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A blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn event. When it comes to social media, the Rocky Mountain Intellectual Property and Technology Institute is trying it all this year. Social media is also the focus of four sessions during the conference. Nate Trelease and Alli Gerkman are two of the masterminds behind the first-ever incorporation of social media at the institute this year.

Trelease is a transactional attorney by practice and president of WebCredenza, Inc. He founded the Rocky Mountain Intellectual Property and Technology Institute eight years ago with Gary Abrams and has been the program chair since the beginning.

Gerkman is the Manager of Online Content and Development at Colorado Bar CLE. She manages the social media outlets used to promote the Rocky Mountain Intellectual Property and Technology Institute.

Kelliann Blazek: How is the Rocky Mountain Intellectual Property and Technology Institute incorporating social media this year?
Nate Trelease: There are two ways it’s being incorporated. The first would be thematically. It’s part of the substance of what we’re discussing here. We have four sessions on social media. The one we did this morning was a plenary session panel on what are the general practice developments, business developments, networking communication opportunities for social media. The other way we’re incorporating social media is in how we disseminate awareness of the program, how we promote it.

Alli Gerkman: Beyond promotion, we’re hoping that we’ll have long-term benefits in that people who’ve attended this year are able to have a continued platform on which to connect. We set up a blog for the conference (http://ip.annualcle.com/blog/). We invited young lawyers to attend the conference and then blog about it. They’ve been pumping out posts all day. We have a Twitter account (@IPInstitute) and a hashtag (#IPInstitute). We also have a Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/IPInstitute) and that’s one of the key places we’re hoping to see people continue connecting. Likewise, we hope they can do that at the LinkedIn event page that we set up. We’re trying all new things this year. We didn’t do anything with social media last year. This is all completely new.

KB: What has the response been to the sessions on social media?
NT: The second panel today, which was on attorney ethics and social media, was uniformly really good. There were some federal judges in the audience and they came up afterward to congratulate [the panelist] and they appreciated the fact that he was flagging issues that we really haven’t thought of. For instance, getting a recommendation on your LinkedIn page really does fall into the attorney advertising rules.

KB: What were some of the questions attendees asked after the session?
NT: They focused on two things. One was privacy issues. The best example of that would be how do you manage Facebook in terms of personal activity versus professional activity. Do they merge? Do you want them to merge? If you don’t want them to merge, how to do you manage that divide? There were also questions about what social media is going to be like in ten years, to which of course none of us had good answers.

KB: What do you think attendees’ level of participation in social media is?
AG: Nate asked the throwaway question of how many people think social media is just a crazy waste of time. Usually you ask that question to a group of lawyers and you’ll get a decent amount of hands. There were, I would say, three hands that went up. And this is a group of 320 lawyers.

NT: They’re probably like me, at least. They know Facebook pretty well. They know LinkedIn well, but not as well as Facebook. And Twitter is kind of a novel concept—a bird of paradise, exotic. When you look at it you’re not quite sure what to make of it.

KB: How do you make a bird of paradise accessible to people?
NT: You just let people slowly make their way into it, probably starting at the personal level with Facebook. I think it’s like learning to fish or riding a bike. It’s something you learn by doing, not by reading a book.

KB: How did you become interested in social media?
AG: I initially became interested in social media back in 2005. I went to a conference and none other than Kevin O’Keefe was speaking at it. He introduced me to how blogging can be used in a professional context. From there I saw blogging and social media as an opportunity to do a lot of new things both personally in my own career and professionally in the position that I have.

NT: On the professional level and the industry level, my interest has been very recent. I’ve had a Facebook page and a LinkedIn account for probably two years now, where I had 100 followers or 100 connections. 99 percent of it was people reaching out to me and I never really did anything with it. I became more interested at a professional conference in Orlando earlier this year and sort of had this epiphany. If you’re in an industry or a profession where there’s a conversation going on about that industry or profession and you’re not part of it, you’re really missing out on something.

