The ILN has offered a webinar series to our members for the past two years, and in 2010, we're offering a three-part series on social networking. In October, we started with, "Social Networking Strategy & Blogging," with Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog. December's webinar with Freesource's Nathan Egan focused on "LinkedIn for Lawyers."

There's a lot of great information in here from Nathan, so I'll break this up into a couple of posts.

After a short introduction from ILN's Executive Director, Alan Griffiths, Nathan jumped into his presentation. Due to some technical difficulties, Nathan wasn't able to share his PowerPoint, but instead offered a fabulous demonstration of the most useful features of LinkedIn and how attorneys can make it work for them.

He started by saying that the ILN had informally interviewed a few of the attorneys before the webinar, and learned that their business objectives for 2011 centered around finding new clients, having better access to & visibility in the marketplace, being able to collaborate and share, and positioning the firm and its lawyers to be top of mind for clients. Nathan said that these new tools, like LinkedIn, offer a way to help meet these business objectives.

Nathan said that social media strategies, for LinkedIn or other tools, should be developed to meet the business objectives of the firm at large. He said that many clients come to them and say, "Should we be blogging? Should we be using these tools?" and his answer to them is that they should be if it meets their business objectives.