COURSE 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 can be more easily found on social media than elsewhere. Social media is also easily used to communicate with existing or potential clients, colleagues or opposing lawyers, and the public. These and other uses of social media 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 ethical issues when lawyers use social media for communication purposes in law practice.
- Communicating with parties, opposing attorneys, and witnesses via social media
- Researching jurors, parties, witnesses and judges via social media
- Ethical issues with blogging, e-newsletters/law updates to clients, posting video
- “Friending” or otherwise connecting with judges, witnesses and others on social media
- Trends in texting, confidentiality, and discoverability
- Using web sites, online advertising and social media for client development
Speaker:
Thomas E. Spahn is a partner in the McLean, Virginia office of McGuireWoods, LLP, where he has a substantial practice advising clients on properly creating and preserving the attorney-client privilege and work product protections. For more than 30 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 a 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.