Legal Ease Blog

NEW - LinkedIn Essentials Online Course

I am excited to announce that after many years of teaching and training and writing about LinkedIn, Dennis Kennedy (my co-author on Make LinkedIn Work for You, A Practical Handbook for Lawyers and other Legal Professionals) and I have officially launched our online course - LinkedIn Essentials.

This course will take you step-by-step through the three main building blocks of LinkedIn - Profiles, Connections, and Participation - and show you easy ways for you to improve your LinkedIn presence and maximize your use of the platform.

But perhaps the most useful part of the course is that we teach you how to think strategically about how you use LinkedIn to get the most value out of the platform and out of your LinkedIn network as possible.

The course includes not only hours of video, broken down into 9 important lessons, but also provides you with "homework" in the form of worksheets to complete at the end of each lesson to reinforce what you've learned and to help you customize your LinkedIn strategy for you. The course also includes a complete LinkedIn action plan for you to use to plan the next three months of LinkedIn activity.

Complete the course at your own pace, and hop over to LinkedIn after each lesson to implement what you've learned right away.

Is 2021 the year you want to finally make good use of LinkedIn - now that you know virtual networking isn't going anywhere anytime soon? If so, this course will be well worth the investment.

Check out LinkedIn Essentials here.

47 Tips to Improve Your LinkedIn Results in 2020

In honor of our new book, Make LinkedIn Work for You, A Practical Handbook for Lawyers and Other Legal Professionals, my co-author, Dennis Kennedy and I have put together this list of tips to help you with how you use LinkedIn in this new decade.

We've organized these tips into three categories, along the lines of what we call the three "building blocks" of LinkedIn: Profiles, Connections and Participation.

The tips are pulled straight from the book - please let us know in the comments if you've implemented any of these tips and how they are working for you!

LinkedIn Tips: Profiles

1. Add a banner/header photo to your Profile to highlight a skill, achievement or area of focus.
2. Look at the Profiles of some power users to see how they’re maximizing their LinkedIn presence.
3. Use stories or examples in your About section to illustrate what you do for clients or to provide additional insight.
4. Include keywords that your target audience is looking for in your Profile, including in your headline.
5. Use LinkedIn analytics to help you to refine your keywords.
6. Name your target audience in your Profile and speak their language.
7. Demonstrate your message; show, don’t tell.
8. Add relevant, appropriate video, audio, presentations, or other extras to showcase your work and what you do for clients.
9. Keep your Profile fresh – don’t forget to update on a regular basis (at least quarterly) and put time for updating on your calendar.
10. Add your bar admissions information to your About, Experience or Licenses and Certifications sections of your Profile to make it clear where you practice.
11. Add an explicit call to action to your About section (download a PDF, subscribe to your email newsletter, schedule appointment).
12. Make your Profile stand out and make it easier to read with short paragraphs and bullet points.
13. Compose your entries in a word processing program, then copy and paste into LinkedIn.
14. Review your Profile on both the desktop and mobile app versions of LinkedIn to see what information appears before the “see more” link; put your most important information first.
15. Click on “Add Profile Section” periodically to see if LinkedIn has added new sections that might be relevant to you.

LinkedIn Tips: Connections

1. Use the “People Also Viewed” results on your Connections’ Profile pages (and your own) to find people who might be good Connections for you.
2. Convert the business cards you receive into LinkedIn invitations while the memory of the in-person meeting is still fresh.
3. Accepting more of the invitations you receive is an easy way to build your number of Connections. If you are unsure about the inviter, send them a message in LinkedIn to start a conversation before you accept the invitation to connect.
4. In meetings or other events, consider suggesting that people use the “Find Nearby” feature in the mobile app to let everyone easily find and connect to others who are there.
5. Don’t forget that you can cultivate Connections over time: remove, block, ignore or remove invitations, and otherwise manage your Connections to make your Connections list more tailored to your goals.
6. Because many people have premium accounts, they will see that you have viewed their Profiles. Simply viewing Profiles can be a way to see if someone who you don’t know well will invite you to connect with them.
7. Invite people to connect with you when you speak, in your communications, and even on your business card.
8. Don’t forget that premium account options have additional features that can help you find and add Connections. You can take advantage of a free 30-day trial and, if you purchase a premium account, you can turn it off at any time.
9. If you use Twitter, a great technique is to see who follows you on Twitter and, if it makes sense, send them LinkedIn invitations.
10. Send invitations to second-degree Connections who like or comment on your Posts.
11. If you sincerely like a presentation or article, let the speaker or author know and ask them to connect.
12. Look at your Connections’ connections – if you see someone you’d like to meet, ask if they will make an introduction for you. The introduction doesn’t have to occur on LinkedIn. Or, simply ask your Connection if you can use their name in your LinkedIn invitation to your desired contact.
13. Be creative. We are always finding new ways to use LinkedIn to identify potential Connections.

