Social Media Best Practices

for Law Schools

• introduction
• students
• staff
• employers
• conclusion
• join the conversation

Staff

• first steps
• creating policy
• admissions
• alumni relations

Former Assistant Dean at the University of Iowa College of Law, Steve Langerud, knows that many in his field ”sound warnings of fear, doom, and disaster about the internet” without addressing the potential value of a positive online image. This is not too surprising, considering that nearly two thirds of respondents to a Iowa Law survey said they wouldn’t think to use social media to market themselves professionally, and more than half answered “n/a” or “None” when asked “What is the most interesting or effective thing you have seen someone do to promote themselves professionally online?”

More and more career services offices are reaching out to students with Facebook pages of their own 1, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Several institutions have also hopped on Twitter, such as IowaLawSchool. However, when advising students about how to use social networks, many schools still say to erase or hide (by enhancing privacy settings) much of students’ online selves.

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First steps for law school staff and administrators

To help students make the most of social networking, law school staff will need to learn some new tricks. But the upside is that obtaining and using these skills will provide gains in your own career in the same way you are empowering students to benefit.

1. Know the terrain. This means you must participate in the networks. Keeping a LinkedIn profile is a minimum requirement. Take the time to think about what of your job history and connections are both useful to you and will make sense to students when they view your information. Join Facebook, if you haven’t already. The benefit of Facebook is really about keeping up with the proverbial Joneses, since Facebook has over 180 million users. Keeping a Facebook account will also help you realize how tempting all the silly games and applications are, as well as let you confront the same issues of friending, networking and sharing that you ask students to keep tabs on each day. Participating in social networks is the only way to understand how they work and see their potential value, which in turn allows you to honestly advocate certain identity-forming and -marketing strategies for students and your peers.
2. Lead by example. Realize that students and of course your colleagues will be interested in the “new” message of forming a positive online image. Take the initiative to engage students and other counselors in professional, meaningful online discussions. Consider blogging about developments at your school or in the field that reflect well on your work. Make connections on LinkedIn with those students who you know and trust. Write recommendations for them, comment on their blogs, follow them on Twitter. Set the tone for professionalism and approachability online and others will follow suit.
3. Provide concrete, step-by-step advice. For the basics, like setting up a LinkedIn account and modifying Facebook privacy settings, have an easy-to-follow reference guide. Keep it in a format that is easy for students to use, which means visible online: not a piece of paper in a file. Back this up with your personal experience using the sites and a willingness to sit down with students at their laptops and walk them through. Host a workshop where everyone walks out having set up their basic LinkedIn profile and five connections. For more in-depth topics, like blogging, commenting, RSS sharing or search engine optimization (harnessing your top Google hit), keep an up-to-date list of reputable reference materials. Again, this must be online. Embrace active links to third-party content. No one expects this to be your area of expertise, so save as much work for yourself as you can by pointing students to online resources, even if you must do so with a disclaimer of endorsement.

Getting started with social networking can be time-consuming, especially if you don’t spend many hours of most of your days online already. But, like the students you advise, you’ll succeed if you are able to view the time spent cultivating connections online in the same light you view other types of networking. Would you be willing to spend 45 minutes for coffee with a colleague from a nearby town? Then commit to as many minutes to find 100 colleagues from around the world. Social networking builds on itself. The more you participate, the more your voice is heard and others respond and point you to others who weigh in, the more valuable it will be. Don’t be afraid to spend some time feeling out the networks, and to giving careful consideration to what you say and portray online. Then you will speak with some authority on what students should or should not show to the rest of the internet-connected world.

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Creating policy

It's important to have guidelines in place for both how the instition will advise and assist students with social media as well as how the school and its employees/representatives will represent themselves online. For in-depth resources, see the references for institutional social media use.

Knowing what draft policy should look like is a common hurdle for law school administrators. This is new territory for most institutions and as noted above many have reacted by shutting down or shutting out social media. Will Hornsby, staff counsel at the American Bar Association, suggests a simple, common-sense baseline policy:

• Be mature
• Be ethical
• Read it again before posting

Hornsby also suggests asking yourself how you would feel if what you posted was published on the front page of the New York Times. What if your grandma were to read it? If any of these questions give pause, it is probably best to revise or refrain from posting.

The UK instructs its civil servants on it's Principles for participation online page to follow the same rules as they would while speaking in official capacity at a conference, for example.

1. Be credible
   • Be accurate, fair, thorough and transparent.
2. Be consistent
   • Encourage constructive criticism and deliberation. Be cordial, honest and professional at all times.
3. Be responsive
   • When you gain insight, share it where appropriate.
4. Be integrated
   • Wherever possible, align online participation with other offline communications.
5. Be a civil servant
   • Remember that you are an ambassador for your organisation. Wherever possible, disclose your position as a representative of your department or agency.

As with any institutional policy, there are many individualized aspects to be considered:

• The message
  Know what you are going to say before you say it. The immediacy and facility of social media makes it very tempting to jump in and start blasting the ether with achievements, invitations and event annoucements. If you're not sure how to write a definition of what you want to say, look first to policies for non-online communications and seek the advice of members of your constituents (students, staff or alumni) who already participate in some of the fora you would like to join.
• School identity and demeanor
  What is the tone of communications from the school? Formal? Newsy? Personable? Warm? Passive? Informative? Interactive?
• Primary audience
  Who are you connecting with? Could be prospective students, current students, alunmi, donors, faculty, community supporters or any or all of these groups. Some platforms (like Facebook) are better suited for reaching a certain demographic (prospective students). Follow and connect with others doing the same kind of outreach, ask them what's effective, and selectively adopt from their bags of tricks.
• Person or department in charge
  Who will manage the primary institutional accounts for your school? Jeff Ingram of Ein Communications suggests three roles for organizational Twitter feeds: "Leader," "Loudspeaker," or "Ambassador." Will the face of your organization be your Dean (like
• Benchmarks for success
  Return on investment (ROI) of social media can be a very slippery thing. Individual organizations must create their own benchmarks for what they will consider success or failure of a social media policy. For some who carry out a social media plan, individual gains in professional development (through productive professional relationships oneline) or efficiency of previously-cumbersome tasks (like contacting everyone on an alumni mailing list online rather than by mail) will justify the social media investment. for others, the dedicated time a successful social media campaign requires is just one more thing on an already-overworked staffer's to-do list. Consider your standards for:
  • Frequency of updates
  • Degree of interaction
  • Level of "listening" or monitoring the web for input on your school
  • Number of network affiliations (it may be too much to jump in with a multitude of networks to start off, or it may make your message more consistent and easy to find)

Drafting social media policies that address all of these points will make your efforts easier to explain and justify to your stakeholders and will help ensure you note and adjust when the data indicates you are going off course. Download a draft policy for staff social media use here (written by Laura Bergus) [Word document].

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Recruiting new students

Social networks make sense for recruiting new students and communicating with the incoming class.

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Connecting with alumni

1 See, for example the Touro Law Center and Penn State Law.

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While specific social networks and products are mentioned on this site, the author has no affiliation with these networks other than membership or holding an account. Although certain networks are recommended for use due to their utility and/or ubiquity as judged by the author's personal experience, the author makes no claims as to the security, reliablity, usefulness or functionality of any network, service or website. Nor does the author make any claims regarding outcomes of use of these or any other social networks. Using social media is an individual choice and participation is at the user's own risk.

Links to external sites should not be viewed as the author's endorsement of those sites' content; such content is intended to be illustrative or elaborative of the context in which the link appears. External pages may cease to exist or become outdated and are outside of the author's control.