5 More Reasons for In-House Counsel to Use Twitter

I attanded a law firm seminar yesterday evening discussing social media for in-house lawyers.  It was an informative and very well-received event, yet  I was amazed to find that save for myself and the presenters, nobody else around the table had ever used Twitter. 

Twitter is so ingrained into my working day, I thought everyone else was using it too, but it appears not, and more evangalising is required by the rest of us! So following on from my previous  5 Reasons for In House Counsel to Use Twitter and 5 Twitter Best Practice Tips for In-House Counsel, here are 5 more reasons for in-house counsel to use Twitter:

1. Community: Twitter is highly effective at creating communities.  There's a growing legal community on there, and we're already starting to see sections of that community specialise, in particular lawyers focussing on technology, IP, IT cloud computing, and, of course, social media are growing and prospering by creating communities within the larger legal circle.

Being an in-house lawyer can be a lonely experience professionally, especially if you're sole in-house counsel in, say, a firm full of engineers or scientists.  So, lets face-it, some daily legal banter wouldn't go amiss.  Twitter allows you to become part of a community very easily, and the more you put into that community, the more you'll get out of it.

2. Easily incorporated into your day: One of the reasons I've heard for lawyers not getting involved in social media or twitter activities is because they can't find the time.  Well, that's no excuse in my book. With Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite , its so simple to have Twitter running unobtrusively on your desktop as you're completing other tasks; and very quickly you'll become accustomed to spotting the avatars or hashtags of your favourite follows as your tweetfeed pops up in the corner of your screen.

3. The Next Generation: Social media is already the communication choice of the next generation.  Your business is going to have to prepare itself to accommodate this sea-change in communication preference, and if you want to communicate with the next generation of lawyers, its a tool you'll have to get to grips with pretty quickly too.

4.140 characters only: Twitter helps you to hone your writing skills. You need to get your point across in 140 characters or less. As an in-house lawyer in commerce and industry, this skill is particularly valuable where you're dealing with individuals not interested in the legal niceties, but who just want to get to the point.

5. Fun: As my good tweeting companion and fellow in-house lawyer @junecasalmir quite rightly points out, tweeting is actually quite good fun, its enjoyable to meet, network with and read tweets from some great people who you wouldn't have the opportunity to meet in the real world.

Have I convinced you yet?

The event I attended yesterday evening was hosted by the wonderful @stevekunkewicz and @paulcarruthers (to whom I thank for the insight into my point 3 above).