January 30th, 2009

Twitter: A Review

The other day I trashed Twitter a bit (Twitter and The Age of Information Overload) because I already have so many sources for information and didn’t really see why I needed another one, and didn’t see how it was much of an improvement over existing technology. I wrote from the standpoint of someone who had not yet joined.

Well, now I have joined. My Thursday trial was adjourned, so I opened a Twitter account (@Turkewitz), downloaded Tweetdeck, and started noodling to see if my opinion would change. After two days I now consider myself expert enough to write on the subject.

There are two fundamental issues with Twitter that exist for any social networking site: Technology and Community.

Technology
I am certainly not impressed with Twitter technology and stand by the point I made the other day about listservs or other electronic forums being superior. And when I write about technology I don’t mean the geek end; I mean the user end.

I first joined the online world with Prodigy back in ’92 and have used one forum or another for online discussion since then. Twitter may be different than other current platforms, but is it better? The answer is clearly no.

Any good forum should have these critical components to allow for posting links and engaging in discussion:

Multiple discussion boards so that those that want to talk baseball aren’t in the same forum as those that want to talk knitting;
The option to follow a discussion either in threaded fashion or chronologically, or simply to collapse the thread into the heading; and
The option to ignore certain users because they want to talk about Mac and Cheese instead of the forum subject.

Twitter doesn’t really do this well. It’s a type of scattershot approach to social networking, but the discussion is strewn so far and it would be tough to follow any kind of conversation that might actually break out. And if you actually wanted to make a decent point in reply to an article or blog post, you would still be limited to 140 characters. (Though that might be a blessing in disguise for many.)

One of the best discussion forums I’ve seen is the one created by The Motley Fool financial site. If you look at this board for Apple, for example, you can see a neat, clean user interface. You can ignore people and threads with the click of a button. These boards have existed since the mid-90s.

A good law forum should work the same way, with the ease of dropping in links and creating bios and arguing with one another, because that’s what so many like to do. If you want to get rid of the Mac and Cheese Poster or the chucklehead only concerned with self-promotion, then poof — they’re gone.

The Motley Fool boards blow the doors off anything Twitter has to offer.

Community
Great technology is useless without users. And even crappy technology is good if you have good users.

Twitter has succeeded in attracting the legal community, in lightening speed. How fast? An article by law technology guru Robert Ambrogi on August 8, 2008 in Law Technology News reviews various social networking sites for lawyers. Twitter isn’t even mentioned.

And then there is an article in the January 2009 Trial Magazine (sub. only) about social networking for lawyers. It discusses Facebook and Linkedin and a couple others. But still no Twitter. Assuming the article was submitted a couple of months back, it gives you an idea as to how fast Twitter has taken off in the legal world.

So Twitter appears to be succeeding in the community development end. And that means it can be a valuable tool if you value finding articles and cases that may get swapped here and there, though they may be of limited use if (like me) you have a narrow geographic focus and practice area. I’ll get far more value out of a forum with 25 local personal injury attorneys than I will out of a forum of 2,500 attorneys in different fields spread out over the nation. But I’m not everyone and your mileage may vary.

So Twitter is succeeding, and can be a decent tool for some things. I will continue to noodle with it and use it to see how it goes. Not because the technology is good, but because that is where people are congregating. Yes, I know, that is simply a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But I don’t see it as a keeper. Twitter is not the future of the legal blogosphere. My next piece will be on what I think the future holds.

Links to this post:

twitter for law firm marketing
i ran across an interesting post from eric turkewitz, a new york personal injury attorney who offers up his wisdom on his blog – the new york personal injury law blog. his post, titled twitter: a review was a lucid overview of a social …

posted by admin @ February 10, 2009 5:04 PM

quickies and white lies
no, this post isn’t about guys who break-up with you just before valentine’s day. it contains a few follow-ups and forecasts about sex offender laws, schenectady’s felonious ex-police chief, the future of the legal blogiverse, …

posted by David Giacalone @ February 03, 2009 10:37 AM

January 30th, 2009

The People’s Court Wants Me

Ever wonder where shows like The People’s Court find their subjects? Well, the answer is here: They troll through small claims court looking for filings. (OK, you can learn that at Wikipedia, but stay with me on this one.)