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Ari Kaplan delivered the keynote address at the 2010 ABA TechShow to a crowd of attendees tweeting about his enthusiasm, his humor and his stylish tie.

Kaplan practiced law for nearly nine years at large firms in New York City. Now he is principal of Ari Kaplan Advisors, working as a fulltime ghostwriter, industry researcher and speaker.

In 2008, he authored a book titled, “The Opportunity Maker: Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development.” The book discusses ways lawyers can stand out in today’s economy, not only by raising their own profiles but by raising others’ as well.

“’It’s not just, ‘What can I do to make myself look good?’ More importantly it’s, ‘What can I do to make someone else look good?’ That’s how you create sincere relationships,” Kaplan said.

An example? Guest blogging.

Kaplan emphasized the Internet’s value of momentum over perfection. Bloggers need to generate content on a repeat basis to create momentum. If there is a time when they can’t sustain this momentum, guest bloggers can come to the rescue. This creates an opportunity for the blogger to highlight the breadth of their work and an opportunity for the guest blogger to develop their profile, he said.

Kaplan said setting perfection aside is also important in creating opportunities.

“People obsess over what is in their email," he said. "If I’m sending you an email query and my timing is right and the content and what I’m offering you is correct, if there’s a spelling error you are still probably going to respond to me.”

In terms of the depth of lawyers’ tech savviness, Kaplan sees room for improvement. Lawyers aren’t ignoring new technology, he said, but they aren’t necessarily using it to its full potential. Being experimental is essential, he added.

“It’s not just about fear of the tool," he said. "It’s certainly about fear of the time someone will have to spend, which is why I suggest that people set very reasonable goals for themselves and very reasonable expectations of executing on those goals.”

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If you go to the Rosen Law Firm's website, North Carolina Divorce Law, you’ll find a video in the center of the page. Click on it and Lee Rosen is ready to help:

“Welcome to North Carolina Divorce. I’m Lee Rosen...I want to be a part of helping you manage your situation. At the end of this short video, I’m going to give you my direct phone number and my email address and I want to hear from you if you need anything at all.”

Rosen, the President of Rosen Law Firm in North Carolina, received the James I. Keane Memorial Award for Excellence in eLawyering at the 2010 ABA TechShow.

Rosen’s interest in technology dates back to his teenage years when his Commodore 64 was the latest gadget on the market. Rosen Law Firm started its online presence in 1996 with an informational website. The response from the public was overwhelmingly positive, he said.

“We thought, ‘Well gosh, this is kind of fun and we’re helping people. This feels good’," Rosen said, "What do they say...if it feels good do it. So we did it.”

The response from the legal community was a different story. Rosen said other lawyers were uncomfortable with the idea of “giving away” free services.

“The reality is the average lawyer would rather practice law than be involved in the marketing of their practice or in educating the public," Rosen said. "It just isn’t their interest.”

For Rosen, though, public service is at the core of his practice. He learned to value public service from his grandfather and father, both lawyers, and said the Internet can facilitate lawyers’ success on multiple levels.

“The Internet, public service and the marketing of your business all really come together nicely," he said. "You have to have the business component to be able to fund that public service component.”

The Rosen Law Firm website is jam-packed with family law resources: articles, FAQ pages, videos, forums, podcasts, video podcasts — the list goes on. The firm is also boosting their mobile and local search engine presence to reach more people. Expanding the content they offer to include ancillary issues is another one of the firm’s goals, Rosen said.

“We started a site called StayHappilyMarried.com," he said, "that’s fairly innovative in our arena where people think they should be undoing marriages rather than helping them to work out.”

Rosen said lawyers, as a whole, are prone to change resistance and will need to adopt technology rapidly to catch up with everyone else. Even so, he said, finding ways to innovate and staying ahead of the curve is something that’s getting harder these days.

“Our question is, 'What’s next?'" Rosen said. "Because we want to be there. That requires constant scrutiny of your crystal ball with your reading glasses on.”

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In 1999, Ed Walters co-founded a legal research company in his living room.

