Brent Britton, Shareholder, GrayRobinson, Tampa Florida

If marketing is theater, what is the Internet but a massive audience? Brent Britton routinely obtains business as a direct result of his participation in social media by treating the audience with whom he is connected in more or less the same way he would treat them if they met at a party. He entertains. He does not advertise to them nor does he spew marketing copy.  He merely uses the social Web as a communications tool to say things that are meant to interest them.

Brent is a Shareholder and Chair of the Emerging Business and Technology Practice Group at Gray Robinson. He considers himself fortunate to have been fairly active on the Internet even before it was called the World Wide Web—literally his entire adult life. The communicative power of social media allows him to stay in touch with friends, family, and clients, and he admits he often takes that part of it for granted.  However, as a lawyer of 16 years, he has always considered the Internet to be fecund business development territory.

He told me that, in 1995, he asked the managing partner of a large, worldwide law firm at which he was a lowly associate, “Why don’t we have a website?” The response? “That’s not where we get our clients.” Today, of course, almost every lawyer has a Web site. But he added that, if you ask many lawyers why they aren’t yet using Twitter, guess what answer you get?  ‘That’s not where we get our clients.” Sigh.”

Brent believes that using the Internet to develop business should be second nature to most lawyers, and that social media is aptly named because it is a social event—a sort of party. He went on to say that lawyers have been developing business at social events for centuries. They attract new clients at parties by introducing themselves and engaging others in enlightening conversations.  Says Brent, “We get our charisma on.  We partake in witty banter and adroit repartee. In short, we get clients at parties by entertaining them… by being the kind of person they’d like to have playing for their team.”

What he doesn’t do to get clients is get “all up in their grill shouting out highlights from our resumes and reciting an exhaustive list of the multitude of services we so expertly provide.” As a result, about once a week Brent gets a call from somebody who found him online.  He recently brought in a client who had seen a post on Brent C.J. Britton (his blog), www.brentbritton.com, where he discussed work-fire-hire status of copyrightable works.  The prospect liked what Brent said, needed legal counsel in a similar situation and gave him a call.  Brent got the engagement.

Brent’s advice to others who are contemplating using the social web for business development is to remember that people want to be engaged, entertained, or educated.  Says Brent, “they are hungry for it.  Say bright things and people will follow you.”

Follow Brent @bcjb on Twitter . Connect to him on LinkedIn at brentbritton.  His blog can be found at www.brentbritton.com.

Excerpted from the forthcoming book, social.lawyers | transforming business development, by Jayne Navarre to be published in Fall 2010 by Thomson.

Brett Trout, Brett Trout Law Firm, Des Moines, Iowa

Prospective clients want information quickly. Brett Trout knows this, and so Twitter has become his communication tool of choice. With a niche practice focused on intellectual property he uses Twitter, @bretttrout, to jump into targeted conversations, share his knowledge base, and ultimately find new clients—all in 140-character messages. Twitter is the centerpiece of his marketing plan; he’s skillful at it and savvy, but it didn’t happen over night.

As an intellectual property attorney based in Des Moines, Iowa, Brett has been in and around the Internet since the mid-1990s. In 1999 Brett published a book on Internet Law covering topics such as what are websites, confidentiality and email.  He has since published two more books on Internet law, including “Internet Laws Effecting Your Company” and “CyberLaw: A Legal Arsenal for Online Business,” both available on Amazon. Like many early adopters of technologies, Brett admits he isn’t shy about experimenting and can pretty quickly tell what’s going to be useful and sustainable. So, in 2003, while many of his competitors were sleeping, he launched a blog, blawgit.com, and his instinct was right on the money.

Although still an important part of his social Web strategy today, Brett’s blog is no longer the centerpiece, finding the immediacy and scale of Twitter to be a greater force for connecting with prospects. As such he has significantly shifted the time he devotes to the social Web to the micro-blogging site. He certainly hasn’t abandoned his blog and believes blogs will always be BIG, if for nothing else than the “Google juice” they provide, but has found that its usefulness has evolved with time. When a topic or conversation on Twitter merits an additional discussion that doesn’t fit into the 140-character format, he puts that discussion in a longer form post at Blawgit.com.

As a communications channel, Twitter gives Brett a wide reach, significant exposure and an immediate way to respond and connect with his potential clients. In general, he has learned how to weave into posts and conversations the key areas of his experience and background, develop links and add to his pool of prospective clients.

