Friday, December 26, 2014

Law Firm Alumni Networks

Over the past few months, I have received a number of e-mails from the alumni associations of each of my two former law firms.  

In theory, I think these alumni networks are good ideas. They could help us keep in touch and could introduce us to people with common ties to those law firms. They could also help the law firms maintain ties with alums who could become clients.  

In practice, however, I rarely use any of the alumni services offered.

One of the main reasons is that my former firms do not have offices where I currently live (in Nashville) and they rarely, if ever, have events here.  If I still lived in Atlanta or New York City, I would probably attend some of the offered alumni CLE events, but I am probably never going to travel for them. 

As to the online alumni networks on the law firms' websites, I think the contact information for alums probably stays relatively out of date (as people choose to update their information on major social networks, but may forget about the ones at the law firms).  LinkedIn law firm alumni groups are probably the most useful thing that the law firms do, but I find the content posted there is generally not that helpful and can be dominated by some desperate group member salesperson.  (I also think LinkedIn is the least user friendly of the major social networks, but that is a topic for another post). 

What law firm alumni network efforts have you seen be successful? Are they worth the effort that major law firms seem to be putting into them?

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/business_law/2014/12/law-firm-alumni-networks.html

Haskell Murray, Jobs, Web/Tech | Permalink

Comments

Haskell, I have had the same experience you have had, although I have not found the LinkedIn network for my former firm altogether that useful. What I enjoy most is being on the mailing list for client alerts and memoranda. I know you also have benefitted from that service (since you have sent me some over the years). I have not used the alumni directory feature (so it may be out of date), but I know I could find that useful. I'll be interested to see if others have different experiences. Thanks for posting.

Posted by: joanheminway | Dec 27, 2014 5:09:59 AM

Very good point about the law firm alerts/emails. Those have been useful.

Posted by: Haskell Murray | Dec 27, 2014 7:05:14 AM

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