social media

All smart business owners use social media to promote their services or products and so should CLNC^® consultants. Here are some simple ways successful Certified Legal Nurse Consultants are using social media in their CLNC^® businesses.

Talk to Your Friends – Let all of your friends know you are a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. Ask each friend to connect you with an attorney she knows. Almost everyone knows an attorney, so if you have 250 friends, that’s 250 attorney-prospects waiting to hear about you and your CLNC^® services.

“In this day and age, one would be foolish not to utilize the marketing power of social media to help get the word out that you’re a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. Through social media I have been very fortunate to have numerous friends and family members actually network for me. Their efforts have led to new attorney-clients and successful business relationships. New cases coming my way with no effort on my part – you can’t beat that!”

Julie Somen-Becker, RN, BSN, CLNC

Talk to Your CLNC^® Colleagues – Invite your CLNC^® subcontractors and colleagues to be your friend. Social media’s messaging tools are a convenient way to refer cases to expand each other’s business. Direct messaging is also convenient for referring experts and CLNC^® consultants.

“My social media contacts are primarily Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. I only spend 6-7 minutes a day on social media, but I have increased my pool of CLNC^® subcontractors with that minimal time investment. It’s well worth the time that you invest if you spend it wisely.”

Lawrence Frace, RN, CLNC

“I use social media to network with Certified Legal Nurse Consultants about potential testifying experts and new ideas for marketing campaigns. I’ve received some great ideas from other CLNC^® consultants and have reciprocated with some of my favorite rain-making tips. Keep your posts professional and assume everything that you write is public.

Dorene Goldstein, RNC, CLNC

Talk to Attorneys and Share Information – You might not want to “friend” your attorney-clients in order to avoid blending your personal and professional life. However, the question really doesn’t have to be “Do I friend or not?” Just create a business page for those professional relationships. That way you can keep your “friend” profile private and your “professional” page public. Your professional page can be a place to post useful links, share information, foster a sense of community and maintain your presence as a valuable resource.

“One attorney was asking a question about an OB case. I used this opportunity to educate him about the issues in his case, and by doing this I gained his trust. About a month later when I sent him a marketing packet and followed up with a phone call, he offered me that exact same OB case to review.”

Dorene Goldstein, RNC, CLNC

Facebook and Google Plus have made it easier than ever to get involved in social media. It’s a new world full of opportunities to expand your legal nurse consulting business. Used practically, professionally and purposefully, it can help expand your pool of CLNC^® subcontractors and experts, keep you in touch with your network of CLNC^® colleagues and attorney-clients and help you find new markets and attorney-prospects for your CLNC^® services.

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Providing attorney-prospects free information is a great marketing strategy that can give you instant credibility as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. You can provide free information through an information newsletter (print or electronic), website and even social media, especially Facebook and Twitter.

One mistake I see legal nurse consultants making is providing information that attorneys view as less developed and possibly less credible than information from other sources available to them. For example, medical-malpractice attorneys aren’t interested in hearing about changes in the law, verdicts or settlements from nurses. They subscribe to legal reporters, legal publications, RSS feeds and email alerts that not only give them the information, but also complete it with analysis from experts. That analysis helps to offset the simple “reporting” that is all too common in many newsletters.

What attorneys do want to learn from Certified Legal Nurse Consultants are those pieces of information on which the CLNC^® consultant is considered to be the expert. This includes information on changes in standards of care, hospital policy and procedure changes, relevant healthcare studies and other pertinent information that will provide them clear insight into the complex healthcare system.

Attorneys are crazy busy like the rest of us, and they carefully triage what they read. Think of your own reading practices and how you decide what you will and will not read. Use your own practices to assess and ensure that your free information is not just free, but also relevant and compelling to the attorneys who will read it.

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Plaintiff and defense attorneys have been given an incredible gift by Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook team. I’m not sure that Facebook had the plaintiff or defense bars in mind when they added the upgrade that allows Facebook users to download a “complete” copy of the postings to their profiles. This tool captures messages sent back and forth by members using the messaging function and captures postings to your profile, video, photographs, etc.

I’ve blogged in the past about the discoverability of postings on Facebook and other social media sites. Prior to today, when it’s been claimed that content on a site like Facebook is subject to discovery, judges have gone to great lengths, including extremes such as “friending” a party in order to do an in-camera review of that party’s Facebook page to determine whether or not the content is relevant to a lawsuit. In other cases where a Facebook profile was provided, discussion threads may not have been fully expanded so information was left out and there were other anomalies that occurred which interfered with full discovery. Today, an attorney can simply request that a party’s entire Facebook profile be downloaded and ask for the full profile or just the relevant portions. The other party cannot object or claim that it would be a burdensome or impossible process.

