Opening up access

Steve Matthews of Stem Legal in Vancouver and I conducted an informal poll to see if we could confirm that law firms were blocking access to social networking sites. Our theory was proven in the results, available in an article in the March 2009 issue of the ABA’s Law Practice magazine (http://tinyurl.com/af8eob).

Of those responding to the survey, 45% said their firms blocked access to social networking sites. The three most blocked sites: Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. Those are also three of the top ten most visited sites on the web. I was surprised that 45% of firms blocked access to some social networking sites, and that the percentage was fairly consistent across firm size ? small law firms were just as likely to block access as big firms.

It seems to me that if you are recruiting young workers, you should not cut off one of the ways they communicate. Deacons published a survey indicating that an employer’s policy regarding online social networking would influence a significant percentage of workers’ decision to join one employer over another.

Although I am an advocate of open access, I do so with the caveat that you need to let the people in your organization know what is proper use and to monitor their compliance. I fear that many firms use blockage as their policy. That may have worked ten years ago, but not today. You can just as easily access these sites from an iPhone or Blackberry as you can from a firm computer. Blocking does not stop the bad behaviour that it is trying to prevent. Blocking merely changes the access method.

There is a fair amount of research, the most prominent of which are two reports from McKinsey, showing that access to social networks at work, coupled with a good policy, results in a more engaged, more motivated and potentially more innovative workplace. . You should set sensible policies and set reasonable expectations for your employees. Social networking sites at their core are communications platform. You should be able to adapt your policies on email, confidentiality, marketing and similar policies to easily include social networking sites. If not, those other policies probably need updating anyhow.

Social network blocking survey: results

Size of respondent’s firm
10 lawyers or less   9%
10-50 lawyers    13%
50-200 lawyers   19%
200-500 lawyers   19%
500 or more lawyers   41%

Does your firm block access to social networking sites?

Yes, our firm blocks access to some social networking sites 45%
No, we have unfiltered access to the Internet 55%

Does your firm block access to any of these sites?

Facebook    85%
MySpace    77%
YouTube    55%
Twitter    26%
Blogs     22%
LinkedIn    14%

This survey was conducted in January 2009 on Zoomerang.com. A total of 231 individuals responded.

Doug Cornelius is Chief Compliance Officer for a real estate private equity company. He is a frequent writer on the social internet, knowledge management and enterprise 2.0 for lawyers. This article is excerpted from a March 2009 post on his blog Compliance Building: http://www.compliancebuilding.com.