March has seen Stem’s clients winning awards, featured in interviews, and blogging thoughtfully on a wide range of topics. Here’s a quick look at what everyone’s been up to:

• Gowlings was recognized in the Canadian Dealmakers Awards Gala for three transactions they advised on. The Awards celebrate excellence in mergers & acquisitions
• BC-based legal support services provider Dye & Durham was proud to launch BC Law Watch, a portal for news, events and opinions related to the practice of law in BC
• Randy McClanahan of contingent fee litigation firm McClanahan Myers Espey LLP answers the question “Why don’t more hourly billing lawyers take on contingency fee cases?”
• West Palm Beach criminal attorney Ron Chapman explains whether it’s possible to have a name removed from the Florida sex offender list
• Cloud computing and SaaS continue to grow in popularity, reports Clio, which had another successful year at the the ABA Techshow. While at Techshow, Clio co-founder Jack Newton was a presenter in LexThink’s IgniteLaw series, and spoke on what law firms can learn from Zappos.com
• Nursing home attorney Jonathan Rosenfeld was appalled to learn that nursing home patient dumping is on the rise. He also wrote about an innovative program that fights sepsis cases in hospitals, and hopes this program will be adopted by nursing homes, where sepsis is a frequent cause of death
• New Jersey criminal attorney John Marshall wrote about two recent cases that show how different “the potential outcomes can be when someone is arrested for selling marijuana“
• Arizona divorce and family law firm Nirenstein Garnice Soderquist was voted Best Family Law Firm by Arizona Foothills Magazine, which said the firm “has a long-standing reputation of making the best out of life’s curveballs”
• Arizona criminal lawyer Lawrence Koplow has added a new practice page related to the defense of fraud schemes, including internet and white collar crimes
• Dealth penalty expert Terry Lenamon says nixing capital punishment may be a growing trend, and speculates that California might be the next to get rid of the death penalty
• Toronto tax lawyer Philippe Dioguardi of Dioguardi Tax Law was interviewed on CP24′s Stephen LeDrew show
• Mesothelioma attorneys at Hissey Kientz LLP launched a legal documents database that includes dozens of asbestos and mesothelioma lawsuits
• Maureen Canning of The Meadows Addiction Treatment Center wrote about what healthy sexuality looks like on her Sexual Addiction Blog

We’ll be back next month with more news and accomplishments to share.

I gave a presentation last week on social media for law firms that looked at ways in which firms — rather than individual lawyers — can make the best use of tools like blogs, Twitter and Facebook. Over the next few weeks, I’ll summarize some of my points on this topic, starting with this post on Facebook.

Like most people, I began using Facebook purely as a social tool, adding friends and family and acquaintances-I-haven’t-seen-since-high-school to my contacts list. About a year or so ago, however, I began getting Facebook connection requests from business contacts, which felt a little odd — Facebook was for people I knew well and with whom I was willing to share updates about kids’ skating lessons, whereas more distant or professional contacts were more appropriate for LinkedIn and Twitter. So I tried to keep my personal and business lives in separate social media spheres, and from my conversations on the topic, I’ve found that many lawyers have tried the same thing.

Those distinctions are rapidly collapsing, though. Facebook recently passed the 400-million member mark — it would be the world’s third-largest country by population — and that much critical mass means that Facebook is a business tool whether we like it or not. Law firms are coming to this realization as well, and many are dipping a toe in the Facebook waters by setting up a Fan Page, a firm account that provides information about the firm and invites other Facebook members to  become “Fans” (a designation that costs nothing and serves to indicate support or appreciation for a given company, product or service — see my previous post about setting up a Facebook Fan Page). Unfortunately, most of these firm efforts are so tentative as to deliver very little value, and most seem to indicate a misunderstanding of what Facebook offers that a website doesn’t.

A typical law firm Fan Page merely repeats what the firm already offers on its website, and in much less detail. A short description of the firm taken from the website’s “About” page, a series of links to press releases taken from the “Media” page, and that’s about it: Website Lite, basically. I won’t pick on any firms by linking to their underachieving Facebook Fan Page, but if you search for any given large firm’s presence on Facebook, what you’ll likely find will confirm this.

