Twittering

Inside Straight: Why Your Four-Month-Old Social Media Policy Is Obsolete

By

Four months ago, you revised your company’s policy on employees’ use of social media. The policy said all the right things: When employees use social media, they should respect the rights of others and treat people with dignity; obey the company’s code of business conduct; maintain corporate confidences; and so on.

Unbelievably, some recent communications from the National Labor Relations Board suggest that each of those provisions (except for the “and so on”) could actually cause your company some labor pains. Why?

Here’s the easy part: The National Labor Relations Act protects employees who engage in “concerted activities” for the employees’ “mutual aid or protection.” Those words apply across the workforce and are not limited to unionized employees. An employee acting solely on his or her own behalf is not engaging in “concerted activities.” On the other hand, consider an individual employee who is working with (or on the authority of) other employees, or is trying to induce a group of employees to act, or is bringing group complaints to the attention of management. The NLRA may protect all of those activities, and an employer may violate the NLRA if it maintains a rule that could reasonably “chill employees in the exercise of their” rights.

What does that mean for the three examples suggested in the opening paragraph of this post?

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Inside Straight: Why Your Four-Month-Old Social Media Policy Is Obsolete”

19 Comments

Size Matters: Make New Tweeps, But Keep The Old

By

On July 28, I asked for readers to share their tips for success on Twitter. Several readers and social media experts have weighed in on this topic. Apparently, the way to garner a loyal (and numerous) Twitter following is the same way you make friends: build relationships, communicate and engage one another, and share information and unique insights.

Yes, Twitter is like high school, except that anyone can be a cool kid. So, if you want to be a Twar (read: Twitter star), use the following tips….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Size Matters: Make New Tweeps, But Keep The Old”

9 Comments

Morning Docket: 08.16.11

By

Mon dieu, je déteste mon propriétaire.

* Led by Cleary and Wachtell, five Biglaw firms were involved in the $12.5B Google/Motorola deal. Talk about a total prestige orgy. [Am Law Daily]

* Casey Anthony will be appealing her check fraud probation order in Florida. WHERE’S THE JUSTICE FOR THAT GIRL’S CHECKING ACCOUNT!!?!? [CNN]

* Those pushing for a law school at Indiana Tech admit the state doesn’t need another law school, but “another kind.” The kind that doesn’t exist, amirite? [Chesterton Tribune]

* Your pets don’t need millions from your estate after you go to the big dog park in the sky. But if you feel so inclined, Fifi will probably use the money to dye her hair back. Pink is so not her color. [Reuters]

* For some young lawyers in Nevada, passing the bar is easier than getting a job. Meh, I guess I should’ve considered moving to Nevada. [Fox News]

* Lawyers in Texas are excited about a Twitter Brief Competition. All filings should be under 140 characters. Just imagine: @Appellant Ur lawyer sucks, ttyl #affirm [Tex Parte Blog / Texas Lawyer]

16 Comments

Size Matters: I Need A Hero

By

I always assumed that my youth (or quasi-youth) would guarantee me superstar status in connection with social media. I am not sure why I thought this, because my first foray into Facebook was a bit of a disaster. I was quite late to the party, joining years after I realized that everyone was doing it. To compensate, I went on a mad dash to accumulate as many friends as possible. I sent out friend requests to people that I had barely known, mistreated, been mistreated by and would not acknowledge if I saw them on the street. I would also accept anyone’s friend request. I recall that about a month after I joined, a man with no common friends sent me a request. His name was “Summertime,” he had no last name, and his picture was him without a shirt and holding what appeared to be an ax. I gladly accepted his request. Looking back, I shudder to think what a social media expert would have concluded was my personal brand based on viewing my profile.

Years later, when I became @ValerieLKatz, I forgot my Facebook failure and assumed that I would be a Twitter phenomenon. I believed, as with Facebook, that the only thing that mattered was to have a lot of tweeps.

So how do you get the tweeps, I wondered?

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Size Matters: I Need A Hero”

18 Comments

Non-Sequiturs: 07.22.11

By

Rashard Mendenhall

* You’ve got to check out this lawsuit (in case you missed it earlier). An athlete says nonsensical tripe over Twitter, loses his endorsements, and then wants to sue. Yeah, Rashard Mendenhall has the right to say whatever he wants, and we have the right to spend a lifetime calling him an idiot. [Legal Blitz]

* I’m not sure that creating jobs for prison inmates is exactly what the voters in Wisconsin had in mind. [Adjunct Law Prof Blog]

* The Winklevoss twins really justify all the hate I’ve ever had for the trust fund, Final Club set at Harvard. [Dealbreaker]

* When law firms fight back (against News Corp.). [Am Law Daily]

* I’ve never read somebody waxing so poetically about the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. [What About Clients?]