We all know Facebook can be a place where people let down their guard, speak freely and, unfortunately, sometimes behave badly. In your legal nurse consulting cases you may want to bring your attorney-clients into the loop about Facebook and the wealth of information available there. At the same time, let’s all remember that we’re all creating a vast and permanent digital footprint. Let’s set good examples by keeping ours clean.

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Everybody’s favorite social media site Facebook announced a new feature that can make it more friendly and more useful to Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. The feature I like is a new one within what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls “groups.”

Groups allow you to sort your friends into different segments so you can communicate differently with each. What that means to CLNC^® consultants is that you can separate your online friends into groups such as Attorney-Clients, Attorney-Prospects, friends and more importantly, your personal CLNC^® Alliance Group. The new “groups” feature allows you to share updates, pictures and video, work together on shared documents and chat in real time with all or part of the group.

That’s what I’m most excited about for CLNC^® Consultants. I’ve blogged about the importance of creating an alliance with a group of 5-8 other strong Certified Legal Nurse Consultants from different geographical areas and with different nursing specialties. Follow this link to read that blog and then start creating your own CLNC^® Alliance Group. Use this link to set up your alliance group.

Watch this two-minute video from Facebook explaining the new “groups” feature.

Now you can work online more effectively on Facebook with your CLNC^® Alliance groups, getting real-time feedback on your work product.

Start interacting today with your own CLNC^® Alliance group for better business results.

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We all love social media. For example, I use Facebook to communicate to all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants and aspiring CLNC^® consultants. I love reading details of your lives and seeing the fun photos you post. One Certified Legal Nurse Consultant told me that what she loves most about Facebook is that she never has to worry about keeping up with her friends’ email addresses – because their Facebook address never changes. If she’s on Facebook, she’s always in touch with them. This is really a radical form of communication and allows connection with more and more people, including attorneys, who are joining Facebook every day.

Something I’ve noticed though – social media can quickly move from a means of communication to an obsession. One can get caught up in all of the things to do there – the games and other ancillary applications. That’s my issue with social media. Clicking your mouse to get points to build a hen house for your farm or sending someone virtual hugs, flowers or groceries seems like a crazy waste of time.

Where we focus is where we yield results, and let’s face it, building a better farm, sending pictures of flowers and answering meaningless quiz questions becomes a feel-good addiction that reaps little more than distraction from vision and purpose. Does “I got a new llama for my herd today” or “I answered a quiz about Pop-Tarts^®” really sound better to you than “I got three cases from a new attorney-client today”? The way you unwind is certainly your personal choice, but I prefer to find my relaxation in nature, taking a walk or listening to the clacking of my bamboo while enjoying a glass of wine in my backyard. Relaxation has a beginning and an end but the demands of a “virtual farm” never will.

For successful Certified Legal Nurse Consultants living in the real world, those meaningless feel-good addictions are something we avoid. We spend our time growing our legal nurse consulting businesses, not fertilizing our virtual farms. I’ve gone though and blocked just about every “application” I can on Facebook to keep those “requests to bale hay” from cluttering up my wall. I appreciate that someone loves me enough to want to send me a virtual pet – but I’m busy with my legal nurse consulting business and connecting with my family and friends – and I hope you are too.

Social media is a great thing. It’s changing the way we connect and communicate. Just make sure that you’re using it to advance your legal nurse consulting business or to truly connect and communicate with your “friends.”

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Recently a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant contacted the Institute and told us about a subcontractor she’d hired. After completing the project, the subcontractor proceeded to list herself on several different social media sites as being associated with the contracting CLNC^® consultant. The subcontractor then used the contracting CLNC^® consultant’s “LinkedIn” profile and network to contact other parties announcing her association with the contracting CLNC^® consultant and marketing her availability to subcontract.

Looking at this through the subcontracting retro spectroscope, I believe that every CLNC^® consultant who is using subcontractors should include a “social media nondisclosure clause” in their subcontracting agreements. I don’t recommend hiding the existence of subcontractors from your attorney-clients and that’s not what this is about.
 
Simply speaking, your subcontractors should not use your social media and your connections for their own benefit, at least not without your expressed permission. I asked Tom to draft some language that you can add to your CLNC^® subcontractor agreements (with your contract attorney’s approval) and here’s the result:

SOCIAL MEDIA NONDISCLOSURE: Subcontractor agrees that throughout the term of this Agreement, and for a period of two (2) years after the termination or expiration of this Agreement, Subcontractor shall not, without the prior written consent of Company, in any way or in any form disclose, publicize, market or advertise to any contact of Company or any other person, party or company via any form of social media including, but not limited to, FaceBook, Twitter and/or LinkedIn, the fact that this Agreement exists, that you are working or have worked as a subcontractor with Company or any other facts regarding this Agreement and our relationship.

