Twitter for Lawyers

for lawyers What’s in it for me? Victoria Pynchon, Esq. ADR Services, Inc. and the American Arbitration Association

Control of your “brand”

Unlimited access to your market

Your market’s unlimited access to you

Weak links = greatest opportunities

Connection with mass media

NPR

Law.com

L.A. and New York Times

High profile in local, state, national and international market

Fewer rubber chicken dinners

Lawyers

AmLaw 100 and 200

mid-sized firms

Solo practitioners

Business

Fortune 50 & 500

mid-market

Small business

People who refer people

church/temple members

therapists

Sports

PTA/rotary/clubs

Networks (legal; women; business; professional)

Who is your market?

What does your market read and hear and watch?

“ virtual water cooler” in 140 characters or less

People hire and recommend those whose names they recognize and trust as experts

i.e., @Labor_Lawyer posts news and views on employment law & is followed by HR people at Fortune 500 companies

@ipstrategist followed and was followed by Business Week & published short piece in online Business Week as result of twitter

Drive traffic to blog

Publicize news

Create personal relationships with people in market

Where to find lawyers on twitter http://lextweet.com

Real time Search & Managing Your Twitter “Channels”

Connecting for Job Help by Barbara Rose

Gwynne Monahan is not a lawyer, but she knows what it’s like to lose a job. So the Twitter thread she spotted in May about lawyer layoffs caught her attention. “Wondering why laid-off attorneys don’t band together and start a new law firm,” a lawyer tweeted.

Attorney Victoria Pynchon asked if someone would use Ning, the social networking platform, to start a site where lawyers could help one another weather the downturn. Monahan jumped on the idea because she wanted to learn Ning. Ten minutes later, she tweeted, “@ vpynchon asked if anyone wanted to create a Ning site, and so I did, and here it is: Lawyer Connection.”

What about boundaries? Victoria Pynchon ADR Services (c) 2009 As Anne LaMotte says in Bird by Bird , we each have our own emotional acre and we can do anything we want on it. We can also include and exclude anyone we want. If you are a private person, draw a clear boundary between your private life and your online life. You have a multiplicity of selves and you do not need to bring all of them online. The ones you DO bring online, however, must be AUTHENTIC.