The saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. The same could be said of information/media/current awareness in a law firm. We can lead our lawyers to the content but there is no way to ensure they read …or is there?

We are currently in the process of evaluating media and social media aggregators, some of which include very savvy dashboard platforms and delivery mechanisms. Others of which, include sophisticated social media analysis tools. Some of the products that we or others I have spoken to are considering include:

The evaluation criteria we have mashed-up includes but is not limited to:

  1. Easy to use interface for publishing/editing 
  2. Users (or their proxy) can manage own profiles
  3. Content can be pushed to email, RSS or Microsoft SharePoint
  4. Content is archived and searchable for later use
  5. Aggregators incorporate public info, paid subscriptions, social media and internal commentary
  6. Provides free content or access to content 
  7. Offers a trial 
  8. Price – is it by topic, by firm size, # of curator or another other mechanism 
  9. Provides training 
  10. Has a good industry reputation 
  11. Has other law firm clients 
  12. Provides on going support 

Firm needs will determine the weighting of these criteria but is there anything we’ve left out? Are there other products or issues to consider? And if we provide it, will they read it??