This may seem strict, but you don’t want your subcontractors marketing to, or associating with, your social media contacts. If they’re already a friend on FaceBook, you don’t want them discussing business on your Wall. As the legal nurse consulting world adapts to social media, so must our contracts.

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I’d like to share a conversation I had with Brian Horn, a social media expert, on the importance of participating in social media as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. One important point Brian makes is that you can participate in social media in a meaningful way without taking too much time away from your legal nurse consulting business. Enjoy the video.

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Every CLNC^® consultant using social media to market your Certified Legal Nurse Consulting business, raise your left hand (keeping your right hand on your mouse). That’s terrific! I know a lot of you participate and interact regularly with Vickie on Facebook^® and Twitter^TM. I also know that Facebook and Twitter can be semi-frustrating if you’re using them directly through a web browser instead of an application like TweetDeck or HootSuite^®. Why frustrating? Because you need to refresh the page on a regular basis to see the updates.

Likewise, if you’re a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant who’s bidding on business equipment on eBay^® or another auction site and you want to keep ahead of last minute snipers or just watch bidding trends, you face a similar problem. A problem whose only remedy is sitting, mouse-in-hand, and relentlessly clicking the “refresh” button on your browser.

Well my CLNC^® amigos, I have a solution for you, at least if you’re a Firefox^® user. Simply visit the Add-ons for Firefox page for ReloadEvery and install this nifty little add-on. It allows you, by right-clicking on an open web page, to select an automatic refresh interval for that page. You can even set your own custom refresh timings. This allows you to watch your Facebook wall or profile page and keep up with Vickie and your CLNC^® colleagues without the need to click the refresh button. It does have the innate danger of wiping out that half-written, pithy status update you typed in and hadn’t yet sent so be careful when you use it. Internet Explorer^® and Safari^® users are out of luck but I’ve read that the Opera^® browser has this already built-in.

With ReloadEvery installed, you always have the most current page/news in front of you and you’ll never miss a Farmburg Piglet request again. I think this is just another reason to move to Firefox as your web browser for your legal nurse consulting business.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

That’s a pretty powerful question with many different answers. Back in June, I tweeted about a high-profile case that involved an MD who was blogging about his medical malpractice trial as the trial was in progress. I used this as an example to illustrate why Certified Legal Nurse Consultants should recommend that their attorney-clients check out social media (and the blogosphere) for postings by opposing parties (and their own parties), before and during a trial. That case ended in a substantial settlement for the plaintiff after the MD was shown to have exposed trial strategy, ridiculed the case and made generally inappropriate postings for which he was confronted during the trial.

Another MD blogged about a recently concluded medical malpractice trial. His blogging initially raised all sorts of HIPAA questions (which became a nonissue once the suit was filed and anything happening at trial became public). Just to be safe, the MD allegedly changed some of the “facts” as you can read in his disclaimer. This raises issues of what sort of information should or should not be exposed, even after a trial. Granted you can sit in a courtroom, listen to the testimony and see the evidence, but you are not privy to the thinking, reasoning and strategy decisions of the attorneys and the parties they represent. Perhaps that’s something an attorney wouldn’t want his defendant or plaintiff blogging about. Read the articles and analyses on both these cases and make your own decisions. Keep in mind that attorneys are under their own ethical restrictions that we’ll discuss below.

A famous poker player won’t appear on those poker television shows that televise a player’s hand. He doesn’t want people to see how he plays, bluffs or calls on certain hands because they could develop a strategy to beat him. Trial attorneys might feel the same way about having their strategies exposed.

That being said, let’s look at a different set of potential bloggers, the jurors and/or courtroom spectators. In our electronic age no one, and I mean no one, likes to be “off the grid.” Spectators blogging from the courtroom are the equivalent of news reporters and don’t present a problem.

Smart phones with easy Internet access like the Blackberry^® or iPhone^® have created modern day courtroom issues. Judges have always admonished jurors not to read about a case or view television trial coverage, but how many judges give jury instructions regarding blogging? Tweeting (micro-blogging) and even researching the basis of the parties’ claims raises issues during a trial. Even something as simple as texting can be problematic. Remember, jurors are supposed to make their decisions based solely on the information they receive in the courtroom – only the evidence introduced at trial. So if a juror reads a blog about the trial, that would be the same as viewing a news report about the trial or Googling the underlying claims. That sort of behavior risks prejudicing the case or raising the possibility of a mistrial. Attorneys should search social media and the blogosphere during and after trial for traces of this type of misconduct. Some people are shameless about what they post, so armed with a few keywords and content of text messages sent during a trial, it can be quite simple to discover and possibly render a juror liable for contempt.

