Social Media – Easy as a Hoola-Hoop

(as originally published by the National Law Journal on 3/18/2011)

During the 1950s, a plastic circular tube containing a little bit of sand took the nation by storm. During the first six months after its introduction, more than 20 million Hula-Hoops were sold. The surprising thing about Hula-Hoops Read more

Social Media is Nothing to be Afraid of

(as originally published by the National Law Journal on 3/3/2011)

In the Middle Ages a certain class of people was more mistrusted than any other: millers.

You see, few people owned their own mill, and so they needed to take their grain to the miller to be ground into flour. The problem was that, when the grain was handed over, there was no way of knowing if the miller was being honest — he could have been keeping some for himself. The common farmer had no way of knowing whether he was being cheated. This same mistrust happens today with car mechanics, doctors and probably even some types of lawyers. Sadly, some people feel the same way about social media. Read more

Referrals still more important than law blogs?

When an important article comes out in the social media industry, I usually see it come across my Twitter stream.  When the article relates to social media and the legal industry, I will often see it repeated over a dozen times.  Sometimes, when an article is about social media, the legal industry and controversy is involved the article gets emailed to me by lawyers all over the world and is forwarded to me by my aunt who generally only forwards locats.  Just such an article hit last week, and if you aren’t living underground (without internet access) than chances are you probably saw  it. Read more

LegalmindsTV Interviewing me about value of social media

Click here to see the post and transcript: http://legalminds.tv/dayton-socialmedia

Law Blog Success Down Under

(as originally published by the National Law Journal on 2/17/2011)

I’m spending the next few weeks in Australia and New Zealand speaking to lawyers about social media, so I thought I would share an interview I had with Natalie Hickey, law blogger and partner at Mallesons Stephen Jaques — one of the “Big 6″ firms in Australia and one of the 100 largest firms in the world, with almost 1,000 attorneys globally. Read more

Promoting without appearing self-promotional

There is a cultural difference between Australian and Americans that I have noticed.  Americans are far more willing to be self-promotional.  Australians are hesitant to start blogs and will often make their tweets private on Twitter.  So I guess the big question is, can social media work for you if your aren’t willing to be self-promotional.

The answer is yes . . . and no.

There are two types of promotional tweets, the first are the type that are used to brag about ourselves.  “I just won a big case” “I just completed a huge transaction” “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!”  You get the idea.  Read more

The Evolving Lawyer

(as originally published by the National Law Journal on 2/24/2011)

I had the chance recently to complete a childhood dream of mine and see a duckbilled platypus up close at the Healesville Sanctuary in the Yarra Valley of Australia. It truly is a strange creature — it’s a warm-blooded mammal, yet it has a beak, webbed feet and lays eggs. I learned from the zookeeper that the male platypus can excrete a poisonous venom from its claws potent enough to kill another male patypus. The duckbilled platypus is the only platypus we know of (which raises the question: Why isn’t it referred to simply as “platypus?”) The platypus is truly a mysterious anomaly of nature. Read more

The End of Client Alerts: Part II

(as originally published by the National Law Journal on 2/10/2011)

There once was a man who bought a truck and decided to start selling watermelons. Every morning, he would load up the truck, drive to the farmers’ market and fill his truck with watermelons, paying $1 for each melon. He then would drive around selling watermelons until they were all gone. He would charge $1 for every melon. After a couple of weeks, the man became frustrated. He wasn’t making any money, he complained to his friend, who asked him, “Why aren’t you making any money?” He replied, “I think I need a bigger truck.” Read more

Use Twitter to Cut the Clutter

(as originally published by the National Law Journal on 2/3/2011)

The other day my son was sitting next to me while I did some work on the computer. He started pushing icons on my screen with his finger. My computer doesn’t have a touch screen like my iPad, so nothing happened, but it demonstrated an expectation my son is growing up with. He expects to get the media he wants, when he wants it at a touch of a button. When I was a kid (not very long ago) the only options for watching cartoons were right after school and Saturday morning. I wouldn’t ever think of sleeping in on Saturday mornings or I would miss Transformers, HeMan and possibly even The Smurfs re-runs. I was completely at the mercy of the TV schedule. My son will likely never have to deal with this constraint. He can simply watch Cartoon Network all day every day, or the History Channel, ESPN or Seinfeld re-runs. I had to search through libraries to find content as a child; for my kid, finding content will be as simple as a Google search.  Read more

My name is spelled J-O-N not J-O-H-N

By guest blogger and law student: Jon Ivanco
Professionalism is all in the details. I can’t tell you how many times people make this mistake with something as basic and simple as my name. I can tell you though how much it bothers me. I can also tell you that it bothers me more and more with the amount of correspondence I have with an individual in a professional capacity.

See the thing is, my name defines me. Much like a name of a company is picked to define it, my parents spent time picking my name and I have made it my own. I have earned the right to be called by my name and have it spelled correctly. There is not even one justifiable reason why someone cannot get it right, especially in emails. My handle in all my emails is “Jon Ivanco”. All of them, without exception.

Should I be a little less bothered by this? Should I simply just say close enough? No. Never. Not allowed. And I’ll tell you why. It is three letters long, it’s not exactly unique, and to most people it is largely considered idiot proof. Read more