A lawyer might send and receive dozens of e-mails a day, which is why the next statement may seem a little outlandish. E-mail is becoming passé.

It is not ready to go the way of the Pony Express just yet, but the "you've got mail" culture that has dominated communication for the last decade is subtly shifting. As with many technology trends, the best gauge of current and emerging behavior is teenagers - and teenagers text.

E-mail use among teens is reserved for communicating with teachers and sending documents to themselves to print at a convenient location. Rarely, if ever, does one high-school student e-mail another to make plans. Instead, teens are in constant communication via the short, grammatically questionable text messages they send each other via cell phones, BlackBerry and smart phones, or other handheld devices.

Technologically, texting is not all that different than e-mailing. After all, you can send an e-mail from a personal device just as easily as a text. It is in the style in which they are written where the shift lies. Once upon a time, e-mails still had some pretense of letter-writing decorum. There was a salutation and a sign-off, complete sentences and fully spelled words. Texts are notable for their brevity. They are sentence fragments, full of abbreviations and, generally, void of all grammatical effort. What texting lacks in structure it makes up for in efficiency. Texts are meant to be quickly written, read and responded to.

The subtext is that we are all far too busy to put up with anything at all long-winded. Therefore, it makes sense that technological trends would collide and the concept of blogging would intersect with the communication style of texting.

The sentence you are reading is approximately 140 characters, which is the maximum length for updates in the emerging field of "microblogging."

A microblog is born

The concept of microblogging began with a San Francisco-based company who used the platform as an internal communication device.

Sensing a new twist on social networking, partners within the company launched the service known as Twitter in 2006. Although sites based on similar ideas of microblogging exist, Twitter dominates the niche market in the United States. However, microblogging itself and sites like Twitter have become extremely popular in Asian media markets, primarily China.

Twitter's concept is fairly simple, and not vastly different from those behind other social-networking Web sites. Users create a profile and post a status message of 140 characters or less as often as they feel fit. What sets Twitter apart from sites like Facebook or LinkedIn is that the informational focal point is not a person's profile, but instead his or her status message, known by some users as "tweets."

The name of the game is to be both a "follower" of other users' tweets and to have your own updates "followed." Based on the profile information each user provides, you can choose to follow the status updates of your choice. Naturally, other users can sign up to follow your tweets. Your followers - and those you follow - may not be people or organizations you have a personal connection to. Instead, the idea is to follow the "tweets" of people or groups with similar interests, often those in your industry or profession.

Even though Twitter's status-update feature poses the question, "What are you doing?" updates are often professionally oriented. Tweets may alert followers to a link for a site or article of interest to a particular community or professional group. Accommodating the 140-character limit is much easier than it seems, especially through the use of Twitter's TinyURL feature, which shortens Web links with a single click. Users also post questions in an effort to gain a quick, informed answer from a captive audience. Moreover, Twitter interfaces with programs like Facebook, so a single status message can be used for multiple online networking venues.

Users are free to update at their leisure, but most post new tweets several times a day, making the effort seem like an ongoing conversation - which was initially the appeal of traditional blogs. Conceptually, microblogs are no different, except that they play into the increasing need for the instant-gratification communication that is the hallmark of a text message.

Strategic application

It would be an exaggeration to say that microblogging and Twitter are taking the legal world by storm. Nonetheless, the concept has infiltrated business and industry enough to garner interest in its potential, especially because of its successful application in other fields - most notably politics.

As many readers probably know, Democratic Presidential Nominee Sen. Barack Obama announced his selection of running mate to his supporters via text message. Throughout the primary season and general-election campaign, the Obama team has had a bag of technological tricks fired up and ready to go, among them Twitter. In a 24/7 news environment and with a campaign that caters to an army of young supporters with handheld technology devices, Twitter has acted as the ideal method to update the faithful about every new morsel of information. In that way, the campaign is also able to control what information is highlighted in each new status update, to some extent shaping the political conversation and focus.

Police departments have used Twitter to great effect to keep personnel and citizens updated during ongoing emergency situations, such as the California wildfires or in weather events like incoming hurricanes or snowstorms. Several companies use Twitter as a means to keep their finger on the pulse of their customer base, recognizing complaints and compliments alike via tweets. This is easy to do, since Twitter provides a search feature that allows users to search tweets for words or phrases. If a company, or you, are being Twittered about, it is easy to find out.

Twitter's potential for lawyers may prove useful on a smaller scale. Most lawyers who use it enjoy the quick call-and-response of posing a question as a tweet and instantly receiving answers. Strangely enough, Twitter may also provide a great opportunity for traditional, in-person networking. Twitter users often propose "Tweet-ups," gatherings where local users connected only online can meet the men and women behind the status updates.

Too much information

Certainly, Twitter has its faults. The idea of knowing what everyone is doing all the time can be overwhelming and annoying, especially when users make more personal than professional use of their tweets. While reading status updates that answer a question or direct others to new information is useful, updates informing everyone what you had for lunch are not.

Moreover, Twitter is still just a baby among online giants. Whereas Facebook has mainstreamed, Twitter is gathering steam. It is still primarily the playground of early adapters and those apt to be technologically savvy.

Regardless, adding another weapon to your arsenal of networking and marketing tools may be worth the effort. Using Twitter alone may not make a difference in the legal world, but it can be one element of lawyers' emerging effort to participate in the changing communication landscape. Along the way, you might finally figure out how to text-message your kids.

Caroline Bala Brancatella is a law clerk for a federal judge in Philadelphia, Pa. Admitted to practice in New York state, she can be reached at cbrancatella@gmail.com.