“We grew to the point where the only place in my house that there wasn’t a desk was my bathroom. And that’s when we decided we needed to move,” Walters said.

Fast forward 10 years and Fastcase has 400,000 subscribers, works with 17 state bar associations and just debuted a hot new iPhone app.

Walters, the CEO of Fastcase, and Bar Relations Manager Christina Steinbrecker were on hand at the trade show during Fastcase’s first trip to ABA TechShow.

“The thing about this show that is so great is the people are so curious,” Steinbrecker said. “Usually you’re grabbing people and giving them the overview, but to be able to get into the meat and potatoes of what the service actually does has been really fun.”

What Fastcase does can be narrowed down to two things, Walters said: democratize the law and make research smarter.

“It’s an easy company to get behind when I get out to things like this and talk about how great we are,” Steinbrecker said. “It’s a really important issue in my mind—access to legal research and making it easy and affordable to everyone.”

In the future, Walters wants to expand the number of state bar associations Fastcase works with, continue offering high-touch customer service and expand the company’s mobile services.

Fastcase recently launched the first legal research application for the iPhone. The app is free to everyone and has been hugely successful, he said.

“Free is a very powerful price," Walters said. "For the month after we launched it, the Fastcase app was more popular in the iTunes store than Bing, which I didn’t expect.”

Walters anticipates reaching out to other mobile markets, including Android and Blackberry, in the future. He knows competitors will jump on the mobile bandwagon soon, but he’s confident Fastcase has the edge.

“The future is much more mobile and I want Fastcase to own the mobile market. I want to be the 800 lb. gorilla of mobile," he says, adding, "We were here first.”

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Nicole Black is Of Counsel to Fiandach & Fiandach, publishes four legal blogs and writes a weekly article on law and technology for The Daily Record. Carolyn Elefant is the founder of the Law Offices of Carolyn Elefant and the creator of MyShingle, a blog focused on solo and small firm practice. Nicole and Carolyn co-authored “Social Media for Lawyers: The Next Frontier” and presented sessions at TechShow.

Kelliann Blazek: What is your interest in TechShow?

Carolyn Elefant: I’ve been coming the past three years. I spoke three years ago on tech issues for solo and small firms and this year we were invited to speak on topics related to social media. We both spoke about online presence and then I had another track on eMarketing.

Nicole Black: This is my second year and it’s probably my favorite conference to attend. It’s a great convergence of all the people in the legal tech space.

KB: What was your inspiration for the book you co-authored, “Social Media for Lawyers: The Next Frontier”?

NB: We wrote the book because we both participate in social media and think it can be a really effective tool for lawyers to use in their practices. We set the book up so it would be approachable for both a novice and someone who has a basic understanding of social media.

CE: We also thought it was important to have a book that’s written by attorneys. There are a couple social media books and there’s some excellent websites about social media that we both follow, but lawyers tend to be very hesitant about borrowing ideas from other professions, often to their detriment. If we could break down a barrier by showing it from the perspective of lawyers, we thought that would be more effective.

KB: How do you both use social media in your own work?

NB: I primarily use social media to interact with other people and to learn and to disseminate information on the topics that are of interest to me, which is law and technology. It’s just a tool to connect and network with other people and I find it to be really a great tool.

CE: I do a lot of blogging so that is my main way of communicating through social media. I use it sometimes to disseminate information about either my blog site or sometimes if there is a decision of interest in my field of practice I will send out information about that. Also, again, to connect with colleagues in different places and interact, because as a solo I don’t have any people that work on site with me. To be able to have conversations throughout the day or interact with people kind of made a case against the isolation of being solo.

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Mark Rosch is the Vice President of Internet for Lawyers, a company that aims to teach lawyers how to search the Internet more effectively. Mark presented two sessions at TechShow, including Find Info Like a Pro, Volume I and Google Tools for Lawyers.

Kelliann Blazek: What is your interest in TechShow?

