A couple of weeks ago, my wife sent me an email with a link to this PC-Mag article. ???FTC-Approved Company Will Save Dirt from Your Facebook Profile for 7 Years.

My first reaction was that isn’t all that surprising, and people really do need to learn to think before they post anything to a social networking site. Even if you’re only sharing it with a small group, in Google+ Circles for example, nothing is stopping someone from capturing that photo, post, etc. and sharing it elsewhere.

However, when I read the article, part of it really jumped out at me, in a disturbing way.

?Forbes got its hands on a few reports Social Intelligence has made for reporters. One job applicant was indicated to be a racist for joining a Facebook group called “I shouldn’t have to press 1 for English. We are in the United States. Learn the language.”

If that’s the sort of thing that gets you dropped from a potential job, wide-spread use of this service is going to lead to the majority of the country being unemployable. Good luck finding someone who passes this sort of examination hiring managers!

The other thing that this shows is the danger of large, widespread, data collection, especially by government entities. Anytime the subject comes up there’s always the chorus of “If you’re not doing anything wrong, what’s the big deal?” comments to anyone who thinks too much information is being collected. It’s not the data, it’s that someone is going to be interpreting the data completely out of context. Is the Facebook group mentioned above sort of just stupid? Sure. Does joining it make you racist? I think that’s a pretty big stretch, but someone at this company decided that it did, and now the background check run by potential employers is going to come up with you being a racist.

Extrapolate this example out, and you can see how it would be really easy to find information that would hurt you taken out of context. For example, tweeting in support of the US National Team in their recent soccer match with Mexico might be taken as racist, or maybe even anti-immigrant, when taken out of the context of a soccer match. (“C’mon boys beat those Mexicans” sounds somewhat normal during a game, not so much outside of that!). Talking about enjoying a drink after a stressful day might mean you’re a raging alcoholic, looking forward to the weekend might make you a disengaged employee, and on and on. It is all open to interpretation, and if someone can officially label you based on their interpretation, we have problems.

Still, be careful what you put out there. Some things are always stupid.

I try to keep my feelings, and many opinions, about sports off the blog. But sometimes, sports provides an excellent example of something that applies in the professional realm.

One recent example is Jim Tressel resigning from Ohio State. Obviously, I lived in Columbus for some 25 years, I’ve followed OSU football a little, and I’ve followed this whole story pretty intently. Many people are feeling very sorry for Coach Tressel, but I can’t really count myself as one of them. As I tried to explain my reasoning for this, I realized that what I do for a living has a pretty big influence here.

Anyone who has ever worked in a law firm, even if you’re not practicing law, or handling ESI, has been reminded again and again that there are certain ethics rules that we must abide by. Maybe other people, in other industries, can talk about their clients, or what cases they are working on, but we can’t. We have to keep client confidentiality, we have to abide by the e-discovery rules, we can’t just hide documents, we have to cooperate with the court, etc. These are the rules of the industry. Breaking these rules simply isn’t acceptable. If you don’t like the rules, or don’t feel like you can abide by them, you need to find something else to do.

The NCAA has rules too, and we can argue until the cows come home about whether they are good rules, or effective, but it doesn’t matter. For the record I think many, many NCAA rules are stupid, and exist to protect the financial interests of the people in charge. Alas, my feelings on the NCAA are irrelevant.

If you are going to exist in that environment, as a player, a coach or a college administrator, you must abide by those rules. Breaking them isn’t acceptable.

If I, in the course of doing my job, decided to simply hide a bunch of data collected from a client, and then lie about it later, I would no longer have my job. It’s also highly likely I would never have a job in this industry again, no matter what sort of good intentions I had. It simply isn’t acceptable behavior. Hiding violations on behalf of his players, and lying about them is unacceptable, no matter what the rationale is.

Coach Tressel made a lot of money as part of big time college football. If he didn’t like the rules, he could have very easily done something else for a living, or simply retired with the money he’s already made if he felt that strongly about what the right thing to do was. Trying to break the rules of his industry, while continuing to take the pay checks, isn’t something that pushes me to feel sorry for him.

I’ve read with some interest some of the commentaries about the recent moves of high-level eDiscovery experts from various firms and vendors. As someone who made a much less glamorous move myself recently, I’m curious about the different reactions. One of them was from Rees Morrison that caught my eye:

Ay, there’s the rub. Just when an employee becomes expert in e-discovery, some vendor or consulting firm poaches them. The lure of more money, variety, and an upward career path persuades those who learn the trade at the expense of with a corporation or law department. As I have written, it is hard to keep talent when dollars and stimulation beckon

Rees, of course, is looking at this from a managerial perspective. Many, many firms have been pushed into eDiscovery as the hot new area to have some expertise, however they didn’t actually have any expertise in-house. So they found someone with some technical chops, and worked to get them trained. Eventually, with some training, some experience and a whole lot of work, they have someone who is pretty darn good, if not expert.

