No, this isn’t about the lawyer version of whack-a-mole, as interesting an idea as that may be. It started in earnest* about a year ago, when padawan Keith Lee of Associates Mind and author of The Marble and the Sculptor decided to start a slack room just for lawyers. It was to be a place for lawyers to hang in private and talk cool lawyer stuff.
A year later (I’m guessing on dates, so don’t hold me to it), Keith’s got many hundreds of lawyers hanging around. What this means is sweeping up the joint and herding the feral lawyers has become a job. It was time to make a change.
It’s exploded and grown beyond what I thought possible. I used to think a dedicated “social media for lawyers” was a dumb idea, but that was obviously wrong.
Although I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it “social media for lawyers” because that indicates millions of people with lots of weak connections. We have a community with lots of strong connections. So here is a letter to the community to talk about the future.
It seems that lawyers, like any other marginalized and vulnerable group, feel a need to belong to a club that gives them tummy rubs and validates their feelz. But unlike the most insipid and politically correct groups around, the slack room had some snark, some spark and some personality. It wasn’t just a scold-enforced Cult of Positivity. Lawyers made off-color jokes, used politically-imperfect language and enjoyed the camaraderie of their brethren.
The name was changed from LawyerSlack to LawyerSmack, as the slack platform may not always be around, and tying the group to the platform wasn’t a smart long-term plan. But as Keith said, this wasn’t about slack, but community.
Since running this joint became a job, Keith will be charging for the pleasure.
But for me, it’s work. A labor of love, but still labor.
Knowing what it took to run Fault Lines, I can vouch for that. It’s a full-time job. Membership in LawyerSmack will be $99 per year. It’s limited to 1000 lawyers and, if you piss off Keith, you get thrown off the island.
Is it worth it? Is it a good idea? That depends on two things. First, are you looking for a place to hang out with other lawyers? Second, will LawyerSmack rise to its best use or devolve into a morass of gifs, unwitty one liners and pontificating first-year lawyers?
I spent a few minutes yesterday watching it happen yesterday. It’s not for me. This is a place for younger lawyers, more attuned to the slack format and more in need of validation. If you’re the sort of lawyer who feels as if “the law is grinding your soul,” then you will benefit from having others who share your feelz to commiserate with you.
I don’t, and frankly, I have no use for a support group, particularly comprised of baby lawyers. And, I should add, that some of the lawyers in there are the same lawyers who have a phony social media persona of toughness when they’re the first to whine about their feelings being hurt should someone say the word “girls.”** Phonies, teacups and scolds aren’t the sort of people I prefer to hang around with.
On the other hand, there are some smart, tough, funny young lawyers in there as well. From what I saw, these will be the predominant voices at LawyerSmack, the ones who won’t spend their time whining about their hurt feelings, who are interested in serious thoughts and won’t allow their club to devolve into a lean-in group for the clinically pathetic.
LawyerSmack will end up being what the participants make of it. If they want to be smart and witty, then it will rise above everything else out there and create the first real club for young lawyers who want a place on social media where they can hang with their own while maintaining intellectual integrity and without having to feign political correctness so the other kids will play with them.
I have a lot of faith in Keith. I expect him to keep the place clean and neat, to stop it from turning into a food fight while letting lawyers be themselves without imposing Rule 8.4(g) and shrieking about civility lest the most fragile member be forced to sniffle. If what I saw is indicative of what LawyerSmack will be, it’s got a solid base of good people with some combination of brains and a sense of humor.
If they can keep this, LawyerSmack is worth it. It’s worth a try.
*According to Keith’s State of the Union message. he started the slack room three years ago, because slack was new on the scene and he’s a cutting edge kind of guy. But it languished since no one knew about it. After he put in the effort to spread the word, lawyers came.
**Keith is the guy who created this.
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Because he is officially restricting it to lawyers, it will be obvious to the leftist moles (who are almost certain to be present) that the sensibilities of Rule 8.4(g) are not being properly respected. Said moles will likely maintain the denunciations of unwary lawyers on the site, irrespective of what Keith Lee does or does not do.
That’s going to leave it up to Keith whether he lets it become a Star Chamber of social justice or not. He can tell people to chill, and he can throw them out. But if he let’s the place become home base for politically-correct lawyers, it will be awfully lonely in there.
I haven’t been that much of a Keith fan. Now, I must rethink.
zomg, Lawyer whack-a-mole, judge nude mud-wrestling… That would make the courthouse a fun place and bring in the masses, and then the courts could charge and be self-sufficient.
If you think about judge nude mud-wrestling hard enough, it would sound less appealing.
I don’t know, around here there are a lot of hottie magistrate judges. Magistrate judges do count, don’t they?
I was an early adopter of LawyerSlack. I enjoyed it.
Now that it’s going to a paid “internet Bar association,” and I’m largely working with puppies and kitties, I’m going to have to rethink whether it’s useful for me.
The conversations were great, and the referrals were great, but in the end one has to weigh the usefulness of a product on a cost/benefit analysis. In the end I’m struggling to see the benefit of this for me personally.
Others might disagree. In the end, it may be one less thing that pisses me off. That’s not a bad thing, is it?
This is really the test of concept, whether it’s worth the price. And that’s going to be up to Keith and the community to provide sufficient value to each other to make it sufficiently valuable. When the “real” bar associations become self-congratulatory societies, SJW lean-in groups or anti-professionalism apologists, an alternative is needed. Will LawyerSmack be good enough to fill the void? That’s the question.
“When” they do? I believe that ship has sailed.
Or imagine, just using that same $99 to attend a half dozen local bar association events where you speak with colleagues face to face.
Stop overselling LawyerSmack.
I resolved to ignore it after I saw it had been touted at ABA Journal.
He has no control over the ABA Journal. Still, it puts him in an awkward spot, getting beyond the taint.
Plus increases the likelihood that his site will quickly fill with hysterical leftists who saw the ABA writeup. Assuming they have the $99.
Without naming names, some of that is already the case. The question is whether the SJWs will scold the others to be sensitive to their feelings and only use their approved words and ideas. That’s part of what I’m talking about here.
I can see why some newbie kid lawyer, who is going to have to deal with SJW types forever anyway, might buy into this. I don’t see what it has or offers for longtime practitioners, even if it was free.
This is how young people interact with their peers. Us old guys prefer to actually talk to people in real life, often with a glass in our hand. It’s a brave new world.