Mark Rosch: I’ve been coming to TechShow since 2003. I come to TechShow as an author of books for the Law Practice Management Section primarily. In June, we expect the Section to publish “Google for Lawyers,” which is essentially an extended version of the presentation we did at TechShow today. It looks at all of those tools, search tips, etc. for using Google more effectively to coax out the information that Google has found on the internet that’s going to be useful to the attorney as a searcher. Most people, particularly practicing lawyers, they don’t have time to click that button—the “more,” the “even more”—to see what these things do. I like to say I waste 10-12 hours a day on the Internet so they don’t have to.

KB: Do you find yourself learning new things at TechShow?

MR: I learn things at sessions all the time. Sometimes I learn things at sessions I’m presenting, which is a good thing. I think one of the things that people need to remember is no one knows everything. Very often in this kind of crowd at TechShow, there will be someone who knows more than you do on a particular topic. These are very smart people. And there’s no embarrassment in that. There were one or two questions that we got from the audience today that were very specific questions. I’ve never heard the questions before or anything like that in the dozens of presentations we do.

KB: What advice would you give lawyers to more effectively use the Internet?

MR: First, if they’re using Google or any major search engine, look at the advanced search page because you’re going to get the option to create more sophisticated searches.

Second, as great as Google is, as much as we’ve talked about it and written about it, it’s not the be all and end all to research. It’s not even the be all and end all to search engines. Every search engine finds different information. Be familiar with more than one. My top three: Google, Bing, Yahoo.

Third, when you’re on the internet and looking at websites, search engines in particular, don’t be afraid to click a button that you don’t know what it does or what it means, because you can’t break the internet. People have tried and clicking a link on a site is probably not going to do it. If you’re looking at a reputable site, feel free to click around.

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Ben Stevens has been practicing law in South Carolina for 15 years. He publishes three blogs, including The Mac Lawyer, and will be debuting an iPad for lawyers blog soon. Ben presented two sessions at TechShow: Mac Software for the Law Office and iPhone Tips for Lawyers.

Kelliann Blazek: What is your interest in TechShow?

Ben Stevens: I speak a lot on using Mac technology for attorneys so it’s kind of a good fit for me to plug in with these guys. I was one of the first speakers at the first Mac sessions three years ago and we’ve grown from Saturday morning with a couple Mac sessions to a full day Mac track this year. Hopefully there’ll be more programming next year.

KB: What is your fascination with Macs?

BS: It’s more or less just the ability to get things done effectively and enjoy doing it. I used to look at PCs as something I had to use. I look at Macs at something I enjoy using. We work together. The stability and simplicity of the operating system. The fact that it just works and it works quickly. My wife still uses a PC so we’ll go and look something up on the Internet. She’ll open hers and it’ll take two minutes bumping and grinding and fans coming on and it’ll eventually start up. I just open my lid and I’m typing away.

KB: You’re launching an iPad for lawyers blog in a few weeks. What do you envision the impact of the iPad will be on lawyers?

BS: I think the iPad, just from the Internet connectivity standpoint and the form factor, is going to be great for attorneys to have something more usable than a netbook. I’ve had netbooks before and the problem was the keyboard was too small and cramped to type on. So having something bigger, but not too big, that’s light and that’s intuitive, like the iPhone is. Just to be able to use the Safari component will be one thing but then when you integrate the ability to view and edit .pdfs and mark them up and documents and emails and all the other things. Before you get into all the apps that are out there now, I think it’s going to be a game-changer for attorneys.

KB: Do you think the iPad will be a technology that will be readily embraced?

BS: I do. If you think back to when the iPhone came out, there was this big question about, “Is it going to be as good as they say?” or “Are people going to buy it?” And then when it came out, people are standing in lines and camping out overnight and now everyone’s got one. Now the only complaint is the network’s not great. It’s not the phone’s not great. It’s the coverage. You take that same technology and put it into something a little bit bigger. I really think it’s going to change the way people practice law.

