It’s been a while since we last checked in. Like almost everyone we know, we’ve been very busy this winter. Here’s what we’ve been up to:

First off, the Law Firm Directory. Lawyrs can now update information about the law firms and offices they work at through the “update your profile” option. Some lawyrs have already expanded their firm’s profile, not to mention sending along some great ideas about how to improve the directory.

Secondly, due to some convincing requests from our users, we’ve started to build a “Jobs & Careers” section where lawyrs can browse and post job offers and legal career information. We expect this to be a particularly popular and useful tool, so we’d love to hear back from you about what you’d like to see here.

All in all, we’re still finishing up a few more features, after which we’ll make our “official” launch of the site. I know what you’re thinking: we’ve been saying that since winter began. Thing is, we’ve come to view some of the user suggestions as things the website cannot do without. Each of these new features takes time to build. We can tell you that we’re getting close to “going public”!!

For now, lawyers can still only become lawyrs by invitation, but we’d be delighted if you would use the “Invite a Friend” tool to spread the word about lawyrs.net. Building a strong and active online community of lawyrs is the key to turning this into the kind of social networking site that the legal community truly deserves!

That’s it for now. Thanks for your support. Take care until next time, and enjoy the early Spring!

That’s right: it’s update time here at lawyrs.net. We’re just catching our breath after spending the last month or so building up the law firms directory. Now if you go to the directory, you’ll be able to choose from many big law firms (Freshfields, Clifford Chance, DLA Piper, and dozens more). You’ll see a complete list of their practices areas and international offices, as well as recent news about the firm posted by members of the lawyrs community. Click on any of the “Offices” locations, and you’ll see why we’ve been so busy – office-specific information, including contact information and maps.

We hope the “Law Firms” directory will eventually become a centerpiece of the lawyrs community. Therefore, we will continue to work on expanding its content and functionality. Pretty soon, users will be able to search and find other lawyrs at specific law firms and offices. Lawyrs will also be able to post information and news about their own law firm or office straight onto the directory. Essentially, you’ll have user-driven “news channels” for each law firm.

But enough about the near future! Let’s talk about right now! We’re delighted to say that we now have a community of registered lawyrs representing 58 countries. Not a bad showing for a private beta testing phase!

Meanwhile, we’re seeing lots of activity in the “Groups” section. This is largely due to the welcome arrival of many international lawyers from LLM GUIDE, our partner website. We’re happy to see that many incoming LL.M. students are using lawyrs.net to make contact with future classmates. At last count, the “Georgetown LLM Class of 2009″ group had 20 members.

In the next few weeks, we will be beginning our public beta phase. That means that anyone can register without an invitation. We hope that an increase of users will enrich the website even more, and allow us to expand our services and functionality for the lawyrs community.

Speaking of improvements, we are always happy to receive comments and suggestions from lawyrs. Feel free to post in the “Beta Group” on lawyrs.net, or send a message directly to Hannes or Setarah.

Thanks again to everyone who has stayed active on lawyrs.net over the last few months. We’re looking forward to an exciting 2008 here! We’ll be in touch soon. Take care.

I hope autumn is finding you all in good spirits. Believe it or not, we’re STILL in our private beta phase here at lawyrs.net, working on a few things before we go “public.” But we are proud to see that lawyrs.net now has a solid base of users representing 39 countries from all over the world. And we continue to get positive feedback from various bloggers who have found our website.

We’re also very happy to announce that Setareh will be working with us to support the lawyrs community. If you have any questions, suggestions, or problems, she’s the best person to contact.

Like in any online community worth its salt, a few users have started up groups, discussions, and posted “legal news” on lawyrs.net. We hope to see more discussions in the weeks to come, but we’re encouraged to see some beginnings since user participation and engagement really is the lifeblood of online communities.

Thanks also to everyone who has sent in suggestions for improvements. Please keep ‘em coming. We’ll get back to building and integrating them once we finish this post!

In the meantime, stay tuned for an “official tour,” where we’ll talk about everything that can be done on lawyrs.net.

Until next time, take care!

We are a bit surprised (happily, of course) by how many lawyers have joined so far. After all, we’re still in the ‘private beta’ testing phase. We’re also appreciative to all the bloggers who have taken the time to review our site. There’s something to learn from each of the reviews - the generally positive, the mixed, the French, the Spanish, the Chinese …

Meanwhile, we’ll be busy expanding and improving the site in the coming weeks (and beyond). We should say one thing from the outset: we’re not looking to trump other social networking sites with a bunch of fancy features. (Okay, we’ve got a few in the works, but…) Instead, our aim is really to build a simple, functional community where lawyers from around the world - who have a lot in common and a lot to share - can come together. It’s a place for lawyers and legal experts to present themselves, network, share information, discuss, form groups, and have some fun.

In short, we hope to build the kind of law-focused community that we think has been missing on the Internet. For those of you who’ve already found us, we’re glad you’re here. Welcome and enjoy.