Wednesday, January 4, 2012

They Couldn't Wait (An Angry Rant, With Profanity)

As the 2011 holiday season grew closer, the social media and tech hacks got, as Elmer Fudd says, “bewy bewy qwyat.” Lawyers, real lawyers, turned their focus to family, travel, closing out their year, settling those last few cases, and the interest in buying into the salesmanship of former lawyers peddling social media and tech bullshit waned.

It was kinda nice.

But yesterday, the first day back for most lawyers, brought out the rash of shit that is the failed and former lawyers, and those with no business advising anyone in the legal profession, going on and on about why lawyers need to “get on board,” with social media and shiny toys. It was like they were holding their breath for 3 weeks and just couldn’t take it anymore. The flood gates opened – where was their next desperate lawyer looking to “harness the power of social media?” Where was the next broke lawyer looking to learn which Apple product they were required to have to “survive?”

There was this post about worthless garbage predictions about things with power switches and that post about how cool social media for lawyers is and the other 12 posts about which software lawyers “must” use in 2012 to survive. Most from former lawyers, who still wont admit they were failures in practice or just weren’t very good or interested in being lawyers. They now just want to tell you how to do it right.

I have a question for all of you – all you out of work failures with law degrees trying to play yourselves off as some authority on anything:

Why don’t you all just shut the fuck up?

You use your moniker as “lawyer” to try and convince the desperate among us, those looking for any website, toy, or marketing trick to help them “make money as a lawyer,” that you are their savior. There you are, ready, willing, and able to try and sell them on your lies that you somehow, after leaving your mediocre, or worse, failure of a law career, are worthy of taking money from your former brethren to help them reach wealth and fame doing the same thing you couldn’t do yourself.

You beg to speak at conferences and say nothing. You speak down the hall from conferences that never heard of you. You speak to 12 people and because someone tweeted about it, 30 people tell you how awesome you are.

You tell lawyers they need to “get on board” the same train you jumped off of years ago.

You are a fraud. All of you.

That’s why you stay close to each other, congratulating one another for doing nothing but stating the obvious. One of you is quoted by the other fraud and the other merry group of morons chime in with their “congratulations!”

Congratulations for what?

For the fact that another lawyer turned marketer fraud thinks you are worthy of their love?

You sit in the stands and pretend you know how to teach the players on the field what they need to do to be better.

But you were unable to stay on the field.

You stopped playing.

These players (lawyers) want to continue playing, they’re not looking for a career in failure.

So why don’t you get the fuck out of our profession in total?

Go. Stop taking money from lawyers to make them dumber, lazier, and more reliant on things that do nothing to better the profession.

You worsen our profession. You make money turning it in to nothing short of a group of document pushing, robo-typing, shiny toy addicts. You know nothing about client representation, being an “officer of the court,” or the high honor of having the license to advocate for a person, entity, or cause.

You are pathetic. And none of us that cherish the privilege we have been given to be officers in the third branch of government have any use for you.

Those that have a use for you, those lawyers too stupid to realize that paying you, listening to you, acknowledging that you are a member of our profession, are conspirators in your fraud. And should drive the bus out of town on which you are a passenger.

Go. Away.

Happy New Year.

Anonymous comments are welcome as long as they say something relevant and half-way intelligent and arent a vehicle for a coward to attack someone. I trust you understand. Located in Miami, Florida, Brian Tannebaum practices Bar Admission and Discipline and Criminal Defense. He is the author of I Got A Bar Complaint.Share/Save/Bookmark

5 comments:

Jordan said...

This one was my favorite:

http://adriandayton.com/2012/01/this-law-firm-gets-social-media-allenmatkins/

A non-lawyer, using the blog of a fai.., err, non-practicing lawyer, to rave about a firm she feels "gets" the use of social media. And by "gets", she means making sure that every time a lawyer farts, there's a tweet, a Facebook update, a blog post, and a Youtube video. Maybe a newsletter, too.

While she approves of the fact they're using social media, what's strangely absent is what it's actually done for them. You know, a tangible result.

So here is my question: is the time spent on this kind of social media justified in terms of a return, or is it better spent on other stuff? (assuming your goal is business development). Stuff like taking a client out to dinner or out for a round of golf. Or, wait, this might blow your mind, doing a really good job on the files you already have and impressing them with a great result.

I think social media is a great way to keep in touch with people and to cultivate existing relationships. I've gotten some work in from former high school friends and college buddies because we keep in touch through Facebook.

However, has anyone ever gotten a great client because they spammed a news article? Does anyone important actually read crappy Twitter accounts that send out links to stuff? (hint -- social media coaches are not important).

Oh wait, who cares about that stuff. As long as you're using social media, you "get it". That's all that matters. Doing stuff for the sake of doing it.

shg said...

Samantha Collier is pretty darn cute, in an I-used-to-be-the-secretary-but-now-I'm-the-social-media-guru sort of way.

You, not so much. Less so when you're angry. And pretty darn fabulous in your Inksters Christmas hat. Go with fabulous.

My Law License said...

Yes, Samantha is very cute. Not so cute is her choice of social media scum to work with, and I've told her that.

Samantha isn't a lawyer either, so she has no responsibility to our profession as a, whatever shg called her.

I'm more focused on the lawyers who need to just go do something else, get out of the profession in total.

Jordan said...

So a lawyer who has very little legal experience is publishing a blog about what practicing lawyers should be doing to get more clients, and using a non-lawyer to help do that...?

I suppose that in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Kevin S. Brady said...

"I suppose that in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."


Like a legless man trying to teach people to dance.

Those who can, do. Those who can't, become social media coaches. Or something along those lines. Parasites, the lot.