Most of the people around the Sedgwick County Courthouse, and around Wichita, know I use Twitter to help cover hearings and trials live from the courtroom. You can even follow the updates if you don’t sign up, using the my Twitter feed at the left of this page.

But lawyers are using Twitter to do research and pass professional information.

I follow several lawyers, including Anne Reed — an expert on juries from Milwaukee, whom I met via Twitter when I began “tweeting” my first trial.

A former lawyer, Grant Griffiths, recently posted a series on his blog on “How to Use Twitter as a Lawyer.”

As Griffiths points out, JDScoop gets you started with “145 lawyers (and legal professionals) to follow on Twitter.”

And Kevin O’Keefe, another Wisconsin lawyer, has a post on how to use Twitter to market a law firm.

There’s apparently a lot of tweeting out on in, and outside, the courtrooms.

Update: For more on Twitter basics, see this report from fellow tweeter Anita Cochran.

Twitter is a micro-blogging, social networking platform where millions of people answer the question “What are you doing?” with short messages.  What I’m doing is covering the Burnett trial and I’m posting updates live from the courtroom, including details you won’t necessarily read in the print edition of The Eagle.

Anne Reed, a trial lawyer and jury consultant from Milwaukee has been following my “tweets” and explained it this way in her blog, Deliberations.

You can also follow the updates here on Kansas.com.

You can interact if you sign up (it’s free) and put “@rsylvester” before your message to leave a comment or question. Be patient. Between Twittering and keeping track of the trial, it gets pretty hectic in the courtroom.