LegalTech Panel: Best Practices for Online Networking

I will keep this short.

The best thing about this panel was its moderator, Bob Ambrogi, who made several polite but ultimately unsuccessful attempts to steer the panelists somewhere in the vicinity of their panel's promised subject matter.

Here is what was promised in the LegalTech brochure:

- Opportunities in online networking for attorneys

- Re-energize the traditional, valuable art of networking with tightened budgets, time and resources

- Growth areas, benefits and challenges of online networking

- Best practices on selecting a network

- Gaining the strategic advantage of an online network

Here is what was delivered:

- Martindale-Hubbell Connected, a "gated community" attorney networking system currently in private beta, with features that are yet to be finalized, is going to be the best way ever for private practice lawyers to network and for in-house counsel to get free information.

- Other kinds of networking - the ones where you aren't in a "gated community," apparently - present all sorts of dangers to lawyers, who might inadvertently disclose confidential client information or create surprise attorney-client relationships as a result of said networking.

I had the "if you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all" refrain drilled into me as a child, so I won't post the names of the panelists here.

In sum, the panel was a disappointment.