Reading a post from Ms. JD’s Sonya Rahders announcing the winners of the 2019 Public Interest Scholarship Competition, I wanted to give a shout out to the law student winners and Ms JD for recognizing women in this regard. 

After all, the passion and commitment to public interest careers of these four scholarship recipients topped a large pool of highly competitive applicants.

But I did not. The reason being that the scholarship winners did not have Twitter handles. At least the first two I looked for when I was ready to give them all a kudos in a tweet. 

I pointed out the problem of legal professionals not having a Twitter handle when I was recognizing, via Twitter, the leading lawyers, and their message, on a conference panel.

Dennis Garcia, Assistant General Counsel at Microsoft, agreed and found it amazing many legal professionals were still not using Twitter.

Sure, you can tweet someone’s name without their Twitter handle, but it’s awkward – at best.

They don’t see the tweet, they don’t see the ongoing twitter thread – others recognizing them or a discussion about what they said, others cannot look up who they are by clicking on their twitter handle and what have you.

My response when ready to tweet something and finding the legal professional doesn’t use Twitter or make their Twitter handle readily available is to conclude the legal professional doesn’t use the Internet for learning and networking – they are far behind the curve or just don’t care.

I am not alone, LexBlog often does not share posts for which the source does not have a Twitter handle. LexBlog is not alone. You’ll never really find out who else thinks you are a little lame for not using Twitter and, as a result, doesn’t share your items or recognize you when recognition is due.

Sound harsh? Not really.

Journalism and media has changed with the net. If you are going to be out dialoguing and putting yourself in a place where you’ll be recognized – on or offline – others need your Twitter handle – bloggers, reporters and just other Twitter users.