Hannah Steeves @hjsteeves School of Information Management

Background @Background Social networking platforms have changed the way individual legal professionals communicate, share, and present themselves to their colleagues, clients, and the general public. Specifically, the social networking platform known as twitter, has become a popular tool for engaging in legal information activities including, but not limited to, current awareness and self-promotion.

Methodology @Methodology 25 accounts were drawn from a snowball sampling from a compilation of lists prepared by experts in the field. The most recent 50 tweets from each account, excluding retweets without added content, were categorized as Current Awareness, Self-Promotion, or Alternative. Alternative content was analysed to determine additional categories. The frequency of the information activities was determined by account owners’ participation rate(s).

Acknowledgements @Acknowledgements Thank you to Sandra Toze, Mike Smit, and David Fraser for their contributions and support. Further readings and resources available upon request.

Canadian legal professionals’ information activities: What do they do and how do they tweee ?

Results @Results 1.  Current Awareness tweets occurred most frequently

and had the most participants. 2.  Additional categories included: •  General Communication with other Legal

Professionals •  Job Posting •  Opinion on Legal Topic •  Personal Political Opinion •  Unrelated to the Legal Profession 3.  The most frequent additional information activity was

tweeting content Unrelated to the Legal Profession. 4.  Personal Political Opinions received the most

retweets. 5.  General Communication with other Legal

Professionals received the most likes.

Conclusion @Conclusion Canadian legal professionals engagement on twitter can be thematically categorized to provide insight into how they need, seek, and use information. These results support further research to determine the intention and effectiveness of these types of information activities for Canadian legal professionals. Further research will help clarify best practices for legal professionals while using social networking platforms and better define current legal information seeking needs in a digital environment.

Demographics @Demographics

Data Visualizations @DataVisuals

Data Visualizations @DataVisuals asdlkjalsdkjalkjlj

Objectives @Objectives The purpose of this research is to determine and categorize the information activities of Canadian legal professionals on twitter. Objectives were as follows: 1. Do legal professionals make posts categorized as current awareness and/or self-promotion? Does one of these categories occur more frequently? 2. Are there other categories of information activities legal professionals are engaging in? If so, what are these categories and how frequently do they occur?