LinkedIn Tips: Participation

1. Create posts for LinkedIn in batches so all you need to do is post something you have in your queue.
2. Use a scheduling tool to schedule some posts in advance.
3. Create a LinkedIn SlideShare account and upload presentations to your Profile.
4. Take your LinkedIn relationships offline by scheduling lunch, coffee or phone calls.
5. Schedule regular weekly or monthly time for LinkedIn participation activities.
6. Follow companies, individuals and influencers whose content is valuable to you and your network.
7. Use self-promotion sparingly, self-deprecatingly, and subtly on LinkedIn, but do not be afraid to promote yourself.
8. Consider whether you want to sync your blog and Twitter accounts to LinkedIn to allow for cross-posting.
9. Use “Congratulate” options LinkedIn gives you to acknowledge new jobs and other changes for your Connections.
10. Use Groups as a way to meet new people and make Connections.
11. “Follow” individuals of interest to you within a Group to receive their Posts.
12. Use LinkedIn’s analytics tools to see who is engaging with your content and engage back with them.
13. Tag LinkedIn users with whom you would like to establish or continue a relationship to help them to engage with your Posts.
14. Watch how LinkedIn power users participate on the platform and see what ideas you can steal from them.
15. Vary the types of posts you make and the format of your posts and learn from these experiments.
16. Repurpose articles you’ve written into shorter LinkedIn posts or republish as a LinkedIn article.
17. Try to always use images with your content, especially photos of you with others.
18. Post short videos.
19. Share documents on your Profile and in other places on LinkedIn.

If you want even more great practical tips like these, you can find them in our book, Make LinkedIn Work for You: A Practical Handbook for Lawyers and Other Legal Professionals, available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback versions. Get your copy today - or better yet, buy copies for your whole firm or organization!

Stay tuned for more articles, webinars, presentations, and online courses on LinkedIn topics from both Dennis and me in 2020.

Happy New Decade!

5 Ways to Be a Better LinkedIn Networker

LinkedIn can be a powerful networking tool, but so few people (including lawyers) take advantage of the power of LinkedIn or leverage it to build their networks and their businesses.

If you're just starting out or if you want to build your network quickly, take a look at my two-part post on LinkedIn co-written with Dennis Kennedy, Six Ways to Jumpstart Your LinkedIn Network - Part 1 and Part 2. But don't stop there! Here are 5 more ways to build a healthy, effective LinkedIn network:

1. Seek out experts and industry leaders to follow or connect with

With 500 million users, LinkedIn is a great place to find experts and industry leaders. Search by name or use LinkedIn's fresh perspectives page to identify leaders who could be good connections or whose content and perspectives you might be interested in. You might be surprised to find out how many leaders or industry superstars are actually in your network - and if they're a second level connection, you can send them an invitation to connect right away if you wish - even with a free LinkedIn account.

Not a second-level connection? Not to worry - click on the "More" button at the top of their Profile, and then click on +Follow. When they post an update, you'll see it in your feed.

By connecting with and following experts and industry leaders, you can expand your network and your visibility. Connecting directly gives you access to that industry leader's connections - simply click on the number of connections on their Profile, and you'll get a list of their connections - a great way to identify more people to follow or connect with. You'll also increase your visibility if your new industry leader connection comments, shares, or likes your posts or other activity on LinkedIn.

But even just following an industry leader can help you. Not only will you be able to see their posts in your feed - a potential source of ideas for your own content - but you can also interact with that industry leader by liking, commenting on or sharing their posts. These interactions can be seen by their network and followers - which may lead to more connections. And if that industry leader sees your engagement with their content, they may decide to reach out to connect with you directly or to engage with your content in return.

2. Search for companies in your niche on LinkedIn

Finding companies on Linkedin that are in your niche or in the industry that you serve (or in related industries) gives you the opportunity to follow those companies to find out what they're doing on LinkedIn. This can provide valuable insights into what their legal needs might be, how you can reach these companies or companies like them, how you might refer business to them or work with them to build your referral network. It can also provide you with ideas for your own content.

Looking at companies on LinkedIn also allows you to identify and view the LinkedIn Profiles of the individuals that work for that company. You can get information about who holds what positions within the company, and you can follow or connect with them, building out your network. 

3. Engage with your target audience

Where else can you directly engage with your dream clients, referral sources, or thought leaders? And it doesn't have to be time-consuming. If you take the two tips above to heart, your LinkedIn feed should be filled with updates and activity from these three groups of people. Now all you have to do is engage: like or comment on their posts; share relevant posts that would provide value to your own network or in your LinkedIn Groups.

When you engage with other LinkedIn users, they'll be notified of your engagement. This is how you begin to build relationships and to increase your visibility. As noted above, when you engage with others' posts, their networks can also see that engagement. And the person who made the original post may increase their engagement with you as a result, too - maybe they'll take a closer look at your Profile, send you a message on LinkedIn, or share your content.

