LinkedIn as Attorney Profile of Record

Kevin O’Keefe makes the point that LinkedIn has surpassed Martindale as the “profile of record” for attorneys.  He points out the benefits of using Linkedin to connect to the folks you want as clients or referral partners.

LinkedIn Upgrades

I do think that LinkedIn could improve what it provides for attorneys to avoid ethics issues.

• Allow “specialties” to be a changeable text field so attorneys can mention their practice areas without worrying that what they say conflicts with state bar rules about legal certification
• Allow for inclusion of notice and disclaimer fields so that attorneys can state at the bottom of their profile page that this is an advertisement if required to do so by their state bar association
• Allow for contacts to be viewable by their network on an individual rather global basis

Judge sued for Lexis doc filing restrictions

Texas state court judge, Frederick Edwards and his clerk are requiring parties to file court documents electronically, with LexisNexis, and don’t allow filings to be delivered in person, according to a federal class action. This Montgomery County system, north of Houston, gives Lexis Nexis, income from each civil filing, according to the complaint.

The bigger story is how increasingly online legal services which incorporate everything from court filings, to law books, to legal website developers, marketing services, accounting software etc. are control by the two legal corporate giants – Reed Elsevier (Lexis/News) and Thomson Reuters (West publishing, Findlaw and HubbardOne.)  While those two companies are definitely competitive with each other, once they purchase vibrant smaller companies providing important and useful niche services, I’ve seen those companies wilt and stultify.  Meanwhile, companies that should have died a natural death – like Martindale Hubbard – have been kept on life support in order to milk clients of revenue without providing any real value.