Texas Center for the Judiciary, Judicial Excellence Through Education, Austin, Texas


By Christie L. Smith You may have heard the phrase “social media”, especially in recent months as news reports focused on its effectiveness in the national elections. But you may still not know exactly what social media is. It’s a brave, new internet world out there, and apart from what might seem to be some pitfalls of social media (think MySpace stalking cases), there are some great advantages to not only knowing what it is, but how to use it. This is the first of a three-part web-only series on social media and the judiciary. First up: social networking sites. In some ways the top three, MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn are similar, but the audience and usages they attract differ widely. All of them give the user an ability to set up a profile and then invite other users to become part of their network, or “friends.” Perhaps the best known of social networking sites is MySpace, and while certainly there are adults populating its ranks, it’s more well-known among the school set. Of more value, and certainly more respected among professionals, is Facebook. Facebook allows you to connect with old friends and make new ones. Says Elisabeth Earle, a judge at County Court at Law #7, “I use Facebook as a tool to connect with members of the bar and the community, as well as stay up to date on what people are doing.” One of the most valuable features of social networking sites, Earle says, is the ability to keep up with people as they change jobs without investing a lot of time. Each social networking site will send out notifications to a user’s network when information about that user changes. So when a user updates his profile information with a job change, or any other change for that matter, his whole network gets notified via email. The most widely used site for professional networking is LinkedIn. LinkedIn allows you to post past work history and skills, gives you options on how you want to be contacted and for what reasons, and allows you to recommend people with whom you have had good work experiences with. It also allows people to recommend you. Woodie Jones, recently elected as judge to the 3rd Court of Appeals, used both LinkedIn and Facebook in his election outreach efforts. He says, “I joined LinkedIn solely because of my recent campaign. Every judicial candidate is looking for ways to spread the word to non-lawyers about his or her candidacy, because so few non-lawyers are informed about judicial races. As the election neared, I contacted my LinkedIn connections and asked them to contact their LinkedIn connections about my race. Overall, I think it had limited value because LinkedIn will only let you send a message to ten of your connections at a time. I was willing to send 20 messages to my 200 connections, but I doubt that any of my connections were willing to send to more than the initial ten. It probably had some value, though, so I would recommend it for judicial candidates who have a contested race.” Besides being able to use social networking sites in contested elections, you can take advantage of them to do research on campaign workers or employees. LinkedIn will allow you to search a user’s employment history and see who else might be sharing any of their employers. You can then contact that other person for what might be a more accurate reference than you might otherwise get. The next article will address websites and blogging.

By Christie L. Smith

You may have heard the phrase “social media”, especially in recent months as news reports focused on its effectiveness in the national elections. But you may still not know exactly what social media is. It’s a brave, new internet world out there, and apart from what might seem to be some pitfalls of social media (think MySpace stalking cases), there are some great advantages to not only knowing what it is, but how to use it. This is the first of a three-part web-only series on social media and the judiciary.

First up: social networking sites. In some ways the top three, MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn are similar, but the audience and usages they attract differ widely. All of them give the user an ability to set up a profile and then invite other users to become part of their network, or “friends.” Perhaps the best known of social networking sites is MySpace, and while certainly there are adults populating its ranks, it’s more well-known among the school set.

Of more value, and certainly more respected among professionals, is Facebook. Facebook allows you to connect with old friends and make new ones. Says Elisabeth Earle, a judge at County Court at Law #7, “I use Facebook as a tool to connect with members of the bar and the community, as well as stay up to date on what people are doing.”

One of the most valuable features of social networking sites, Earle says, is the ability to keep up with people as they change jobs without investing a lot of time. Each social networking site will send out notifications to a user’s network when information about that user changes. So when a user updates his profile information with a job change, or any other change for that matter, his whole network gets notified via email.

The most widely used site for professional networking is LinkedIn. LinkedIn allows you to post past work history and skills, gives you options on how you want to be contacted and for what reasons, and allows you to recommend people with whom you have had good work experiences with. It also allows people to recommend you.

Woodie Jones, recently elected as judge to the 3rd Court of Appeals, used both LinkedIn and Facebook in his election outreach efforts. He says, “I joined LinkedIn solely because of my recent campaign. Every judicial candidate is looking for ways to spread the word to non-lawyers about his or her candidacy, because so few non-lawyers are informed about judicial races. As the election neared, I contacted my LinkedIn connections and asked them to contact their LinkedIn connections about my race. Overall, I think it had limited value because LinkedIn will only let you send a message to ten of your connections at a time. I was willing to send 20 messages to my 200 connections, but I doubt that any of my connections were willing to send to more than the initial ten. It probably had some value, though, so I would recommend it for judicial candidates who have a contested race.”

Besides being able to use social networking sites in contested elections, you can take advantage of them to do research on campaign workers or employees. LinkedIn will allow you to search a user’s employment history and see who else might be sharing any of their employers. You can then contact that other person for what might be a more accurate reference than you might otherwise get.

The next article will address websites and blogging.