But consider. I joined Facebook a few months back, at the request of a family member. For about a week I was a dedicated user, and I got and sent lots of cute little messages with it. Then I gradually dropped off it because it just wasn’t interesting enough. And to be honest, most of the people I know on it have similar usage profiles – including the person who invited me. Now granted, I’m a techie in real life and I spend far too much time on computers professionally to want to use them as a substitute for real social interaction – but not everyone I know on Facebook is in the same category.

Is it a social networking tool? Yes. Does it have it’s uses? Yes – I think it’s a great way to reconnect with people I haven’t seen or heard from in a long time, or it would be if I could find any of them in the millions of users on it already.

But – were I in university now, taking the putative Psych 101 class – I’d be a lot more likely to simply walk up to the cutie in the front row and ask her if she wants to go for coffee after class.

What does this have to do with lawyers? I don’t know – I’m not one. But I think Jordan’s comment about lawyers being “dismissive or clueless” about social networking indicates a dangerous frame of mind for any professional. Applications like Facebook have mindboggling possibilities with respect to their legal (or illegal) ramifications, so whether or not the legal profession intends to them as an element of its business, it cannot afford to be dismissive about them.

I personally don’t like facebook very much, and I’m pretty careful about what I post to it in terms of personal information – but I’m not in the demographic for it, and I suspect that neither are most of the people reading or commenting on this blog. There are millions of people who are – and they’re the ones who will be coming to you for legal advice when the information they put on Facebook gets abused or misused.

In short – they’re the ones who’ll be paying (at least some of) your bills. I don’t think you want to be dismissive or clueless when it comes to that.

By the way, if you’re looking for a topic, I’d be curious to here any comments you might have on Blaney McMurtry in Toronto, their policy on lawyers traveling across the border with laptops with zeroed harddrives, and the concept of nonwarranted electronic search and seizure at the Canada/US border in general.

Facebook is an engine of social interaction, which lawyers don’t really have much call for. There are aspects of Facebook that lawyers can make use of — creating Groups, for instance, organized around a practice area or common interest in which a lawyer specializes and wants to market himself. (I’m planning on starting a Facebook Group for Law21 shortly, for what it’s worth.) But these are ancillary uses.

What lawyers need is a dedicated professional social network with which they can meet clients, find referral sources, learn and network. LinkedIn meets some of this need, Legal OnRamp meets even more. I expect we’ll see more of these develop down the road — so long as a viable revenue model can be found to sustain them. But running a profitable business on the web is an ongoing challenge for many more people than lawyers….

In high school, you knew a lot of your class: not so at first year University.

So just how did you introduce yourself to that cutie in the first row of yoru Psych 101 class?

Facebook provided you with the necessary clues.

What is the corresponding need for lawyers?