The In-House Lawyer Meets The Lawyer

Last Wednesday I received a call from The Lawyer magazine asking me for some time for an interview to appear in their in-house lawyer profile section.  I was over the moon to be asked to feature in this prestigious publication, and even more excited that they sent a photographer round to Latitude HQ for a photoshoot the very next day.  All very showbiz indeed.

The photoshoot co-incided with 1. stage 1 of a completion meeting at Latitude and 2. much more stressful than any completion meeting as I'm sure you'll all agree, a bad hair day, making it completely and utterly impossible to gaze into the distance with an air of nonchalance.

So huge thanks to The Lawyer magazine, and in particular Joanne Harris, for the write-up quirkily entitled Tweet Shop which appeared online just a few days later.

Legal Village

A quick mention and thank you to Legal Week who are picking up some of my selected blog posts to feature in their Legal Village, an online community of blawgers sharing their random, and sometimes even serious, points of view for the entertainment of lawyers on coffee breaks across the nation.

Image copyright of brewbooks on Flickr, and which features Legal Grind Coffee in Santa Monica.

The Times Law Top 10 Legal Tweeter

I'm proud to be included in The Times Law Top 10 of legal tweeters! What an honour.


The article is behind a paywall, so I had to pay a small fee to see my name in lights.  Why its time to open a corporate Twitter account celebrates the rise of Twitter amongst the legal profession and The Times has chosen to describe me as "a social media evangelist".  This headline characteristic is a reflection of how rapidly the emphasis of this very blog stepped away from a log of legal events affecting my industry to that of a lawyer experimenting with how lawyers can use social media to its best effect.  A year ago, very few people had heard of the in-house lawyer at Latitude, but now I receive a regular flow of professional opportunities which wouldn't have come my way previously and I'm routinely asked for comment on my new niche. I like to think I'm proof of what social media can do for you as a lawyer, so I'll continue to encourage you all to Play the Advantage it has to offer! 


The Times Law Top 10 roll of honour comprises:

•  @Inner_Temple: Provides the latest resolutions plus links to selected legal headlines from across the press
•  @Charonqc: The very funny alter ego of Mike Semple Piggot, polymath legal blogger, writer and artist.
•  @richardsusskind: Renowned legal IT specialist, academic, writer and Times columnist
• @davidallengreen: Insightful media lawyer, blogger and legal correspondent for theNew Statesman
•  @RichardMoorhead: A legal academic and blogger specialising in writing about legal services and access to justice
• @in_house_lawyer: Social media evangelist who also tweets regularly on issues around commercial and digital law
•  @copyrightgirl: Often responds directly to inquiries from followers on issues around copyright law and intellectual property
•  @legalfutures: Very good on matters of compliance and competence for lawyers
•  @LegalBizzle: The irreverent and personal thoughts of a lawyer, although on professional matters
•  @TheNakedLawyer: Solicitor-turned marketer often tweeting on how lawyers can get the most out of social media

Well done everyone who features.

Beware the Digital Trailblazer

On the Inforrm Blog, today's post, Privacy and the Right to Oblivion, was extremely thought-provoking.

I've left a comment against that post, but what I wanted to say here was that I really do like the imagery which Jeffrey Rosen conjures of a digital trail. We live in an era where our trails are recorded digitally and my view of that is that we're fortunate to do so. We have the ability to leave our mark. We are digital trailblazers!

Yes, we have the right to manage those trails carefully, but not necessarily retrospectively.  Online or offline, not all mistakes can be erased. So, choose the trail which you wish to leave carefully, before you make it.

Social media gives us all the opportunity to create, manage and promote our own trail but, as they say, with  power comes responsibility...to yourself. With many things in life, over-regulating tends to hinder not help; common-sense is usually the only rule required.

Branded Part 5: Take a Look at Facebook

A tweet caught my eye today, "What's the next big thing in social media for lawyers?". Samantha Collier's blog, Social Media for Law Firms, claims the answer is now Facebook because ultimately "everyone under the sun now finds you on Facebook".

I know some professionals will balk at the idea but I'm inclined to agree with Samantha, not least because of Facebook's powerful search-engine like presence, although my view is that she is way ahead of the curve here; a lot of lawyers I know aren't even on Facebook personally yet and a few more have just the one solitary connection on Linked In.  

However, a quick search on Facebook will reveal that there are already a modest number of "solicitors" and "law firms" with a professional Facebook presence and, indeed, a fan base.

But this blog isn't about law firms, its about in-house lawyers.  A quick Facebook search against "in house lawyer" revealed:

For the avoidance of doubt, this is not me.

