Four quick takes on social media pratfalls by judges, lawyers and others — just from the last few weeks. Don’t let these happen to you!
- A Kentucky state court judge posted a comment on a pending murder case on her “official” Facebook page: “This murder suspect was RELEASED FROM JAIL just hours after killing a man and confessing to police.” The judge agreed to a public reprimand, for violating judicial ethics rules, including refraining from public comments that could affect the outcome of pending cases.
- Another judge was sued last month in federal district court because he allegedly scrutinized his secretary’s Facebook posts, called her into his office to express his disapproval of her politics-related posts, and eventually fired her two weeks after she posted criticism of President Trump’s immigration policies, and those of some Texas politicians. The secretary had worked for the court for 14 years.
- You’ve undoubtedly seen the rant of a New York City lawyer against Spanish-speaking staff in a restaurant. His profanity-laced tirade was captured on a cell-phone (of course), and went viral. His apology on Twitter was called “too little, too late” by a United States congress member, who filed a formal complaint with the attorney discipline system, as reported by the ABA Journal. According to CNN, he was kicked out of his office space, too.
- Last, a grand juror is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to sending a Facebook message disclosing a Florida federal grand jury indictment to the girlfriend of the man charged. Grand jury proceedings are secret; the grand juror warned the girlfriend that the man had been set up by a snitch, and later sent her photos of the indictment.
Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter (oh my)
Social media is great — we are bombarded with messages about the benefits for us as lawyers in credentialing and marketing ourselves (love to blog!) and educating the public on legal issues. And lots of lawyers and judges use it successfully. The downside, of course, is that it’s so easy to use these tools, that we can get careless and make missteps. And when we do, social media is also there to show our gaffe to (potentially) millions.
Interestingly, there are lots of stories about Facebook follies — but anecdotally, it would seem that fewer lawyers use it for professional purposes than LinkedIn, for instance. A recent ABA Journal “question of the week” asked if lawyers planned to de-activate their Facebook accounts in light of the flap over FB’s disclosure of information to Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining company. While not a scientific poll, the responses seemed to show that respondents weren’t very much into using FB professionally anyway.
The ABA’s 2017 Legal Technology Report suggests a similar conclusion. Less than 40% of firms (of all sizes) reported having Facebook accounts. (In contrast, 75% of respondents said they had an individual LinkedIn profile.)
Of course, the watchword here is to be sensible and cautious. Speed kills: slow down, and think before you click. Don’t do anything on social media you wouldn’t want millions to see — because they might. And of course, check your local rules and ethics opinions. By now, there is lots of such guidance about friending judges, social media as advertising, pretexting to gather data on opposing parties, not disclosing client information and other issues.