I see that The Ministry of Justice has got the hang of twitter and social media benefits. I just could not resist the tweet above from Matthew Taylor of the MTPT blog.
I am a fan of twitter, although I tend to misuse it and abuse it and, ordinarily, would not bother to read any blog post or article talking about the benefits of social media to lawyers or, worse, sanctimonious blog posts from newcomers who have spent too much time drinking snake oil. I do, however, always enjoy reading blog posts which take the piss out of social media mavens and gurus and the Grand Old Duke of New York, Scott Greenfield of Simple Justice, often marches his wonderfully acid twitter media posts up to the top of the hill and down again. His latest on this issue… The Square n00b Answer..is very amusing.
Greenfield starts…” Ever wonder how all the old-time lawyers jump online and screw it all up overnight? It could be those bar association CLEs teaching how to be a blogger in 30 seconds or less, taught by lawyers who have never been closer to a computer than when they stop at the secretary’s desk to ask for a coffee refill. Or maybe it’s reading something like this Corporate Counsel post at Law.com by Doug Wood from Reed Smith…….Yes, that Doug Wood, the man who launched a thousand twits and blogs with his thorough, yet persuasive, explication of why corp counsel need to “Get With It … or Get Burned.” He offers such gems as….. “
Peninsulawyer, who also tweets, wrote an interesting piece on twitter and other social media… Social Media – Out of control? where he reviews the state of play and benefits for lawyers. It is an enjoyable piece but I don’t propose to rehearse the points he makes. His blog post did, however, prompt me to ask a question on twitter… “Are lawyers foolish to block access to Twitter etc for their staff?” Inevitably, issues of productivity came up and, of course, it is easier to control it in a small operation than a larger one. For my part, when I ran businesses and law schools, I regarded it as very much a matter of give and take. There was also the very real problem of hypocrisy, as I was a regular poster on RollonFriday in the very early days of that discussion board, as were some members of my team. I suspect that British law firms will use twitter well, some do already, and others will make a complete horlicks of it and use twitter to broadcast their latest offerings and little else.
I shall end with this tweet (I have permission) … sums it up, really. Carry on Twittering!
THE IRAQ INQUIRY
Geoff Hoon says Gordon Brown starved MoD of cash before Iraq war
Geoff Hoon did a boot job on Brown at the Iraq Inquiry – and, pleasingly, the questioning does seem to be getting a bit sharper. The Times reports: “Gordon Brown tonight faced demands to give evidence to the Iraq Inquiry before the election after the former Defence Secretary said the Armed Forces were starved of cash in run up to the war.”
And… the other interesting piece of information to come out was a hitherto classified letter from the Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith to Hoon. The Times reported, in a separate piece:
“The Attorney-General sent a furious letter to the Defence Secretary a year before the invasion of Iraq warning that he saw “considerable difficulties” in giving legal approval for war, it emerged this morning.Lord Goldsmith complained to Geoff Hoon that he had put in a “difficult position” by the Defence Secretary’s public claim that Britain would be entitled to use force without a specific United Nations resolution.In a previously secret letter released by the Iraq Inquiry this morning, Lord Goldsmith said that he had given no opinion on the legality of military action.“I think you should know that I see considerable difficulties in being satisfied that military action would be justified on the basis of self-defence,” he wrote.
Of course, later, Lord Goldsmith was able to find enough relevant law upon which to base an opinion that going to war was lawful. It will be interesting to see what the Iraq Inquiry ‘inquisitioners’ do with Goldsmith.
Sarkozy backs off from Haiti spat as US military airdrops aid
I see that the French president has backed down from a diplomatic spat after one of his ministers complained that the US was ‘occupying’ Haiti. France, of course, was the colonial power in what became one of the world’s poorest basket case countries. It seems to my jaded eye to be rather hypocritical to complain about the US involvement when it would appear that France has done little to assist Haiti in recent years… or if they did, their assistance was a spectacular failure. The last thing we need is the French, or anyone else, trying to vie for publicity and ‘power’. The first issue must be assistance, saving lives and building a future. The US has the ability and resources and it is their money they are spending as well…not just money derived from donations. (The Times has a full report). For my part it is good to see many nations and the people of these nations doing what they can, whetehr by donating or by direct practical help, to help another country instead of waging war.
LIBEL… a continuing and burning issue…
“Freedom of expression and investigative journalism are fundamental protections to the democracy of this country.”
Jack Straw, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, January 2010
The Independent reports: ” The success fees which lawyers working on no-win, no-fee conditional fee agreements (CFAs) in defamation cases should be cut from 100 per cent to just 10 per cent, Justice Secretary Jack Straw announced today. The proposal, the latest stage in the Ministry of Justice’s programme aimed at ensuring that costs in publication proceedings are reasonable and proportionate, was put out for consultation today. It is thought that action could be taken through a statutory instrument by May. Mr Straw’s announcement comes hot on the heels of the publication last week of the review of costs in civil litigation in which Sir Rupert Jackson, who sits in the Court of Appeal as Lord Justice Jackson, recommended ending the regime under which success fees for lawyers suing newspapers for defamation and privacy on CFAs are paid by the losing defendant. Instead, he said, damages should be increased by 10% so that the claimants could pay their lawyers’ success fees from the amounts they recovered.
Libel tourism, superinjunctions, oppressive use of law to curtail inconvenient news coverage blights our legal system and much of it arises because lawyers have been able to charge truly astonishing fees. Other reforms, including proposals to get rid of juries in libel trials, are to be welcomed so that libel becomes a fair law to give redress by vindication rather than be seen as a cash cow for lawyers or a tool for corporates and others to shut out debate and freedom of expression and reporting. Jack Straw, if he can pull a statutory instrument out of the hat before the May election, is at least making a start.
And…since this is a SOCIAL MEDIA edition of my daily Law Review… it seemed appropriate to end with this truly remarkable news story from The Telegraph… you really could not F*****g make it up…
Chef Ramsay is going on a twitter course? Why? This… I will just have to see… Hat Tip to @Pam_Nash