4. Create your own content

If all you're doing is consuming others' content on LinkedIn and not creating your own content, you're missing a huge opportunity. Creating content makes you more visible on LinkedIn because it gets you in front of your network in their feed. This drives engagement, which also drives connections and followers. After all, why would someone follow or engage with you on LinkedIn if you don't participate and there's nothing there to engage with?

Creating content for LinkedIn doesn't have to be a time or labor-intensive process. Re-purpose what you already have - take the first few paragraphs or a few key take-aways from an article you've written for your website or for another publication and post them as an article on LinkedIn (you can post a link to the full article at the end, driving traffic to your site); pull quotes from your articles and post text updates; share images from your firm's events; post links to articles written by others with your own commentary; share slides of your most recent presentation.

5. Join and leverage Groups

Want to get in front of even more referral sources, potential clients, master networkers and thought leaders? Don't ignore LinkedIn Groups. Join Groups on LinkedIn that you already belong to in real life - many offline groups have LinkedIn Groups associated with them. This might include your local bar association, alumni groups, networking groups, and more.

Look at your connections and those of thought leaders, experts or people in your target market to see what Groups they belong to (you can find this information under Interests on their Profile) - many of these Groups may well include more people like them - and more potential connections.

Once you've joined a Group, you have access to its members - you can post discussion to Groups or message Group members individually. Since many Groups on LinkedIn have more members than are in your own network, and include people you wouldn't have access to otherwise on LinkedIn, the potential to expand your visibility, your engagement, and your network by being active in the right Groups on LinkedIn could be huge.

(To learn more about using LinkedIn Groups, read this post).

Of course, you don't want to forget that a good Profile is the foundation of your LinkedIn presence, and it will help LinkedIn users get to know you and make an informed decision about whether to invite you to connect, accept your connection invitation, or engage with your content, so it's important to have an informative, compelling and complete LinkedIn Profile.

For some advice on improving your LinkedIn profile, check out these posts and articles:

Do Something! Power Up Your LinkedIn Headline

Four Ways to Give Clients What They Want on Your LinkedIn Profile

Supercharge Your Summary

Add Multi-Media Elements to Your Profile

Make Your Profile Complete

5 Ways to Improve Your LinkedIn Summary

The Summary is one of the most overlooked areas of most lawyers’ LinkedIn Profiles, but it can be a great way to add value to your Profile and convey important information to your audience. LinkedIn calls the Summary “your media-enhanced elevator pitch.”

Here are five ways to improve your LinkedIn Summary:

Write in a conversational tone

LinkedIn is a professional networking site. What you do on LinkedIn is an extension of what you do and how you network in real life. Your LinkedIn Profile stands in for you to connect with others – colleagues, potential clients, referral sources, the media, etc. It represents you.

When you introduce yourself to people in real life and talk about what you do and who you do it for, you introduce yourself in the first person: “Hi, I’m Jim. I represent entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to protect their brands.” You wouldn’t say, “Jim is an intellectual property lawyer representing small business.”

Although your firm bio is usually written in the third person and much of the information from your law firm website bio can be used in your LinkedIn Profile, you’ll want to change it and make it more conversational for LinkedIn.

In my view, on your firm website, the bio is written in the third person as if the law firm were introducing you to web visitors, while on LinkedIn you’re introducing yourself. (Although solo lawyers may choose to write their website bio in the first person on occasion).

Don’t use legal jargon unless you are sure that your audience (clients, potential clients, referral sources) understands and expects it. Use the language your clients use to describe their needs and the services you provide.

Create a blockbuster first sentence

The Summary can be found in the bottom-most portion of what LinkedIn calls your “introduction card” at the top of your Profile.

As you can see from the image above, when LinkedIn users look at your Profile within LinkedIn, they’ll see only the first 3 lines, usually about one or two sentences. To see the entire Summary, users have to click the “Show more” link. As a result, those introductory lines are extremely important. They should contain the information that is most significant to your audience.

The beginning of your Summary should serve to entice readers to click on the “Show more” link to see the rest of your Summary.

Tell your story

While the first sentence of your Summary should pack a punch, the rest of your Summary is also important. You have plenty of room, since the current character limit for the Summary is 2000 characters.

Although only the first portion of your Summary initially appears to LinkedIn users, when users who are not logged on to LinkedIn click on your Profile, they will see what LinkedIn calls your public profile.

On your public profile, if you choose to show your Summary, viewers will see your entire Summary without any extra clicks required. (Although the public profile does not show any media you’ve added to your Profile.)

When I talk to lawyers about LinkedIn, I equate the Summary to the cover letter that accompanies your resume. The rest of LinkedIn is in a format which is similar to a resume, with categories for your work experience, education, honors and awards, recommendations, etc. In those sections, you don’t have much opportunity to control the format. But the Summary is unique. It is a free-form field that is less constraining than the rest of your Profile. You have much more flexibility here.

Take advantage of the opportunity within the Summary to tell your story – tie all of your experience together. Let your audience know why you became a lawyer, what your professional goals are, who you help, and why your experience and the rest of the information contained in your Profile is important to them.