Brett gets quite a bit of business from Twitter, but admits it’s not for everyone and it takes time to build effectiveness. He’s been working it for 3 years and now has over 10,000 followers who can read his posts and potentially Direct Message (DM) him with requests for assistance. These initial contacts via DM often develop into work. In fact, while being interviewed by Lance Godard of 22Tweets (@22twts), a Twitter project that does real time interviews of lawyers in twenty-two tweets (posts), someone in Brett’s network saw one of the posts in their Twitter stream and contacted him via direct message with a legal problem. As in everything Brett does on the social Web, he is very careful not to give legal advice. In this case he simply asked her for additional information, did a conflict check and then invited her to call him by providing a phone number. He was able to work out her issue in that initial phone consultation, so it didn’t result in anything beyond that, yet the immediacy of his availability is memorable and could result in a future matter or referral.

In addition to Brett’s Twitter presence and his blog, he uses Facebook for keeping in touch with family, friends and people he knows well. Those relationships are not overtly business, but knows that all have the potential to be referral sources. He also maintains a profile on LinkedIn and has over 500 connections, however he hasn’t yet seen any benefit. He believes that it is a viable tool for job seekers and might use it in the event he was looking to hire someone.

Brett’s advice for lawyers who want to use the social web for business development is to get in contact with someone who knows what they’re doing. He suggests that they ask questions and learn how NOT to make mistakes. “It takes time to get a feel for what is legal or illegal and what is acceptable etiquette or unacceptable. While social media leverages resources and multiplies efforts, if you mess it up the result will be the same, only tenfold.”He suggests that people are less tolerant of inexperienced users and mistakes are hard to correct. He also does not think it is wise to try to simply replicate what someone, such as himself, has been doing for over ten years, as one size does not fit all. He believes that each lawyer should take time to lurk, watch and get a feel for how things proceed, what’s allowed and what’s not allowed, then jump in when they’re ready.

Other lawyers have asked Brett to tell them why they should be in social media? His response is simple: “If you have to ask for a reason, then you probably shouldn’t be there.” He adds that, “Everyone can put up a billboard. It’s another thing to turn that into new business. If your idea is to post your billboard and sit back expecting a response, it’s probably better to do something else.”

You can find Brett at BrettTrout.com. His blog is www.blawgit.com. You can follow him on Twitter, @bretttrout,

Excerpted from the forthcoming book, social.lawyers | transforming business development, by Jayne Navarre to be published in Fall 2010 by Thomson.

Nils Victor Montan, Of Counsel, Dannemann Seimsen, Brazil

“Social media totally changed my professional life,” wrote Nils Montan when we chatted via LinkedIn.

Like many people, Nils, an Intellectual Property lawyer with the Brazilian law firm of Dannemann Seimsen, he first became involved in social media, two years ago, through Facebook, using the platform for purely personal reasons. He had just moved outside the United States and wanted to keep in touch with friends back home, only to find that many of his friends were not as active on Facebook as he had hoped.

Still, as he started to post articles and comment about his interests, he noticed that there were people from all over the world who were willing to share their thoughts and insights with him.  He began to build relationships with a few of those people, and to his surprise, those relationships seemed as intimate and important as a “real world” friendship.

From Facebook Nils migrated to LinkedIn and discovered the platform that he believes is the single best way to network in the professional world.  He started his journey on LinkedIn by building contacts and joining a few groups. A result of his early experience, he saw that social media was going to have an important impact on the practice of law, he so he started the LinkedIn group, Law and Social Networking. Within seven months the Group has 650 members and 115 open discussions with over 62 comments. His activity produced five new clients for his firm in the last year and numerous “connections” that he believes may lead to business.

Nils doesn’t believe lawyers are doing anything really new in developing business, as lawyers have been networking for two thousand years. But the media they use to network is totally new—particularly digital media, at least for Nils, who considers himself more of a marketing person than a traditional lawyer at this point, all because of social media.

“First attorneys joined business associations to meet significant business leaders.  Bar and trade associations followed.  In my case, most of my business is conducted on-line. Without social media, I wouldn’t have a business now.  Social Media is how I find people. In due course, I like to ‘graduate’ a connection to a phone call and, if I can, an in-person meeting.”

Nils employs a strategy of broad exposure across the many social-media platforms, and it seems to be paying off. In many cases, Nils reports that clients found him as opposed to vice-versa. In addition to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, he has launched two independent social networking membership sites, Law & Social Networking (www.lawandsocialnetworking.com) and IP Ally (www.ipally.com).  Says Nils: “The broader your exposure, the more likely it is that people will find you. Although to a great extent the practice of law is territorial, social media has allowed the legal profession to break geographic limitations when it comes to the marketing of services.”

