CLP talked with Carlyn Hicks, recent YLD Child Advocacy Award winner and child law social media maven. Ms. Hicks focuses on improving parent representation through direct advocacy and legislative and court reform.
Why Mississippi College of Law School?
I looked around and Mississippi College of Law fit everything I wanted:
- small enough to feel like family, but not too small,
- downtown near my job so I could walk to and from classes and work,
- located in the middle of our state courts,very good pro bono and child advocacy clinics.
It was the only law school I applied to and I was so happy to be accepted. I was able to build great relationships; it was just a great place to be.
You are currently director of the Parent Representation Program? Talk about what you do.
Our Mission First Legal Aid Office is one of six ministries on the campus of Mission First. Each ministry approaches the families, children, and communities we serve holistically and respectfully. The campus has a medical and dental clinic, child and teen development programs, as well as summer and afterschool enrichment camps. The ministry’s motto is Transformation in Motion and we work daily to transform lives through service. When we developed the parent representation program there, we wanted the holistic approach to remain a consistent theme throughout representation and legal support services, We wanted the parents to have some dignity when they come in. Our practice is not about checking services off from a form or spotlighting parent problems.
This past year I was actively involved in legislative and court reform efforts to help parents with access to justice. I’m looking forward to doing more of that this year and beyond until we make legal representation for indigent families in Mississippi a reality. This is a civil access to justice issue that deserves the attention of our lawmakers, our judges, and members of our bar association – for the sake of families in our community.
CLP is a fan of your social media work, especially your Twitter feed. How and why did you start?
I’ve always used social media to get share information. In the beginning, I was not a heavy Twitter user. But, one summer I attended a conference, where the organizers pushed for us to tweet to maximize exposure of the information being shared. So I created an account and started tweeting. I saw what they were doing to connect people with similar interests and engage them in dialogue and it made sense. I saw the benefits of it immediately.
Boost Message and Memory During Conferences
I live tweet at public meetings and conferences. It helps me memorialize and document what happened. It also promotes online dialogues. Live tweeting helps the conference facilitate:
- engagement,
- conversation,
- information sharing (articles and links.)
You also get to learn about who is attending these conferences and events with you and you can gain their perspective on the same experiences with the click of a hashtag. It’s fascinating.
What about Twitter for lawyers? Any tips?
Take the CLE courses on social media for lawyers. There are several ones out there and many are web-based.
Lawyers may be slow to change because law is not a fast-moving profession. There’s one CLE called Social Media for Lawyers: The Next Frontier. I think there couldn’t be a more appropriate title for it. We are in the tech age, the reality is that this is how people are communicating, and we meet people where they are.
More lawyers may get aboard [social media] once we realize the benefits of engaging on social media platforms and the value added to our practices and our networks.
In my opinion, Twitter is the motherboard of information sharing—gets it out there immediately and you have direct interaction.
We have to engage the people where they are. Young lawyers are on social media, we have to bring other members of our bar along with us: engage, engage, engage!
Sally Small Inada, MA, is marketing and communications director and a media enthusiast at the ABA Center on Children and the Law, Washington, DC.
Subscribe to Child Law Practice
Get the full interview with Carlyn Hicks in the October 2015 Child Law Practice, plus:
- An Advocate’s Guide to Protecting Trafficking Victims in the Child Welfare System by Allison Newcombe, a staff attorney with the Alliance for Children’s Rights. Newcombe specializes in the legal needs of commercially sexually exploited children and youth.
- Child Sex Trafficking: Legal Overview, by Alison Newcombe, JD,
- Tips for Working with CSEC Survivors, by Nola K Brantley, CEO, Nola Brantley Speaks!
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