Social media calls…Legal aid advocates answer!
By Lauren Forbes
The social media storm has not passed over legal aid advocates. The growth of social media offers new ways for advocates to connect with and learn from one another. Which resources are advocates using? A recent survey conducted by the editorial team of Clearinghouse Review: Journal of Poverty Law and Policy attempted to learn more about poverty lawyers’ current use of online resources.
By a wide margin, the most popular online resource used for legal research or professional development is listservs, which are used by 81% of respondents. Only 29.1% of respondents indicated that they use RSS newsfeeds to stay on top of relevant news and information. In addition, although more respondents reported using social media than in earlier surveys, professional use of social media is still quite limited.
A more detailed summary of the survey results is available at Techno.la, a technology blog for legal aid and public interest advocates. The editors of Clearinghouse Review are grateful to the survey respondents for their input. The information collected in this and other surveys will be extraordinarily helpful as we plan future content for Clearinghouse Review.
