Twitter for Business Litigation Lawyers
This is intended as short reflection piece, so I'll ask for your indulgence to the extent this is "off topic", but since I am writing this on a Sunday afternoon, a little reflection is in order. Twitter is a free online tool that is increasingly used by "Internet-savvy" lawyers who do business litigation, and others, to keep in touch with other lawyers and friends, as well as clients and family. Some might say it is a natural evolution or logical development for those who blog, as it has been described as "mini-blogging".
There is still much for me to learn about Twitter and how to use it, as I have only begun to become familiar with it, but in the process of learning about it, I thought it would be helpful to share a few links for those who are interested in finding out more about this latest means of leveraging the Internet.
Lawyer Denise Howell, a pioneer blogger, has written a post here that provides a link to Twitter 101 for Lawyers. In keeping with the latest developments on the Internet here is a link to a Twitter song on YouTube. Here is an article with an increasing list of lawyers who use Twitter.
Kevin O'Keefe, guru for lawyers who blog, has written extensively about why lawyers should learn more about Twitter, (e.g., here), and now there is a "top 10" list of rules for those who use Twitter that Kevin recently posted about on Twitter (called a tweet). Kevin predicted correctly many years ago that blogs would be a mainstream "major player" in the legal profession, and so I give his opinion considerable weight when he says that Twitter is more than just a passing fad.
UPDATE: I want to "tie-in" the title to this post better than I did initially, so I bring to your attention the first comment below by a thoughtful reader who has supplied two especially helpful and relevant links that provide a list of "BigLaw lawyers" who use Twitter as well as one that provides a link to "securities counsel" who use Twitter. (click on "comments" below). The point of my post is that Twitter is not limited to those lawyers whose practice is limited to "consumer/retail law" such as domestic relations, but rather, Twitter is being used by those in big firms who might have more of a "wholesale" practice that caters to businesses and others who are not the "typical retail consumer" that one might think of as likely to use the latest Internet-related development in communicating with others.
Two more links that may be of interest:
Twitter Feeds for Securities Counsel:
http://www.securitiesdocket.com/twitter-feeds-for-securities-counsel/
BigLaw Lawyers on Twitter:
http://www.securitiesdocket.com/biglaw-lawyers-on-twitter/
thanks for the information it helped me a lot
information in the blog is handy
Francis, I got to this post via Twitter. As is typical of our favorite Twitter evangelist's tweets, it didn't quite promise what I was hoping for. I am a business litigator, as you are. Considering the title of your post -- and now I am as much as anything asking you to brainstorm -- can you think of ways that people who do what we do, in particular, can benefit from Twitter? I mean beyond the overall social networking / business development concept. Considering your own affiliation with a large regional firm (one I know well ;-)), I would be very interested in your thoughts on this.
I'm a business litigator with a blog and a twitter feed and... well, I don't understanding Twitter as a business building tool.
Most of the "Twitter" uses I've seen do nothing more with it than use it as a simplified RSS reader. That's all well and good if you're not comfortable with RSS -- which most lawyers aren't -- but for someone with a massive number of feeds in Google Reader like me, it's superfluous and not as powerful as my existing system.
My own tweet fits into that: it's really nothing more than a microblog.
Other than that, Twitter is a nice way to stay in touch with people you already know. Again, all well and good, but I already know those people. They're referring work to me or they're not; I'm referring work to them or I'm not. I just don't see the ROI there as compared to, say, blogging or networking or the like.