Break it up

LinkedIn is an online platform, and more and more users are engaging with LinkedIn on a mobile device rather than a desktop or laptop computer. Even relatively short paragraphs can look like huge, intimidating blocks of text online, and especially on a mobile device.

Keep paragraphs short in your Summary to make them easy to read and skim, even on a small screen. Use bullet points to break up the text.

You can copy and paste bullets from another program (like MS Word), or you can use your keyboard to create them right in LinkedIn (get instructions here).

Add media

The Summary, Experience, and Education sections are the only places on your LinkedIn Profile where you can add what LinkedIn calls “rich media.” This includes images, video, articles, presentations, links, and more. When you add rich media to your Summary, it will display below the Summary text, but above the “show more” link.

In today’s visual world, adding media to your Summary can help you stand out from others in your field. When a user clicks on rich media content in your Summary, they can view the content without leaving your LinkedIn Profile. For example, if you add a PowerPoint presentation or video, LinkedIn will open a window on top of your Profile that allows the LinkedIn user to view the complete presentation or video without taking them away from your Profile.

Bonus tip

Here’s one bonus tip that is especially important for lawyers. LinkedIn doesn’t always have an obvious place to include information that might be required by your jurisdiction’s ethical rules, like disclaimers, “Attorney Advertising” notices, or your office address. Your Summary is a place you can include that information. Your Summary could also include information such as the jurisdictions and courts where you are admitted to practice law.

Do you have questions about how to get more out of LinkedIn? Let me know in the comments below!

For more tips on your LinkedIn Summary, see my post, LinkedIn Tip #4: Supercharge Your Summary.

Want more LinkedIn info? Check out my post, Power Up Your LinkedIn Headline (includes my FREE downloadable headline worksheet).

Do Something! Power Up Your LinkedIn Headline

Your Professional Headline is the line that appears under your name on LinkedIn. When users first encounter you on LinkedIn, they may not be looking at your Profile; they may see you as a suggestion in People You May Know on their Network page, in search results, in a list of connections, or in a LinkedIn Group. In many of those cases, all they will see is your photo, name, and your Professional Headline, like this:

Think of your Headline as your LinkedIn elevator speech or your virtual introduction. It should be short and to the point, but it should communicate enough information about you to entice people to want to know more. In the case of LinkedIn, you want your Headline to convince users to click on your name and view your full Profile or to connect with you.

Know your audience

Think about what is most important to your audience or the people you want to connect with on LinkedIn. Your Professional Headline is a valuable tool that can communicate your area of practice, your knowledge and experience and to distinguish yourself from other lawyers. It should be a differentiator that helps you to stand out in search results and it should be descriptive so that when people see your Professional Headline they immediately know what you do.

Be descriptive

Don’t make the common mistake made by many lawyers by limiting your Headline to just your title (Associate, Partner, etc.). Include your practice areas or the types of work you do for clients. Consider including the name of your firm as well – it won’t always be obvious to LinkedIn users if they’re not looking at your full Profile when they encounter your name.

But don’t stop there. Even your title and firm name (“Partner at Flintstone and Rubble, P.C”) are not enough. If a user is not familiar with your firm, this information may not be enough even to communicate that you are a lawyer (Flintstone and Rubble could be an accounting firm, for example).

Add a description of your practice areas or clients, keeping your audience in mind. Use keywords that your audience might use to search for a lawyer in your practice area. Utilize all 120 characters that LinkedIn makes available for your Headline.

Compare these Headline examples:

Partner -or- Partner at Scooby and Shaggy, LLP, Management-side Labor and Employment Law Trial Attorney

Associate at Lane & Kent, P.C -or- Elder Law and Estate Planning Associate Attorney at Seinfeld & Costanza

Trial Partner at Florrick, Agos -or- Partner, Scott, Schrute, Halpert, Beesly & Howard, PC, Risk Management and Legal Malpractice Attorney

If these headlines appeared in search results, which one in each pair would you be more likely to select?

Revising your Headline

Certain key events (getting a job, losing a job, promotions, etc.) will trigger the need to revise your Headline (along with the rest of your Profile). There’s no hard and fast rule, and much depends on your purpose and audience, and how fast those things change.

Revise your Headline as often as you need to. But keep in mind that when you revise your Headline, LinkedIn may send your connections a notification that you have a new job. If that isn’t the case and you’re just tweaking your Headline, you may want to turn off those notifications before you make your Headline changes.

If nothing significant has changed, you may want to look at your Profile and your Headline every 6 months to a year to see if there’s any updates that need to be made, any changes in language or new ways of phrasing that you might want to incorporate based on what’s happening in your practice and in the marketplace.

Job seekers: Include your desired position?

If you have a specific kind of job in mind, you can certainly make it clear in your Headline. But be aware that if you are currently employed, your employer or other colleagues may be able to see this information. If you do not want them to know that you are job hunting, you might want to keep that information out of your Headline.

