Legal Marketing & PR

ABA Techshow: Kevin O?Keefe on Twitter for Lawyers

By Amy Derby

The first panel I attended at ABA Techshow was called All aTwitter: What?s the Buzz about Microblogging? The panel was made up of Kevin O?Keefe (@kevinokeefe), Tom Mighell (@tommighell), Catherine Reach (@catherinereach), and Dominic Jaar (@dominicjaar). It was an interesting session geared toward Twitter beginners, and I thought many of my clients and readers might find it informative.

I took a (very poor quality) video of the whole session (with my Flip cam) and had hoped to post the whole video here. But since the ABA owns the intellectual property rights to the sessions, I?ve been told to keep my video clip to five minutes. (Hopefully the ABA won?t sue me over the extra minute.)

This clip is of Kevin O?Keefe of LexBlog, LexTweet and LexConference discussing why lawyers might want to use Twitter and how. (A big thank you to Kevin for giving me permission to post part of his talk.)

Kevin said the answer to the question of ?why? will be a personal thing for everyone, but that for him the ?why?? really began to sink in last May when he learned about the China earthquake on Twitter thirty minutes before the media began covering it. He said the same thing happened again in November with the Mumbai attacks. He was able to use Twitter to see live up-to-the-minute coverage, including pictures, of what was going on long before the media got to it.

Kevin said these experiences were ones that made him feel like there is definitely something to this Twitter thing, even when he couldn?t pinpoint exactly what. He said he felt the same way in 1996 about the internet when he went to AOL.

Twitter is ?a discovery tool to get to know people,? Kevin said. He talked about how Twitter makes it easy to get to know the local media, and how those connections can help a lawyer.

Where Facebook and LinkedIn are places to keep track of people you already know, Kevin said, Twitter is a place to get to know people you haven?t even heard of yet. And the people you want to get to know, you get to learn a lot about them very quickly. Best of all, Twitter doesn?t take a lot of time.

But Kevin?s big message here was that lawyers can use Twitter to get work, and not just a little bit of work. He gave an example of a young Wisconsin lawyer nine months out of Marquette University who picked up five good clients in six weeks by following people in Milwaukee on Twitter and reaching out to them to build relationships.

Kevin said LexBlog?s business has gone up by probably twenty percent because of relationships he?s built on Twitter. I can understand how that would be true, since I get over half of my business via Twitter, LinkedIn and my blog ? and many people find out about my blog via Twitter, or find out about me via word of mouth recommendations by people I?ve met on Twitter. It only makes sense that this experience will translate the same way for lawyers.

Most lawyers I know and respect rely heavily on word of mouth recommendations and get the majority of their business because they have a good reputation. Couple Twittering with blogging, and it?s a powerful way to enhance and spread that reputation, as well as develop relationships that will lead to more recommendations and referrals.

Three ways Kevin recommends lawyers use Twitter:

1. Share things you read. Don?t have time to blog about everything in your feed reader that?s related to your practice area? Tweet the headline out with a link to the story and add a quick comment about it. Leave enough space for people to Retweet it.

2. Share/Retweet what others have already put out on Twitter that?s related to what you do, or that?s been tweeted by people you want to get to know better. Retweeting someone?s links is a good way to get that person to notice you and start a relationship with them. In turn, they?ll probably return the favor.

3. Add in a little bit of the personal. This helps people get to know you as a person and not just as a lawyer.

If you?re a lawyer or legal professional using Twitter, how are you using it? What kind of relationships are you building via Twitter? Have any of these relationships translated into business yet?

For related ABA Techshow posts, see also:

• Social Networking: Changing More Than How I Do Business
  
• ABA Techshow: Bringing Networking Home

Full post as published by Law Firm Blogger on April 13, 2009 (boomark / email).