So far we’ve discussed the plaintiffs, defendants and jurors – what about the plaintiff and defense attorneys? Any Certified Legal Nurse Consultant will remember from the Institute’s CLNC^® Certification Program that attorneys are ethically prohibited from disclosing certain confidential client communications without the client’s consent. This applies to the blogosphere both during and after trial. But what about statements made in advance of trial or while selecting the jury that might tend to influence a well-read jury pool? A few attorneys make money writing books about their high-profile clients but that’s well after the client’s gone to jail (or not). A gag order by a judge can preclude an attorney from blogging about an ongoing trial. Attorneys may use hypothetical postings as long as there is no reasonable likelihood the client or situation can be identified. With all this in mind, blogging, texting and even list serve postings will be an issue to watch (or read about).

Judges, like attorneys, are ethically restricted from discussing pending or ongoing matters being litigated. So, if you think you see the judge texting from beneath the bench, let your attorney-client know. They may not want to risk the ire of a judge who’s simply discussing dinner plans, but might infer the judge wasn’t fully present during trial.

Finally, there’s you – the legal nurse consultant. As you work closely with the attorney-client and the litigation team, you’ll have inside information about the case, the parties, strategies, etc. As an agent of the attorney you are also precluded from disclosing certain confidential information. If you value your legal nurse consulting business you must refrain from tweeting and blogging about a trial in progress (“The defense expert is getting blown away – we’re moving in for the kill with my questions on SOC.”) without your attorney’s knowledge and permission. In fact, I recommend you not discuss your cases at all on the Internet. Frankly, it’s poor business practice.

Social media and blogging are emerging parts of cyberspace and both sides in the legal arena need to explore and monitor their usage. It’s a brave new world of communications and communicability for legal nurse consultants and the legal profession. If you use your mind (while others around you are losing theirs), you’ll successfully avoid any amateur mistakes.

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I’ve previously blogged about the fact that potential employers are searching social media to discover what people have posted prior to hiring them (and in some cases after they’re on the payroll). Tom has discussed the fact that photos posted on the Internet may contain metadata that includes date, time and even a GPS location of where the photos were taken. We’ve also explained how Certified Legal Nurse Consultants can use deep-web search engines to locate information about an expert or party who is not generally available on the Internet. I’ve also talked about whether legal nurse consultants (or parties involved in a lawsuit) should be blogging or texting about legal cases. Even your cashless toll-pay tag and the information from the computer that runs your car’s motor can provide relevant information. Now it’s time to tie it all together and discuss the potential discoverability of all those postings a plaintiff or defendant has made to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other similar sites.

In a lawsuit, almost all communications concerning the suit or its subject matter made by a party to anyone other than their attorney (and in some cases their spouse) are potentially discoverable. These social media communications may be used as a statement against interest, evidence of wrongdoing or character evidence. In the old days, paper records in the custody of a party were the primary source of discovery, but today discovery extends to all sorts of electronic communication.

In any case where the information may be relevant to a plaintiff or defendant, the social media communications of the parties may be discoverable and as Joe Friday used to say, “can and will be used against them.” There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in information generally available to the public. There may be such an expectation for information posted to a “protected” group on Facebook or Twitter where only “Friends” or “Followers” may see the info – but this hasn’t been fully hashed out by the courts. Two famous cases used photos posted on Facebook and MySpace to aid in sentencing of defendants.

The savvy Certified Legal Nurse Consultant should recommend to all attorney-clients that communications or other information relevant to the suit (or likely to lead to the discovery of relevant information) be requested from relevant parties (plaintiff or defense) through interrogatories, requests for production and requests for admission. This would include:

• The email addresses of all email accounts (business and personal) used by a party before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit;

• The domain names of any websites (business and personal) owned or operated by a party before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit;

• The user names and account information for any social networking sites that a party belonged to or interacted with (such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.) before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit;

• The domain names or address of any blogs owned, operated or contributed to by a party before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit regarding the subject matter of the lawsuit;

• The domain names of any blogs posted to, or comments posted to any blog or similar website(s), before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit;

• Whether or not any information posted by a party was posted to a “password protected,” “by invitation only” or otherwise restricted website or portion thereof before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit;

• The account names and telephone numbers of any cell phone or other telecommunications account used or belonging to a party before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit;

• Names of any web browsers used or belonging to a party before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit;

• Names and addresses for any Internet service provider (ISP) used by a party, before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit.

An attorney may have to request copies of some of this data pulled from back-ups of the relevant computer systems and may need to request access to the computers of a party to obtain this information.

Finally, think about how you personally use social media. Anything and everything you post online, whether it’s a review of a product, a critique of someone or something, pictures of you, an email you send, a blog you comment on, etc., all are likely to be discoverable and may end up being used as evidence in cases where they are relevant.

If you use your social media wisely it shouldn’t be an issue – but as illustrated by the cases above, not everyone is likely to think before they post.

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