Twitter Does Not Seem To Be In Future Lawyer's Future

There is probably nobody more astute as to tech than is Rick Georges of Future Lawyer, but what he basically says in a new post is that tech and time are not necessarily the same.  Good tech is suppose to save you time and be beneficial, and he does not see much of either of those traits in Twitter.

Following up on a post by Lawyerist, Rick Georges says in his post:

"I don't have enough time in the day to be a lawyer and a blogger and a dad and a husband and, well, you understand. Twittering is too much like stalking someone who wants to be stalked. If I want to know what you are doing every moment, I will marry you".

Nice.

I do not know if "twitters are twits", but I do see where with too many connects that following Twitter could become an obsession that are too much like following those bane reality shows on TV.  A small part of it might be beneficial but most of it is not.  It is the process of sharing and sorting through the ton of posts in an effort to separate the wheat from the chaff.  I am not sure I am prepared for it.

Last year I removed myself from most listservs because it just got impossible to follow them.  These were professional listservs in which important information is sometimes exchanged.  The problem was that one day I got to my office from Court and I had over 150 emails because of the listservs.  A few days later it was over 250.  Some were interesting and important.  Many were not.  Some were just lame.  There was also a lot of just wrong information floating around.  All of them took time.  All of that time added up to a lot of time.  Regardless, I found myself spending a half a day on this things, and I just could no longer afford the time to read and contribute to them any longer.

It seems to me that Twitter is nothing more than a large number of individual listservs.

I might give it a try because I do think social media is an imporant evolution.  I do not want to be too conservative and old school.  But, like Rick Georges and many others I have my doubts.

(Tech Reverend Rick Georges Pictured.  Art From The Tech Tiger)

Comments

[Grant D. Griiffiths]

With all due respect to you and Rick, Chuck you guys just don't get it. There are more and more lawyers getting on twitter every day. Not so much to find out if someone's 2 year old pooped in the potty. But to network. Twitter if used right is a great place to interact and learn from those you follow and who follow you. Imagine having instant access to 800 thought leaders in your field and asking them a quick question and in a matter of a few minutes getting a quick, down and dirty answer. Imagine the power of interacting with some of those same thought leaders in planning a conference. And imagine feeding your blog post to this group of people who are following you to see what you have to say. It is like having 800 subscribers to your RSS feed. I am using 800 as only an example. You don't have to follow any more than you want.

Yes twitter can be overwhelming if you allow it to me. Just as email, faxes, phone calls and blogging can. But used correctly, twitter can be one of the greatest marketing and networking tools one can use.

Dont discount it because someone is not progressive to see it benefits. Afterall, Rick is not progressive enough to use a Mac in his law office either. And like a TV or email or phone or heck the kids, you can shut it off and leave the room.

I am happy to visit with any attorney thinking about using twitter and how it can be used right.

[Sam Glover]

I second Grant's post. Twitter has been the most effective social networking tool for me for actually getting to know new people

With LinkedIn, all I do is add people to my contacts list, which does nothing to forge new relationships that could lead to business or referrals.

With Twitter, I actually get to know other people because I get to listen in on their thoughts, and they get to listen in on mine.

As I said in my post on Lawyerist, however, it's all about how you use it.

[Kevin OKeefe]

Hey Chuck, thought I'd just share a comment of mine on Rick's blog:

Individual lawyers need to decide what works best for them.

I don't buy that for everyday practicing lawyers Twitter is not useful. I was told as a small town lawyer in rural Wisconsin in 1996 that the WWW and the Internet were no place I should be wasting my time. 'No one uses the Internet, especially the blue collar type clients I wanted as a plaintiff's personal injury trial lawyer and especially in rural America where no one has heard of the Internet.'

Well, turned out folks were wrong. I figured out to answer relevant law questions at AOL, archive them at my site, lead law chats at AOL etc. Lead to plenty of good work and a state wide reputation in 18 mos.

Imagine meeting local reporters and business people you could not imagine using Twitter as a customer service, relationship building, or investigative tool. Imagine local people following you (people you do not know) that think you are a pretty good person and spread word of your law blog posts around the community via Twitter. Will it be most reporters and most community members that I'll connect through Twitter? No. Who cares. I'll take 1% of them who amplify my message. These things don't suck.

I didn't get Twitter the first, second, or third time I looked at it. I thought for a year plus it was the dumbest thing ever. But when I saw a lot of business people, far brighter than this kid, talking about how Twitter worked them, I kept looking at it.

At some point Twitter clicked for me. It can click for everyday lawyers and give me Twitter as a practicing lawyer in any town in America and I'll run laps around offline marketing and many blogs.

Blogs are great, but 140 characters is fast. And my followers on Twitter as well as FriendFeed get all that just like they would a blog post.

PS - For those playing with Twitter, use Twhirl or TweetDeck (my preference) as an app to access Twitter.