I don’t tweet. I also do not quack, bark, moo or meow. I do text and send out way too many emails. But when I do so, I am very careful, particularly when I press “Send” on my lap top or iPhone, and I exercise even greater caution when I hit the dreaded “Reply All.”

I’ve learned from personal experience how dangerous emails can be, particularly when you reply to everyone in the world who gets email.

I cannot tell you how many times over the last few years I have wet my pants after realizing I have sent out an email that I never should have sent or, even worse, made a “Reply All” that should have been a reply to absolutely no one.

And it is because of the mistakes I have made in sending or responding to emails that I have taken a vow that under no circumstances will I ever tweet.

Emails are dangerous. Tweets can be downright disasterous.

If you don’t believe me, ask University of Tennessee Law Professor Glenn Reynolds.

Professor Reynolds has been on the cutting edge of social media since the beginning of this century. Long before I even knew what the word “blog” meant, Professor Reynolds was a frontier blogger known throughout the internet world as “Instapundit.” Professor Reynolds launched Instapundit in 2001 as a part of a UT Law School internet law class.
By 2002, Instapundit was reported to be the most visited blog in the world. Professor Reynolds also became known as the “Blog Father,” a sort of internet Elvis, with more than 200 Instapundit impersonators creating their own blogs after being inspired by Professor Reynolds.

Professor Reynolds’ fame as a blog journalist also gave him the opportunity to write for traditional media, as he became a columnist for USA Today.

And then Professor Reynolds began to tweet. Unfortunately, in September he went a tweet too far.

On Wednesday night, Sept. 21, he sent out a tweet that went to more than 580,000 of his followers around the world. The subject was a protest that was occurring on Interstate 277 in North Carolina in response to the fatal shooting of a man by a police officer. Regretably Professor Reynolds tweeted about the protestors: “Run them down.”

These three tweeted words caused protests on the campus of the University of Tennessee and throughout the internet world and, ironically, these protestors wanted to run Professor Reynolds down.

Twitter suspended Professor Reynolds’ account after outraged commenters around the internet world accused him of inciting violence.

UT Law School Dean Melanie Wilson then issued a statement that while the University of Tennessee Law School respected the First Amendment rights of Professor Reynolds, they did not support the views expressed in his “Run them down” tweet, and in fact, were appalled by it. The Law School promptly sent out the Dean’s statement, which was then, of course, tweeted!

UT faculty members and students quickly joined in the tweet-versation, tweeting, retweeting and sending letters condemning Professor Reynolds’ tweet as incendiary.

The law school then launched an investigation of Professor Reynolds’ unfortunate tweet, reviewing the situation with Professor Reynolds, University leadership and the Office of the General Counsel.

Initially, Professor Reynolds refused to back down from his tweet. He defended it by stating, “Blocking interstates and trapping people in their cars is not peaceful protest — it’s threatening and dangerous, especially against the background of people rioting, cops being injured, civilian-on-civilian shootings, and so on. I wouldn’t actually aim for people blocking the road, but I wouldn’t stop because I might fear for my safety, as I think any reasonable person would.”

Professor Reynolds then added, “If Twitter doesn’t like me, then I am happy to stop providing them with free content.”

But Professor Reynolds quickly learned that, to paraphrase the words of the legendary Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., freedom does not include the right to tweet “Run them down” on a crowded internet. USA Today suspended Professor Reynolds as a columnist for one month, and that led to an Insta-apology.

Professor Reynolds issued a statement saying, “I didn’t live up to my own standards, and didn’t meet USA Today’s standards. For that I apologize to USA Today readers and to my followers on social media.”

UT Law School Dean Melanie Wilson then issued a statement announcing that no disciplinary action would be taken by the law school or the university against Professor Reynolds as “the tweet was an exercise of his First Amendment rights.” Dean Wilson reiterated, however, that “the tweet offended many members of our community and beyond, and I understand the hurt and frustration they feel.”

Professor Reynolds then made one more announcement. He was logging out from Twitter, and for the time being focusing totally on Instapundit blog posts. In effect, he would blog more and tweet less.

This episode has reaffirmed two important things to me.

First, words are powerful. We lawyers live in a world of words and a world of conflict. The words we say or write can either resolve conflict or promote it. Our words can heal or divide. They can move people to reconciliation or anger.

And when those words can be sent out almost instantaneously through the internet world, they can be downright dangerous.

Don’t be expecting any tweets from me. For the time being, I’ll just keep sending a few hundred words each month on paper to readers of the Tennessee Bar Journal whom I will never refer to as “followers.”

I will also continue to be cautious with my emails, and I may never again hit “Reply to All.”

BILL HALTOM is a shareholder with the firm of Lewis Thomason. He is a past president of the Tennessee Bar Association and a past president of the Memphis Bar Association. Read his blog at www.billhaltom.com.