« Blawg Review #205 at Declarations and Exclusions |
Main
| Corporate Scorecard 2009: Annus Horribilis »
Another Social Media Site for the Legal Community
Ho hum. Another day, another social media site for the legal community. This time, reports The Shark, it's Advanced Advocates, which bills itself as the first "worldwide collaborative platform for law students." Translated into current parlance, that's "Facebook for law students," according to Brian Lauter.
So is the site worth a visit? Perhaps not just yet, says Lauter, because the site is somewhat sparse content-wise, with only 40 registrants to date. Still, Lauter sees some potential:
For instance, the
site has searchable brief and outline databases. Also, there is a “Clerk Ratings” feature which basically allows
users to rate their employers (the name is slightly misleading, as the idea is
that users will want to rate legal employers of any kind).
The site also
includes a less useful “Bookstore,” feature which would be cool if, instead of
just hawking Amazon.com products, it allowed users to sell their used books to
other law students a la Half.com.
A one-stop hub for
briefs, outlines, student employer reviews, and book sales is actually a pretty
good idea. The biggest problem with the
site right now, as [Social Media Law Student] points out, is that there are only around 40
users. The site relies on users to
upload their briefs and outlines to the databases, which I doubt many will
do. No users means empty databases
which means no reason to join, which means no new users.
Lauter suggests that Advanced Advocates might want to start putting
together the databases itself to attract more students to the site. Otherwise, it will fail as another one of the “if you build it, they will come” situations.
What about you? Is the social-networking scene for lawyers at a saturation point? Or are there some sites that you'd still find useful in this space?
Posted by Carolyn Elefant on March 30, 2009 at 03:45 PM | Permalink
| Comments (3)