It was only a matter of time before someone would add two and two and come up with 37. It’s part of the devolutionary process, striving to reach the lowest common denominator because the voices inside your head tell you it’s the way to go. And so came the title of this post by Rachel Humphrey Fleet, a Seattle lawyer who attended Avvocating, Advanced Online Marketing Training for Lawyers. The title is Tweeting the Judge: How Legal Writing is Like Social Media.
Fleet paid attention to what was said, a reminder of how dangerous a little information can be:
The rest of Fleet’s post offers some decent thoughts, neither particularly controversial nor novel, about brief writing. What’s interesting is that she’s conflated separate concepts to place herself clearly on the slippery slope. From there, it’s all downhill.
There’s no mystery as to how this happened. The same characteristics that make one persuasive in a brief, or before a jury for that matter, work in social media as well. But that doesn’t mean that social media and legal writing are, or should be, the same, or that twitting your argument home will win the day.
Now that someone has attempted to breach the gap between legal writing and social media, let me say this as clearly as humanly possible. They are not the same. They should not be the same. If you think they are the same, or try to treat them the same, your client will pay dearly for your insouciance. Judges don’t want to twit with you, and won’t take kindly to your attempt to twit to them via your brief.
To clear up any confusion that may linger, the underlying ideas that Fleet promotes, authenticity and engagement, are crucial to all communication, regardless of whether it’s technology’s flavor of the day or legal argument. We’ve often discussed that attempts to adopt the personas that work for others, but which just don’t fit us, invariably fail. We need to be ourselves, to find the methods that work for us, and then use them to the best of our abilities. This isn’t anything new.
But the mere fact that these characteristics apply across the board has nothing whatsoever to do with confusing social media with appellate briefing, or any other aspect of lawyering. Let’s put an end to this nonsense immediately, before the Slackoisie get all excited and start requesting that they be allowed to submit their motions via Facebook.
So be authentic. Engage in a conversation. And never, but never, confuse twitting with your legal briefs.
H/T Venkat
Fleet paid attention to what was said, a reminder of how dangerous a little information can be:
In plain language, this means to “be yourself” and have a conversation. She went to a conference to learn this. She then had an epiphany: “it struck me: I do these things when I write a brief.”I signed up because I find marketing mysterious enough, but when you throw in terms like Search Engine Optimization, Core Web Presence, Organic Search, and Click-Through Rate, I want to crawl back into bed. Two overarching threads of advice emerged at the conference:
1. Be authentic.
2. Engage in a conversation.
This made me feel better. I can do these things.
The rest of Fleet’s post offers some decent thoughts, neither particularly controversial nor novel, about brief writing. What’s interesting is that she’s conflated separate concepts to place herself clearly on the slippery slope. From there, it’s all downhill.
There’s no mystery as to how this happened. The same characteristics that make one persuasive in a brief, or before a jury for that matter, work in social media as well. But that doesn’t mean that social media and legal writing are, or should be, the same, or that twitting your argument home will win the day.
Now that someone has attempted to breach the gap between legal writing and social media, let me say this as clearly as humanly possible. They are not the same. They should not be the same. If you think they are the same, or try to treat them the same, your client will pay dearly for your insouciance. Judges don’t want to twit with you, and won’t take kindly to your attempt to twit to them via your brief.
To clear up any confusion that may linger, the underlying ideas that Fleet promotes, authenticity and engagement, are crucial to all communication, regardless of whether it’s technology’s flavor of the day or legal argument. We’ve often discussed that attempts to adopt the personas that work for others, but which just don’t fit us, invariably fail. We need to be ourselves, to find the methods that work for us, and then use them to the best of our abilities. This isn’t anything new.
But the mere fact that these characteristics apply across the board has nothing whatsoever to do with confusing social media with appellate briefing, or any other aspect of lawyering. Let’s put an end to this nonsense immediately, before the Slackoisie get all excited and start requesting that they be allowed to submit their motions via Facebook.
So be authentic. Engage in a conversation. And never, but never, confuse twitting with your legal briefs.
H/T Venkat
I can think of more than one judge who might like to see me limit my briefs to 140 characters!
Scott,
Just a note from the slippery slope to assure you that I have, in fact, not confused tweeting with legal briefing.
