Twitter is proving good for business as legal rookies increasingly turn to social networking sites to bolster employment prospects
Twitter power: regular tweeting has enabled some lawyers to increase their media profile and secure paid work.
First it was the nerds. Then came the celebrities, hotly pursued by journalists. And now lawyers are catching on to the power of Twitter.
The legal world's equivalent of the prolific tweeter Stephen Fry is David Allen Green, a solicitor who combines his day job as head of media law at the City firm Preiskel & Co with a part-time role as the New Statesman's legal correspondent.
Green caught journalists' attention when he began tweeting and blogging during the Simon Singh libel case The secret of the 40-year-old's success appears to be combining lawyerly insight with a rather un-lawyerly outspokenness and irreverence. "I am hearing bullshit from [the former News International head of HR Daniel] Cloke and [News International's head of legal affairs Jon] Chapman," Green tweeted recently, in reference to the hacking scandal, having earlier remarked: "But just imagine having Wendi Murdoch as a godmother..."
Lower key, but no less astute, is Adam Wagner, a junior barrister at 1 Crown Office Row who has used Twitter, in conjunction with the highly rated legal blog he edits, to become the one of the best-known young lawyers in the country – quite an achievement in a hierarchical profession where it is often frowned upon for rookies to seek publicity. Like Green, Wagner operates by tweeting a combination of blog links and pithy work-related musings. "I see at least one QC a week joining Twitter," he says. "But the hierarchy on the site is different to real life."
Other lawyers to have used the medium cleverly include Ashley Connick, a Leeds University graduate who landed a plum trainee job at one of the prestigious "magic circle" law firms partly on the back of his tweets about life as a wannabe solicitor, and barristers John Cooper QC and Felicity Gerry, whose Twitter presence has enabled them to disrupt the established order of legal media rent-a-quotes.
Where the legal profession has enjoyed less success is through corporate Twitter accounts – a number of which have appeared lately as law firms and barristers' chambers attempt to emulate the individual successes of Green and Wagner. The vast majority miss the point of Twitter – at its core, the provision of insight unavailable elsewhere – with many using it to disseminate dry press releases.
Some of these accounts are inactive. A minority clearly have had time and thought put into them, but still tend to be a bit dull. Exasperated by the legal profession's bumbling efforts in this area, Legal Week argues that "corporate law firms don't 'need' in any meaningful sense to blog, tweet or otherwise mess about with social media".
The exception to the drab corporate Twitter account rule is the entertaining London_Law_Firm, which appears to thrive because, in reality, it is the personal Twitter account of Chris Sherliker, the quirky founding partner of the niche law firm Silverman Sherliker.
Certainly, it has been good for business. In July, Sherliker used Twitter to create a group for former employees of the News of the World with a view to launching a class action against News International. The group attracted 20 expressions of interest within its first 24 hours – a number Sherliker says has since grown significantly, thanks to coverage in The Lawyer.
Apart from a distinct individual voice, what many of the successful lawyers on Twitter have in common is a certain nothing-to-lose adventurous – albeit usually at the milder end of the spectrum – in giving of themselves through their tweets. This may be down to the fact that most have developed their online profiles from relatively lowly real-life professional stations, giving them the freedom and incentive to push boundaries in order to get their names out there.
Pre-Twitter, Green was an anonymous journeyman lawyer, who, after starting out at the bar, re-qualified as a solicitor, and completed a series of relatively short stints at several law firms and a government legal department. Wagner and Connick were young unknowns who recognised the importance of trying something different as they attempted to forge careers during a recession. Gerry and Cooper are both criminal barristers at a time when legal aid funding is about to be cut by a third.
The challenge for them all will be maintaining their interesting Twitter personas now their online success means they have something to lose. Recently Green has responded to his higher profile by seeking to create a divide between his personal and professional online selves by increasingly using a private Twitter account, which only a select band of approved people can follow. It is uncertain how effective this approach will be in a medium where many followers demand authentic personal insight.
Wagner and Connick, meanwhile, have ploughed steadier paths, characterised by a much greater aversion to causing offence – something reflected in the lower number of Twitter followers they have than Green. But while the former's growing expertise in human rights law – and ability to relay that in simple terms to non-lawyers – has seen him develop a niche as a nice guy, Connick has found himself increasingly short of interesting things to tweet about now his hunt for a graduate job is over.
The key to longevity for lawyers with a public profile? "Confidence in your opinions and a willingness not to hold any sacred cows," says the veteran media lawyer Mark Stephens, of Finers Stephens Innocent, who has appeared regularly in the press since Marcel Berlins, a former Guardian legal journalist, "discovered" him in the 1980s.
"If I think a judge has got it wrong, I have no problem saying so, but I try to avoid ad hominem attacks," Stephens adds, before excusing himself to continue live tweeting from the Leveson inquiry.
By Alex Aldridge
From guardian.co.uk