The only limitation in Nil’s experience is that the increasing “noise” in social media is making it harder to find the most valuable sources, sites and connections. He is afraid that as the social media space gets over-saturated with “offers,” “top ten tips,” and webinars, the goose that laid the golden egg may be killed.

Still, he’s got his career firmly planted in the social online medium, having converted his law practice of 30 years—which included private practice with law firms, fourteen years as Vice President and Senior Intellectual Property Counsel with Warner Bros., and two years as the President of the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (“IACC”)—into a full-time marketing practice for his firm.

His advice for others, “Invest the time. Social media marketing is not a quick fix. It may take years to develop a reputation that will brand you as a professional, and that will draw clients to you.”

You can find Nils at Dannemann Siemsen, on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/nilsmontan, or join one of his social networks, www.lawandsocialnetworking or www.ipally.com. Follow him on Twitter @nilsmontan. (Nils also served as a Member of the Board of Directors, an Officer and the President of the International Trademark Association.) For book lovers, I highly suggest Nil’s non-business LinkedIn group, Book Fanatics.

Excerpted from the forthcoming book, social.lawyers | transforming business development, by Jayne Navarre to be published in Fall 2010 by Thomson.

Chrissie Lightfoot, CEO, Solicitor (non-practicing), Entrepreneur Lawyer Limited, United Kingdom

In order to survive and thrive in the legal profession being a technically excellent lawyer is not going to be good enough. Chrissie Lightfoot recognized this and knew her technical expertise alone was not going to distinguish her from peers, bring in new clients, or even perhaps secure her future. She knew, deep down, that she needed to be present and available for her potential clients where they were now and where they would be in the future. That, she concluded, was within social media, social networking and other ‘trending’ digital platforms.

While not an early adopter of social media she did get a head start first joining LinkedIn in 2008. She immediately recognized its potential for marketing; building relationships and networking with local, national and international professionals and, of course, identifying potential clients. She has not been disappointed. In general, she has found the platform useful for gaining market knowledge and awareness, raising her and her organization’s brand profile, identifying referral sources, and procuring mutual benefit among those who might be her affiliates, associates, referrers, and ultimately clients. As an added benefit she uses LinkedIn to find suppliers and experts to assist her clients.

Chrissie added Twitter, @entrepreneurlaw, and Facebook to her social media mix in 2009 and now considers her self a fully-fledged social media and networking junky—because it works! As a trainee solicitor and since founding Entrepreneur Lawyer Limited during the recession of 2009 she has managed to generate and refer £562,000 of new client legal work through a combination of traditional sales and marketing techniques using both offline and new online tools, in particular utilizing LinkedIn and Twitter. Chrissie points to the creation of The Entrepreneur Lawyer Relationship Sales Network Group on LinkedIn and associated activities as a key piece of her social networking strategy. Here’s how she did it.

In order to kick-start conversations, involvement and engagement in her new Group she placed two topics on the group discussion board; “Penny A Brick … Why I became a Lawyer” and “Where does ‘sales’ begin;” the former being a repurposed blog post on entrepreneurlawyer.co.uk published a week earlier.  Chrissie then sent a message to all her LinkedIn connections alerting them to the discussions and inviting them to join the Group. At the same time, she put the two discussions in play on other relevant groups that she participates in on LinkedIn. She also tweeted, facebook-ed and added a message about the Group to her LinkedIn profile status. Within thirty-six hours there were 260 members of The Entrepreneur Lawyer Relationship Sales Network Group.

In addition to the benefits Group members were receiving via the discussions, Chrissie found that starting her Group on LinkedIn opened up a very large number of new, direct LinkedIn connections for her to leverage. Each new connection represented a potential visitor to her blog, a subscriber to her E-ntrepreneur Bullet newsletter or a download of her the first chapter of her free e-book, The Naked Lawyer. She learned that over 1000 visitors had used bit.ly to shorten the group’s URL and share with others on Web sites, Twitter and LinkedIn.  Her own tweets had been re-tweeted many times and other LinkedIn group facilitators added the discussions to their group activity, contacting her directly via LinkedIn and email telling her they did so.

Chrissie reports that her activity in and around establishing the Group did several valuable things for helping her find new leads and engagements. Her activity woke up existing contacts and potential clients who got back in touch with her via calls and face to face meetings, it ignited new contacts, triggered actual business, initiated affiliate interest, and led to a conversation with and proposition from an individual with the key to a door of a potentially lucrative high level licensing deal.

