Within minutes, the new owners published their first piece, and a doozy it was. Keeping the Legal Rebels theme, since the folks at Mad Mag found themselves unable to do better than the ABA Journal had already done to itself, came
I swear, I don’t know how these guys come up with this stuff. What an imagination! But there was more, an interview with Rex Gradeless, offering his insights on twitter to lawyers across the nation. According to ABA Journal writer Stephanie Francis Ward, “you were so interesting we went waaaay over 30 minutes.” It offered gems like this:Rex Gradeless has a unique ability to pinpoint useful information for a variety of audiences. That probably explains why the recent St. Louis University School of Law grad has more than 71,000 followers on Twitter, where he’s known as @Rex7.For Gradeless the question now has become what to do next, and the economy is influencing his decision-making. While he’d like to do civil litigation, the jobs are scarce. In August, shortly after taking the Missouri bar exam, Gradeless had a soft offer with a top-20 law firm he wouldn’t name. The position wouldn’t start until January 2010, Gradeless says, and he’d hopefully be doing legal and Web 2.0 work.
“You have a juggernaut of marketing types in law firms who want to control the message, and it’s hard for them to see it’s not going to be possible forever,” Gradeless says. “Hopefully I can educate them and we can start doing some of this other social-networking-type stuff.”
@SFW70 : Can you give examples of social media that actually worked to get lawyers new, paying business?
Okay, so maybe they pushed the envelope a little too far by trying to make us think that the real ABA Journal would seriously use an unemployed law school grad to teach lawyers across America how to get business based on twits. The best one was when she asked Rex Gradeless his opinion on whether there were malpractice risks associated with social media. Can you imagine?
Granted, the old ABA Journal, before it became a satire rag, had its moments, like when it put the FBI: Gotcha website in its Blawg 100. They must have been howling in the offices over that one.
I, for one, will miss the old ABA Journal, but the new one is certainly a lot more fun to read. I can’t wait to see what they will come up with next.
Caveat: Before anyone gets their panties in a twist, this isn’t a knock of Rex Gradeless, who has done an extraordinary job of creating a public profile for himself based on nothing more than collecting followers. Rex isn’t to blame for the demise of the ABA Journal, or capitalizing on noxious fumes that overcame the judgment of its editorial staff.
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The article was sad. They missed the obvious contradiction: Gradeless’ point is that Twitter is great for business. He has no job. Um…Hello?
That’s not to ding Gradeless, either. I think many of us have gone through hard times. Still…It’s bizarre that someone with 75,0000 followers and no job hasn’t gotten it?
I’m reminded of something learned in physics years ago. Perceived effort or being busy is not work. Work is force times distances. If you’re not moving closer to some goal, then what you are doing is not working.
S:
You and crime and federalism are the only blogs I look at with any regularity. Hence the ignorance implicit in the following question: How much of this piece is satire? Did ABA really close down mag.
N
How long must a man’s legs be?