STOP TWEETING, START MOOTING

DELIVER more than 140 characters or less Tweets and filtered images on Mootis, a new social media and microblogging platform created for lawyers.

Launched in the UK by barrister and Queen's Counsel, Bill Braithwaite QC in January 2015, Mootis has since garnered more than 10,000 active users and is now gearing up for an official Australian launch.

The social network seeks to encourage healthy and intelligent debate, a blessing to lawyers who might find their words falling on deaf ears on other platforms.

For the sake of your argument's authority, weight and substance, Moots can be up to 500 words, with the option to upload videos and conduct polls on the platform too.

Users can register with their existing social media accounts, or legal professionals green to social media can engage for the first time and sign up strictly with Mootis.

Braithwaite says there has been a great deal of interest from Australian lawyers in the past few months, so an Australian platform is only a natural progression.

Brisbane Legal's research indicates that more than 30 early adopter Brisbane legal professionals are registered on the UK Mootis platform already.

"Sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook are hugely successful, but we feel the world of legal services is large enough to warrant its own, bespoke platform," says Braithwaite

"So many legal professionals - at all levels - understand the need to engage with social media but are not entirely comfortable with the general nature of what is out there at the moment.

"There's a lot of clutter.  Mootis is specifically tailored for what is a vast legal services marketplace that extends far beyond lawyers."

Mootis can be filtered by location and specialist area of law, and users can also easily view all the latest trending legal topics.

With the shrewd target market in mind, Braithwaite says Mootis has advanced in-built security and privacy features, with an option for professional verification of key individuals and companies as well.

"If users want to run it as a closed network where only approved followers see their moots then they can," says Braithwaite.

"Equally we have a zero tolerance in relation to any trolling or inappropriate posts. Users can report anything they consider inappropriate and we guarantee it will be investigated immediately and the offending party removed from Mootis, and banned from the platform, immediately.

"We've done lots of work on this and looked at how other social networks deal with the issue of security while there's never a perfect solution, we are confident this approach will strike the right balance."

Braithwaite says the team is open to feedback and suggested improvements from users.

Follow us on Mootis today @BrisbaneLegal.