For Chrissie, the social Web has played a key role in seeding and building business relationships. Starting her Group on LinkedIn and cross promoting it to other web sites gave her new channels to grab the attention of prospects and referral sources and establish professional relationships with real potential, all within a few days. “Not bad I reckon for a day’s preparation writing a blog post, a couple of discussion topics, and a couple of day’s marketing and facilitating—and all for free, no cost, save for the time element of course.”^[2]

You can find Chrissie Lightfoot, EntrepreneurLawyer Limited, at entrepreneurlawyer.co.uk. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/entrepreneurlaw or connect with her on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/chrissielightfoot.

Excerpted from the forthcoming book, social.lawyers | transforming business development, by Jayne Navarre to be published in Fall 2010 by Thomson.

Glenn Manishin, Partner, Duane Morris, Washington, D.C.

Who owns user-generated content on the social Web? That’s a big unsettled question in the courts these days. But it’s almost certain that when the question gets answered, Glenn Manishin will be there—most likely leading the way.

A pioneer in the synthesis of law and technology policy, Glenn has built a practice that involves helping companies’ shape how legislators, courts and regulators classify and treat their products and services, particularly those in computing, Internet and telecom. An intellectual property, policy advocacy attorney at Duane Morris in Washington, D.C., Glenn has seen his practice broaden over the years as technology has developed from telecom to software and from Internet to mobility and content. It is no boast to say that he has participated in virtually all of the most important regulatory, judicial and legislative proceedings affecting telecommunications and the Internet for the past two decades. He is the only antitrust lawyer to have appeared as counsel-of-record in both the United States v. AT&T and United States v. Microsoft monopolization cases. In 1995-96 he represented Netscape when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was answering, “What is this new animal of the Net?” (Netscape WAS the Internet). The case resulted in the inauguration of federal policy that survives in large part today.

Currently Glenn is focused on competition issues such as ownership of the underlying technology methods and assets for a new technology, for example, VoIP (voice over Internet protocol). He is also in the middle of resolving the question of user-generated content. If most, or all, digital content can be “shared,” how do older rules regarding proprietary rights apply in this new environment? And this includes his own rights.

A remarkable communicator, it’s no surprise that Glenn embraces the tools of the social Web, uses them effectively and ultimately develops new business simply by talking about the things he’s passionate about and loves to do.  As of May 2010, Glenn has published over 5,000 Tweets (not including direct messages), he has 4,500+ followers on Twitter, and is the author of two blogs: LexDigerati: Lawyering for the Information Age (lexdigerati.com) and Glenn’s Web (manishin.com). Glenn’s content is all over the Web as it gets linked to and from other blogs, Web sites, Tweets and online discussion forums.

It’s not surprising that this exposure has resulted in new business. Glenn has been approached and retained by some half-dozen clients in the past twelve to eighteen months from social-media contacts. He believes the familiarity created by a user’s “social stream” tends to build closer relationships from the start—a great improvement over cold calls. And while the full significance of the social Web may be lost on some lawyers, many of whom are conservative creatures and tend not to embrace change quickly, he believes that the attorney who does not “get it” probably won’t get as many clients or as much work as these new modes of communication develop further.

Glenn’s objectives for social media are fairly simple; satisfy a passion for early adoption, find industries, partners and clients that excite, and generate work that is satisfying rather than burdensome.

The secret to his success: discipline. Social media addiction can consume one’s life, he says.  To balance this, he dedicates 30 minutes to it each morning, and periodically through the course of the day reviews and posts stories regarding current events emphasizing law and policy that may be of interest to others. Says Glenn, “Content is the best promotion.”

Find Glenn at www.manishin.com, www.lexdigerati.com, glennm.posterous.com. Follow him on Twitter @glennm.

Excerpted from the forthcoming book, social.lawyers | transforming business development, by Jayne Navarre to be published in Fall 2010 by Thomson.

Jonathan Handel, Of Counsel, TroyGould, Los Angeles, California

Thanks to his deft use of social media, Jonathan Handel went from a relatively obscure entertainment lawyer to an oft-quoted international authority on entertainment matters and a regular contributor to Forbes.com—all in a matter of a few short years.

Nothing in his career would have presaged its sudden turnaround and his meteoric rise. He started his legal career like many lawyers, clerking for a judge. He then joined a firm where he focused on appellate and commercial litigation. Concurrently, he worked as a federal Associate Independent Counsel involved in a federal prosecution and investigation relating to a search of Presidential candidate Bill Clinton’s passport files. With a growing interest in entertainment law, he left private practice to accept a position as Associate Counsel of the Writers Guild of America, West. It would be unfair to say that the career path to his current law practice as an entertainment and new media lawyer at TroyGould in Los Angeles was routine. However, none of his early successes rival what’s going on today, and he credits his involvement in social media as one of the big reasons for his recent vertical trajectory.

