I’ve earlier mentioned the importance of communication as an underestimated part of a sound legal approach to technology use or blogging policies.

The second often-neglected and not-usually-thought-of-as-legal-work part of these policies is TRAINING. In my recent presentation on this topic, I noted that a written policy without accompanying training all but guarantees later problems.

Marty mentioned some of the risks that use of technology, including blogging, can raise. I can mention several more, especially for executives in publicly-traded companies or those in companies working toward IPOs. Law schools teach lawyers to spot all of those issues.

I had an instructive conversation with a friend of mine on the plane trip to Chicago for ABA TECHSHOW. I told her that I was speaking on technology use policies. She said that her organization needed to put together a new policy. As we chatted about the types of issues we see today, I could see that, rather than helping, I was making the task seem more daunting, which wasn’t my intention.

I changed the conversation to focus more about whether a “cover every possibility” approach made sense for her or anyone else and whether there were more reasonable approaches to take.

My basic premise is that technology changes so quickly that the more precise you are, the more likely your policy will be outdated and be difficult to interpret in the future. My second premise is that the ways you want people to behave seldom change. My third premise is that if people understand what the risks and dangers are, they will tend to make good decisions. You are free to disagree with any of those premises.

To me, then, a good policy should be based on setting out your core principles (don’t break the law; don’t put key systems or information at risk; behave like you are in a work environment, not a frat house) and setting out the most important rules. Then, you put serious effort into training people how to use technology in ways that do not violate those principles and rules.

Here’s a favorite example of mine. You will see many policies that prohibit people from introducing a virus into the office system. At the same time, there is no effort made to teach people safe behavior with respect to virus issues. As a result, the office consistently gets hit with viruses and it will be difficult to discipline a problem employee because there will be many other offenders. You have a great usage policy in the legal sense, but as a practical matter, it’s kind of a disaster waiting to happen.

The more that people understand the whys and hows, the better job they’ll do at behaving in the ways that you want them to do under your policy. That’s training. That’s also common sense. It’s also something that can get forgotten when you focus solely on the legal issues and see the item “get blogging use policy done” on your legal to-do list.