Twitter, Fists, Thin-Slicing and the Law

Oct 8th, 2009 | By Loi Laing | Category: Facebook, Featured, Lead Article, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, Web 2.0

Twitter and lawyers. Those two words in the same sentence have recently begun to stir up quite a controversy on and off-line. I really had to pause, pry my fingers from the keyboard and think about where I fit within the spectrum of people who utilize the medium, especially as an attorney. I’ve been reading that approximately 6% of the population of lawyers are on Twitter. I’m not sure what the numbers are for Facebook. If you happen to know, please do share. There are some in the legal profession who have made it very clear (you know that lawyer-type does not equal quiet-type) that certain forms of social media such as Twitter are a complete waste of energy and that it’s not worth the time to engage this powerful (free!) tool that we now have at our disposal. (Maybe those $2000 half-page ads in the phone books are really worth it?)

I respectfully beg to differ. In observing a recent argument discussion among lawyers heavily laden with rhetoric, it made me think of that 6%. Just because the other 94% of us are not on board, does that mean it won’t eventually happen? When I was accepted to law school, I was the recipient of a fellowship whose purpose was to increase the amount of minorities in the Florida Bar because the number barely hovered close to 2%. Should I not have gone to law school because, heck, there’s only 2% minorities in the Florida Bar so let us just not disturb the status quo and leave things the way they are. Yeah, yeah, yeah…you may think it’s a stretch but I do see a comparison. Besides, I can do that since this is my post. (Here is where I stick my tongue out if you disagree.) This is life and life requires change. The legal profession and practice of law are no different.

I’ve met many attorneys (in real life) who within the space of 2 minutes, I could easily tell that they were a you-know-what. It’s funny because I can also do the same thing just by reading a letter I’ve received from opposing counsel. Of course what the words convey is strictly business, but I can tell by the way the letter is written that I’ve just met another you-know-what. Twitter for me is no different. I’ve crossed paths with a few lawyers in this brave new Web 4.0 world and it’s not hard to determine what kind of person the individual is.

In his book “blink”, Malcom Gladwell talks about the concept of “fists”. In Morse Code dots and dashes have a particular length which no one replicates exactly. Similar to speech, everyone has a different voice. In the Second World War British interceptors could listen to the fists of the German soldiers and even though they couldn’t understand what was being said, they knew who was saying it and could establish an entire profile for an individual based on this limited information. Soldiers revealed a “fist” in the smallest bit of Morse Code and back then, you only had to listen to a few characters to know who the individual was.

What’s interesting to me, is that you can get a person’s fist just as easily in the Twitterverse. We may only have 140 characters, but it is enough for me to determine a great deal about someone’s personality. People buy from who they can trust. (What? You didn’t think the law was a business?) Recommendations for attorneys come many times in the form of word-of-mouth which usually goes something like this: “My cousin had this real you-know-what for an attorney and I would never go to him/her, but there’s this other one I’ve heard of and you should definitely give him/her a call.” When we express ourselves using Twitter, it’s not so much for the 94% of lawyers who are not fellow tweeps, as much as it is for the rest of the people (and potential clients) out there in the world.

Gladwell also discusses the concept of “thin-slicing” where our unconscious plays a huge role in our determination about people and relationships. There’s really no need to “get to know” someone over a period of weeks, months, or years if you “thin-slice” them based on small clues that lead to their personality. He states, “What you avoid when you don’t meet someone face-to-face are all the confusing and complicated and ultimately irrelevant pieces of information that can serve to screw up your judgment.” The characters may be few and the conversations may be brief, but not for one millisecond do I discount the nature of the connections that I’ve made as a result of Twitter.

Just as in the “real world”, emphasis is placed not so much on what someone says but on how they say it, which makes all the difference in thin-slicing a person and figuring out exactly what their fist is. As lawyers, people are thin-slicing and seeing our fists on a daily basis. The entire premise of Social Media rests on being, dare I say, social. If your objective as an attorney is to bum rush the Twitterverse in an attempt to “make it rain” like Lil Wayne, you’re missing the proverbial forest for the trees. We are having a conversation and yes, it may eventually lead to clients but it is not a means to an end. What I’ve been observing in thin-slicing my fellow 6 percenters is that we’re a different breed. Many of us had no idea that there were so many other attorneys who think along similar lines and whose approach to practicing law is in line with our own.

Old and moldy Traditional models of thought, especially within the legal profession, do serve their purpose. However, as the world evolves and technology continues to change our lives at a rapid pace, we are going to have to evolve and grow with it as individuals and as a profession. Twitter gives us global reach and as humans (yes, even the lawyers too) we are social beings who have a basic need for companionship and a sense of community. There are many (even in the 6%) who write off social media as a fad or plaything. However, for me it serves a very basic function in that the people who I interact with are constant reminders that the times are changing and I am not alone.