The Irish Times ran an interesting article by Fiona Gartland in the Monday 11 November 2013 edition of the paper under the title The sky's the limit for legal eagles on Twitter here. Fiona featured the experiences of three legal tweeters. Here's what they said:
Fiona de Londras (@fdelond) is a professor of law at Durham University and is a founder member of group blog humanrights.ie. She said:
"And it’s a way I can still contribute to debates in Ireland as well as in the UK, even though I am now institutionally located in the UK. I can engage with a Minister, or a TD or a Senator so easily through twitter and connect them into my research in a way that was previously almost impossible for academics to do,” she says. But she adds “you have to be quite good in figuring out how to boil a message down”."Limerick solicitor Rossa McMahon writes on clatterofthelaw.wordpress.com said:
"I used to work in Dublin in a big firm where I had a lot of colleagues and now I’m in a much smaller situation and I find it quite a good way of keeping in touch with other people. Sometimes you know someone through it and then privately bounce ideas off them or see what they think about particular things."Rossa McMahon commented on the business development potential of social media, saying: "From a marketing point of view, I couldn’t necessarily say that I gain anything specific, although I have gotten bits and pieces of work out of it."
Law professor at Trinity College Dublin Eoin O’Dell (@cearta) has written about law, education and policy on cearta.ie since 2006. He said:
"I consider that it is a very important part of my academic work to make my research and arguments available and to engage in discussion and debate online is just another means of disseminating research and engaging in discussion."Eoin O'Dell explained that his blog posts tend to be “considered discussions” of 500 or 600 words in length. He also explained that his Twitter account is used to share interesting items with his 2,200 plus followers and to respond to comments. He also said: "I think it’s a good thing and I think it is increasing the direction in which we are going."
Read the article from the Irish Times in full here. Read my blog post on Defero Law on the article here.
