There’s far more really bad legal information floating about social media than anyone can address.
It comes in torrents, and the wide-eyed but clueless aren’t in a position to parse the good from the bad. But some twits from my little buddy Adrian Dayton crossed the line.
And from there it gets worse.
Good promotion for the Twitter King? Perhaps, but for a kid who went to law school, this is dangerously bad stuff, no matter how hard he tries to create a niche for himself as the go-to lawyer twit. Much as I like Adrian for his refusal to sit on the couch all day eating Cheetos and instead striking out on his own to make something of his life, even if it is complete nonsense and he’s had to stretch the truth a bit at every turn, there is a line that cannot be crossed. Adrian crossed it.
Like it or not, Adrian is a member of the New York bar, admitted to practice law regardless of his choice to become a twitter expert rather than a lawyer. That’s fine, and perhaps even better than the majority of people with no cognizable skillset who have chosen to call themselves legal marketers. Indeed, this could explain why Adrian, with a few months of doc review under his belt, is so admired in the legal marketing world.
But being a lawyer carries certain responsibilities, even if you’re a god to the intellectually infirm. It means that you can’t do something that makes people stupider about the law than they were before, no matter how well it promotes an agenda. Adrian’s twits, sadly, do exactly that.
At the moment, Adrian has a little more than 41,000 twitter followers. While Bradley Shear attributes this to social media credential fraud, that’s another issue. But no lawyer is entitled to push an agenda that puts whatever portion of those followers are actual people at risk. Not even Adrian, and not even the sort of people who would follow him.
Shouting out to your tweeps is not a viable means of finding a lawyer. Sure, you will no doubt find lawyers. Plenty of them. Tons perhaps, because there are plenty of lawyers shilling themselves on twitter. Like this guy.
On the other hand, asking 41,000 of your dearest friends for a recommendation, because you know them so well and deeply trust their judgment when it comes to life or death decisions, is entirely different, right?
This is complete and total idiocy. You do not find a lawyer by closing your eyes as tight as you can the pointing at a name in the phone book. You do not find a lawyer by throwing a dart at a list of lawyers. You do not find a lawyer by asking the internet if anybody (and it could be anybody, since nobody knows that you’re a dog on the internet) knows a lawyer in San Diego.
And you especially don’t do this if you happen to have a license to practice law.
It’s one thing for non-lawyers to indulge in the myths and misconceptions that abound when it comes to the law. They aren’t expected to know better. But that excuse doesn’t fly when it’s a lawyer promoting ignorance. There’s no comfort to be found in the ordinary excuses, that other people do it, logical fallacies or pecuniary motive. Even when one hitches his wagon to something as vacuous as being a twitter expert, a lawyer is still obliged to honor his oath and comport himself in accordance with the code of professional responsibility.
There is no specific ethical consideration that demands the lawyers not do something stupid. If there was, we would certainly have no excess of lawyers running around. But there’s a limit to acceptable stupidity, and that limit is exceeded by the affirmative promotion of something that any lawyer should know to be fundamentally dangerous to the public.
Adrian, you went over the line.
And before any of Adrian’s fan club or the marketing cheerleaders rush to Adrian’s defense, know that I have taken a benign position toward Adrian’s career choice. If some firm of lawyers thinks it’s in their best interest to pay Adrian to teach them how to twit, that’s their choice. I’m a capitalist, and have no problem with Adrian trying to make a living off the backs of the lazy and foolish. Indeed, there’s a certain zen to the whole idea.
But there’s a line that lawyers cannot exceed, even if they’re barely lawyers and make a living off twitter. When that line is crossed, there’s a problem that cannot be ignored. No lawyer is entitled to cross the line of acceptable stupid. Not even on twitter.
Update: Soon after posting, I received this twit from Adrian :
If this is true, then Adrian’s attempt to promote twitter as the source of his referral is untrue, adding yet another wrong to the mix. And if this twit is an attempt to weasal out of the hole, which seems likely as Adrian hasn’t been around long enough to know a lawyer in San Diego for a couple of years, then it’s still false. Either way, the twit promoting twitter is wrong, and the only way to stop digging the hole deeper is to undo the wrong, not compound it.@ScottGreenfield I received a referral from an attorney I’ve known for a couple years in San Diego. I guess I should have asked you.
For kicks, by the way, here is my response to Adrian’s twit :
@adriandayton No, you should have acted like a lawyer instead of a twitter promoter. What you did was wrong.
We’re lawyers, Adrian. Lawyers.
