After I had posted an article on the use of Twitter by lawyers, things were said and noted, and I deleted the ‘unhelpful’ article on Friday evening. The intention of this article was to explain why legal tweeting might or might not confer a ‘competitive advantage’ using “Porter’s 5 forces” theory developed at Harvard University, and that was it. Meanwhile, @charonqc published his article yesterday evening, entitled “Postcard from The Staterooms: #Alridgegate edition …. Have you been “Aldridged” and some other b*ll*cks“. This was in response to an article which attracted much attention amongst legal tweeps entitled, “Lawyers enjoying tweet taste of success” which emerged on Friday afternoon. I certainly do not believe that the generic subject of how lawyers, in training or otherwise, engage with Twitter is a “sacred cow“.
Where we do all most definitely converge is our passion for education. In reply to @CharonQC’s question which is clearly not aimed at me, I can say that “I have been Alridged”, and in my case it was an entirely constructive experience. Last Friday, my first ever legal podcast came out, courtesy of @AlexAldridgeUK. I had a very rewarding and intelligent discussion of the many positives that law firms demonstrated in trying to embrace diversity in recruitment, and Kevin Poulter, a solicitor, social media enthusiast and columnist for ‘London Loves Business‘ (twitter account hereand website here), extended the scope of the discussion to include members of society, who are disabled, working in law firms.
I was invited along as the organiser of the BPP Legal Awareness Society (my twitter thread is here), which equally has a passion for enmeshing legal and business education. It just happens that I am disabled. The thread is continuously busy; we discussed the Final Independent Commission on Banking Report this morning which was published at 0615. My article, published at 0640, is here.
As others have given aspects concerning “the Aldridge article” considerable air time on Twitter already, I thought it only appropriate to give some airtime on my carefully arrived at thoughts about diversity, which I am happy to say have been recognised in a positive manner by @SundeepBhatia2. Sundeep is a Law Society Council member, and whom I respect enormously. His excellent podcast (no 193) with @charonqc can indeed be heard here. I would very much like to advance meaningful discussion about this, so a ‘realistic‘ picture emerges without any unhelpful intervention of recruitment consultants who are protecting their clients – their paying law firms.