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Business litigator Ernest Svenson of Svenson Law Firm has practiced law for more than 20 years and started blogging as Ernie the Attorney in 2002. Ernest presented two sessions at TechShow, including “Digital Workflow: Developing the Paperless Habit” and a session on Acrobat.

Kelliann Blazek: What is your interest in TechShow?

Ernest Svenson: I’ve been practicing law for 20 plus years. I’ve always liked technology. I wasn’t a techie in college. I was a philosophy major. But I just thought computers were kind of cool and had the potential to change the way we looked at things and worked, so I was always playing with them. I got a Mac in law school, the first one that came out in ’84...Now the problem is which tool do you use and how quickly will it grow. That’s a good problem to have.

KB: Can you talk a little about your blog?

ES: I started this blog in 2002. There wasn’t anyone I particularly wanted to talk to but I was interested in technology so I said, “Okay, I’ll try it.” And I did. There was a magistrate in federal court where I worked when I got out of law school that used to call me Ernie the Attorney and I always liked that because, even though I didn’t call myself Ernie, I just thought it was a good way of confusing and lowering that barrier that lawyers have when encountering people. If you tell them that you’re Ernie the Attorney they immediately kind of laugh and say, “You must be a cool guy.”

KB: What do you think is the next big thing, akin to blogging?

ES: The latest one is Foursquare. I’m on a podcast called This Week in Law with Denise Howell. One of the topics that keeps coming up are social media gaps and the fear people have of doing things. There’s a lot of fear about releasing too much information. When people first hear about Foursquare, they say, “Well, I don’t want people knowing where I am!” And you don’t have to. Then don’t say where you are and nobody will know. All these things are just tools and they’re all configurable. We have to get over some our social habits and one of the habits is that we’re afraid of new things because the first thing we think about it is what could go wrong.

KB: How do we get over that?

ES: Be like a kid. Just be exploratory. Try things out. If you play with some of these things, you’ll find they’re pretty cool. All these things are inevitable. You watch kids. If kids use them, it’s inevitable that other people will use them, too. Not in the same way, because kids use them in what adults regard as frivolous ways. It’s a tool. Taylor it and use it the way you want to use it. Why wouldn’t you try them? But I’m not a special person. I don’t have any super human powers. I was a philosophy major.

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Edward Poll has practiced law for 25 years and has consulted and coached lawyers for the last 20 years at LawBiz Management Company. West Publishing Company recently published his latest book, “Grow Your Law Practice in Tough Times.”

Kelliann Blazek: What is your interest in TechShow?

Edward Poll: I’ve been coming to TechShow since its beginning and I don’t remember when it began. I like to stay current with what’s happening in the industry because I consult with lawyers. If I don’t know what’s happening in the industry, I cannot do them a service.

KB: What kind of consulting do you do?

EP: I can’t believe I’m celebrating my twentieth anniversary doing this, but along the way I’ve helped a lot of lawyers change their practice, improve revenue, improve their profit, reduce their stress. Because for the first time, they had an ally. Lawyers are, I don’t care where they are, they’re solos. There’s generally not anybody that they can relate to that can support them as a mentor, someone they can be really honest with. I become an objective, experienced ally for them that they can spill their guts to.

KB: Can you talk a little about how you got into blogging?

EP: I had a website and Kevin started talking to me about reaching lawyers in a different way through the new social media. In the last six months, I have been doing other social media, too: Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook and Youtube. Every week, I have a Youtube vignette and that goes on the blog as well.

KB: What do you think blogging has added to your work?

EP: It is a vehicle for me to reach people. It’s a vehicle for me to help people. It’s a vehicle for more people to know who I am and if they perceive that I’m providing value to them, for free, then maybe they’ll give me a call. Another thing it does for me is keep my writing skills wet. Like any other habit, if you get into the habit you will continue to write. When wrote my first book in ’93, I said, “Okay, that’s it.” And each book I’ve written since then, I’ve said, “Okay, that’s it. I’ve got nothing more to say.” But because I’m in the habit of doing this, then other ideas come to me.