Legal Commentary

Social Networking And The Law

By Patrick J. Lamb

One of the points that Mike Dillon, GC of Sun Microsystems, made in his recent post, Change, is that the new generation of lawyers has a different perspective on the practice, which is helping drive change. 

The career perspective of the newest generation of attorneys is an additional factor in driving these changes. They desire a different lifestyle than what was offered in the past. I know this from first hand experience. As I'm writing this, I'm sitting in a conference room with a number of our law school summer interns. They work differently than I did when I was in law school - collaboratively, in communal spaces, streaming music, while interacting with peers via Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. To many of them, flexibility, mobility, a collaborative environment and interesting work are paramount - and not always what law firms can currently offer.

Against that backdrop, I listened on my ride home tonight to a terrific NPR story on How Technology Divides Workers.  Here is one of the points I found most interesting:

"You can have Gen Y-ers who are busy looking at their BlackBerrys. They've got their laptops flipped open, they're engaging in social networking right during the course of a meeting, and you have a boomer rolling their eyes, not understanding it," says Michael Walsh, the CEO for LexisNexis U.S. Legal Markets. "Two-thirds of boomers that were surveyed indicated that they felt that use of devices, technology — such as e-mail, social networking, the Internet, etc. — contributed to a decline in office etiquette."

I am all for social networking--after all, I blog, I twitter, I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook and others.  One of my kids even said I was cool.  (Of course, you need to understand that right after he said that, he asked me to buy him a new PSP game.)  And I multi-task too--the three screens in my office enable that practice.  But in a meeting, when other people are investing their time, well, that's where I draw the line.  Put the blackberrys and phones away.  Be in the moment and give yourself to the moment.  When everyone does that, the moment is likely to have value, which is, after all, the point of having the moment to begin with.

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on June 23, 2009 (boomark / email).