The problem here though, is that internal processes for promoting, and rewarding, this new found expertise don’t keep up with the overall market. Let’s face it, eDiscovery is a hot, growing, market. If you want to be in the forefront of it, you have to make a commitment, and an investment in your people, and the resources available to them. You can’t dabble on the cutting edge, you’re either committed to being on the forefront of eDiscovery, or you run the risk of the people you’ve invested in, leaving for greener pastures.

In all honesty, I’m not sure many firms should be trying to be on this cutting edge. Depending on outside resources is better than relying on underdeveloped and underfunded internal resources. Sure, it’s great to be able to say to a client that you can handle eDiscovery in-house, cheaper than using an outside vendor. But you have to actually handle it, cheaper. Mishandling it, cheaper, is not an option.

If you’re going to play here, be prepared to live in a competitive environment, be prepared to invest and commit to the resources and people you need, and be willing to go out and recruit experts when yours inevitably get poached. The cutting edge is exciting, and can be highly rewarding, but there is risk.

Interestingly, I find myself thinking back to the 90′s, when the same sort of complaints would be heard from small and medium sized businesses about their IT people. IT skills were hot, and you might spend time training someone, bringing them along internally, and saving money compared bringing in an established “expert”, but eventually your person became an established expert and a company willing to pay for one would grab them up.  Business survived by finding the proper level between skills, technology, people, and outside resources. Law firms will too, but like everything else, they’ll do it slowly.

Earlier this week, I gave notice to my current firm. I’ve been offered, and accepted ,a Litigation Support Analyst position with a much larger firm. (I’m not exactly sure about their policies regarding naming the firm in a blog post, so I’ll leave that out for now….)

Anyway, the new gig is in their Greenville, SC office, so at the end of March I will be packing up the car with as much of my stuff as I can, and heading to South Carolina. My wife will be staying behind, for a few months at least, to take care of things she wants to do before starting her own job search and joining me. (Not to mention being the lucky one who gets to pack up our house!)

So, as much as I would love to invite you all to come visit, I’ll be living is small, temporary, housing. I won’t have room for guests! However, if you happen to be in the area, please let me know! Seriously, I’m moving to a city I don’t know anyone in, without my wife, if you’re going to be close, say hello. Heck, if you see me on Facebook chat, Twitter, or just want to email, please say hello! Those of you who have my cell phone number can text or call too. I may not be in Ohio any more, but it’s 2011, we have the technology to keep in touch, and I fully expect to make use of it!

Also, if you know anything about the Greenville area, or have some contacts, get in touch! I can definitely use the help.

So, that’s the big news. I’ll start the new job on April 4. Planning past that, in terms of things like being at ILTA11, when I might be back in Columbus to visit, or when we’ll be living in permanent housing and have room for folks to stay with us, are pretty much filed in the “to be determined” drawer. I just don’t know, but I will keep you posted.

It should be an interesting ride, I look forward to sharing it here on the blog!

I have always maintained that any personal social networking policy should begin and end with one simple instruction.

Don’t be Stupid!

I’ve always felt like that pretty much covers it. If something is too stupid to do in person, don’t do it online. Thus, don’t have too much to drink and interact online, don’t write when you’re angry, don’t discuss confidential matters, don’t complain about your coworkers, or the organization you work for in public, etc. I’ve always felt that if you could master that simple rule, you’d be a lot better off.

In the last week, actually a bit more than a week, I’ve had to remind myself of that rule, and stay away from social networking. Thus, no blog posts, not much from me on Twitter or Facebook, heck I’ve barely even been emailing anyone. The reason for this? I’ve been dealing with a cold/flu/cough. Thus, I don’t feel all that great, I’m not sleeping well and I’m usually fairly medicated. This leads to me being grumpy, tired and not thinking clearly. Thus, my ability to not be stupid when I open my mouth, in real life or virtually, is pretty well diminished.

Since I have been unable to assure myself of my ability to abide by my #1 rule of social networking, I’ve done the next best thing. I’ve stayed away from it, and haven’t managed to say anything online that might be a problem for me either personally or professionally. I pass this career advice along, for your benefit.

Hope to be back to normal, and have some more interesting things to talk about, soon!

Last night I posted about the idea that your employees using social networking tools, and gathering important information about yor business, your industry, etc. was a no-brainer. Today, I had a conversation with someone that really brought that point to home for me.

Not that we were having a conversation about social networking per se, but it was a comment made by someone who works in the Litigation Support field, albeit from a vendor perspective. She briefly mentioned “spending the weekend reading up on ediscovery opinions”, and as I reflected back on what I wrote yesterday, I realized that is the sort of thing that far too many people wouldn’t even attempt to do.