I brought suit a few weeks ago in small claims court, only the 2nd time I’ve needed to do that in 20 years of solo practice. I paid an expert money for a review, and he never did the review. He didn’t say yes to my case, he didn’t say no, he simply put the retainer in his pocket, the records some where else, and then ignored me when I called to find out what was going on.

So I finally got his attention with a suit. (If I have to do this only once very 10 years, then I’ll count myself lucky.)

Enter, stage right in today’s mail, a letter from The People’s Court asking if the two sides would like to have Judge Marilyn Milian arbitrate our case. Lawyer v. Expert.

What do we get if we agree?

1. If I win then they guarantee payment, meaning I wouldn’t have to go through any collection proceedings to satisfy a judgment.

2. If I lose, they still pay me $250 for my time.

3. No waiting time in real court, as they set up a real date and time; and

4. Travel expenses.

What they don’t guarantee is that anyone appearing on such a show will be free of gratuitous humiliation that any judge wishes to dish out. Now I don’t know if that is the style of the show as I haven’t seen it, but if a show isn’t entertaining then the ratings go kaflooie and it drops off the air. And, frankly, I don’t feel like being anyone’s entertainment unless they are under the age of 10 and share my last name.

Why would any rationale person subject themselves to a TV court? It’s not something I can figure out.

Thanks, but I’ll pass. And besides, if it isn’t with Judge Wapner it doesn’t count.

January 30th, 2009

Linkworthy

“Hayman & Kirshenbaum are the sort who make personal injury lawyers seem no better than common crooks and scoundrels.” Why did Mister Thorne write that? (And how fast did that law firm just kill its Google reputation by its conduct?) Update: Mister Thorne finds more in Part II)

Defense counsel conducts interviews of plaintiff’s treating physicians without permission, and a defense verdict results. Matt Lerner at New York Civil Practice tells you why the verdict was then tossed out by an appellate court;

Blawg Review #196 comes up from Down Under (for the 4th time) on Australia Day;

TortsProf has this week’s Personal Injury Law Round-Up;

When robbing banks, be careful about which paper you write showmethemoney (NY Mag, Intel);

Scott Greenfield sees changing comment policies at BigBlawgs (Above the Law, Balkanization, Concurring Opinions, Volokh, SecularRight), sees a drop in comments at his blog, sees migration to Twitter for some commenters, and wraps it all together in The Lifecycle of Comments. My comment policy remains as it has been for a long time: moderated. While it means less immediacy in seeing comments, it also keeps out the spammers and nuts.

And it was 25 years ago on Super Bowl Sunday that the single greatest ad ever created ran during the game. It was the one and only time 1984 ran on national television. But it lives on in YouTube.

Links to this post:

standing up for your legal rights
unless they’re your copyrights, in which case chicago’s personal injury firm of hayman & kirshenbaum doesn’t seem to be quite so particular (via turkewitz). more: mister thorne reports that h&k has now removed the cited material, …

posted by Walter Olson @ February 04, 2009 12:06 AM

January 29th, 2009

NY Attorney Ordered Jailed/Fined For Failing To Release File (Updated)

Wow. You just don’t see this everyday. Attorney Kenneth Heller was representing someone who wanted to change lawyers. OK, that happens with some frequency.

But then he ignored successive court orders to release the file to incoming counsel, and Justice Howard Silver in the Bronx finally got disgusted and ordered him jailed for 30 days and fined $10,000 back in 2007.

