Associate's Mind

  Social media! Social media! Social media! (to be read in a monster truck rally commercial announcer voice a la Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!) You have to have it. It needs to be plastered all over your website and blog. You have to interact and join every possible service. It’s the most important thing to do because that’s the way [...]

A couple of days ago I received an email encouraging me to cheat. It was from Twitter. Here is the pertinent part of the message: Twitter was offering two methods of advertising. Neither involved any sort of ad placement or banner placement. Rather they offered: Promoted Accounts  Promoted Tweets Why is this cheating? Because, whether you realize it or [...]

  N.I.N.J.A - No Income, No Job, or Assets Often used in context with loans, it also applies to so-called social media “experts.” There has been a ridiculous rise fo people claiming to be some sort of expert or professional or guru in social media in the past few years. How many? Try this on for size: So [...]

  I’ve already told you about how you don’t own your video games. I’ve already told you about how you don’t own your books. And if you haven’t already heard, while you do own your photos, you’re licensing them away for free – at least if they’re on Instagram. Some or all of the service [...]

  This past week I spent significant time at what I believe to be the best social networking site for lawyers. While I was there saw a former law school professor who I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. I spoke with two judges. Just as importantly, I spoke with four judge’s assistants. I also [...]

Over the weekend, Scott Greenfield wrote about the trend in social media that one can be a mentor or be mentored via social media: There’s harm being done here, and that’s why it’s necessary to point this out.  The lawyer who has tried ten cases is being “mentored” by the twitter lawyer who has never [...]

  Don’t say nice things about everyone. Don’t re-tweet that someone re-tweeted you. Don’t thank people for following. Don’t automatically follow people back. When someone follows you and they are obviously a hack – tell them to go away. Tell people to get off your website. Don’t be inviting. Point out hypocrisy and foolishness. Intimidate [...]

Earlier this year, the Web Ecology Project (WEP, an interdisciplinary research group focusing on using large scale data mining to analyze the system-wide flows of culture and community online) ran an interesting experiment on Twitter. The picked a specific networked group of 500 people who all had similar interests in a topic. Here is a [...]

  In the wake of the flash mob riots earlier this year in London, Scotland Yard arrested two teens for “inciting riots” on Facebook. Then two weeks later they arrested ten more. Eventually, two men were sentenced to four years in prison for inciting riots on Facebook: The two men were convicted for using Facebook [...]

  I spent roughly 7 hours roundtrip in the car on Wednesday, to attend a hearing that took a little over 30 minutes. In the litany of intricacies of practice that law school does not adequately prepare law students for, add long car drives to the list. That being said, I don’t really mind it. [...]