‘You cannot dunk on a public defender.’ Meet the extremely online lawyer-Twitter celebrity
When someone invokes “lawyer jokes,” they typically mean jokes about lawyers—a category of humor that predates Shakespeare and often revolves around lawyers’ inherent murderability.
Lawyers themselves are not known for having great senses of humor, which is something Beth Bourdon considers a massive misconception. Most of the attorneys in her Central Florida office, for instance, trade dark jokes among themselves whenever possible. Anything to lighten up the bleak atmosphere that comes with striving to mitigate the death penalty for one’s clients.
Bourdon just happens to make those jokes on Twitter, too. Kind of a lot.
Lurk long enough amid the murky morass of weird ads, weirder new features, and hate-bait that makes up much of Twitter, uh, X these days, and one of her posts just might pop up in your feed. Maybe it will be a joke riffing on right-wing podcasters mad about the Barbie movie, a shared link about protofascism in Ron DeSantis’s Florida, or a savage meme about the sorry state of the platform itself since the current owner took over.
In other words, it will probably be similar to what’s on offer from any number of popular accounts run by progressive posters in 2023. But while some folks who trace Bourdon’s viral joke tweets back to her bio might be surprised to learn that she is, in fact, a public defender and FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) lawyer, that duality is exactly what her fans seem to find most compelling about her.
“The fact that Beth has this insider view of Florida’s legal system and is so down to critique it is very cool,” says author Talia Lavin, who contracted Bourdon to file a lawsuit against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2019.
“Her experience as a public defender going toe-to-toe with police has made her a rare blend of streetwise and smart,” says Ken Klippenstein, an investigative reporter for The Intercept, who has broken several blockbuster stories with Bourdon’s assistance.
Plenty of other lawyers have established a presence online, where they break down breaking news with the jackhammer of their legal acumen. Some of them even crack jokes on the app as well. But what sets Bourdon apart is that the vast majority of other lawyer accounts are pseudonymous by necessity—and very few are run by public defenders.
Bourdon’s particular career path, though, is precisely why she doesn’t use a pseudonym.
“Public defenders don’t really get appointed to things, so I don’t see any point in hiding who I am or what my thoughts and beliefs are,” Bourdon says. “We may finally have our first Supreme Court Justice, but when you look at who gets appointed to positions, it’s not us, because the first thing people say when it does happen is ‘You defended rapists.’ And it’s like, yeah, the Constitution gives rapists an attorney. I thought you liked the Constitution.”
Bourdon’s path to becoming a lawyer initially stalled out due to another misconception about lawyers, beyond their supposed lack of humor. She first gravitated toward a legal career as a teen but convinced herself that all lawyers were geniuses and she was decidedly unqualified.
“When you’re a kid looking at lawyers, they seem like the smartest people in the world,” she says. “I assure you: We’re not!”
After dropping out of college a couple of years in, she started working as a receptionist and unofficial legal secretary at a law firm specializing in bankruptcy cases. In this role, she realized she actually did understand dense, knotty legal concepts, and grew confident that she could one day practice law herself. She left the job not long afterward, to be a stay-at-home mom by day and take classes at night. Once she had her undergraduate degree—and once her youngest child was old enough for preschool—she went after her Juris Doctor degree, and the rest is history.
Although Bourdon has become known as an expert in FOIA lawsuits, prior to working with Klippenstein her expertise in that field was limited to dealing with local police in Florida. A case would come across her desk that referenced some missing piece of information about her new client, and she would have to file whatever paperwork it took to get the state’s attorney to hand it over. Reading Klippenstein’s work had gotten her more interested in national security issues, though, and when the reporter tweeted in 2018 that he needed help obtaining records from the FBI, she stepped in—at first, just as an adviser.
It wasn’t until she had a client who was in trouble relating to immigration, making his case a federal matter, that she realized she might someday need to file federal lawsuits in her own cases. The sooner she had experience in that arena, the better. She reached out to Klippenstein again, and told him she would help out in any way she could.
Bourdon quickly learned her way around a FOIA lawsuit, and helped Klippenstein score major scoops about ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and Tucker Carlson, among others. Although she does this work pro bono, she eventually started a Patreon about the ins and outs of FOIA lawsuits, as a means to subsidize some of the financial and time costs of assisting Klippenstein.
Meanwhile, the reporter helped her develop her following on Twitter. In addition to promoting Bourdon on the platform whenever possible, Klippenstein would sometimes advise the novice poster on ways to avoid becoming the day’s “main character.” Pretty soon, she got the hang of her increased exposure, internalized Twitter joke structure, and started attracting droves of fans under her own steam. She now has nearly 73,000 followers, many of whom have also joined her on burgeoning competitor sites Bluesky and Threads.
“I think the best way to describe Beth as a person and as a poster is sincere,” says Jordan Uhl, writer and host of The Insurgents podcast. “She lays it all out there. She talks about her work, her caseload, and her life in genuine terms. She doesn’t shroud things in a layer of irony to protect herself.”
One sentiment Bourdon sees about herself online a lot—both from fans and detractors—is disbelief that she is indeed a lawyer. Her trolls claim that anyone who expresses herself the way she does online must be incompetent at her job, while those who support her seem surprised that a lawyer can actually hang.
“I think the shock,” she says, “comes from expecting you to not be a fun person who is normal.”
The truth is that being extremely online, a condition Bourdon freely admits to, may have even helped her as an attorney. It’s surfaced information she otherwise might not have seen that has proved useful in cases. It sharpened her wit and helped her further trust her gut in communicating effectively. It’s made her observe cultural touchstones and keep up with rapidly evolving slang, frames of reference through which she has built trust and rapport with the clients she’s assigned. And her increased visibility has also led to new clients.
“I was able to access her legal services because I knew her from Twitter,” Lavin says.
On the opposite front, Bourdon’s career as an attorney also helped prepare for life as a poster, equipping her with the thick skin necessary for shouldering online abuse.
“You cannot dunk on a public defender,” she says. “We have heard it all.”
What she wasn’t prepared for was people in her professional life recognizing her from the internet. As more of those meme roundups that circulate on Facebook began including her output, some friends started treating her like a celebrity. Last year, a pair of newer attorneys cornered her at a happy hour and gushed over the fact that they would be working at the same office as “that lawyer from Twitter.”
She is aware, however, of the limitations of internet popularity in the work she wants to accomplish. While filing FOIA lawsuits can help raise awareness of issues close to her heart, she is unable to post about criminal cases she works on or rally support online for any clients. All she can do is vent her frustrations with the legal system in general. But she is thankful to have amassed a large following that is endlessly supportive when she does.
Bourdon is ultimately a lawyer who posts, rather than a poster who does some lawyering, but she has learned to reconcile and embrace the chaos of having both roles in her life.
“I’m waiting for the day that I have a jury panel and the judge asks if any of the jurors recognize anyone in the courtroom, and someone says they recognize me from Twitter,” Bourdon says. “It feels like that could happen.”
(22)