How does this relate to social networking? Simple. Building an online network, and creating the river of RSS feeds, Twitter, LinkedIn connections, etc. where you can get constant updates on important news, thoughtful insight, learn about upcoming educational opportunities and the like requires an active curiosity about what we do for a living. You simply can’t do this if your mind-set is one of working 9-5 and forgetting about your job other than those hours. That’s a production environment mindset, it doesn’t fit with the 21st century knowledge work environment that we live in. Certainly, litigation support, as a new and constantly changing industry is not conducive to that kind of thinking. You simply can’t keep up, let alone see what might be coming down the road, if you are only interested in doing your work and going home. It requires being actively curious about the industry, a hunger to continue to learn and grow.

Do you really think reviewing the RSS feeds I subscribe to, checking in on the big news of Twitter, and sharing ideas here and on other sites is something I could be fit into a typical work day all the time? Clearly, it’s not. Sure, I do some of that during the work day, but typically I’m also spending many of my evenings with the laptop on my lap while my wife and I are watching television, browsing through my feeds or social networking sites for any important news or great thoughts.

That’s not to say I don’t put it away too. We all need our down time away from our work and out network. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone of that, but in this sort of competitive job market, do you want to be the person who is always looking to learn more, even if it means spending some time learning outside of office hours, or the kind of person who does what they do, and waits for their organization to tell them when to learn something new? I know which one I’d rather have working for me.

I also know I’d much rather take control of my own education and my own training too. Do you?

According to this, yeah. And this part in particular seems like a serious no-brainer.

One method Klososky suggests to managers is encouraging employees to build personalized “rivers of information” that push specialized, real-time information about their industry or expertise to them by way of social technology tools such as RSS readers, Twitter and Digg. A fairly simple idea one might argue, but a practice that many companies underestimate, said Klososky.

“That’s raising the IQ of the organization. That’s one of the big things that costs nothing, but is reaping huge rewards,” he said.

Seriously, I’ve been doing this for years, and I know that I’m more informed and better able to see what’s coming because of it. If you work in a knowledge industry and you’re not doing this, rest assured that someone else is taking the time to do this and will be better equipped than you are.

Still think you can simply get by on what you know now?

Ralph Losey is putting his money where his mouth is. After years of trying to encourage law schools to do a better job teaching e-discovery, he’s decided to take on that challenge himself, with the help of some friends. Earlier this week, he announced the opening of E-Discovery Law Training, an online course equivalent to a three hour law school class, and is even making the first quarter of the class, 15 modules, free to anyone who’s interested.

Yes, it’s open not just to attorneys and paralegals, but also IT folks, Lit Support folks and others who find themselves in this world of e-discovery on a regular basis. It’s not often us lowly Lit Support folks have access to legal educational resources like this.

I will certainly be taking advantage of the free registration, and depending on how it goes, I am also giving serious thought to paying out for the rest of the course as well. I encourage any of you who are interested in learning more to do the same.

As written by me, Jan 18, 2010:

I’ve been thinking, for quite awhile now, that when the job market bounces back and people start to feel a bit more secure in looking around, there’s going to be a mass exodus, especially from the legal industry.

Also, on April 26, 2010:

It seems like everywhere I turn companies are cutting out benefits, dropping perks, freezing salaries, and maybe even laying off some of their people. And in the midst of all of that they are going back to their best performers, the people they rely on to keep things running, and telling them they should feel lucky to have a job.

Now, don’t get me wrong, with this economy we are all lucky, to some degree, to have jobs, I admit that. And budget cuts are certainly needed. On the other hand, if you really expect your best people to simply sit and accept that while you continue to offer them nothing, you’re crazy. These people know they are good at what they do, and they know they have a job not because of luck and your generosity. You’re running a business, not a halfway house. They have a job because they bring value to your business. If you don’t offer them any incentive to stay, don’t engage them, and don’t show them some loyalty, someone else will. Granted, the opportunities open to folks in a recession are limited, but it only takes one for them to be gone. Can you really afford for your best folks to go to work for your competitors?

CNN on Dec 23, 2010:

According to a recent survey by job-placement firm Manpower, 84% of employees plan to look for a new position in 2011. That’s up from just 60% last year.

Statistically speaking, if you manage 100 people, 84 of them are unhappy enough they will be looking for another job. Can you really expect to succeed in that environment?

Saw this video over at Jim Canterucci’s blog originally. It certainly makes you wonder about the way we educate children, and how the education models hasn’t changed, despite the fact that the world has changed in most every other way. As I watched it though, I began to wonder how this applies to law schools. Are law schools also pursuing an education that isn’t necessarily relevant to the legal industry?

Having never attended law school, but working with the products of that system every day, I’m curious to see what others think about the law school dynamic. Lawyers, is legal education helping, or hurting, innovation within the legal industry?