Jonathan started blogging about the Hollywood entertainment industry and related legal issues in August of 2007. His first post on Digital Media Law (www.digitalmedialaw.blogspot.com), “No Honey for Pooh Family,” briefly addressed a ruling against the heirs of Stephen Slesinger who had obtained the rights to the famous bear from the story’s author A.A. Milne. Jonathan followed that with an assortment of posts on trending topics hoping to build readership and get new exposure for his entertainment and technology law practice. Pretty basic stuff.

But at the same time, the Writers Guild of America was threatening to strike. Hollywood waited with anticipation and fear as the deadline for the writers’ strike approached. The effect of a strike, if not averted or delayed, would be programs off the air, movies delayed, and people out of work throughout the industry and the local economy. As a former counsel to the Writers Guild, and a current practitioner of new media law, Jonathan was familiar with the issues. Jonathan and his new blog were perfectly positioned. Add to that, the TroyGould outside publicists had just introduced Jonathan to Variety’s entertainment labor reporter.

Within days, Jonathan began a program of blogging and of outreach to the press. His posts conveyed analysis, opinion and predictions. His emails to journalists offered the same. The posts to Digital Media Law on the topic made it easy for journalists searching for background to find his blog and to quickly see he knew the issues. Within weeks he became the go-to legal source for local, national and international journalists writing about Hollywood labor, many of who told him his blog was the best available source on the topic.

A firestorm of publicity ensued, with multiple interviews per week (and sometimes per day) as the strike began and, then, as Hollywood labor unrest dragged on for months. Boarding a Southwest flight to Salt Lake City for the Sundance Film Festival, Jonathan received a phone call from a radio station insistent upon doing an interview immediately, even as he carted his carry-on down the aisle and searched for a seat in the crowded, noisy plane. Week after week, Jonathan’s friends, clients, colleagues, even his auto mechanic and dental hygienist all reported seeing him on television, hearing him on the radio, or reading quotes in the paper.

And speaking of airplanes: Following a visit with their son in LA, flying back east on Jet Blue, Jonathan’s parents tuned into CNBC on the airline-seat TV. To their surprise, there he was, their son the attorney blogger being interviewed on TV! How cool is that? As cool as all of this…

Over the past two and a half years, Jonathan has been quoted about 600 times on matters pertaining to the Writers Guild of America (WGA) negotiations and strike, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) negotiations, as well as on other matters related to new media, entertainment, and technology. He has been quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Entertainment Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, New York Post, Associated Press, Reuters and Bloomberg News.

He has appeared on the Today Show, Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, CNBC, Bloomberg television, Fox Business News, Los Angeles news channels, Canadian national television, BBC Radio, NPR, and other U.S. local and national radio and TV programs. Stories quoting him have been reprinted in several thousand different international newspapers and TV station websites in Taiwan, China, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Russia, Canada, England, and various European countries.

Jonathan’s Digital Media Law blog, along with cross-posting to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn has opened up opportunities to contribute an Op-Ed piece and a book review, both for the Los Angeles Times, and numerous articles for the Daily Journal and the Los Angeles Business Journal. He’s now a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and Forbes.com and his blog is syndicated on IMDb (the Internet Movie Database). His posts have been linked to or reprinted on other blogs thousands of times. And he continues to be interviewed about twice a week on various entertainment law and business subjects. As the next round of Hollywood negotiations begins, that number will no doubt increase again.

To further sweeten his success, when Jonathan attended a panel in Los Angeles during the writers strike, one of the speakers pulled out a printed copy of one of Jonathan’s blog posts and informed the crowd that Jonathan’s blog was assigned reading for his students. That speaker turned out to be the head of UCLA School of Law’s entertainment law program, and a few semesters later, Jonathan is now an adjunct professor at the school, teaching a class on Entertainment Unions and Guilds.  And most recently Jonathan received an email from Forbes Magazine telling him they read his blog, love it and wanted to offer him an opportunity to be a regular contributor on Forbes.com.

Jonathan’s online social-media participation has worked to exponentially increase not only his profile but also his law firm’s profile and, of course, significantly increase his new business.

What has Jonathan learned between “No Honey for Pooh Family” and Forbes.com? “I had no idea something could take off to this degree. I’ve learned so much about working with the media. I have also learned how valuable it is to interact with and help others via social-media tools.  Suddenly I have the best of all worlds. I love to practice law, I love to teach, and I love to write.” [1]

You can find Jonathan at TroyGould.com, digitalmedialaw.blogspot.com, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/jhandel.

This story has been excerpted from the forthcoming book, social.lawyers | transforming business development, by Jayne Navarre, available in fall 2010 from Thomson Reuters.