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Legal twitterers face shock death
The Twittering legal community is coming to grips with the realisation that Twitter posts can be deeply painful and personal.
The New Lawyer
The Twittering legal community is coming to grips with the realisation that Twitter posts, which come as short spurts of information, usually light-hearted, sometimes newsworthy, sometimes shocking, can also be deeply painful and personal.
Lilyhill, who had 1,364 followers on Twitter, posted her last post on 16 May, and then less than a week later came the shocking post: “This is lilyhills daughter. She passed away on wednesday due to a stroke.”
But this week the legal Twitterverse, comprising lawyers, legal marketers, legal journalists and the like, was shocked to hear about the death of one of their own.
Twitter delivers short, punchy news in fewer than 140 characters. Twitter users hear about earthquakes rocking China, shootings in Mumbai, and that Malcolm Turnbull is delivering a doorstep interview with the press.
As Legal Blog Watch reports, securities lawyer Mark Astarita summed up the sentiment of many legal tweeters when he posted last week: “No one told me that my twitter friends would pass away.”
But the death of lilyhill has reminded Twitter users that Twitter is very much made up of real people. Lilyhill was in fact Roberta Frazier, who described herself on her Twitter page as “paralegal, SOHO Consultant, Digital Coach, Trial Guide for the Techno-Paranoid, Ok, Office Goddess. My coffee mug says so”.
Hundreds of posts have now been delivered on the news. Stevematthews, “a fun-loving law librarian and law firm seo”, wrote “hope her family & friends knew how supportive Robert Frazier was to us in the digital world”.
Another legal Twitterer, Kindardlaw, wrote: “Rest in peace, from your Twitter followers. You really were an Office Goddess!”
