Legal Research

"Are Lawyers Getting Clients From Twitter?"

Posted by Bruce Carton: "I'm a fan of Twitter, and have been using the service since early this year both personally (@brucecarton) and as a news feed for securities litigation news (@SecuritiesD). I'm also interested in its use and value to lawyers, particularly to lawyers in the "BigLaw" world. Looking at it through this BigLaw lens, I have been pretty skepticaI thus far as to Twitter's potential as a business development tool for lawyers (as opposed to a more generic PR/news distribution tool for law firm news and announcements, which seems like a no-brainer use to me).

Stories are starting to pop up more often these days, however, about lawyers who have used Twitter to actually get new, paying clients. On Tuesday, Lawyers USA ran an interesting article about several lawyers who had successfully turned their activity on Twitter into clients. These include:

Brett Trout (@bretttrout), an intellectual property attorney in Des Moines, Iowa, who has gotten six new clients since joining Twitter a year-and-a-half ago.

Deena Burgess (@DeenaEsq), a New York attorney who started her own firm a year ago, and who has turned five Twitter followers into clients.

James Walker (@cruiselaw), an attorney in South Miami, Fla., whose practice is devoted solely to suing cruise lines on behalf of injured passengers. Walker "tweets about the three things he knows best: cruise ship law, cruise ship law and cruise ship law." Walker says that one of his followers, a California maritime attorney, has referred Walker cases which Walker estimates to be worth several million dollars.

Stefanie Devery (@StefanieDevery), a real estate attorney in Mineola, N.Y., has received about 10 referrals from out-of-state lawyers who follow her on Twitter in the six months since she began using Twitter.

I have yet to hear any BigLaw Twitter success stories, but perhaps that will be the next wave? Please weigh in here with your own examples of lawyers who have used Twitter to gain new legal clients.

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Legal Blog Watch, 18 September 2009

Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on September 21, 2009 (boomark / email).