The Twitter exodus is upon us. Lawyers are making earnest and self-aggrandising proclamations that they are off. Firms are quietly sending their accounts to sleep. Followers counts are plummeting, making logging on to Twitter feel like being a contestant on Take Me Out who announces they collect stamps and watching a flurry of lights turn out.
Does any of this matter? Not a great deal in the grand scheme of things. But each of us who is on Twitter (which we never call X) is probably having our own internal conversation about whether we should come off, where on earth we should go, and – nuclear option here – whether we might just be better off leaving social media altogether.
For firms, it has always felt a little unclear what the attraction is. Either you post incredibly bland and anodyne content to keep the compliance officer happy, or you run the risk of trashing your own brand with an off-the-cuff comment. Either way, there doesn’t appear much benefit. Taking one top-20 firm at random, which has almost 17,000 followers, and you’ll see their Twitter output is sporadic. One post just after the election has been viewed 591 times and received one solitary like. The only interaction appears to be from a disgruntled anonymous account who has sent 27 different replies, none of them complimentary.
The Twitter benefits for individual lawyers are more tangible (albeit the risks of a misjudged tweet are no less serious). For all the talk about Twitter as a cesspit, it’s still relatively easy to avoid the smell. The ‘For You’ section should obviously be avoided, and for the sake of your sanity never open the replies to any post about, say, equality or diversity. If you avoid giving political opinions then the algorithm should avoid throwing them at you.
Legal Twitter is largely a supportive, comforting and informative place to be. Throw out there that you are struggling, fed up or seeking a case reference from 1971 and you’ll usually find someone out there to help. It has felt over the years like a genuine community and – for all the brickbats thrown at social media – a positive place to be.
And Twitter has proved to be a vital marketing tool for many in the legal profession. Writers, podcasters and presenters from the law have all been given a leg-up by their online presence and able to cash in on being good at explaining it.
Then there is the argument that by leaving the site, lawyers who can play a crucial role in educating a legally-clueless public invite those who would seek to manipulate and undermine the law. Arguably it is more important than ever that voices speak out to defend the rule of law and those who practise it.
So why leave?
Those who have quit say they cannot stand to be an accessory any longer to owner Elon Musk, who, they say, fans the flames of division in this country from thousands of miles away and allows hateful and inciting material to pass through his site apparently unchecked. But few billionaires ever got where they did by keeping to the highest ethical standards. Why is Musk any different?
Ultimately, it’s a personal choice. BlueSky seems to be the main choice for migrating lawyers, and I opened an account this week, but just the thought of starting over is exhausting rather than exhilarating to me. Quite honestly, I don’t know if I can be bothered. Maybe I’ll go for a walk instead.
Perhaps ultimately we’ll all end up staring at a screen a bit less in future. By driving people away, Musk, without realising, might even be doing society a favour.
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