If you don’t want your employer to know you’re jobhunting, you can still use LinkedIn’s job search and apply for jobs listed on LinkedIn, and you can make sure that your Professional Headline and your summary reflect the knowledge, skills and experience that would be attractive to a new potential employer or for the new position that you are seeking.

What you include in your Headline depends upon what you’re looking for, what you think your audience will respond to, and how much attention you want to call to it. If you want to let as many people as possible know that you’re seeking a specific kind of position, putting it right up front in your Headline is likely to attract attention.

For example, your Headline might read, “Recent New York Law Grad Seeking Associate Position in Commercial Real Estate.”

The benefit-driven Headline

Lawyers who want to really stand out on LinkedIn might want to consider writing a benefit-driven Headline.

What is a benefit-driven Headline? It is a Headline that focuses on the benefits that you offer to your clients, rather than your title or what you do.

For example, instead of, “Elder Law and Estate Planning Associate Attorney at Seinfeld & Costanza,” you might want to focus your Headline on the benefits that you provide to your clients, saying something like, “Helping families protect their aging loved ones and their legacy.” You might even try creatively combining these, using all the available 120 characters.

The Professional Headline is one of the most important elements of your LinkedIn Profile – take some time today to sit down and think about how you can be more creative with your Headline to attract clients, referral sources, hiring partners, or even the media.

If you want help with your LinkedIn Headline or other aspects of your LinkedIn Profile, contact me to see how I can help.

UPDATE: If you're more of a DIY type, you might be interested in this FREE printable LinkedIn Headline worksheet.

Related articles

New York Social Media Ethics Guidelines

More Trouble from Facebook Posts - Judge Posts About Ongoing Cases

LinkedIn's New Interface: A Brief Overview

You may not have seen it yet, but LinkedIn has revamped its user interface recently, in part to make desktop and mobile versions of LinkedIn more consistent. If the new interface hasn't come to your LinkedIn account yet, it will soon. Here's a brief overview of the changes, many of which users apparently don't find positive, based on feedback I've seen on LinkedIn and elsewhere.

Navigation

The navigation bar at the top of every page on LinkedIn has changed; instead of just using words for navigation, LinkedIn has added some icons and has moved some things around, which might make some of your favorite LikedIn features a bit hard to find. In addition, all of the icons now appear to the right of the search box, rather than some appearing below the search box, as in the old interface. 

 

The new basic navigation buttons/menu items are:

• Home
• My Network
• Jobs
• Messaging 
• Notifications
• Me
• There is a bit of a separation, and then a new item, More (Update: 5/17: this item is now "Work")

Only the Me and More menu (which actually says Business in my LinkedIn account, although others have advised that theirs is called Tools) Work menu items have dropdowns that contain sub-items.

Under Me, you'll find your Profile (there are no longer separate links to view and edit your Profile), your account and privacy settings, Manage links to manage your Company Pages and job postings on LinkedIn if you have them, and the sign-out link, as well as the link to the LinkedIn Help Center. 

The More  Work drop-down (which has an icon that looks like a square made up of nine squares) includes items that used to be found under the Interests tab in the old LinkedIn interface, including Groups, Learning (lynda.com courses), Slideshare, Groups, LinkedIn Profinder, Advertising, Post a Job, and LinkedIn Lookup. (More about some of these items in future posts).

Profile

In addition to the design changes noted below, LinkedIn has made several other changes to your Profile. Some of these changes are unwelcome in my opinion, including:

1. Now those viewing your Profile can only see the first few lines (approx. 200 characters) of your Profile Summary, rather than the entire Summary - that means it's even more important than ever to make sure that your Summary provides valuable information right up front so that visitors click on the See More link to see the rest of your Summary.
2. LinkedIn has implemented the "see more" concept on other aspects of your Profile as well; the descriptions under each of your positions other than your current position in the Experience section won't show unless the visitor clicks the view more link, and only three "featured" skills and endorsements show on your Profile without clicking on a similar link. Recommendations are treated similarly.
3. Several of the customized sections that help your Profile stand out, including Honors and Awards, Organizations, and Publications have now been grouped together under Accomplishments, and the new layout places less emphasis on these items.
4. LinkedIn has removed the ability to customize your Profile by rearranging the order of sections.

Home Page

LinkedIn's Home page has also gotten a makeover. A mini-snapshot of your Profile on the left, including your name, photo, professional headline and statistics for Who's Viewed Your Profile and Views of posts. The look of the network update (share an article, photo, or update) and Publisher (write an article) boxes has also been modified.

Design changes 

When you view your LinkedIn Profile now, you'll see that LinkedIn has made a number of design changes to the Profile. These include a change in the dimensions of your header image (if you were using one), and a switch from a square Profile photo to a round one. 

LinkedIn has added a header to some pages (such as Groups, for example), which appears under the black navigation bar. That header, which varies in size depending on the page, still incorporates LinkedIn blue, but appears to have an hombre effect, beginning with the dark blue toward the left of the screen, and moving to more of a teal color to the right of the screen.