Sensing competition, I have upped my social media strategy game.  This is me (note the all important capitalised 'H' in 'House'):

So there it is, the start of what will no doubt be the blog-post, "5 Reasons In-house Lawyers should use Facebook". Until then.

Guardian Angel

This is an example of how Twitter can "do something for you" very simply and very quickly.

Last week I saw this tweet:

I responded with this tweet:

And this one:

Next thing I saw this tweet:

And this article in The Guardian referencing my tweet:

People talked about it:

And nice people said nice things:

Simple.

Branded Part 4: It's Lawyering, but not as we know it

Well, things are finally starting to move forward on the personal brand quest front.  I was delighted to speak with Legal Week recently in relation to a peice which they're writing on Tweeting Lawyers (I'll link to the piece once t goes live); I have an interview lined up for late September with 22Twts (a real time Twitter interview which asks 22 questions of tweeting lawyers, and  I have the honour of being their first interview of an in-house lawyer), and finally I have myself a press deadline (scary) as I've been asked to provide an opinion piece for the Solicitors Journal on the recent Akzo Nobel case decison on privilege and the in-house lawyer.

It's lawyering,  but not as we know it.

5 Reasons for In-House Counsel to use Linked In

In the style of the popular 5 Reasons for In-house Counsel to use Twitter, and having noticed that I'm spending more time using Linked In lately, it seemed only right and proper to set out my 5 reasons for in-house counsel to use Linked In:

1.  In Branded I discussed the benefits to all lawyers of creating a personal brand online.  Linked In is a credible, professional online network which is designed to provide you with the the tools to establish your online professional persona quickly and simply on a canvas which Twitter and, say, Facebook can't provide:

• Your Linked In profile page acts as an online CV
• The profiles of those who you are connected with are stored in an easily-searchable Contacts list
• Links to your website, blog and Twitter account can be easily incorporated into your profile page to showcase your wider online presence
• Status updates, activity timelines, group links and recommendations showcase your business impact

2. Linked In is the place to formally cement any professional connections which you've made fleetingly in the online or offline world, particularly those connections from Twitter!  Linked In also provides access to a wider network of like-minded in-house lawyers and other professionals who you might not necessarily use the other social media networks which you also do.

3. Linked In groups offer you a members-only style form for you to connect with other in-house professionals.  To get you started, here are a selection of Linked In groups focussed on in-house lawyers:

• In House Legal
• Legal Week: In-house lawyers group
• The Lawyer: In-house Hub
• Law Department Management

4. Linked In groups provide you with the opportunity to, not only connect with other in-house counsel, but to also learn from, join in and create discussions on your group's specialist subject area.  Members of groups share information resources, survey data and pose questions on topics of interest, and if you choose to subscribe to your group's email update (on a daily or weekly basis) all of that valuable information and discussion-based material can be delivered direct to your in-box.

5. Lawyers are one of the professions which are traditionally dragged into technology. My real-life contacts from law firms are under-represented on Linked In and, those law firm contacts who are there, have the least active profiles.  As in-house counsel, I like to think we're more connected with the way the rest of business uses technology and we should prove to the professional community that lawyers can have a social (networking) life too!

And, if you're a lawyer who does embrace technology, Linked In is one of the venues where you'll come across other tech-savvy lawyers.

I'll see you on Linked In then: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/melaniejhatton

Branded Part 3: Roll up for the Round up!

2010 marks the beginning of the The UK Blawg Round Up, the UK Lawyers’ Blog of Blawgs. Its mission: to highlight the UK legal blogging scene and the players in it.

UK blogging lawyers are playing catch-up to our counterparts in the US, where the mighty Blawg Review is published weekly.  At present, the UK Blawg Round Up is published quarterly, and there have been 3 editions to date:

• Its Not Blawg Review

• New Beginnings

• Midsummer Madness

I’m thrilled to announce that the 4th edition of the UK Blawg Roundup will be hosted by me. Due out 31 October, the theme will be, unsurprisingly, a Halloween Hoot!

If you’re a lawyer on the UK blogging scene, please submit your blog post for me to review via the Blog Carnival by 17 October.  I'm looking forward to reading all submissions and finding out more about you all.

The UK legal blogging (or blawging) is in its infancy and there really is no better time for home-grown legal bloggers to make their mark and establish a personal brand. So jump on board and get involved!.

Winner: Follow up on my Shameless Plug Post

It never rains, but it pours; two blog posts in one night after the drought that was May.

