Posts Tagged ‘social media’

There has been much controversy surrounding the American Bar Association’s decision to evaluate and revise its position on social media for lawyers. The ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 has solicited guidance from dozens of lawyers across the country and has said repeatedly that any changes are not likely to be earth shattering. But views on both sides of this issue are strong and while some lawyers have been outspoken in their defense of social media, others have said that too much online interaction could cross important ethical borders. This week, the ABA released its initial proposal on the use of technology for client development, and for all intents and purposes, we’re looking at business as usual for lawyers and judges.

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Social media is a great way to stay connected with friends and family members. But as a professional development tool, the purpose of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is far less clear. So far, many lawyers and judges have opted to steer clear of the web when it comes to professional contacts, and the American Bar Association has even said that it plans to address the ethics of social media use for lawyers. Last week, the San Francisco Recorder tackled the subject in a profile of a number of Bay Area judges. Perhaps it wont come as a surprise that their opinions differed quite a bit.

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When people talk about technology related to distracted driving, they usually mean gadgets that make the roads safer by making distracted driving more difficult. But thanks to the tech “arms race” among car manufacturers, these companies have a economic interest in providing high-tech solutions to distracted driving laws, even if they don’t make you safer. So as we enter into the second annual Distracted Driving Awareness Month, we wanted to highlight some of the most dangerous technologies designed to address distracted driving. Click through to take a look.

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Before massive layoffs at the country’s major law firms, before major cuts to the funding of free legal aid clinics, and before before the meteoric rise of Google, consumers relied on lawyer referrals for legal representation. Once search engines took over, however, and we grew used to accessing the world from our desktops, consumers turned to the web. So we’ve compiled some information about the four major legal raters, their differences, and their main qualities.

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If you work in an office, the chances are that you’ve used social media at work before. Hopefully, you keep personal use of social media communities like Facebook and Twitter to a minimum during work hours. New reports have found that more than half of employers in the United States view social media use as so harmful to productivity that they’ve banned it altogether. Companies that have not taken this drastic step, however, have run in to a variety of problems related to social media use, which has led to embarrassment, terminations, and even costly lawsuits.

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Over the past five years, Facebook has evolved from a scrappy web upstart to a worldwide phenomenon with more than 500 million members. Even outside the social sphere, Facebook has also become a force in professional communities, and was the subject of the year’s most engaging film, The Social Network. But when it comes to law, the jury is still out on Facebook, as state courts continue to debate whether information gathered on Facebook should be admissible during the discovery process leading up to a legal showdown.

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There are two sides to the debate about whether state bar associations should enforce stricter regulations on attorney advertising. First, there’s the question of whether the courts should regulate what attorneys can say in print ads. At the center of this debate is the use of nick names, and client testimonials. On the other side, attorneys have been debating whether attorney social media use amounts to advertising and should therefore warrant special regulations. For both of these debates, authorities have recently issued encouraging decisions that indicate a less restrictive view toward advertising and social media.

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Thanks to the ever-changing role of the Internet in public and private life, the role of eDiscovery is constantly evolving. Adding weight to this, a New York judge recently ordered personal injury plaintiff Kathleen Romano to turn over information from her Facebook and MySpace pages, arguing that they could shed some light on whether she was, in fact, subject to emotional distress following her fall from a desk chair back in 2003. Keeping the Facebook information private, Justice Jeffrey Arlen Spinner ruled, “not only would go against the liberal discovery policies of New York favoring pretrial disclosure, but would condone Plaintiff’s attempt to hide relevant information behind self-regulated privacy settings.”

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The rise of social media, and the Internet as a whole, has fostered the ability to connect with old friends, professional acquaintances, and distant family members. It also creates the possibility for a whole new world of social media quandaries that could lead to massive lawsuits. Whether its Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or Yelp, users of every major social media website have run into unique legal problems. And it doesn’t always end up pretty for the little guy. Below is a list of ten epic social media #Fails that have led to major lawsuits.

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If I were a lawyer who had been sanctioned for unethical behavior, I’d probably try to avoid attracting attention to myself. But Florida attorney Joe Davis is taking a different approach, and has formally sued Avvo, the social media and information website for lawyers and consumers, for revealing that he had been sanctioned for professional misconduct. Needless to say, Avvo is not backing down since increasing transparency in the legal process is exactly what the pioneering website has set out to do.

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