Features eliminated

Along with these changes, LinkedIn has eliminated some features, including some features that I found extremely helpful. One of those features was tagging; you no longer have the ability to 'tag' your contacts in order to filter or to send targeted messages with a free account. Now the only options you have for your contacts are to send them a message or to remove them. The elimination of tagging also restricts your ability to easily sort through your contacts; the only remaining options are to sort by first name, last name or recently added.

The How You Rank feature is also no longer available, as is the View Profile As feature, which would allow you to see how your Profile looks to others on LinkedIn. You are also now unable to customize the web links you add to your Profile the way you did in the past - if you had customized them before, visitors to your Profile will now see long URLs with your customized name in parentheses.

Perhaps most disconcerting for power users of LinkedIn is the loss of Advanced Search features, and the Alumni search is no longer there (although you can still find alumni, just not quite as easily).

Temporarily unavailable

As of this writing, some LinkedIn features are listed as "temporarily unavailable," which seems to imply that they'll be returning. These include the ability to export your resume, sort updates in your feed on your Home page, and the Profile Strength feature. (Update, May 2017: Profile Strength is back, but somewhat different now - you can find it under the "top card" information on your Profile (below your Summary). It will walk you through the completion steps until LinkedIn deems your Profile complete, and then you'll receive an "All Star" rating).

Additional Changes
LinkedIn has also made changes to the My Network tab, the Inbox, Notifications, and Company Pages. Stay tuned for future posts that will go into more detail about these and other changes.

Related articles

New York County Issues Ethics Opinion Clarifying Rules on Lawyers' Use of LinkedIn

LinkedIn's Publishing Platform: A Marketing Opportunity

Lawyers and Technology - ABA TECHSHOW 2015

This week is the annual ABA TECHSHOW, the premier technology conference for lawyers taking place in Chicago. TECHSHOW is a combination of educational sessions offering continuing legal education credits, an exhibit hall featuring the latest technology available to help you run your practice, and social events offering opportunities to meet lawyers from all over the country who are learning to use technology to improve their law firms.

In addition to all of this, TECHSHOW provides attendees with the opportunity to meet ABA Law Practice Division authors in meet the author sessions and to purchase LP books at a discount.

This year's keynote speaker is Nick Carr, columnist and best-selling author on technology and culture.

I have a busy schedule for TECHSHOW this year - here's where I'll be if you'd like to take some time to chat:

Thursday, April 16:

12:30-1:45       State of Legal Technology
                            I'll be joining some of my colleagues from the Legal Technology Resource Center discussing the results of this year's technology survey during the State of Legal Technology Luncheoon

2:00-3:00    LinkedIn's Next Level: Getting More Return on Your Networking
                        Dennis Kennedy and I will be talking about how lawyers can get more out of their LinkedIn use. This presentation is a follow up to our basic LinkedIn program and is designed to give those with a basic knowledge of LinkedIn some power strategies to ramp up their networking. If you're still a LinkedIn newbie, you can see a version of our basic presentation that we just did earlier this month for the ABA here - not only will you get the video download, but you'll also get a free copy of the e-book version of LinkedIn in One Hour for Lawyers, Second Edition.

3:00-4:00    Shaping Your Narrative - Online Reputation Management
                                In this program, Gyi Tsakalakis and I tackle the issue of online ratings and reviews sites: why lawyers need to be aware of them, how to improve your positive ratings and reviews, what to do if you receive bad reviews online, and we'll cover some of the ethics issues involved.

Friday, May 17

10:00-12:00    Concierge Booth
                                    Friday morning I'm manning the Concierge Booth with some of my colleagues from the Legal Technology Resource Center. Come say hi!

1:45-2:30        Meet the Author: How to Do More in Less Time
                                 My latest book, How to Do More in Less Time: The Complete Guide to Increasing Your Productivity and Improving Your Bottom Line, was recently released, and my co-author, Dan Siegel and I will be talking about the book during this meet the author session on Friday afternoon, followed by a book signing at 2:30. If you've ever felt overwhelmed with all of the tasks you need to accomplish, had difficulty delegating, or wished you could get better use from the software programs you use every day, this book might be for you. Come learn some of our best tips! 

While at TECHSHOW, I'll also be attending many of the social events and receptions - if you've never been to TECHSHOW, don't miss the TASTE OF TECHSHOW Dinners - dutch treat events at some of Chicago's best restaurants, hosted by our speakers. I may make an appearance on Legal Talk Network as well. All in all, it should be a fantastic event - hope to see you there!

Finally, I want to say thank you to Heidi Alexander for her post on Women You Need to Know in Law and Technology - she's put together a fantastic list of women in technology, and many of those on her list are current or past ABA TECHSHOW speakers and authors. I'm flattered to be included on her list!

