Twitter

My little birds,

I greatly enjoyed playing with my kids' budding sense of reality when they were little by telling them that I knew who broke the lamp, who spilled the milk, who was watching TV, and who was teasing the sitter because "a little bird told me." It took them well into their twenties before they figured out that I didn't really have a talking bird, but simply had developed powers of observation well beyond their ability to hide things from me.

Effective law firm leaders also develop less crafty, but equally effective, means of keeping a finger on the pulse of partners, associates, and staff. One way to do this is to spend a significant portion of each day walking the halls, sharing meals, and checking in with a cross section of the firm. Obviously, the larger the firm, the more difficult it becomes to stay in touch and also maintain a practice, but conversely, the larger the firm, the more important it is! So what to do, what to do...

One new tool that has intrigued me lately is Twitter. Twitter describes itself as "a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?" I signed up yesterday and will start posting an answer periodically, just to see how it works. I don't yet know anybody else who uses Twitter but I gather that lots of celebs are using it to keep their fans informed. I don't know that it will be particularly effective in law firms, and may well be counterproductive. In a sense, the only answer the firm leaders really want to see, I suspect, is "I'm billing time."

Tweet.

Cynthia