Face time with David Allen Green
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16 February 2011 09:49
David Allen Green is head of media at Preiskel & Co and was named as one of The Lawyer’s Hot 100 for 2011. He is legal correspondent for the New Statesman and was shortlisted for the George Orwell prize for blogging in 2010. He also featured in the Observer's list of Tweeters to follow (they only mustered two legal Tweeters, so he must be good).
This all sounds pretty impressive, so RoF Team decided to ask him some fairly tame razor-sharp questions about how to conquer the legal world, Twitter and the blogosphere.
ROF Team: What made you go into the law?David Allen Green: It was the least bad option. My degree was in history, but the life of a history teacher or academic wasn’t appealing. At least law provided an opportunity to think all day about complex factual situations and assess evidence.
RT: We hear a lot about what’s wrong with the law – hours, endless document crunching, hours etc. – tell us what’s good about the law?
DAG: The greatest thing about law is the rule of law. There should be no one so powerful that they escape accountability for their actions. Without the rule of law there would be nothing – nothing at all – which would check routine abuses of power. The second greatest thing about law, or at least experience in law, is that it helps you spot bullshit.
RT: You write a personal blog called Jack of Kent, what inspired you to start blogging and how do you find time to do it?
DAG: Blogging doesn’t take any particular effort. If it were a chore, I wouldn’t do it. I just find something interesting and then write about it. I prefer writing for the internet as there are no real deadlines and I can link to evidence, legislation, and cases. Blogging is like pamphleteering but with electronic footnotes.
RT: Would you recommend that other lawyers start legal blogs or is it a bit of a risky business?
DAG: I once suggested to a well-known media lawyer that more lawyers should blog. After all many of us spend our working days explaining difficult stuff to lay people. His response was: “some of us have client work, dear boy”. If blogging doesn’t come naturally, you shouldn’t bother.
RT: You’re a pretty big cheese on Twitter, how did you get so many Twitter friends (over 10,000) and how many of them have you actually met?
DAG: I have no idea why so many people follow me. There are far better legal twitterers. When I meet someone in real life who follows me, it usually follows a pattern: initial enthusiasm for my work, quickly turning to disappointment at realising I am a Brummie in a suit.
RT: Is it a good thing that tweeting from court proceedings is now allowed?
DAG: In general, yes. Open justice should not be an empty concept: it is not enough to keep the door to a court unlocked. But there will be some idiot who will ruin it. Then I suspect it will just be journalists who will be allowed.
RT: There’s a lot of chatter at the moment about the importance of social media for law firms – then you have firms such as Norton Rose scoring well in a social media survey without ever having tweeted. Do you think having a presence on social networking sites really is valuable for law firms?
DAG: God, spare us from “social media strategies”. There is nothing so disheartening as a City lawyer opening an Twitter account, saying “check this out” and then just linking to a press release. Twitter is about interaction. Accounts should have personality. If it is done badly, it is worse than not doing it at all.
RT: You write for the New Statesman and the Guardian, you’re a regular blogger and a prolific tweeter…..would you consider yourself to be more of a lawyer or a journalist?
DAG: They are sort of linked in my mind. I enjoy promoting the understanding of law in both cases. And one certainly cross-subsidises the other.
RT: You were involved in the recent Twitter joke trial. Should Paul Chambers (who tweeted a joke about blowing up Robin Hood Airport) take some of the blame for a silly tweet? After all we all know not to say the word “bomb” in the airport, even in jest.
DAG: I am defence solicitor for Paul Chambers and the case is on-going. An appeal should be at the High Court this spring. I can say a lot more about this misconceived and illiberal case once the appeal is over.
RT: Where do you think the next generation of crusading lawyers is going to come from given that the law is an increasingly expensive profession to enter and it’s only really the big commercial firms handing out sponsorship to students?
DG: This is worrying. I am from a working class, council estate and comprehensive school background. I doubt I would even go to university if the current tuition fees regime was in place when I was 18. There is no obvious solution to the problem of widening access to joining the legal profession.
RT: What’s next for you? More law? More writing? Or maybe your own TV show?
DAG: I have never had a grand plan. I will see what happens next. But I suspect that with my looks and voice, many would say that I am destined to stay in blogging.
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