Related articles

New York County Issues Ethics Opinion Clarifying Rules on Lawyers' Use of LinkedIn

Women's History Month: 8 Tips for Managers

New York County Issues Ethics Opinion Clarifying Rules on Lawyers' Use of LinkedIn

Last week, the New York County Lawyers Association Professional Ethics Committee released Formal Opinion 748, addressing the ethical implications of lawyers' use of LinkedIn. I had the opportunity to speak about this opinion and about other ethics issues involved with LinkedIn use at a CLE program for the New York State Trial Lawyers Association last Friday, and some interesting discussions ensued.

Here's a quick overview of the opinion:

Is LinkedIn Advertising in New York?

According to Opinion 748, LinkedIn is not advertising if it only contains information about an attorney's Education and current and past employment. However, if it contains additional information, such as a description of the attorney's practice areas, skills, endorsements or recommendations, the attorneys's LinkedIn Profile will be considered advertising.

[Comment: As my readers know from past posts on this blog and elsewhere, to get the most out of LinkedIn, attorneys should be making their LinkedIn Profiles as complete as possible and including information about what areas they practice in, what kinds of clients they represent, what skills they have, what services they provide to their clients, and more. If they do so, their LinkedIn Profile will be considered advertising in New York, according to this definition.]

Compliance with Rule 7.1- Advertising

Once you have established that your LinkedIn Profile qualifies as advertising, you'll need to review Rule 7.1 to ensure your Profile is in compliance. According to Opinion 748, this includes ensuring that your LinkedIn Profile contains appropriate disclaimers, such as the "Attorney Advertising" disclaimer.

The opinion also notes that 

If an attorney also includes (1) statements that are reasonably likely to create an expectation about results the lawyer can achieve; (2) statements that compare the lawyer’s services with the services of other lawyers; (3) testimonials or endorsements of clients; or (4) statements describing or characterizing the quality of the lawyer’s or law firm’s services, the attorney should also include the disclaimer “Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.” (emphasis added)

Specialization and Rule 7.4

As I mentioned in this post, in 2013, NYSBA Committee on Professional Ethics issued Opinion 972, which prohibits attorneys from using any section on LinkedIn with the title or heading "Specialties" unless they are properly certified. Opinion 748 addresses specialization in another area of LinkedIn: the Skills section.

Although Opinion 748 requires lawyers who include skills on their LinkedIn Profiles to include disclaimers, merely listing those skills on your LinkedIn Profile does not constitute a claim to be a specialist under Rule 7.4. In other words, you can list a skill on your LinkedIn Profile even if you have not been certified as a specialist in a particular area of law or law practice by a private organization approved for that purpose by the American Bar Association.

Endorsements and Reccomendations

According to Opinion 748,

The ethical treatment of endorsements and recommendations depends on who is considered to “own” the endorsement and recommendation: the author of the endorsement or recommendation or the person whose profile is enhanced by it.

On LinkedIn, users have control over what is posted on their own Profiles. They can choose to reject or hide an Endorsement, and Recommendations do not appear on a user's Profile unless approved by the owner of the Profile. Accordingly, Opinion 748 holds lawyers responsible for ensuring the accuracy of what appears on their Profiles, stating that, "there is a duty to review social networking sites and confirm their accuracy periodically, at reasonable intervals."

Nothing in Opinion 748 was particularly surprising, and not all jurisdictions in New York may follow the opinion, but it is instructive and is worth the read.

Related articles

Another Social Network Bites the Dust...The End of Google Plus?

LinkedIn's Publishing Platform: A Marketing Opportunity

LinkedIn’s publishing platform allows users to create longer form posts, similar to blog posts, within the LinkedIn platform. Originally only open to LinkedIn Influencers, LinkedIn began opening its publishing platform to other users in early 2014.

When you publish a post on LinkedIn’s publishing platform, your post can be seen on your Profile, and a Notification will be sent to your Network, advising them that a new post is available. LinkedIn users who are not connected to you can also follow your posts and get notified when you’ve posted something new.

The LinkedIn publishing platform is a great way to expand your influence and demonstrate your professional knowledge. It is particularly good for those who would like to get started with blogging but do not have their own blogs, or whose firms do not have blogs. LinkedIn is a huge platform with many members, and your LinkedIn posts may even get more exposure than posts on your own blog.

For those who already have a blog, LinkedIn may be a way to gain more exposure for your content: re-work, split up, or develop a new twist on existing blog content and re-publish it to LinkedIn's publishing platform.

There is no word limit to a long form post on the publishing platform, but LinkedIn recommends that these posts be more than three paragraphs in length for the best visibility. Adding an image to your post will make it more interesting, and may entice others to click on it from your Profile.

Noah Kagan of AppSumo offers some additional tips for maximizing your LinkedIn long form posts based on a study of successful posts on the LinkedIn publisher platform:

1. Titles between 40-49 characters in length get the most views
2. One image added to your post is great(especially at the top – it acts as a header image for the post), but those with 8 images gained the most attention
3. Adding multimedia elements such as videos or presentations may reduce your post’s visibility, based on Kagan’s study
4. How-to or list-style posts perform well, especially if the headline indicates that the post is a how-to or list post
5. Longer posts perform better than shorter ones
6. Posts should be easy to read (Kagan recommends 11 year old reading level)
7. Promote your long form LinkedIn posts on other social media channels

(See the full article – and the rest of Kagan’s list -  at: http://okdork.com/2014/09/09/linkedin-publishing-success/)

To get started using the Publishing platform, simply click in the LinkedIn Updates box and then click on the pencil icon:

 

Doing so will bring up a window that looks like any other word processing program. It’s easy to use, with a familiar interface.

