Biglaw, In-House Counsel

Living In A World Of Purchased Endorsements

The rise of social media means that purchased (or gently coerced) endorsements will become increasingly common over time, according to in-house columnist Mark Herrmann. Who will win the endorsements game?

By  
on

There are about a dozen people whom I would be delighted to recommend for a job (or to defend a lawsuit).

Everyone else, not so much.

That’s probably because I’m a fool: If someone asks what I think of the quality of your work, there’s a voice in my head telling me that I should respond by explaining . . . what I think of the quality of your work.

I’m so old-fashioned.

When I worked as a litigator at a huge law firm and a client asked whether one of my corporate partners was qualified to handle a deal, I knew what the institutionally-preferred answer was. If a potential client asked if we had any good IP lawyers in Dubai, then I was supposed to say that we had the world’s greatest IP lawyer in Dubai — whether or not I could locate Dubai on a map or had ever met any of my partners there.

When you inhabit a law firm, you live in a world of purchased (or gently coerced) endorsements: Because you share your economic fate with your partners, your firm encourages you to lie on your collective behalf. (“We know that Carton is an incompetent bum. But he’s your partner, and he’s running for president of the State Bar! We’ve arranged for a bus tomorrow to shuttle us to the State Bar convention, and we expect you to ride down with the rest of us and cast your vote.”)

That’s slightly offensive, of course, but that’s just the start. The rise of social media means that purchased (or gently coerced) endorsements will become increasingly common over time.

Sponsored

Look at LinkedIn, for example. You now have the ability to “endorse” people for their expertise in specific fields. I don’t play this game, but I’ve watched it from afar. I see that I’ve been “endorsed” by people I just barely know and in fields of which I’m utterly ignorant. What the heck do these endorsements — from people I’ve never worked with, in subjects I don’t know — mean, and why are people offering them?

I’ll guess that the endorsers are generally sucking up in some way: In return for their endorsements, they’re hoping that I’ll either (1) retain them or (2) endorse them back. They want to be paid, in cash or kind, for their endorsements. (Return “endorsements” are certainly the coin of the realm for other forms of social media. If someone links to your blog post, they’re often angling for a link back. If someone follows you on Twitter, they’d really like you to follow them in return. Everyone builds networks that way — whether or not the return “endorsement” was truly justified — and who does it hurt, anyway?)

The power of social media has, however, increasingly tempted folks to “purchase” endorsements in a more literal sense: If you “like” our corporate presence on Facebook, we’ll give you a coupon worth 10 percent off. If you post a positive review of my restaurant on Yelp, I’ll give you a free appetizer the next time you’re here.

Or, increasingly: If you generate the most social media interest in my site, I’ll reward you with some truly significant gift — an all-expenses-paid vacation, or a handsome pile of cash.

This last tactic is the equivalent of telling the Cub Scout troop to sell pies door-to-door, and the kid who sells the most pies will win 25 bucks. The Scouts run around like crazy trying to sell pies, and a bunch of sad sacks then have to deliver 100 pies each, while the kid who sold 102 pies gets the dough. It works like a charm. (Ask my mom. One fall back in the 1960’s, we had a garage full of pies.)

Sponsored

Before social media took hold, personal endorsements didn’t matter nearly as much. If you liked a plumber, you told a neighbor that the plumber was good, and the plumber landed more work. Those recommendations helped, but they helped only on a retail basis.

In today’s online world, endorsements operate wholesale, and wholesale endorsements have real value to the recipient — so they’re worth buying.

I’m old-fashioned, so it pains me to type these words, but I’ll endure the pain for your benefit: If you work at a big law firm, shouldn’t you be playing this game for all it’s worth? Tell your lawyers and staff to “like” your firm on Facebook, “endorse” each other on LinkedIn, vote for your firm’s blog in the poll to decide who’s best, and on and on and on. After all, with a couple thousand of you casting votes (and the competition not yet truly playing the game), this is an opportunity waiting to happen.

Corporations can of course do the same thing — and many of them do. My sense is that corporations are way ahead of law firms in this area.

Ultimately, who will win the endorsements game — folks who readily give away their endorsements in return for cash? Folks who endorse only people or products that they truly respect, because the public will (over time) realize that those recommendations have meaning? People who game the system, making different types of recommendations (or giving repeat endorsements) under different names? Or some other category altogether?

Heck if I know. But do me a favor: “Like” this blog post. Share it on Twitter. Do with it on Google Plus whatever one does on Google Plus. That will drive traffic my way, make Lat a happy guy, and secure my future here at Above the Law.

If I can do anything for you in return, just let me know.

And, whether or not you tweet my column, have a happy and healthy 2015!

Mark Herrmann is the Chief Counsel – Litigation and Global Chief Compliance Officer at Aon, the world’s leading provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage, and human capital and management consulting. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Inside Straight: Advice About Lawyering, In-House And Out, That Only The Internet Could Provide (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

Topics

, , , , , , ,