I sat down with my law school’s career development alumni liaison (or whatever fancy title they use) this past week. She was friendly, she tried to be as helpful as possible, and (to be fair) she did give me some good ideas about my job search.

This post is not about that.

During the course of our conversation she asked me why I enrolled in law school, why I wanted to become a lawyer. I was reminded of a similar question Brian Tannebaum had asked on his blog that I tried answering while still in school.

Back then, I really didn’t know why, other than having some vague notion of wanting to help people. I saw friends and family get screwed over in ways that could easily have been avoided with the help of someone with legal knowledge and experience, and I thought that I’d like to be that someone for them.
Fortunately, all of these situations were civil matters, so I was thinking solely of practicing civilly.

Since then, however, I have become more and more interested in criminal defense work. Scott Greenfield, Mark Bennett, and Brian Tannebaum were probably the initial catalysts for this change when I started following them on twitter and reading their blawgs.

Every so often news items like these come up and highlight exactly how crucial criminal defense lawyers are in our judiciary.

Then I started interning at the Office of the Public Defenders and I have been loving the hell out of that.

When I gave the career development woman my bland answer about helping people, she called me on it; there are many ways to help people, why a lawyer?
It sounded cheesy in my mind when I said it and it sounds even cheesier now that I’m writing it down, but my answer to her was that I believe in criminal defense.

That’s why.

Today is Scott Greenfield Day.

I know it is because the blawgers I enjoy following have told me it is.

I have quoted Mr. Greenfield extensively (or what counts as extensively for this blog) here, and it’s not a coincidence.

It’s also not a coincidence that he is one of the main reasons I have become so incredibly interested in criminal defense.

That will be all.

The most recent Lawyer2Lawyer podcast had guest appearances by @KevinOKeefe and @ScottGreenfield concerning the use of twitter by lawyers.

Kevin had requested questions or concerns people had with twitter, and the first thing that popped into my mind was oversharing. I’m obviously not talking about when you give too many graphic details at the dinner table; rather, when you share information regarding what you are working on.

I recently volunteered to help do research on a case. (As an aside, this is the first bit of practical legal experience I am getting. To give credit where due, I was referred to the attorney through my law school. One of my professors mentioned — in passing — that he knew someone who was looking for help and I approached the professor after class to get the attorney’s contact information.) In my excitement to be working on something real, I twitted the general issue I was researching. Before I hit the “tweet” button, however, I hesitated. How much information does someone really need to piece together the rest of the picture?

That started me thinking about the possible pitfalls of twitter in general — the biggest one being the complacency we fall into when there is a perception of security. Password breaches aside, twitter’s “direct message” feature poses a huge risk for people hoping to direct message sensitive, confidential or private communications. If someone uses the wrong format in sending the message, even if it’s only a single character discrepancy, the private message is posted for the entire globe to read.

I hardly ever use the SMS functionality to update my twitter status, yet I still allow SMS notification of direct messages. When I tried to respond to someone with my email address I completely failed to preface my message with a “d”, thereby publishing my personal email address for all to see. Fortunately I’m a nobody, so I’m safe and unhassled.

Privacy Disaster At Twitter: Direct Messages Exposed (Update: GroupTweet Is Likely Culprit)

dm fail!

There are a myriad of articles on how to use twitter (some days it seems that’s all anyone ever writes about. And it’s not as if each article is chock-full of original information…) and many of them suggest that you use the direct message function rather than @replies so as not to overburden the poor people who voluntarily asked to be shown your every last fleeting thought. This theory works hand-in-hand with the theory that twitter is a useful way to communicate with coworkers, as a sort of mass IM mechanism. I think that it’s safe to assume that your communications with your coworkers will include privileged information. Try to remember that unless you very, very carefully direct message someone, the information is knowable to anyone with an internet connection. Or people sitting next to someone with an internet connection.

I don’t mean to harp on twitter — the issue is the same with all social media:
Apple staffer’s online leak points to new iPhone processor | Betanews
I simply feel that the nature of twitter more easily lends itself to be misused.