Legal Research

UK Twitter Law Firm

By Simon Fodden

Good grief: it’s the (I should have expected it) reductio ad absurdum of legal advice. Until now, the briefest piece of wise legal counsel was “It depends.” Now a UK lawyer is offering free advice in 140 characters, which, though longer than that gold standard, doesn’t seem wiser.

A smiling man styled only as The Legal Oracle (@thelegaloracle) is offering on Twitter:

Tweet your legal claim or question and we will answer it free of charge. Taking the fear and mystery away and making law accessible.

Speaking of “fear and mystery”, who in his or her right mind would take legal advice from an unnamed person in 140 characters? Someone named Katie, it appears. As you’ll see in the graphic below (click on it to enlarge it), she’s the first to seek counsel from the oracle. The prior (four) tweets are throat clearing and advertising noises.

On a slightly more serious note, it will be interesting to see how long the oracle’s efforts will survive scrutiny by the solicitors’ ruling body — and interesting to see what sort of things can in fact be done in 140 characters to make the law more accessible.

[hat tip: @montserratlj]

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on December 14, 2010 (boomark / email).