 62% of Paralegal influence decision making, 89% participate in decision making and 29% are the sole decision makers. May want to rethink that target market. (Insert wink here).

The reality is that the attorneys we work for would rather be billing their time than having to research legal software or legal services. They delegate this work to us and trust our opinions when it comes to making the final decisions. We understand the importance of the aforementioned statistics and our role in the very lucrative legal service industry. We are also very aware of the companies that are willing to support our community by means of sponsoring our local and national associations and sites like ParalegalGateway that provide us with a free platform to virtually network, increase our marketability, continue our education and assist each other via mentoring, sharing forms or simply being able to vent about a bad day at work. Not only are we aware of it, we talk about it and with the economy slowly picking up, we're going to remember those who have stepped up.

So where am I going with all of this? Absolutely we would love to see more vendors stop trying to get something for nothing and help support a virtual network via advertising. However, it goes deeper than that. It's almost as if these companies are devaluing our worth via their allegations that our credibility as professionals just isn't the same as an attorney. All they have to do is ask an attorney and he/she would tell them how valuable we actually are. Perhaps that's a bit paranoid on my part or maybe I just can't quite put my finger on it yet. Whatever "it" is I guess I've been unwilling to learn the proper steps to join in the dance.

I realize this isn't an unbiased post and other opinions are certainly welcome. Maybe they can help to shed light on this topic.

After the flood of attention which lawyers and the media have recently paid to social networking sites, the next logical emphasis will be the ethical use, and mis-use, of such sites by lawyers.

Trying to jump start that inquiry, in Internet Social Networking Sites for Lawyers, we hinted at the risks of Facebook-friend’ing prospective jury members (improper contact under Rule 4-3.5) and we raised concerns about the use of social networking sites being deemed as advertising violations (Rules 4-7 and 4-15). Indeed, in a recent presentation, we even discussed whether a law firm could revise and tailor its website prior to trial. We also proposed to a paralegal group that they could not anonymously send Facebook-friend requests to jury members.

But we were clearly not thorough nor quick enough. The Philadelphia Bar Association Professional Guidance Committee hustled out its Opinion 2009-02 which held that a lawyer could not ask a “third person” (presumably a paralegal or office employee) to Facebook-friend a deposition witness so the lawyer could surreptitiously access the witness’ Facebook page.

For the uninitiated, the default setting on a person’s Facebook page is that only invited/permitted users can see the page. To gain access, a user needs to send a “Facebook friend request.” That request usually is accomplished by clicking a button which says “send Friend request.” There is a discreet link which says “Send a Personal Message” where the pursuing user can enter a greeting or identification or some kind but, at least anecdotally, this is rarely used. The receiving user can see the name, picture, and a brief description of the person sending the friend request. That person can then “confirm” or “ignore” the request. For a good summary of this process, look here.

Here, the lawyer believed the deponent had information on her web page and somehow believed she would accept just about anyone as a Facebook friend (presumably there was some discussion as to the number of Facebook friends or her Facebook practices). In person, the lawyer did not ask to be a Facebook-friend. Instead, the question was raised whether the lawyer could properly have a third person send the request — a person who the witness would likely not be able to identify as someone associated with the lawyer. The obvious intention was that the Facebook-promiscuous user would blindly accept the friend request, thereby giving the lawyer access to the page.

The Philly Bar concluded that this was improperly deceptive under their Rule 8.4, which is nearly word-for-word identical to Florida Rule Regulating the Florida Bar 4-8.4.

First, the lawyer was responsible for the acts of the third person since the lawyer was asking for and ratifying the conduct. Second, the lawyer was purportedly “engag[ing] in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation… because the planned communication by the third party with the witness is deceptive [because] it omits a highly material fact, namely, that the third party who asks to be allowed access to the witness’ pages is doing so only because he or she is intent… on sharing it with the lawyer for use in a lawsuit to impeach the testimony of the witness.”

Unlike that Bar, we note that Facebook friend request typically do not involve an explanation / introduction and question whether this is truly “hiding” information. Then again, in a non-virtual world example, a lawyer asking another person to cozy up to a witness at a bar to get information seems improper. Your thoughts? Comments welcome below.

Source: Florida Law Commentary