* The state of intellectual property is… well, confusing. [Law &Technology / Forbes]

* I’m telling you, this is the most intelligent explanation of why Twitter is what it is. [An Associate's Mind]

26 Comments

Small Firms, Big Lawyers: Five People Who Should Never Tweet

By

There’s not much I can add to this Weinergate thing that hasn’t already been covered on these pages and everywhere else. Congressman Anthony Weiner has said that he’s not going to resign over the scandal that he tweeted various body parts to women other than his wife. I believe that he will have to resign, although not because of the tweeting, but because of the lying about it afterward. (Previously, he claimed that his social-media accounts had been hacked. He then admitted that that wasn’t strictly true. Or even a little bit true. He also conceded that the dog had actually not eaten his homework.)

This online imbroglio has made many wonder why he would even consider posting compromising photos and language on Twitter. Or for that matter, why he would even be on Twitter in the first place. Or why anyone would be.

Lawyers in particular often have trouble understanding why they should be on Twitter. Even my esteemed colleague Mark Herrmann has “proved” that Twitter doesn’t work. Well, I’ve got news for people who doubt that they should be tweeting:

Many of them probably shouldn’t be.

In fact, I’ve tried to identify the types of people (in addition to shirtless politicians in various degrees of arousal) who should stay away from Twitter. Here, then, are five people who should never tweet….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Small Firms, Big Lawyers: Five People Who Should Never Tweet”

18 Comments

Non-Sequiturs: 05.31.11

By

Rachel Brand

* High-powered litigatrices on the move: Rachel Brand and Kate Comerford Todd, two fabulous members of The Elect, are joining the National Chamber Litigation Center — where they will contribute to the Chamber’s impressive track record of litigating against excessive regulation. [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times]

* Was it Anthony Weiner’s wiener that went out over Twitter? The congressman isn’t saying. [Daily Caller via Instapundit]

* Professor Sasha Volokh floats the intriguing idea of prison vouchers: “What would the world look like if, instead of assigning prisoners to particular prisons bureaucratically, we gave them vouchers, good for one incarceration, that they were required to redeem at a participating prison?” [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Dance protests aren’t allowed at the Jefferson Memorial, but might they be coming to Apple stores? [TaxProf Blog]

* An update on “don’t ask, don’t tell” developments. [Metro Weekly]

* This should be interesting: disgraced ex-judge Sol Wachtler tells all. [92YTribeca]

* A moving Memorial Day edition of Blawg Review. [Securing Innovation via Blawg Review]

10 Comments

‘Ryan Giggs’ Is British for the ‘Streisand Effect’

By

On the other side of the pond, the principles of the First Amendment often take second place to the right to privacy. Britain, for example, has a smashing little thing called a “superinjunction,” which citizens can get from a court to keep the media from writing stories about them. They also have regular injunctions, which people — usually rich people, since injunctive relief can be expensive — can get to keep their names out of scandalous scoops. This results in lots of tabloid stories that read like Gawker’s blind items, or simply don’t run at all.

A married soccer player (for Manchester United, in case you care — though you probably don’t) got himself one of the latter, when the Big Brother star/model he was balling told him she was selling her story to the press. Unfortunately for him, a Twitter user crusading against muzzling the press with superinjunctions somehow got his tweepy hands on the information and published the rumor about the player’s adulterous scoring, along with a bunch of other supposedly superinjuncted gossip.

It caused an uproar in Britain initially, but the fire died down fairly quickly — until the soccer player’s lawyers decided to give it some more fuel….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “‘Ryan Giggs’ Is British for the ‘Streisand Effect’”

21 Comments

Skadden Wants Your Twitter Handle — And Will Give You Food From A Truck In Exchange

By

A tipster asked: “How is giving a potential future employer your Twitter ID a good idea?” Well, what if you’re getting free food?

The massive law firm of Skadden Arps is doing a fun little recruitment event at NYU Law School, during finals. They’re feeding the masses! New Yorkers have an affinity for eating food that is sold out of a truck because… well, only civilized people live with millions of strangers right on top of each other, on a rock infested with roaches and mice.

So, yeah, throwing pizza and hungry NYU students from a moving vehicle makes a lot of sense from a New York state of mind.

But would you be willing to give Skadden your Twitter handle? For a slice of pizza?

Let’s look at the promotional flier…

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Skadden Wants Your Twitter Handle — And Will Give You Food From A Truck In Exchange”

30 Comments

Cameras in the Courtroom: Now With More Internets

By

Many state and local courts do have cameras in the courtroom (unlike most of their federal counterparts), but other forms of technology are still frequently verboten. Some courts prohibit cellphones, laptops, and, in the traffic court I once attended, reading the newspaper.

Yet slowly, with much weeping and gnashing of teeth, some enlightened folks in Massachusetts are introducing a local court to the joys of web cams and unnecessarily detailed twitter posts.

Spurred on by a large grant from the James S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the OpenCourt Project officially began on Monday at the Quincy District Court.

Seriously though, OpenCourt is pretty cool. How does it work?

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Cameras in the Courtroom: Now With More Internets”

10 Comments
Page 7 of 81...345678