Your point re the satellite sites is critical, in the main from a technological angle. Of course I declare my normal interest but it may be useful for your readers to get an understanding.

Managing online drafting tools is a big event and not for the foolhardy. Document drafting is what I call three dimensional, not just a simple import, because you have to think of every consequence to an answered question and its subsequent implications elsewhere in the document. This is importnat because a law firm wants a client self serving as much as possible so the initial draft is as refined as possible for the law firm to review.

It is fairly impractical for a law firm to invest capital in building and maintaining technology such as this in house. If they can plug in via a Software as a Service model, SaaS, they get the value without the risk, (or at least a much reduced risk).

It is important for a law firm to understand this to break any drafting platform in to two parts, technology and content. Both need to be built (big task in terms of time and money) but also (and this is often forgotten) both need to be maintained (another big cost). SaaS, contractually, takes those problems away by distributing the cost over the many. (It has the aded benefit of the many feeding innovation back in to the platform, creating a virtuous circle)

To not use your satellite model means embedding it into your own existing website and most law firms cannot afford to do that. If you had to employ one solicitor to maintain content, nothing else, across mutliple content libraries that is going to be expensive irresective of the fact that one solicitor would not be enough...chuck in a dedicated IT maintenance person, perhaps a coder too and you are deep into 6 figure territory. Suddenly the ROI is looking scary.

So yes, absolutely, satellite is good...but I would recommend doing it via SaaS.

I'm hoping that this will open up a debate as I know there are some marketers who disagree - and to be honest I would be quite happy to see some solid, reasoned argument as to why outsourcing would work. It is easy to be too dogmatic about these things, but if somebody is able to demonstrate that they are doing it and it is working then I am happy to listen.

I agree with you that it doesn't have to be as limited as saying "I will only tweet with identifiable individuals"... it is more about authenticity and transparency so that if I tweet Directlaw support I want to know I am communicating with someone from there, but I wouldn't necessarily expect it to be the same person every time (by the way if Twitter bring in the promised business accounts with "bylines" to show which individual user is tweeting it would be very helpful for this).

Likewise, if a Twitter account purports to be from XYZ Law LLP then I only really expect that the tweets will be from one or more people within that firm (but not an external PR agency).

If you are looking at an account which appears to be from an individual then I personally don't think there should be any leeway at all... it should be written by the supposed author.

I guess celebrities are different, but I don't follow any (apart from Stephen Fry and a few Ubergeeks who I am pretty sure write their own material). I guess as many of them don't write their own autobiographies you wouldn't expect much more on Twitter, but I don't think there are many tweeting lawyers who fall into that category.

My feeling is that I am uncomfortable with someone else managing my messaging, and whilst some may think me extreme for disconnecting with someone who uses a third party, that is my view, right or wrong.

You could say "so what." But I think that is too easily dismissive and if we are going to compromise core principles then why bother at all?

Of course I accept that major corporates and celebrities do this all the time, but the point is that I know that. But if I have a problem and tweet a service provider I like to know I am communicating with someone who actually works for them, is part of the culture.

You rightly point out that social media is not like other forms of marketing, social media by it's definition is about the individual who at times collectively become the crowd.

I, as you know, was originally, @directlawuk and regenerated into @jonb1966. I have never gone on record as to why I did that but it kind of connects in to this discussion. Sometimes I want to say things, (sometimes they are spats with my wife or shouts about music and film). At the same time I am acutely aware that there is a blur between what I say with my Epoq hat on and what I am saying as Jon Busby.

As social media grows I just thought it appropriate to define those edges better which has also spun out in to Legal 2.0, which, (certainly going forward), does not push Epoq or DirectLaw but just reports my personal take. I fund the whole enterprise myself etc.

I am happy for people to talk to me and see my eccentricities and more human(ish) side as that is me and i like me, and if you like that then we will find it easier to engage. If you don't like it then you can choose not to engage, bearing in mind this is a two way thing.

The @directlawuk account will follow the @mailchimp model, a tool for news, product and development updates and product specific debate.

@directlawuk is not written by a 3rd party it is written by a Epoq employee and in fact we may start creating accounts for say our finance, product, marketing etc departments because, and this is the real point, if you are going to tweet to a service provider you want to make sure you are tweeting with the person you think you are tweeting with.

Finally, social media is all about language and the exquisite beauty of language is that it makes us individual. My concern with 3rd party tweeting is that their messages can become dumbed down, soulless and generic.

Tweeting moves fast, you can't exactly get a quarterly update from your 3rd party supplier. Consequently employing someone else to do your tweeting could be very counter productive

The issue is control - it is quite right to say that by incorporating Twitter feeds etc. into your site you are giving up an element of control to that third party provider. The example of the account being suspended is one problem, but there have been a spate of accounts being "phished" recently and sending out links to phishing sites and comments about user's sex life - which wouldn't look good on your website.

Brian - I think your point is equally valid... what about content which is produced by lawyers themselves, but cannot really be said to be as part of their employment (e.g. a personal Twitter account or blog)? If the copyright of this doesn't vest in or belong to the firm then really the goodwill which is being generated is that of the individual lawyer rather than the firm.

I don't really have answers to either of these. In relation to the first one I suppose that this is just a commercial risk for the firms to evaluate. I suspect that as SAAS and cloud computing services become (more) prevalent businesses may become more comfortable with the model, but this is always going to be a risk with services like Twitter (where you have no real Service Level Agreement). I suppose it depends on whether you believe the benefits outweigh that risk.

The second point I believe is part of a wider shift which is already happening as more and more lawyers dip their toes into the social media waters on an individual basis. In some ways, the client relationships have always been with individual lawyers rather than a firm anyway - this is what junior lawyers are usually striving to build up and why firms are keen to make lateral hires at a senior level.

On one level this is just an extension of this principle to a new platform (social media and internet marketing). My argument would be that by formalising this activity and tying it more to the firm's own brand identity it may actually be easier for the firm to take some measures to protect the benefits which accrue to this marketing activity (maybe it could even be covered by restrictive covenants?).

I can see a certain logic in the development of more social and participatory elements coming from the blogs, wikis, tweets and buzzes of a law firm's individual lawyers, which would orbit around the firm's "core" website. However, who owns those blogs, wikis and tweets? Would the law firm want a body of work built outwith the firm's "core" that could easily be taken by the author with them if they were to leave the firm in question? However, such blogs, wikis and tweets may reflect the personal brand of their author rather than the corporate brand of the law firm itself as a result of being outside the "core". Law firms may need to consider policies to cover the position.

Another issue with developing content outwith the "core" is the potential diversion of SEO from the "core" - again also an issue if an author of one of the orbiting buzzes were to go their separate way and take the buzz with them.

I wouldn't recommend unmoderated comments - I was really referring to the fact that some "blogs" on law firm sites have no comment facility at all… they are just one way traffic.

Really interesting to get some feedback about your internet marketing and website - much appreciated.