Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Martindale-Hubbell Reborn as MySpace for Lawyers

I've just received an email from LexisNexis asking me "Have You Networked Today?"

With your martindale.com registration and the new My Martindale Network tool, it's never been easier to organize and manage outside counsel. Built in partnership with Corporate Counsel, My Martindale Network enables you to securely store Preferred Providers and short lists for other matters on martindale.com. This gives you one place to track and manage outside counsel, annotate profiles and use martindale.com's Side by Side Comparison tool to make more informed decisions.
OK, the MySpace comparison is unfair. What Martindale is trying to do is redefine itself as a LinkedIn for lawyers.

In recent years the Martindale website (the digital counterpart to the old reliable Martindale-Hubbell Legal Directory) has grown increasingly irrelevant. Who needs a lawyer directory in the age of Google when every law firm has its own website? Perhaps there is a market for a social networking service limited to lawyers. But I'm not sure; maybe it's more valuable for lawyers to network with clients and potential clients through existing services like LinkedIn, or even Facebook?

At any rate, it's nice to see that good ol' Martindale still has some life left in it.

2 comments:

Harvey Morrell said...

Our library does have a few patrons who call in to ask us to check out particular listings in Martindale. The A(v) listing seems to be totemic for those patrons.

Jacqueline Cantwell said...

I am surprised that you don't like the print Martindale. Even though many bar associations and state courts have attorney listings, I find the print issue helpful because it is organized by city. I get a lot of self-represented litigants who want to find attorneys within a city, and the blue pages with the firms' descriptions are just what they want. The international law digests and state law digests are still useful. Just today, I checked the arbital treaty to verify that Jamaica was a party. I don't know how else I could have found that info. Jacqueline Cantwell