There’s a saying in software development that customers want to get their projects done:
Cheap, Fast and Good.
The typical IT joke is that you can have 2 but not all 3. I have a feeling that’s where the legal department’s position is with the other departments who are deploying social and have a need to engage with their customers. Where the CEO ideally wants the response to happen Quickly & Legally. The joke here is that Legal departments say “Quick” OR ”Legal” but not both. There have been a couple of big brands on the wrong end of that joke lately and therein lies the importance of incorporating the legal department as a founding partner of your social efforts in the beginning rather than trying to “bolt” them on afterwards.
To be fair, there are a lot of reasons that the Legal department should be a significant partner in your efforts. This deck from Daliah Saper does a solid job identifying all the reasons that mitigating risk in social is important. Here are just a few:
- Privacy Laws – Like HIPPA in medical
- Negligence – in assuming a duty and not following through on it
- Trademark – confusing a consumer about your Brand and it’s use
- Copyright – using/sharing something that’s not yours
- Discrimination – especially when used in the hiring process & checking up on current employees
The marketing reality though is that Brands simply don’t control their messaging the same way in which they used to. Responses to outcries from promoters and detractors alike that are measured in days or worse yet weeks is simply unacceptable today. Speed is of the essence and customers just want to hear the truth. That puts legal departments, who are in place today to mitigate risk, in a precarious position. Where their primary job is reviewing the actions of employees it typically takes longer to get tasks completed. Much of the time now executives who take the time to run through legal are actually opening themselves and their companies up to increased risk of being perceived as non-responsive and contrived (or not authentic). The damage from being too slow can sometimes be more than acting quickly and genuinely.
What are companies to do? Our moderator this week, Lucretia Pruitt, has been working on answering this question as well. A veteran of the digital space, she has had her share of run-ins with the legal debate and has agreed to help all of us work through this. Following in our tradition of 3 questions spaced 20 mins apart, Lucretia will lead the chat starting at noon eastern with the following questions:
Topic: Quick & Legal: How to Make Social Media Less Scary for the Legal Dept
Q1: How can big companies advocate for less regulation to reflect realities of social media engagement?
Q2: Should you train legal in SM and what does it look like?
Q3: How do you create SM policies/strategies that legal will accept?
We invite you to join in the conversation to share or learn or both! Follow along by using #sm61 on your favorite Twitter client or simply follow along on our LIVE page.
Tags: jason breed, law, legal, Lucretia Pruitt, marc meyer, mitigate risk, partnering, Privacy, quick, social media
As an IT consultant I am fully aware that IT management is struggling with whether social media is productive or obstructive for companies and their employees. Software is being developed and policy and restrictions are being decided everyday by IT managers. The security of company networks are at stake but the potential for innovation using social media is a large enough carrot for the discussion of how to properly utilize the medium continues. Palo Alto networks came up with a whitepaper, http://bit.ly/d2NZRp, which will explore the issues surrounding social media in the workplace. It is important to not only understand the immediate benefits of doing business how one lives, but the threat it presents to a company’s greater ROI and productivity when it comes to the server’s safety and security.
If your IT Department wants to block social media apps on the company network… http://bit.ly/d2NZRp and http://bit.ly/cR80Al