My post title, “Tweeting the Judge,” was a little flight of fancy, but it should be obvious from reading the post that I am not advocating bringing the form or casual tone of social media into formal legal writing, nor any other blending of the two.
It may be obvious to *you* that using your authentic voice and engaging the reader is important to good briefing. However, judging by the clunky, wandering, stiff briefs I see other attorneys filing every day, either that knowledge is far from universal, or lawyers need reminding.
Many of them are young lawyers to whom social media and its mode of communication are second-nature, but who try to channel Abe Lincoln when they write a brief. They need to be told it’s good to write naturally. I know I didn’t learn that in law school.
Thanks for the warm welcome to blogging!
Rachel Humphrey Fleet
Bad brief writing is nothing new, either to lawyers in general or the blawgosphere in particular. But the same lack of sound judgment that makes young lawyers write poorly, (though not at all like Abe Lincoln, who was both authentic and engaging, not to mention remarkably concise, will lead them to misapprehend your post. It was not a model of clarity.
You explain yourself better in your comment here than you did in your post, where you never said that writing formal legal briefs is nothing like the form or casual tone of social media. Perhaps the lesson is to try less to be cute and more to be clear.
I would have hoped that someone at the Avvocating Conference, where you learned all about being authentic, would have explained that engaging in a conversation is a two way street. Sometimes another party to the conversation will not be in complete agreement with you. If no one mentioned that, you should ask for your money back. And a warm welcome to blogging.
This was the point of my post about the cruel discpline of twitter, the elimination of all unnecessary words. After I write a brief, I go back through it and cut out every word that doesn’t have a specific and good reason for being there. You would be amazed at how many wasted words can be eliminated when you tighten it up, and how much better your argument is when all the extraneous language is eliminated.
Thank you for the constructive feedback you’ve just provided on my post, Scott. I’ll keep it in mind.
I welcome civil disagreement, but you didn’t disagree with me in your OP. Rather, you said the points I made about briefwriting were valid but unoriginal. Fair enough. I objected to your statement that I had “conflated” the two and that I had presented them as “the same” (your words), when my post had merely mused on the ways they are “like” each other (my word).
Further, I admit that the sneering and personal tone of your post stung, and being new to law blogging (though not new to personal blogging) I reacted. It’s your “house”, though, and you’re perfectly entitled to whatever tone you choose.
Onward and upward.
–Rachel, who was authentic even before the Avvocating conference.
Whether you keep it in mind or not doesn’t interest me in the slightest. That you harbor the typical narcissists’ delusion that my content or tone is subject to your approval as sufficiently “civil”, coupled with the pathetically pedestrian content of your advice, makes you just another irrelevant inexperienced lawyer trying desperately to get some business so the cost of law school won’t be completely wasted. The blawgosphere is full of Slackoisie like you, with little to contribute and trying not to look foolish.
Now that’s a sneering tone.
SHG: too busy not giving a f*** to give a f***.
That was 44 characters, so feel free to tweet that.
Not the slightest clue what that means.
Yeah, me neither, but like many of the people you comment about, that doesn’t stop me in the slightest!
Whoo. Thanks, I thought it was me and I’d have to get my kids to explain it to me. I hate when that happens.
I hope your children would know to explain it nicely.
I don’t think you do. I think you hope that no one tells the truth so that lawyers who can’t get business through the quality of their representation can get away with their self-promotion and deception without anyone calling them on it. I think you hope others will be nice so you won’t be embarrassed. Rather than hope others will be nice, stop doing things that you are ashamed of and fear will be revealed by some mean lawyer.
That’s what I hope.
Explaining nicely doesn’t mean lying. I’ve been charged with not being nice more often than not, though I don’t I believe I was nasty about anything; someone just got their feelings hurt.
You don’t have to be an ass to tell the truth.
You’re amusing. You seem to enjoy a bit of ranting and raving and have a lot of energy for it.
Fortunately, we also don’t have to meet with anyone’s approval as to whether we’re nice enough to suit their peculiar sensibilities. That would be the sort of way they would behave in their own house, not someone else’s.
Why is it that girls always feel compelled to have the last word? Is it hormonal?
why is it that boys feel the need to throw spitwads to feel powerful? is it testosteronal?
(btw, anger is a feeling)
You can’t see my grinning face, but that was just too easy. You should know better. We’ve been through this before.