Legal Research

LexTweet Helps Filter Tweets From a Courtroom Near You

By Omar Ha-Redeye

As Simon Fodden pointed out earlier, one of the greatest limitations of Twitter is the amount of unwanted “noise” it produces,

What has to happen for Twitter to become useful and enjoyable for me is the introduction of filters or channels or folders… I need to be able to group them by my own taxonomy and then, depending on what I?m up to, screen out the noise and leave the signal.

A new service by LexBlog might help legal professionals accomplish this. 

LexTweet gathers tweets from legal professionals on Twitter, which effectively creates a legal channel.  The service has become quite popular by Twitter users, and their approval process for the now sizable number of community members ensures some quality of content.

A number of judges in American courts have recently allowed Twitter in the courtroom, giving rise to microblogs of court trials.  Ron Sylvester, of What the Judge Ate for Breakfast, successfully argued that writing for Twitter was no different than writing for his newspaper.  Sylvester has apparently been reporting from courts in this manner for some time.

Robert Ambrogi points out other high-profile cases where Twitter has been used recently.  Judges have indicated that rather than trying to control the flow of information, juries should be appropriately instructed not to review the posts.

All this twittering about has some wondering whether legal writing is on the decline.  Wouldn’t the ability to express thoughts succinctly in 140 characters  be an improvement to the legal field, instead of an impediment?

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on January 11, 2009 (boomark / email).