Today, the First Department Affirmed that decision. Here it is:

Orders, Supreme Court, Bronx County (Howard R. Silver, J.), entered on or about January 26, 2007, March 9, 2007 and April 26, 2007, which, inter alia, held appellant, plaintiff’s former attorney, in contempt for failing to turn over his file to plaintiff’s successor attorney, authorized the seizure of the subject file, and sentenced appellant to 30 days in prison and a $10,000 fine, unanimously affirmed, with costs.

The finding of contempt and subsequent punishment and seizure order were warranted by appellant’s disobedience of successive court orders unequivocally directing him to turn over his file to plaintiff’s new attorney and the resulting prejudice to plaintiff’s right to a new trial in this action for maritime wrongful death (10 AD3d 46 [2004]; Judiciary Law 753[A][1]; see Matter of McCain v Dinkins, 84 NY2d 216, 226 [1994]). We note that motions by appellant asserting a retaining lien and seeking payment of his fee and disbursements prior to his turning over the file were denied in orders that were not challenged in a timely and proper manner and constitute law of the case. We have considered and rejected appellant’s other arguments.

Wowsa.

Update: Is this the same Kenneth Heller that was disbarred in 2004? How was he practicing law in 2007 if he was disbarred in 2004? The court wrote back then that, in addition to the charges before it, he had the following aggravating circumstances:

…respondent’s 24-year history of sanctions, which includes a 1999 private admonition from the Committee, sanctions by courts on five occasions since 1984, and sharp criticism by courts on at least six other occasions since 1980; respondent’s conduct during this disciplinary proceeding in ignoring evidentiary rulings, submitting evidence that had been ruled inadmissible by the Hearing Panel, and lacking candor in his testimony before the Referee; his persistent rationalizations in denial of his misconduct; and the lack of remorse or acknowledgment by respondent that his conduct was harmful and inappropriate.

A search of New York’s directory of attorneys only finds one Kenneth Heller, and it indicates he was disbarred.

See:

Attorney Disbarred for History of ‘Reprehensible’ Conduct (6/29/04, NYLJ);

A 75-year-old attorney has been disbarred for what an appeals court described as a history of “reprehensible, unprofessional behavior” that included threatening judges, defying court orders and disrupting the legal process.
New York’s Most Obnoxious Lawyer (4/10/07, Village Voice)

With so many jerks working as attorneys in New York City, you’d think there would be no way to determine who’s the single biggest pain in the ass. You could be wrong. The winner (or loser) is arguably Kenneth Heller.

Links to this post:

lawyer, jailed for holding client files, was disbarred anyway
the world’s worst bank robber, seen here yesterday, has a comrade in kenneth heller. heller was a local attorney whose client didn’t like the representation heller was giving her in a long-running case and switched lawyers. …

posted by @ January 29, 2009 4:58 PM

January 27th, 2009

Blawg Review of the Year Nominations – 4 Days Left

While the 2008 web awards in so many categories are now history, there is one left: 2008 Blawg Review of the Year. A full list of the reviews from last year is available at that link, with a snippet of information on each to jog the memory.

For those who love Blawg Review, that weekly round-up of the week’s legal blogging, there are only 4 days left to nominate a review for best of the year for 2008. Nominations will be accepted until 11:59 PM on January 31st.

Who can nominate? According to the anonymous editor of the review, who is closely keeping tabs on the ballots:

Every blog that has ever hosted Blawg Review, or is scheduled to host an upcoming issue of Blawg Review, is entitled to post its nominations of as many of the qualified issues of Blawg Review (other than one’s own) as it wishes to acknowledge for consideration for recognition as Blawg Review of the Year 2008.

I posted my own list of the 11 best reviews of the year, nominating three of them for the award, based on the manner in which stories were told, since framing a story properly is a healthy part of what lawyers do.

So if you’ve done a review or plan to do one, the time is running out to put up your nominations. But wait, there’s more! If you nominate by midnight tonight, the editor will waive the shipping and handling of the nominations, and quite possibly, toss in a pocket fisherman, set of Ginsu knives and salad spinner.