New Service Allows Oklahoma Lawyers to Connect Online

By Jim Calloway, Director, OBA Management Assistance Program

This month marks the launch of a new OBA member benefit called Oklahoma Bar Circle. It is a social networking site designed for use by Oklahoma lawyers. You may think you have no interest in online social networking. But, this new service is valuable to each and every Oklahoma Bar Association member as a marketing tool among your fellow lawyers.

One shorthand way of thinking of Oklahoma Bar Circle is that it is like Facebook for Oklahoma lawyers, but access is allowed only to other Oklahoma lawyers.

But if you have not participated on Facebook or other online social networking sites before, it may be helpful to think of Oklahoma Bar Circle as an online pictorial directory — just like you might have for a church or civic organization. As you see in the examples accompanying this article, searching for your information in our MyOkbar service yields basic information from our database. It is routine “name, rank and bar number” type of information. With Oklahoma Bar Circle, you can complete an online profile with lots of content including personal photo, your job description, your work and education history and other items.

"Another use for the site is its mentoring potential," OBA President Jon Parsley said. “Users can post a message seeking advice, and that message can be read by hundreds of other lawyers who can respond with the information you need.”

Signing up for Oklahoma Bar Circle is easy. You use the same login information as you use for MyOkbar. You can find a link to the new service at our Oklahoma bar Web site at www.okbar.org or the direct link is www.okbar.org/elemental/barcircle.htm.

Eventually, you will be able to log onto this service directly from our primary Web site like you do with Fastcase, but because many of you have security set very high in your browser, we want you to be able to read some information on allowing cookies to make sure that you can log in.

This only needs to be done one time.

As we have noted, Oklahoma Bar Circle is a secure, closed community accessible only to Oklahoma lawyers. You shouldn’t have the experience that many have had on Facebook of old friends posting your high school pictures online for your current professional colleagues to see. (Of course, if you went to high school with another Oklahoma lawyer, you will just have to rely on their discretion.)

You may note that some of the information isn’t really customized for the legal profession yet. We’re trailblazers in this area, with Texas Bar Circle having launched the first online social network for lawyers and California in the process of launching a similar service. So, please understand there will be improvements in the future.

Some of you will use Bar Circle as a marketing platform to make other Oklahoma lawyers aware of the services you provide and obtain referrals from other lawyers.

Many of you have jobs outside of private law practice, and while you will want to have your current employment information online, you may use Oklahoma Bar Circle to show off photos of your family, make a public online journal or join groups relating to hobbies or other non-business interests. Oklahoma Bar Circle need not be just about business. You can join (or create) groups based on your location, interests or hobbies. Oklahoma Bar Circle could be used to talk about first-time parenting, golf or other sports, to discuss and recommend restaurants or to organize a gathering.

In fact, we understand one of the more popular activities in Texas Bar Circle is lawyers who are amateur photographers sharing their photos online.

You can form and join public groups on Oklahoma Bar Circle, but invitation-only private groups are also allowed. We hope that OBA committees and sections will make good use of this resource to increase their member interaction.

My hope is that Oklahoma Bar Circle will not be considered as advertising under the ethics rules since only other lawyers can access it, but we will have to wait for further guidance on that subject.

Once you join Oklahoma Bar Circle, you will build your network by searching for and inviting friends and colleagues. Start with people you know (known as “friends” in Oklahoma Bar Circle) and then connect with their friends and colleagues (“friends-of-friends”). Think of the concept of “six degrees of separation.” You know Sarah, Sarah knows Mike, and Mike knows Kevin Bacon. The same concept works within Oklahoma Bar Circle. You know your law school classmate, your classmate knows Martha, and Martha may know the general counsel of a potential client or the managing partner of a firm you want to work for. Oklahoma Bar Circle shows you these connections and lets you visualize your existing extended network. By building your network and inviting your friends to do the same, your reach throughout the community will grow over time.

Don’t worry that you might end up with friends you don’t want. Oklahoma Bar Circle is permission-based, which means you choose who you network with and add as friends. If needed, you can even block users you don’t want to communicate with.

Tips for Oklahoma Bar Circle

• MyProfile is the part of your Oklahoma Bar Circle information that is displayed to other bar members. Your home page is for you to customize and use.
• Only enter the information you want displayed to all other Oklahoma lawyers. You may not want to include your home phone number.
• By default, Oklahoma Bar Circle sends out a lot of e-mail reminders when items are posted by others. On your first visit, you will likely want to go to MyAccount and uncheck several of the boxes under “Send me an E-mail when” and “Opportunity Settings.”
• If you have a blog, you absolutely must enter its feed into My Blog so that everyone can see your latest posts as you make them.

This article originally appeared in the May 9, 2009 issue of the Oklahoma Bar Journal.