Legal Research

Stop the Presses! Lawyers Love Twitter

By Connie Crosby

Ever since Adrian Lurssen over on the JD Scoop blog from JD Supra posted the suprising list 145 Lawyers (and Legal Professionals) to Follow on Twitter last week, I have had a dramatic increase in lawyer, law student, and law librarian followers to my own Twitter account. I was surprised to be placed at #2 on the list, only behind our own Steve Matthews in the #1 position. Wow! Well, Steve gets special Twitter link love for having created Legal Voices, a website pulling together a number of key legal Twitter feeds.

I was asked by a friend in communications whether the lawyers (mostly U.S. attorneys) are using pseudonyms or their real names. Interestingly, most are using what are presumably their real names, and are indicating city, practice area specialties, and law firms in their brief bios. The majority are also using their professional photos for their avatars. Very smart personal branding!

A few conclusions I draw from the number of lawyers now on Twitter:

• word about Twitter and the marketing opportunity it presents is getting out;
• lawyers are not as intimidated by social networking tools as some of us have previously thought;
• Twitter gives lawyers and law students a fast way to participate in online conversations without a big time commitment; and
• presumably clients of lawyers are also on Twitter.

I bet being able to easily post from a Blackberry doesn’t hurt, either. Since that list was posted last week, it has already grown to 259 lawyers and legal professionals. Adrian Lurssen has also written a follow-up post Lawyers (and Legal Professionals) to Follow Online: An Update including some follow-up discussion about “connecting the dots” on how and why to use Twitter.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on September 18, 2008 (boomark / email).