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Did Biglaw Get Twitterjacked?

Monday, July 20, 2009 11:17 AM - By Elie Mystal

twitter logo.jpgCan social networking benefit Biglaw firms? On the one hand, any way for firms to directly reach prospective clients and new hires sounds like something that should garner Biglaw interest. On the other hand, sites like Twitter have yet to prove themselves as a business generation tool.

But regardless of whether you think Biglaw firms should be in on the Twitter game or not, certainly firms should be protecting their brand names on Twitter. (Ed. Note: Above the Law is on Twitter. And so are your editors, David Lat, Kashmir Hill, and me). It appears that if Biglaw firms ever join the Twitter age, they’ll have to fight with cyber-squatters to get their names back. Legal Blog Watch reports:

Going through a list of the top 50 law firms, I was quite surprised to see that no less than 95 percent of the names that I thought these top 50 law firms would eventually want to use were unregistered. I suggested in a post on my own blog that day that anyone reading from BigLaw should “take 30 seconds and register your law firm’s name today … Even if you don’t understand what Twitter is, please just trust me and do this. Your law firm will thank you later, I promise!” I listed about 35 no-brainer Twitter usernames that I felt BigLaw needed to immediately lock up (e.g., @dlapiper, @jonesday, @akingump).

Just a few days later, the Biglaw Twitter names were gone. But were they snapped up by law firms?

More after the jump.

All 35 highlighted Twitter usernames were snapped up days after the article was published:

One week later, on Dec. 5, 2008, I checked on these 35 Twitter names again to see if anyone had responded, and was again surprised: Every single one of the 35 law firm names I listed had been registered. Given the 100 percent registration, my fear at the time was that “Twitter-squatters” might have hijacked at least some of those names trying to make a buck down the road. Six months later, a spot check of these 35 names shows that they remain registered but with no signs of life or ownership.

Are there squatters on Biglaw names? I follow Mayer Brown, its feed is updated regularly with Mayer Brown news and notes. But I also didn’t see anything useful during my cursory glances at the other feeds.

Then again, what would be useful from a law firm Twitter feed?

Maybe it is a good thing that many law firms haven’t figured out Twitter yet. It won’t be long before your employer is following you on Twitter. That will be sure to make some people uncomfortable.

Were Prime BigLaw Twitter Usernames ‘Twitterjacked?’ [Legal Blog Watch]
Please Take 30 Seconds Now, Your Law Firm Will Thank You Later [Securities Docket]

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