Publishers have traditionally brought their technical expertise and capital to help people publish their material. The internet has made it easy for non-technical people to publish without investing much capital.

In house counsel are starting to what many consumers do when looking for information. They use the internet and their favorite search engine.

I have sent Martindale-Hubble three letters and no response and this Law Firm is still on their site and still has a good rating.

I have found other victims and am considering the liability and the posture indifference Martindale-Hubble has seemingly taken.

I see some benefits to the gated community.

One of the reasons I am skeptical of using the Martindale database to authenticate is that Connected will be open to some non-lawyers. You have to let in the marketing people to help update and manage profiles. (Obviously, it would be better to have the attorneys do it themselves. That is unlikely to be the case for the vast majority of lawyers for a long time.) Where do you draw the line for keeping out non-lawyers and non-practicing lawyers?

The other problem is that the Martindale database is just not that accurate. It’s not Martindale’s fault. But firms just have not been keeping on top of their martindale listings. (I see that the listings from my old firm are not accurate. Lots of departed people are still listed.)

I continue to participate in the Connected community and wrote this post because I see the potential. I am just waiting for some of that potential to come to fruition.

As always, thanks for the feedback and we do appreciate how active you have been with your peers in MH Connected. You are an early adopter and we are lucky to have your input.

I just want to clarify one point you made, the ‘gated community’ is something that corporate counsel and other lawyers specifically asked us for in a network. And as we’ve developed Martindale-Hubbell Connected, they’ve told us they want other legal professionals join them. So, in opening the network later this summer, we’re not “conceding” anything, but rather responding to the specific needs of our users.

We hope to give folks the best of both worlds, and that’s why we value our relationship with LinkedIn, showing members their whole network in one glance.

As you said, we have “the resources and the goldmine of information to make Connected a success”. And know that there is a strong and dedicated team in place to make this a reality.

I would guess that Martindale has seen some of these problems coming. I assume Connected is the result.

As a young associate, Martindale.com was a wonderful resource. You could easily find information on opposing counsel. I faded into the background as law firms started putting their attorney listings on line. Until I heard about Connected, I had not been to Martindale in years. But the target audience is in-house counsel, not law firms.

Martindale, as a subsidiary of Lexis, has the resources and the goldmine of information to make Connected a success. It is just a matter of execution.