Twitter on trial

Here are some of the ways legal marketing guru Larry Bodine describes Twitter: “the Macarena of online social networking”; “the dullest knife in the drawer”; “a traffic accident”; and “dying.”  Bodine also likens Twitter to such interweb road kill as CompuServe, the Apple Newton, and WordPerfect 5.5.  Moreover, the microblogging service is now so overwhelmed by spam that “the only thing missing is the Nigerian prince who just needs some money to get his brother out of jail.”   

These quotes are from yesterday’s live web debate (hosted by the ABA Journal’s Legal Rebels) between Bodine and “Social Media Law Student” Rex Gradeless (72,000+ Twitter followers).  The debate topic: “Twitter: Waste of Time, or Marketing Goldmine?”  You will not be surprised that Bodine took the latter position. (In this judge’s opinion, Bodine “won” the debate by TKO within the first 5 minutes.)

For the pro-Twitter-as-legal-marketing-tool position, see Kevin O’Keefe’s response at Real Lawyers Have Blogs.

Whatever the merits of either view, BigLaw generally has not (yet?) bought into Twitter.  Of Vault’s Top 10 firms, only Weil, Skadden, and Kirkland have firm accounts—and the latter 2 appear to be mere “claim the name” placeholders.  Elsewhere in BigLaw,  Foley Lardner and , especially, Akin Gump (leveraging the firm’s relationship with Tom Goldstein and SCOTUSblog) are examples of firms that are active twitterers tweeters.

                                         -posted by brian