New York Business Lawyers

We’ve over the past weeks, seen a couple of the shiny law bloggers adding sparkle to social media.  From focused analysis to legal humor, each attorney and firm has brought the profession closer to the practitioner and layperson.

This week the accidental star of the show is Eric Turkewitz, author of the New York Personal Injury Law Blog. As if April Fool’s day was not foolhardy enough, Turkewitz posted a faux PR piece about his appointment to be the Obama administration’s own official law blogger, it’s legal organ on the interwebz, if you will.  His logic was that it was simply a joke and a parody of the political bloggers who, in truth, have a nasty habit of incestuous rumor recycling. And in truth, I doubt he nor anyone else expected it to take the turn that it did.  In fact I don’t think Turkewitz is the fool, read on.

And wouldn’t you know it, sans Aston Kutcher, the New York Times (which I love) picked up Turkewitz’s post as gospel, hence getting punked badly by its own staff.  A Glengarry Glen Ross like rundown of the whole sordid affair is available on Turkewitz’s blog.  The fallout has resulted in decidedly opposing camps on the incident.

Some call his actions reprehensible, with another legal  blogger focused on ethics, Jack Marshall of Ethics Alarms, to pen a literary lambaste.   And throughout the blogosphere, this tidbit has pitted esquire against esquire. All of it reading like the setting for Lucas’ lost opus, “Blog Wars”.  Although, Marshall ultimately recanted and concluded that an ethics violation had not occurred.

However, others have defended Turkewitz, especially those in the camp generally unenthused with what they consider to be the decline of Western journalism as we know it.  Turkewitz has penned his own rebuttal, sharply calling into focus the failure of the New York Times to nary make a follow up phone call to verify the post.

So which is it? A failure of the journalism industry or a failure of the legal profession? I am of the mind that it is the former. Not merely because I am a legal blogger, but because I do not believe the ferocious velocity of information gives any of us license to tweet first and ask questions later. Quite the contrary, I believe it makes it all the more important to be even sharper and keener and question every one of those 140 characters. And this is the case, even if the tweets come from those with professional degrees and ethical codes.  If we don’t, then we risk giving rise to a phrase like “I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV” for social media that actually sells.

Clark Hoyt, the New York Times “public editor”, wrote a column that references the Turkewitz event, and makes the critical point that being eagle eyed is key when writing on “platforms where speed is everything and attitude sometimes trumps values like accuracy and restraint.” Bravo Clark, bravo.