Social media networks are indispensable tools used by legal professionals and have transformed the way lawyers communicate with each other and their clients. However, as social media networks proliferate and become more technologically advanced, so too do the ethical issues they present to lawyers.
Indeed, due to the ethical quandaries that social media communications sometimes create for attorneys, the Commercial and Federal Litigation Section of the New York State Bar Association at its January 2014 Annual Meeting presented a CLE entitled “Social Media in Your Practice: The Ethics of Investigation, Marketing, and More.”1 At this CLE, section members used their mobile devices to answer questions concerning various hypothetical social media scenarios. We discuss below some of the issues raised by the hypothetical scenarios as well as the percentage of responses to each question.
