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CCCA62_040-044.qxd:CCCA_V1No1_DriversSeat-FIN.qxd 09/14/2007 04:13 PM Page 42 Feature technology circles as the first general counsel of a Fortune 500 company to blog about his job. Sun Microsystems was already the “poster child” of the blo- gosphere because its CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, is an avid blogger who encourages his employees to follow his example. About 4,000 of them (more than 10% of his employees worldwide) are blogging under the Sun banner. “I have an interesting and unique job and I want to talk about that publicly,” says Dillon.“I think I can add more value to my community by being more open about these things.” He openly and unabashedly writes about his job,from litigation to patent licensing, the annual stockholders’ meeting or his inter- national travel, and even personal anecdotes as a father and a boss. He writes for an audience of in-house counsels, law students considering a corporate career, the technology sector, Sun employees (including 65 lawyers in 25 countries) and Sun cus- tomers around the world. “Since December, 25,000-30,000 new people have read my blog. Now,multiply that by 4,000 employees and think of all the people we’re talking to around the world. It’s a great way to help people understand what our company is about, what the culture is like, why we do things the way we do and what our core val- ues are,” Dillon says. “One of the great things about the blog is how it has created a community of other bloggers at other companies at all levels that I can tap into now. We share information, best practices, things that we could be doing better, and that’s terrific.” Dillon and his legal team drew up a plain-language protocol for employees who blog that contains advice under headings such as Don’t Tell Secrets, Write What You Know and Think About Consequences. (Read the policy on public disclosure at blogs.sun.com.) Employee blogs are not screened before they are posted,unless requested, a freedom which does not cause Dillon to lose sleep. “E-mails are the thing that keeps most general counsel up at night, because often people write them in a fit of passion and they don’t deliberate. They don’t think their e-mails are going to be read by others. Writing a blog is a more rigorous process.You John Wallbillich know it’s going to be read, so you do research and work on the The Wired GC Lexvista Partners content. It’s more thoughtful,” he says. Ann Arbor, Michigan Dillon is well aware, however, that as general counsel of a bil- lion-dollar company, his blogs could be used against him. “At some point in time,will somebody go through this and all “I think blogging is a very powerful tool for lawyers. In fact, I the different blogs and find select bits of information, perhaps scratch my head every day that there aren’t many more general out of context, and perhaps try to use it in a negative way? On counsel that are doing this,” says Mike Dillon, senior vice- balance, it seems to me a very very low risk when there’s such a president and general counsel for California computer giant, wonderful upside to blogs.” Sun Microsystems. Dillon made news last year when he started a blog, called Anonymous blogging The Legal Thing, making him a celebrity in legal, business and For other corporate counsels, the balance of risk does not seem 42 CCCA Canadian Corporate Counsel Association FALL 2007