Every once in a while, a variety of admonitions, seemingly unrelated, come together in one place to make a very good point.  It happened yesterday.  In the morning, I received an email from the Turk informing me that I was quoted in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  Odd, I thought to myself.  I didn’t speak with anyone from Cleveland lately.  Was it on Miranda, Heller, police misconduct? 

Nope.  Of all the subjects in the world, it was on twitter.  It seems that somebody picked up on a post I wrote a few weeks earlier about how lawyers in the blawgosphere have embraced twitter.

“I now twit,” criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield wrote recently. “I do it because many of my friends in the blawgosphere spend more time twitting than blogging. They comment about blog posts on Twitter, and if you don’t read Twitter, then you won’t see their comments. In the process, Twitter has become incredibly mainstream for lawyers.”

Greenfield went on to bemoan what he said was a reduction in thoughtful conversation as Twitter siphoned off users from law blogs.

Inexplicably, Debra Cassens Weiss at the ABA Journal picked up on this critical story and wrote one of their own yesterday, entitled Twitter Becoming ‘Incredibly Mainstream for Lawyers.’

Law blogger Robert Ambrogi calls Twitter a “virtual watercooler,” a place where professionals can talk and exchange ideas. Another legal blogger, Scott Greenfield, wrote on his blog that he has to read Twitter because all his blogging friends use it to comment. “Twitter has become incredibly mainstream for lawyers,” he writes.

While the Cleveland Plain Dealer story included the same quote as the ABA Journal, it was done in context, though perhaps the context was less helpful for the readers of a dead tree paper than for the blawgosphere.  The ABA Journal, on the other hand, repeated the quote with only paraphrased context. 

Later, a couple of twits come across the screen from @BruceCarton and @DougCornelius :

@scottgreenfield in ABA Journal saying “Twitter has become incredibly mainstream for lawyers.” Really? I bet less than 1% of lawyers use.

@brucecarton @scottgreenfield An increased use of Twitter by lawyers, but not mainstream. Way less than 1% (there are lots of lawyers)

The point had come full circle.  Perfect.  Moreover, it ties in with my longstanding admonition to young lawyers who think that there is nothing cooler than getting their name in the paper or the mug on TV.  So many lessons from just one silly post of mine.  It doesn’t get much better than this.

Obviously, my original post was about lawyers in the blawgosphere, which is hardly the same as lawyers in general.  Had I known that some yahoo from Cleveland would pick it up, I probably would have been more explicit on the point, but then I’m writing in the blawgosphere about the blawgosphere, and that degree of detail would have been redundant. 

One would have thought the point to be better understood by the ABA Journal, but that would have taken all the zing out of their story, which took it to yet a different place.  Lesson: When you write or say something, expect it to be used by others to serve their purposes.  Remember, lawyers are just the lunch meat of the media.  They are happy to use our quotes, but only because it serves their ends.  

Ironically, my point about discussion moving from blawg comments to twitter, the subject of another post, was proven by Doug’s and Bruce’s twits. Their point, that twitter barely touches lawyers in the general population, is obviously true and a proper commentary on the ABA Journal’s insinuation.  It had nothing to do with my point, of course, since I was talking about lawyers in the blawgosphere, but having assumed that the quote in the ABA Journal accurately reflected my quote, and having not read the post from which the original quote was taken, it’s understandable.

But this shows how lawyers need to be careful what they wish for, because they just might get it.  I had no idea someone from Cleveland had lifted a quote from my blawg post.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but usually reporters call me up to ask me questions about it rather than just pull a quote.  So I had no clue that it happened.  Similarly, Weiss at the ABA Journal never called either, but lifted the story third hand.  Then Bruce and Doug took the ABA story, certainly a credible source, and pointed out the fallacy that twitter was mainstream for lawyers everywhere. 

Now had this been on a subject that mattered, it could have been a potential problem.  After all, it’s ludicrous to suggest that twitter is mainstream for lawyers in general, while it’s perfectly accurate to say that it’s mainstream for lawyers in the blawgosphere.  Heck, even Turk, who just posted about what a worthless distraction twitter is, gave up and signed on. You can follow him @Turkewitz, as he could use a few more followers just to save him from abject embarrassment.

And, of course, the confusion would have been avoided had Bruce and Doug not twitted their comments to the ABA Journal story but commented here to the original post, where I would have cleared up the extension of the quote from lawyers in the blawgosphere to lawyers in general.  But they twitted the comments instead,  And that was the point. 

Of the gazillion lawyers out there, only a smattering have a meaningful presence in the blawgosphere.  Sure, many now wish they had jumped on board, and others still have tried only to get smacked in the head when they realize that it’s not as simple as the marketers would tell them.  Is it 1% or 5?  Who knows, but it’s clearly still a tiny fraction of lawyers.  Of those who toil in the blawgosphere, however, twitter has most assuredly became mainstream, and with it has come a number of issues, not the least of which is the movement of comments off the blawgs and into the twittersphere.

So for all those young bucks who would be so thrilled to see themselves in a paper in Cleveland, or better yet in the ABA Journal, consider this apocryphal tale of how public information moves about, and gets a little more twisted in each reincarnation.  The big ego boost you desire can lead to post-coital depression when you feel like you got screwed.

I rest my case.