Social Media

What’s The Deal With Legal Twitter Anyway?

Less about how much you love your firm, more workplace drama please and thanks.

By Chris Williams on April 05, 2022 1:14 pm

648080As the social media manager for ATL, please trust that I’ve spent my fair share of time trolling the net for Nyan Cat remixes, watching 30-somethings laugh defiantly in the face of Gods, and using the internet for its intended purpose.  From that wealth of experience, I’ve gleaned a bit of wisdom — the different social media sites have different personalities and uses about them. The once great social haven Mypace that once prepared more youths for a future in coding than the Melinda Gates Foundation now is largely a spot to listen to music. Facebook, once a wild land where Ivy leaguers would post pics of snorting blow without consequence, has morphed into your grandmother’s favorite social media platform. And an international monolith whose collection of data makes Google jealous, but that’s not the point. Instagram is where you go to doom scroll and LinkedIn, much like the show “Cops,” is where you find out “Oh, that’s what happened to that frat bro from that one time.”

But please, for the life of me, can somebody explain the purpose of legal Twitter? Who is the audience? It’s really hard to know who your audience is when your feed is comprised of folks in their mid-40s smashing #s like a toddler eating Chex and a 20-something on their burner account bemoaning how the Cravath raise was functionally an Uber Eats subsidy. Also, please stop with all the hastaggery, they make you look like you’ve stepped fresh out of 2014. #Nobody #Takes #That #Mess #Seriously and it’s about time somebody spoke out against it.

Legal Twitter, whatever it is, is definitely worth keeping around — at least in part because nobody seems to really get its audience. It’s the only way I can rationalize Daniela Jampel pressing enter on this banger of a tweet and not expecting to get dragged.

https://twitter.com/Dani_Knope/status/1511237531345555459?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1511237531345555459%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fabovethelaw.com%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost.php%3Fpost%3D848061action%3Dedit

I will say it is an amazing platform to watch meltdowns of the rule of law in real time:

Even the government recognizes its utility when it comes to keeping tabs on rights:

https://twitter.com/PasturesPolitic/status/1511329573270478848

It is also a great litmus check to see what the threshold for pissing people off over time is:

But the real reason I think we all use Twitter is because occasionally you get a nice little moment where a barred attorney shares a little thinky thought:

This is what we need to get back to. Not lay lawyers talking about how hard Facebook violates the Constitution by blocking them for hate speech or ignoring the actual content of posts because it prevents you from lusting over proper punctuation:

 

Then we can get to what Twitter was meant for — dragging people with really hard “this you?” moments:

All you JDs out there — turn your Twitter fingers into trigger fingers. Expose that judge for ruling on matters they know damn well they should recuse themselves from. Be bold and post burner content on main. I’m begging you. Something has to drown out Elon Musk buying ~10% of the damned thing from my feed.

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.