What Facebook offers firms is the chance to tell a different story about themselves, or show a different side of themselves, than what is possible or appropriate to tell and show through other communication means, such as a website, a newsletter or a brochure. No law firm is really a one-dimensional creature that can be summed up completely by a corporate website — or if it is, it has bigger problems than social media. Most if not all law firms are complex, multi-dimensional communities of service professionals and service offerings, and some of those dimensions are more effectively conveyed through non-traditional vehicles like Facebook.

For instance, a Facebook Fan Page allows a firm to post photos and videos of a staff function, a charity fun run, or a lawyer’s TV appearances. It can let a firm start up discussions of interest to its Fans involving industries or communities that the firm serves. It can showcase upcoming events, either at the firm or in the community (perhaps including events that the firm sponsors). It can incorporate updates from the firm’s Twitter account, if it has one, or point to interesting or important developments in the law or with specific clients. Anything that a firm is or does that could benefit from the interactivity and sense of community that Facebook engenders is a good candidate for inclusion on a Fan Page.

Although there are many examples of firms under-utilizing Facebook, there are also a few very good examples of getting it right. Silicon Valley powerhouse firm Fenwick & West has a Fan Page worth studying: front-page updates incorporate the firm’s Twitter feed and include profiles of firm clients and their successes, the photo gallery includes shots from a turkey lunch and a LEED celebration, and the documents page links to all the firm’s shared documents hosted at JD Supra. Or consider the Fan Page for Wolfe Law Group, a construction law firm with offices in New Orleans and Seattle. Its Facebook page includes photos of employees building houses in post-Katrina New Orleans and downloadable SlideShare presentations by the firm’s lawyers. Patton Boggs’ Facebook page has a detailed biography page explaining its public policy, litigation and business law work, and a series of links to podcasts and events like local jazz festivals. You can learn a lot more about these firms and how they differ from their rivals from their Facebook pages than you would from their websites.

Facebook has only scratched the surface of what it can offer users, so I fully expect that the number and variety of features and functions available to Fan Page owners will increase in the years to come. The important thing to remember isn’t that every firm needs a Facebook page — I don’t think that’s the case — but that firms need to find out what social media vehicles like Facebook offer in terms of new ways of marketing themselves, new means by which the character and brand of the firm can be communicated, and new opportunities to develop a multi-faceted profile in the online world. Your website can’t tell the whole story of your firm, and you don’t need to force it to try — there’s a world of channels opening up to your firm, and now’s the time to experiment and figure out which ones deliver the best results for your marketing, branding and communications goals.

My newest law practice column has been published in The Lawyers Weekly, and this month’s topic has a media focus: how a lawyer can give a good interview without putting herself at risk. It was the result of twin streams of thought I’ve had lately: one, that many lawyer interviews are remarkably bland and produce eye-glazing copy in print, and two, that I’m seeing more instances of lawyers misquoted or misunderstood even in top-notch publications. The latter trend likely will only exacerbate the former one, as lawyers worried about being misinterpreted will be even more reticent with reporters and will stay well within the safety zone during interviews.

I like to think there’s a balance that lawyers can strike between careful and care-free, one that depends on setting expectations at the start and preparing in advance; that’s what the article explores in more detail. The whole issue really emphasizes the critical importance of trust between a lawyer and a journalist, and like in any relationship, that trust has to be earned over time. To paraphrase an old rule: verify until trust.

Since our last batch of updates, there have been 11 additions to LawBlogs.ca:

• Law of the Lands – Farm, Energy & Enviro Law (John Goudy)
• Blawg Briefs (Aird & Berlis LLP)
• Employment & Human Rights Law in Canada (Lisa Stam)
• The Ten Second Lawyer (Innovate LLP)
• Legal Frontiers (McGill)
• F/Law: Canadian Women and the Law
• LCO Blog (Law Commission of Ontario)
• Bora Laskin Law Library Reference Services Weblog (U of T)
• Canadim Immigration Blog
• Projects, Infrastructure, and P3 Blog (Davis LLP)
• Immigration Law Blog (Davis LLP)

These latest additions mean that lawblogs.ca now lists more than 200 Canadian blogs from lawyers, profs, students, law librarians, and legal marketers.  Cresting over the 200 mark is a noteworthy achievement in the Canadian market.  In fact, compared to just 11 months ago, we’ve observed 71 new law blogs – almost one-third of the directory!