So, following up on my Shameless Plug & Follow Up post where I asked you all to click on the link to my blog post for Latitude in the hope that if it was the post with the most hits on the Latitude blog for that month then I would win the prize for the monthly blogging competition......drum roll.......well thank you all very much indeed,  I won!  Even better, an earlier blog post which I'd penned for Latitude and which I'd cunningly linked to in the first (I don't work for a digital marketing agency for nothing) came second.  I won again!

I have donated my winnings from the competition to Save the Children.

I'm a Specialist Plant

I recently realised that I've not blogged a blog post throughout the whole of May.  However, I do have a perfectly good scientific explanation for this.

I'm a specialist plant.

At least, my "preferred roles" are that of a specialist (law) and a plant (a creative ideas person).  More particularly, my "least preferred role" is that of a completer-finisher (..er...there's no easy way to say this, basically I prefer other people to sort out the detail, and I'll get on with the bigger picture).  This is unusual for a lawyer, most of us are archetypal completer-finishers (interested in painstaking detail).  Not me apparently.

In other words, I had an idea about how I could develop my specialism of law....this blog, and then during May (presumably while I had other ideas brewing) I must have assumed that someone else in Team Melanie would get on with the detail of the blog for me.  No such luck!

Well, at least  this is the explanation according to an analysis of my typical behaviours in a Belbin Team Role Profile.  For those of you who aren't familiar with Belbin, he was a Dr who, (not Dr Who, but a Dr who) with a team of researchers in the 1970's, set about observing and recording team behaviours, with a view to finding out why some teams worked effectively and some didn't (assuming a controlled set of resources).  The research identified 9 Team-Role behaviours, and through an incredibly simple set of psychometric questions identifies an individual's preferred, manageable and least-preferred team toles. To have a preference for or against a role is not wrong per se, and the theory does suggest "allowable weaknesses" for each role (for example the conscientious completer-finisher might be reluctant to delegate), but on the flip side, it also suggests weaknesses which if allowed to get out of hand would not be beneficial for the overall team good.

Like DISC (see my earlier post Disc World) Belbin theory is another tool which allows you to understand your own behaviour and those of others in your team.  It also helps team managers to not just build a team made up of a perfectly balanced set of 9 Team Role types, but identify where the potential gaps of behaviour in their team lie and to plan around that accordingly.

I was introduced to Belbin Team Role Theory by the very friendly and helpful Urquhart Partnership, or for more information you can go direct to http://www.belbin.com/.

Branded: Part 2 Donuts & Carnivals

In my earlier blog post Branded I set out on my quest to turn my in-house lawyer brand into a household name (or maybe that should be business hold name?) renowned the world over. The quest continues. I’m now pleased to be a contributor to the Law Donut Blog which offers free legal information and resources to people running smaller businesses. I’ve promised to work on my first series of contributions, musings and thoughts; although, said contributions, musings and thoughts might be more quickly inspired by the delivery of some Krispy Kremes to my desk....a-hem....moving on....

I was also interested to learn this week about Blog Carnival, a collection of blogging communities working together in shameless self-promotion. I’m all for that, and rather conveniently the UK Blawg Round Up community are currently in the process of organising their Easter edition hosted on this occasion by Peninsulawyer with the theme of "new beginnings". Another blog opportunity for me to muse upon and I encourage other UK law bloggers to contribute to the carnival also.

Speaking of readers of this blog, I thought it would be useful to know if there were actually any. So in a burst of ‘techiness and inspired by my digital marketing type colleagues at Latitude I incorporated Google Analytics into the HTML code of my blog (I needed a drink after this technical endeavour) to monitor hits and conversions, and much to my relief discovered that there are indeed readers of this blog. Phew.

Now, it seems that all I need to do to reach the highest echelons of legal blog brand fame is to get myself a dinky little animal avatar like those of the wonderful Technollama and IPKat.

Are you an in-house lawyer developing your brand? Let me know how you’re doing it (or how I could do it better!) by leaving your comments below.

Disc World

As most in-house lawyers to SMEs will testify the role will expand into areas of the business which just aren’t in any way, shape or form legally related; and the area which I’ve found myself deviating into is training and development. Having some experience as a professional support lawyer for a UK Top 15 law firm it’s an area I’m familiar and comfortable with, so I was delighted to be asked to formulate a training and development strategy for my company's senior managers during the latter part of 2009.

