Help! Lawyers from Television’s “Damages” show are Twitter-Stalking Me

So last night much like the other members of the “I’ll Watch Law and Order Until My Eyes Fall Out” group on Facebook, I tuned in to FX to see the season premiere of their lawyer show – “Damages.”

With all of the Law and Order marathons on around the New Year, I figured it was prudent to change things up a bit and conserve myself in case my bloody corneas are in fact an indicator of my Law and Order career coming to an end.

I missed the first season of Damages, but I told friends that I was coping pretty well because we who had finished law school and passed the bar had a special aptitude for lawyer shows which allowed us to jump in mid-stream with a full and complete understanding of the entire show. Like all my humor, that statement only had a bit of truth in it, and I was only able to grasp a few of the fast-paced Damages show basics.

First, and easiest to discern was that the Glenn Close character (Senior Lawyer Partner Patty Hewes) was the “bad guy.” The show’s director was successful at giving her an overall aura of evil, but for those of us who have worked in a law firm, Attorney Hewes was most transparently “bad” as throughout the show she was both concerned with her Associate’s true opinion of her (which wasn’t so positive after last season’s murder attempt) and riddled with the guilt of not giving the Associate all of the facts and the entire big picture of the case she worked so diligently on all last season.

Secondly, although the Rose Byrne character (Junior Associate Lawyer Ellen Parsons) was frequently engaged in dream sequence or reality-type scenes of herself engaged in revenge murder or attempted murder, I know from my Law and Order training that she is the “good guy.” As part of season two, Attorney Parsons is working with the FBI to bring down her boss, and as anyone who has seen Law and Order knows, those working with or for law enforcement and District Attorney’s office are wearing the white hats.

The show was interesting enough, but after it ended I got back to my primary addictions – LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Since Kevin O’Keefe’s LexTweet has come out with rankings based on how many followers on Twitter one has, building my Twitter network has become my competitive social media activity du jour, and I first logged in to check out my current number of followers, or how close I am to pushing past my next target @Glennia

As I scanned through my followers, who are mostly social media savvy lawyers and legal professionals met via LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, I was surprised to find Attorney Ellen Parsons from the Damages show following me. I responded like any late-30’s adult male would respond to being Twitter-Stalked by a young and very attractive female attorney - I asked her out with an “@Reply”

“@EllenParsons thanks for the follow. Since your fiancée is murdered and all I was wondering if you're free this weekend. I'm in Boston.”

Twitter has recently limited the number of Tweeps I can follow for some reason at 2000, so I quickly booted some MD/JD with nothing much to say, and followed back @EllenParsons. I mean hey, she does seem like a good attorney.

Later however, things got creepy. I later found the alleged murderer and evil super lawyer @PattyHewes (the Glenn Close character) following me! Ahh! Creepy thing is - now I'm following her back - and I never clicked to follow her, and I didn't even have the capacity to follow someone else as I was at my limit of 2000! How powerful is this woman!?!

Pretty sharp marketing if you ask me, and despite being a law school grad, I plan on getting deep into the Season One Wiki on the Damages show to get ready for next week.

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Connect with David Barrett on Twitter @barrettdavid