What Boundaries Have You Set for Your Own Facebook or Twitter Use?
Social networking is fairly new for lawyers, and there aren’t many best practices for using the medium for client development and professional networking.
Jones Day partner Steven Bennett, who chairs the firm’s e-discovery group, took a crack at it with a Twitter-related cover story in this month’s New York State Bar Association Journal (PDF).
Bennett advises that lawyers establish protocols before tweeting, specifically that they avoid “anything but general professional news in their Twitter communications, restricting the group of recipients of Twitter communications (or some subset of such communications) and/or providing periodic notice to recipients of the conditions under which the Twitter communications are made.”
This made us wonder if we’re going to see 140-character versions of the ubiquitous confidentiality notice that we often see tacked to the end of lawyer-generated e-mail messages. And it made us wonder what you’ve done, if anything to keep your Twitter and Facebook communications from getting you into disciplinary hot water.
So tell us …
Have you developed any protocol for Twitter, Facebook or social media conversations? Bonus points if you have cautionary tales to share about how lawyers communicate online.
Answer in the comments below.
Read last week’s entertaining responses to this request, “Share Your Witness Attire Horror Stories.”
Featured answer:
Posted by John A. Day: “A decade ago I was trying a case in rural, rural Virginia - an area plagued by unemployment and poverty. My client’s daughters were both going to testify. Both lived in NYC, were absolutely beautiful, and very good dressers. Too good for the venue. I took them to Wal-Mart and bought them more appropriate clothes. They literally wept, but showed up to court every day looking Wal-Mart pretty.”