One of the key tools which I’ve built the strategy around is DISC, a behavioural profiling tool which aids the individual in recognising their own behavioural traits, those of others, and then allows the individual to adapt their personal style to better influence others. I firmly believe that one of the foundation stones for personal development is to “know thyself” and awareness of your own behavioural pattern is an essential for increased communication and influence both in your personal and business lives.

I’m not the only lawyer interested in this, the DISC profiling system in use today was initially formulated by lawyer and psychologist, William Marston, in the early 1920s born out of his fascination with individuals’ behavioural patterns and it’s now widely used within all types of business the world over.

The DISC model is incredibly insightful, and users are often amazed at the accuracy of the information obtained about themselves in their profile report. One of the reasons for its popularity is that it uses neutral language. There is no wrong or right behaviour in DISC, it uses a “universal language of observable behaviour” (TTI Ltd) to powerfully identify the behavioural tendencies within each of us individually and which make up our unique character. Furthermore, DISC is not a psychometric tool nor is it a measure of knowledge or intelligence; and so it’s a true “leveller” between directors, senior managers and junior staff alike and can be used to create a common language within your business to better aid communication.

DISC itself is an acronym for the 4 quadrants of observable behaviour (all of which are in us to a greater or lesser degree):

Dominance or Drive: results-driven, competitive, risk-taking people show a high D profile. Think successful sports stars, coaches and entrepreneurs.

Influence: charismatic, enthusiastic, popular and charming are characteristics of individuals with a high I. Oprah Winfrey and Jonathan Ross both have a high level of I in their behavioural profiles.

Steadiness: High S individuals portray loyal, devoted, stable and patient behavioural patterns. They are the ultimate safe pair of hands, think Mother Theresa and Ugly Betty!

Compliance or Conscientiousness: High Cs are perfectionists, analytical, accurate, precise and exacting individuals. The Monica Geller character in Friends and most lawyers and accountants will demonstrate a high C in their behavioural profile.

There is also a clever inter-relationship between the individual quadrants of the DISC reflecting whether a behavioural type is motivated by task (D and C) as opposed to people (I and S), whether a behavioural type is active (D and I) or reflective (S and C), and how an individual’s “natural” style changes into an “adapted” style under pressure.

Of course each of the quadrants of behaviour brings with it a value to a business, and a team will need individuals from all quadrants (or an individual operating in each quadrant at the right time) to successfully deliver a project or task. Each behavioural quadrant will however need motivating and managing in a particular way, and recognising the behaviour in an individual is the first step to achieving the appropriate balance of motivation and management.

There are different versions of DISC profiling in use today and a simple search of the internet will reveal providers of all of those versions. The version which I experienced was from TTI Ltd, a licensed supplier of Success Insights Intl Inc and was delivered by Julie Harrison Consulting. I’ve also found DISC Profile Blog full of informative and practical demonstrations of DISC in action.

Branded

brand
• noun 1 a type of product manufactured by a company under a particular name. 2 a brand name. 3 an identifying mark burned on livestock with a heated iron. 4 a piece of burning or smouldering wood.
• verb 1 mark with a branding iron. 2 mark out as having a particular shameful quality. 3 give a brand name to.

I’ve recently been inspired by an article from Kevin O’Keefe on Real Lawyers have Blogs on the importance to lawyers of creating their own personal brand. Although aimed at law grads and associates his Define your Personal Brand As A Lawyer post rang true to me also; as sole in-house counsel to a business which previously had no lawyer working in it, a large part of my time is making sure my colleagues understand the broader commercial value which a lawyer can bring to the business and that we’re not just here to fire-fight any disputes, check contracts or create red-tape and obstacles!

As I work in the digital marketing industry, I found Mitch Joel, in his 6 Pixels of Separation blog shared some great insight in his Top 10 Dos And Don'ts Of Social Medial For Current And Prospective Employees. It conjures up the picture of a personal brand being a 3-dimensional presence and that social media is the perfect tool to achieve that. I enjoy using social media tools to connect with the people I work with and my friends, and so Mitch’s blog was further inspiration to me to step-up a gear in relation to my own personal branding. I already Twitter as @in_house_lawyer (more followers than my personal Twitter account worryingly), so that seemed a good platform from which to take my own personal brand to the next level. It’s also a demonstration to the business I work for of the all-important value-add of an in-house counsel.

So, here it is, the next stage in my personal branding campaign, my In-house Lawyer blog. I tried to blog once before but the fear of being insufficiently profound, high-brow or intellectual or perhaps not the first person to spot a legal development stopped me from saying anything at all! However, now that I have a personal brand to develop, the purpose of my blog has completely changed as its now my vehicle for establishing my In-house lawyer brand.