 

LinkedIn will also provide analytics so you can see how much attention your posts are getting:

 

 

If you're looking for a place to begin content marketing and haven't established your own platform yet, LinkedIn's publishing platform may be just the place to start - it's easy to use, professional-looking, and is ready to go as soon as you write your first post.

Related articles

New Year New Marketing

Do Something! Don't Let Fear Stand In Your Way

Beyond the Basics on LinkedIn

This week I received a question from a reader about using LinkedIn which read in part,

What would you say are the top 3 to 5 ways in which attorneys should be using LinkedIn on a daily basis to actually build their practice and attract/identify new clients? I’m looking for concrete ideas—not simply, build your network and post status updates. Of course you need to have a complete and up-to-date profile. Of course you need to make periodic status updates. Or course you want to find new connections and build your LinkedIn network. But once you’ve done those things… then what?

Good question. In LinkedIn in One Hour for Lawyers, we focus on the three basic building blocks of Linkedin – your Profile, Connections and Participation. The book shows readers how to edit their Profile, build their connections, and begin to post Updates and get involved in Groups. But once you’ve done those basics, it might be time to take your LinkedIn participation to the next level.

The short answer to the question is to build upon those concepts and the basic building blocks by taking them a bit further. Some of the answer will depend on your practice area and audience or purpose for using LinkedIn, but some examples include:

 

• Continuously updating your Profile and tweaking the language so that it resonates better with your target audience(s). For example, if a lay person reviewed your LinkedIn Profile, would they immediately know what you actually do for your clients? Would they be able to recognize who to refer to you or, if they are potential clients themselves, would they be able to identify themselves as people who would definitely need your services just from reading your Profile?
  
  
• Posting updates that are not necessarily about you, but that provide value to your network – items or articles that would help them in their business or personal life
  
  
• Using LinkedIn’s new Publishing platform to write longer posts of interest to your audience
  
  
• Finding and joining Groups that will get you directly in front of your audience; leveraging your connections’ connections to get (real life) introductions and build your network; and using LinkedIn to find potential clients  (See my previous posts here and here)
  
  
• Using the Search tools to identify specific individuals you would like to meet; see what you have in common that might create opportunities; identify their needs based on what they post
  
  
• Joining (or starting your own) Groups and actively participating in discussions and posting content to the Groups that you find relevant
  
  
• Looking at the Profiles of your target audience to see what Groups they belong to and whether those Groups might contain your target audience
  
  
• Using LinkedIn as a corollary to your real-world networking. For example, use LinkedIn as a follow up tool when you meet new people; look at LinkedIn to see who in your network is in a particular city you may be visiting so you can have a face to face meeting; and using the tools in Contacts to remind you to stay in touch with your network regularly 

 

Just like real-world networking, the best way to get the most out of LinkedIn or any other ‘community’ or ‘network’ is to keep working it on a regular basis. Engage with others. Be interesting. Be present. Help others – make introductions and connections, answer questions, and demonstrate your knowledge.

To answer the question more directly, 3-5 things lawyers should do daily (or even weekly) on LinkedIn are:

1. Review Group discussions (either by looking at the emails you receive from LinkedIn or by going to your Groups main page and looking at the "feed" of discussions) to see whether there is anything you could contribute value to.
2. Review LinkedIn invitations, accept those that are appropriate and send a personalized thank you message to those who invite you to connect so that you move the conversation along. Send personalized invitations to connect to new connections you met during the week, and take a few minutes to review the "People You May Know" suggestions and "Who's Viewed Your Profile" for potential new LinkedIn connections.
3. Review connections of new connections to see if there is anyone you would like to meet or be introduced to; look at their Groups for potential new Groups to join.
4. Skim through updates from your network to see where you can engage by commenting, liking or sharing others' updates.
5. Post network updates that provide information of interest to your network.

On a monthly basis you may want to do things like weeding out Groups that are inactive or are not the right fit for you, following up with connections you haven't been in touch with in a while, and reviewing your Profile to see if any updates or changes are necessary.

Want to learn more about what you can do with LinkedIn? Join me on a free webinar on August 21 at 2 p.m. Eastern sponsored by MyCase. Register at: http://bit.ly/1pbgjUc

Related articles

Using LinkedIn to Find a Job - or to Find Clients

LinkedIn Tip #5: Upload Your Address Book to LinkedIn

6 Benefits Of LinkedIn Publishing You Can't Afford To Ignore

LinkedIn Tip #8: Adding MultiMedia Elements to Your Profile

LinkedIn's Publishing Platform: A Marketing Opportunity