Legal Commentary

Text messaging for lawyers

By Ernest Svenson

My friend Dennis Kennedy has an article in the ABA Journal about lawyers using text messaging. He offers some tips on how to get started using text messaging. I know that many, if not most, lawyers would consider text messaging completely useless. I'm not going to argue that it's a critical tool, but I will say that it can be beneficial in certain situations.

I once was at a deposition of a corporate CEO, which I was defending. The General Counsel of the company (who, like me, has teenage kids and was therefore adept at text messaging) had stepped out of the room to take an important call when the questioner started to ask the CEO questions that I knew the GC needed to hear. I quietly picked up my phone and texted him, and 30 seconds later he came back into the room and listened to the testimony. The other side had no idea that I had sent a text message, or that the GC regarded this line of questioning as important.

If I had interrupted the questioning in any way I might have signaled that they were on to something. Afterwards, the GC thanked me for alerting him. Maybe it wasn't an example of text-messaging helping to win a case, but it was very helpful and the client noticed it.

Full post as published by Ernie the Attorney on October 29, 2008 (boomark / email).