A few days ago a Tweet caught my eye, one that was proclaiming the death of business cards.
People have been predicting the impending doom/obliteration of business cards since the beginning of the 21st century. Everyone has a smartphone or app or some widget that is supposed to supplant the humble, lowly business card.
I used Twitter’s fancy new polling feature to ask lawyers if they still used business cards. The question was also posed on Facebook. The results?
- 81% of people responding on Twitter said they still use business cards.
- 100% of people responding on Facebook said they still use business cards.
Lawyers overwhelmingly still have and use business cards. Why? Are lawyers unchanging, anti-technology luddites, clinging to the past? Or is there perhaps a reason for continuing to carry around business cards?
Business cards have been around for centuries. Professionals, gentry, merchants, and more have used them to provide information to others and to promote themselves. They were developed because it allowed people to give a bit of themselves to others. Business cards allowed a person to give an impression of themselves long before “personal branding” existed. They are the original “avatars:”
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Long before Second Life avatars, long before Facebook profiles, long before AOL screen names, human beings were flattening their complex corporeality into idealized representations of identity. In 15th-century China, in 17th-century Europe, name cards, visiting cards, and trade cards — the predecessors to today’s 2” x 3.5” business cards — gave people their first chances to construct virtual selves.
Business cards are talismans. They provide some small indication or feeling about a person. Lawyers have been using them for hundreds of years to let people know who they are and what they are about
At the gym and someone asks you about something? Hand them a business card so they can follow up with you later. At a city council meeting hearing about zoning issues and you run into another lawyer? Exchange business cards. A friend knows someone who is having a legal problem and can they put them in touch with you? You give them a business card.
Business cards might only be a small bit of cardstock, but they say: “I exist.” “I have an office, a telephone number, an email address, a website.” They communicate a bit of real world permanence that saying “look me up online” or “let’s connect on LinkedIn” does not.
It’s true that the longer you are a lawyer, the less likely you are to need business cards. You won’t need to pass them out to people in order develop business or let others know who you are. With time, your experience and reputation will extend in front of you and people will refer business to you on their own. But even then, a business card is a simple way to connect with another person. It means, you want to develop a relationship in a way that no amount of technology has replaced — yet.
Will business cards last forever? Unlikely. At some point in the future, more and more of what we used to physically carry will be consumed by smartphones — credit cards, identity cards, and more will eventually vanish. All to be replaced by apps and software. When the majority of people stop carrying wallets, I imagine people will stop carrying business cards as well.
Yet as StartupLJackson noted:
Until that day, keep carrying those business cards.
Keith Lee practices law at Hamer Law Group, LLC in Birmingham, Alabama. He writes about professional development, the law, the universe, and everything at Associate’s Mind. He is also the author of The Marble and The Sculptor: From Law School To Law Practice (affiliate link), published by the ABA. You can reach him at [email protected] or on Twitter at @associatesmind.