LinkedIn provides a way to stay connected

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Have you heard about the latest free marketing tool for lawyers and other professionals?
It’s LinkedIn, a Web site for professional networking, at www.linkedin.com. I received a few e-mails inviting me to “link” or “connect” with someone over the past few months, and thought, “Um, sure. I’ll get to that later.” The e-mails languished in my inbox.

Milwaukee Municipal Court Judge Derek Mosley was among those who sent me an e-mail invite. That’s what prompted me to take another look. It’s bad form to ignore a judge, after all. So, I dutifully created an online profile and connected with him. It didn’t take long, maybe 10-15 minutes; I just worked from memory, and didn’t re-create my entire resume. I then connected with Mosley and a few others who had sent me e-mail invites.

At LinkedIn, you can connect with former colleagues or schoolmates. The site doesn’t encourage trying to form connnections with people you don’t know, but would like to know.

Recipients can indicate that they don’t know you. When that happens, LinkedIn says it will punish you by asking you to enter an e-mail address with each future invitation.

You can also check the connections of the persons you’ve already connected with, if they permit it. If you know someone on their lists, you can poach a connection by sending him or her an e-mail invitation to connect.

In Search of…

I found searching for law school classmates the most interesting. I did ask a few to connect, and we exchanged a few brief e-mails, which was fun. But for LinkedIn, I might not have had another opportunity to get in touch with them. I also did a bit of “lurking.”

There were a few others whom I did not know well in school, but was still curious to see what they’re doing now.

I can imagine that LinkedIn would be extremely valuable to job hunters. When I clicked on the Jobs tab, and entered “freelance writer” and my ZIP code, more than a dozen opportunities popped up (including one to write reviews of reality TV shows for a blog. Now that sounds like fun!).

Dozens popped up when I typed in “attorney.” However, to get the details, I’d have to subscribe to LinkedIn’s Simply Hired service, for a minimum of $6.99/week. With some of the opportunities, however, the company’s name is listed and I can imagine that you could just directly contact the company.

There’s also a Questions and Answers tab, where, as the name implies, people post a question for LinkedIn users to answer. There weren’t too many seeking referrals or asking general legal questions, but I did see a few in the archives.

My guess is that your own circumstances will dictate the utility you get from LinkedIn.

Six Degrees of Separation

Judge Mosley, for example, says LinkedIn is great for elected public servants – emphasis on the “elected” part.

“It helps me keep track of people who’ve donated or attended fundraisers, or just people you want to keep in contact with – law school colleagues, etc. Whenever people switch jobs, they update their LinkedIn profile and everyone they’re linked with is automatically updated on their new position and contact information,” he says.

“Especially in law, people change jobs a lot. And, it’s like this crazy ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ thing. Because every time you link to someone, and they link to someone else, you’re contacted about that, and you realize, ‘My gosh, I know her.’”

Another unforeseen benefit, per Mosley, is that his LinkedIn profile more than once has provided an introduction to others, who didn’t need to cold call the court. He was contacted by someone from a nonprofit, charitable organization who asked him to give a speech.

From knowing that person’s connections, Mosley knew that accepting the invite would be a smart idea.

Facebook Alternative

Mosley calls it “an adult MySpace or Facebook,” two networking sites favored by Gens X through Z (what will they call the generation after that?). These sites focus on personal interests more than professional or educational affiliations.

Mosley shuns them as a general rule, because, “I don’t want to tell the world about my favorite song.” (Hmmm. Maybe it’s a really embarrassing choice. “Feelings?” “The Pina Colada Song?” “Oops, I Did it Again?”)

Anne W. Reed, a shareholder with Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren s.c. in Milwaukee, is on both Facebook and LinkedIn. She says that in some ways, she prefers Facebook. Reed writes on her blog, entitled Deliberations, that, “LinkedIn has a lot of people in it, but it doesn’t encourage the kind of communication the broader sites do, so at least in my experience it’s very quiet. (Word is they’re developing more kinds of interaction.)”

She additionally tells me, “It’s almost like I can hear the glasses clinking but don’t know where the party is with LinkedIn. Although if you Google yourself, your LinkedIn profile does show up, and they don’t bombard you with e-mails if that’s one of your concerns.”

She identifies competitors Ryze, and LawLink, as well – check them out.

LinkedIn makes money by selling advertising or premium accounts, costing anywhere from $60-$2,000 annually. Neither Mosley nor Reed has found the need to upgrade to anything beyond the free, basic profile. And of course I didn’t.

My bottom line? Because I am so new to LinkedIn, for the most part, it has just served as a free and simple way to catch up with people from my past. Maybe I’ll need them for a business purpose sometime down the road, and maybe not. Still, I would never consider re-establishing a friendship or professional relationship a waste of my time. And, I did it from home, in my jeans. I didn’t have to get dressed up and go to the event where they’re serving bland chicken.

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