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The legal innovation track at the State Bar of Texas Annual Meeting is all about the future.

“I think the future is here,” said John Sirman, a lawyer and the web manager for the State Bar of Texas. “Changes that maybe we were talking about a few years ago are happening now.”

That means plenty of opportunities for lawyers to adapt and change, Sirman said. The State Bar of Texas hopes to better equip lawyers for these changes at the annual meeting, which will be held in Fort Worth on June 10 and 11.

Part of the annual meeting is a legal innovation track titled, “The Adaptable Lawyer,” a term coined by Texas lawyer Michael Maslanka. The training will encourage lawyers to adapt to a changing business environment. Social media is an important component of this new environment, Sirman added.

“Lawyers need to be open to new ways of not only doing business, but also making professional connections. Social media is definitely a part of that,” he said.

The State Bar of Texas sponsored a “Twitter-style” novel contest to promote the legal innovation track. That’s right—a complete novel in 140 characters. Sirman said the contest was open to all US-licensed attorneys and over 200 lawyers submitted entries. The winner will be announced at the annual meeting during a breakfast seminar by LexBlog CEO Kevin O’Keefe.

Twitter will also be very visible during the meeting itself. Sirman expects use of the hashtag (#sbot10) will be even more popular this year. A tweetup (#sbottwt) will take place on June 10 at the annual meeting.

There’s more to social media than Twitter and Facebook, though. Sirman cited the experience of Michelle Cheng, an Austin lawyer who will speak during the legal innovation track.

Cheng posts frequently on yelp.com, a site that allows users to post reviews for businesses in a specific community. Sirman said Cheng has made professional connections on the site without aiming to do so.

“She’s not talking about anything related to law practice, but she’s just out there,” Sirman said. “It’s a good of example of participation on social media sites and how you really don’t know what they might lead to.”

Sirman knows the value of social media firsthand. He is the Technology Editor of the Texas Bar Journal and frequently relies on professional relationships he has developed online to track down content.

“It’s my online connections and social media connections that I go to first for articles and contributions.”

A self-proclaimed Internet aficionado, Sirman has managed content for the State Bar of Texas website for the past five years. Sirman said social media has allowed the State Bar to educate not only lawyers, but also the public. The Facebook and Twitter accounts managed by the State Bar of Texas alternate posts geared toward lawyers and the public to appeal to both audiences.

“I think we’re definitely reaching people that we otherwise wouldn’t reach,” Sirman said. “All of this work with social media is just scratching the surface.”


By the numbers:
13,000 people belong to Texas Bar Circle, a social network for Texas lawyers
11,593 people “like” the State Bar of Texas on Facebook
1,268 people follow @statebaroftexas on Twitter
140 blogs managed by Texas lawyers are linked off of the Texas Bar Blog

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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.