Congress, FTC Look at Online Privacy

A new buzz phrase is emerging in this area called, “privacy by design” which is thoroughly considered by the Information Law Group in this post.  Here are some highlights:

• Know how and when your business interacts with consumers and the implications on the privacy of the information they provide
• Consider the demographic of your company’s products or market – certain segments will be more concerned about privacy protections than others
• Stay abreast of what the FTC and Congress is doing in this area as it’s pretty fluid right now
• Keep in mind data collection, security and retention when drafting the appropriate policies

NLRB Takes on Employer re: Facebook Firing

True to their word, the NLRB is taking on another employer over the termination of five employees because they went to Facebook to discuss work load and staffing issues.  The employer, Hispanics United, is a nonprofit serving low income individuals and families.  An administrative judge is set to hear the case on June 22, 2011.

If you are interested in learning more about the issues a company faces handling social media issues, there will be a program on May 25, 2011 at noon where Jessica Braverman and myself will be discussing these issues at the Alameda County Bar Association Headquarters in Oakland.

Link to NLRB press release

When Is Your Office Really Your Home?

An interesting post from My Law License, wondering about attorneys working out of their homes but  renting an office where they have their phone answered and mail received.  If they have a photo of their “office building” on their website, are they misleading clients and potential clients?  In California, there is the B&P code 6158 which states that electronic advertising as a whole can’t be misleading.  But really is there a significant different between placing your office address on the website and the building in terms of misleading potential clients?  I don’t think so but it’s an interesting question.

Why New Legal Social Networking Sites Fail

Welcome to Lawford which is a new social networking website that promises easy profile creation as it’s differentiator.  But as Robert Ambrogi suggests, lawyer social networking platforms maybe easy to use and still fail.  Why?  Because there has to be a powerful incentive to belong to yet another social network – legal or not.  So I quickly filled out my profile on Lawford and now what?  Supposedly, I will be able to connect with other lawyers and how is the different from LinkedIn?

CLE CLE CLE

Lawyers hate having to pay for and track their hours.  Why not create a social networking website that by joining it you get a significant discount and a way to track and submit CLE hours to your State Bar?   Lawyers need to get something big in order to be convinced to join yet another social networking website and CLE might just be the ticket to get them to such a site in droves.

Seattle to Yellow Pages – Drop Dead

Perhaps my headline is overly dramatic but I couldn’t resist the play on the famous New York Post Headline that read, “Ford to New York: Drop Dead” when the then President refused to bailout the Big Apple.

However, according to this article, Seattle appears to be the first city in the nation to pass a law allowing residents to drop out of Yellow Pages distribution.  This prompted the publisher’s lawsuit claiming the law violated its First Amendment rights.   The Judge has denied the publisher a preliminary injunction but has yet to rule on the underlying lawsuit.

Bye Bye Yellow Pages?

However, in less than a week, 14,000 Seattle residences have registered on the website to opt out of receiving the Yellow Pages. Should this trend take flight, how relevant will the Yellow pages remain to lawyers spending thousands to get a listing?  Hopefully, at the very least this will give attorneys some ammunition to negotiate on price.

Scaring Lawyers Over Social Networking

This post on lawyer’s use of social media does a good job of explaining how social media works in terms of content and distribution.  The author works in Canada which may explain why there is no discussion of the advertising or legal ethics.  However one of the comments proceeds to address the issue of attorney ethics and social media but does so in a way to “scare” attorneys.  Here is a taste of the comment:

The rules that govern lawyers are still too murky and not for the faint of heart.

Actually, the rules that govern lawyers in social media are the same as govern attorneys in traditional media.  Its not the rules that are murky its the application of social media to the rules.  One of the points the commenter makes is that “friend” another attorney can result in “censure.”  The commenter links to this article which discusses Florida’s rule that prohibits a judge from friending an attorney.  A few other states also have rules regarding a judge friending an attorney.  To take the situation where a judge can’t “friend” an attorney and state that the rule is about any attorney “friending” another attorney is a classic case of scare tactics – distorting and amplifying a fact until it becomes untrue.

While its true that its unclear how attorney ethics rules apply to social media in many circumstances, that doesn’t mean that the scariest scenario will apply.  Ethics rules are safeguards for clients and consumers not draconian restrictions on how attorneys can engage in the world.  The more attorneys adopt social media, the easier it will be to determine how ethics rule should apply.

Google Search Algorithm – Quality 1st

Since the beginning of the commercial Internet, businesses have been looking to push their way to the top of search rankings.  Over the years there have been many trends and most of them involve “gaming” the system.  Initially, Google’s approach was to reward quality sites – those that people returned to again and again as witnesses by linking to those sites.  However, businesses focused on secretive ways to game Google and Google doesn’t like that.

This post to their official webmaster site lists out what they want to promote in high ranking websites.  Quality is number one and rather than paying lots of money to create link farms or generate lots of dubious content, here are some things Google will be looking for in ranking your website:

• Authority of Author
• Are these topics of Interest or Driven by Keyword Popularity?
• Quality of Copyediting
• Originality of the Content
• Is the Content Substantial or Superficial?

Example of Corporate Social Media Training

Here is a good example of a well-thought out planning training program for companies adopting social media.  Here is what I like about it:

• Addresses the range of audiences involved – not just one type of employee and also looking at vendors and the like.
• Identifies what the role various stakeholders have in the process
• How to approach training for these audiences
• That ongoing training will be required

 

WordPress Landing Pages on the Fly

One of the great features of WordPress is that allows for plug-ins to create quick custom functionality that used to require a great deal of custom programming.

Case in point: a new plug-in called Premise which allows WordPress site-owners to quickly tweak a landing page which can act as a sales page, a pricing page with clear and compelling graphics that outline your offerings, a video page highlighting your offering, a tabbed landing page allowing for a variety of content to display in a more dynamic way.

So check out Premise and see what’s possible to create in minutes without a programmer present.

White & Lee – Clients, Clients, Clients

When DSD Law Site Solutions works with a client, we spend considerable time upfront understanding what’s important to them and what their competitors are doing well and not so well.  Together with the client, we brainstorm visually how the firm wants to position itself in the legal marketplace.

With White & Lee, it was clear from the start that this was a firm excited to work with companies that had bold ideas and big needs for creative approaches to get their products and services to market. Based on this understanding and performing a detailed competitive analysis, we provided White & Lee with a bold home page that is all about their clients and their enthusiasm to be working with them.