Also noteworthy, we’re currently in the middle of a “weeding project”: dropping all the dead and abandoned blogs. Once we pull those (the list hits 235 prior to culling), we’re still solidly over the 200 mark for active law bloggers in Canada!

If you know of one we’re missing, please – drop us a line!

Spurred by Martha Sperry’s recent post about the numerous benefits to bloggers that Facebook offers, I decided it was past time for me to revisit and complete an old project: creating a Facebook Fan Page for my blog Law21. It’s still early in the process, and I’m learning as I go, but I can see a lot of valuable applications of a Facebook Fan Page to a legal practice, and I thought I’d share some of my initial thoughts here.

By way of brief explanation: a Facebook Fan Page is a dedicated page on Facebook for your business, organization or other commercial entity. You use it to publicize and promote your business by publishing news, updates, information, offers and so forth, and by inviting your professional contacts and interested friends to become “fans.” These people show up as members of the Fan Page, they can post messages and engage in conversations on the page, and they receive new entries from the Fan Page in their Facebook update feeds. Considering there are now 400 million people on Facebook, there’s good reason to take it seriously as a marketing platform. Nicole Black has an excellent summary of how to set up and use a Facebook fan page for a credit union — you should go read that first, substituting “law firm” in the appropriate places, and then come back here.

Setting up a Facebook Fan Page for your law practice is one thing — turning it into an exceptional value-add for both its members and your business can be another. A lot of Fan Pages seem to just sit there, rarely issuing updates, not really telling visitors anything interesting about the company or taking advantage of the features Facebook has to offer. This silence suggests that their owners created the Page because someone told them to and haven’t given it much thought since. These desolate Fan Pages don’t give people any payoff for becoming fans, and their low member totals are duly reflective. Their lesson is: don’t start a Facebook Fan Page unless you intend to give it regular attention; like an abandoned blog, it can actually drive down your prestige by conspicuously collecting dust by the side of the road.

Many other Facebook Fan Pages are active, but they’re not always the right kind of active. Just like a lot of personal Facebook accounts and Twitter feeds, these Fan Pages suffer from IAAM Syndrome: It’s All About Me. Every update and every data point on the Page is all about the business: its latest accomplishment, its newest office, its most recent press release, and so on. Absolutely, there should be some of this content — part of the goal of a Fan Page is to keep your Fans engaged in what you’re doing and what you’re up to, and to use them to spread that word far and wide. But it needs to be balanced, if not outweighed, by content about and focused on the Fans and what interests them.

For every entry on your Fan Page about your firm’s activities or offerings, there should be at least one or two entries that focus on your Fans: a link to a mainstream news article about one of your key practice areas that your clients (and potential clients) care about; a question or opinion poll about a current-affairs issue that affects your client community; a conversation-starter that lets your fans kick around an engaging topic, serious or otherwise. As Niki says in her article, a good Facebook Fan Page is a community, and you should do what you can to encourage interaction, facilitate dialogue and build relationships within that community.

On top of that, you can make this community even more special by giving your Fans bonuses or insider access they can’t get from your website or your firm’s newsletters. Write an article that’s only accessible by clicking on a link from your Fan Page. Provide an exclusive offer — a half-hour’s free consultation, say, or free parking in your building, or a list of kid-friendly diners near your office — that only your Fans will hear about. Set aside one hour to do a question-and-answer session for your Fans on any legal subject of interest. Give people an incentive to become Fans and to pay close attention to every new announcement or addition to the Page — increase their sense of belonging and exclusivity.

What’s more, remember that Facebook offers you a lot of unique options for packaging your content. You can create Photo Albums of your office or staff members, maybe for a special event like a birthday or baby shower, helping to humanize the members of your firm who are otherwise only known through those stiff, posed, smiling photographs on your website. Schedule Events at your firm like in-house seminars or outside speaking engagements by lawyers. Post Videos now and again, either little three-minute advisories from the managing partner or links to a relevant and interesting item at YouTube. Use the RSS Grafitti application to send your Twitter feed directly to your Fan Page. Profile one of your Fans once a week or once a month, introducing him or her in more detail to the other members of the club.

In short: keep it active, keep it interesting, and keep it about your Fans. Those are the three keys to a successful Facebook Fan Page — and, not incidentally, to everything you do, say or publish under your firm’s banner.