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Wait, a lawyer should not reach out to 40,000 people, many of whom you don’t personally know, and then make a blind referral essentially in order to promote your own business…? Are you telling me that lawyers should actually make referrals based on trying to ensure that a potential client gets access to a competent, skillful attorney, who the referring attorney has vetted and can vouch for?
How the heck am I supposed to build a business based on social media if that’s the case?!?! This dude on Twitter, and he says he’s the best criminal defense lawyer ever! That’s all I need to know before I send stuff his way!
On a serious note, I think the law should allow recovery for a negligent referral — especially when the referring attorney receives a referral fee. When you make a referral, you’re using your credibility to persuade a client to retain a lawyer. As such, the client is relying on your judgment when they retain someone based on your recommendation — that same logic is applied to any malpractice suit. If you give a client bad legal advice, they rely on it, and it hits the fan, you’re on the hook…
On a personal note, I once made a bad referral. I had met a lawyer and we did lunch where they told me about their practice. However, I didn’t actually know the lawyer very well, though s/he seemed competent. I referred a client to this lawyer because the client had a matter way outside my area which this lawyer apparently handled. Before making the referral, I called their former boss (a very well respected attorney) who vouched for the lawyer. However, the representation ultimately went south, costing my client money. Bad communication, fee dispute, wouldn’t return calls, etc., and several other hallmarks of bad practice management. Guess who took the heat for it from the client? Me! I lost a lot of credibility with this client, and the only thing that made it right was when I referred the client to competent counsel — a trusted colleague someone at my firm knew very well — who did a great job and achieved the desired result. I have to admit, at first the client was hesitant to take my advice for a second time. Many apologies were made. After that incident, I began to appreciate how serious referrals are… assuming you care about the interests of your client and your credibility.
In any case, I hate to be so agreeable, because it makes for boring discussion. I suppose Adrian may have vetted the referral first, or the referral might have come from someone who he knows well and trusts, which wouldn’t be SO bad. There are a lot of ways to conduct your due diligence on referrals.
Now, if he didn’t vet the referral, given how little he actually practiced, you wonder if he just didn’t think about it… which then leads you to wonder why he’s allegedly in a position to give experienced lawyers advice.
Here is some free advice: it will behoove your clients to vet your referrals. 😉
Yeah, can you imagine actually having a clue who you refer to? What a concept!!!
I take referrals very seriously. When I don’t have a lawyer in whose hands I would trust my affairs, I won’t refer anyone else.
It’s “tweet” not “twit”. Unless you were trying to be punny.
You’re new around these parts.
Scott,
There are a lot of other ways this PR lawyer could have looked for an attorney in San Diego:
phone book
internet search
bar association (which was closed at the time)
Matrindale-Hubbel list
Instead he reached out to me, I reached out to my network on Twitter and to a lawyer I met a couple years ago on Twitter (that has over a decade of experience practicing in Southern California), and a referral was made.
I am confident that my friend in PR that is a practicing trial lawyer was able to properly vet the referrals given to him by my friend that is also a lawyer in California.
If not, he could have just as easily used:
phone book
internet search
bar association (which was closed at the time)
or
Matrindale-Hubbel list
I met both of these lawyers on Twitter, so I stand by my conviction that Twitter is in fact an extremely useful tool for connecting people.
Hey little buddy,
Your reaction saddens me, on a number of levels. First, that you just won’t straighten out the mess you’ve created by suggesting that someone can twit for a lawyer and, bang, that’s how lawyers are found. But the deeper and uglier part is that you really don’t understand how referrals are made.
I can help you. In fact, it’s something of a duty that you not further add to the misinformation that has become so prevalent among twitterers. The means by which you think lawyers are found, as per your list, are garbage, means of absolute last resort for someone who has no knowledge of law or lawyers. It’s like screaming, “I’m a blithering idiot and don’t have the slightest clue how to find a lawyer.”
Worse yet, it’s sending people someone you don’t know. That’s not a referral. That’s a lie.
The way lawyers do it is to find someone they actually know and trust, IRL, in the area in which they are looking for a lawyer, and find out from this person you actually know and trust, IRL, who he actually knows and trusts, IRL, to be appropriate for the job.
Someone has a decade of experience? So he’s a moron for 10 years? Not good. You met him on twitter? You don’t know him at all. Not in the slightest. You didn’t refer anybody; you just gave a name for which you had absolutely no clue about competency or appropriateness.
Now that you know how to do it, that need never happen again, and you need no longer contribute to stupidity on twitter. You’re a lawyer, Adrian. Act like it. Much as I like you, I will not tolerate your pumping twitter at the expense of real people and reality.
The bar association is an excellent choice. Presuming, of course, that there are no nearby hobos to ask first.
Don’t insult hobos. They’ve been nothing but kind to you.