June 2016
Ethics and Social Media: Current Developments
Program Description:
Lawyers use social media technology to collect and share information, and communicate with others, not only personally but also when acting as lawyers. Important and probative information about a case - information about jurors, witnesses or others in litigation or about a transaction - can be more easily found on social than elsewhere. Social media is also easily used to communicate with existing or potential clients, colleagues or opposing lawyers, and the public. Client development - online advertising, blogging and emailed newsletters - is also commonplace among lawyers. All these and other uses of technology raise substantial ethical issues for lawyers - competence, confidentiality, preservation of the attorney-client privilege, and honesty. This program will provide you with a practical guide to substantial ethical issues when lawyers use social media and other technology in practice.
- Ethics, social media, and technology - competence, confidentiality, and honesty
- Communicating with parties, opposing attorneys, and witnesses via social media
- Researching jurors, parties, witnesses and judges via social media
- Ethical issues when blogging, issuing e-newsletters/law updates to clients, or posting commentary or video online
- “Friending” or otherwise connecting with judges, witnesses and others on social media platforms
- Trends in texting, confidentiality, and discoverability
- Ethics of using web sites, online advertising and social media for client development purposes
Faculty:
Thomas E. Spahn is a partner in the McLean, Virginia office of McGuireWoods, LLP, where he has a broad complex commercial, business and securities litigation practice. He also has a substantial practice advising businesses on properly creating and preserving the attorney-client privilege and work product protections. For more than 20 years he has lectured extensively on legal ethics and professionalism and has written “The Attorney-Client Privilege and the Work Product Doctrine: A Practitioner's Guide,” a 750 page treatise published by the Virginia Law Foundation. Mr. Spahn has served as member of the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility and as a member of the Virginia State Bar's Legal Ethics Committee. He received his B.A., magna cum laude, from Yale University and his J.D. from Yale Law School.
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