Monday, March 17, 2008 5:56 AM
Last year, I remember thinking to myself that there were a lot of lawyers adding profiles to LinkedIn, an online professional networking website. And, that many of these same lawyers were ones that had never struck me as being particularly "tech-savvy." My conclusion was that it all came down to business. That is, the business of serving existing clients and generating new leads. Similar to the rapid adoption of Blackberry devices by the same "non-technical" lawyers, LinkedIn apparently was being seen by a tool that assisted their business objectives.
From a personal perspective, LinkedIn has helped reconnect me to a number of people I either went to school with or worked with in the past. Like myself, they have gone onto other jobs and cities across the country. From a networking perspective, I think we sometimes overlook how wide and diverse our personal networks are; mainly because we have lost touch with so many people from our past.
Then, of course, LinkedIn also offers an avenue for others to discover you, your skills and your experience. By way of example, Kevin O'Keefe, over at LexBlog, noted yesterday in his post Does LinkedIn work for networking in the legal profession? that five different people from different walks of life stopped by his LinkedIn Profile on Sunday.
I realize there are many other online networking and profile options out there beyond LinkedIn, and they may be as good or better. My own experience has simply been with LinkedIn and I have found it to meet many of my needs. Perhaps it will meet yours as well; stop by and check it out: LinkedIn