The Young Texas Lawyer

The growing trend among private and public enterprise has been to reduce the number of controversies created by their employees’ behavior on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. Not only are they embarrassing to those involved, but they’re simply bad for business.

In Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Professional Guidance Committee has issued a recent opinion regarding an attorney’s proposed investigation of a witness’s Facebook page. The lawyer tried to use a third party to send a friend request to the witness with the hopes that the witness would accept it and the lawyer could use the third party to gather information about the witness for impeachment. The Philadelphia Bar essentially shot down the idea and labeled it deceptive. Taking the behavior outside the context of the internet should help get the answer to any ethics questions regarding social networking sites. If you trick a witness into befriending a third party in real life then you’ve definitely crossed the line and therefore to do so on Facebook is essentially the same.

Just last week, The Wall Street Journal released a list of rules for “professional conduct” amongst its staff members. The list included a host of policies regarding the use of online activities on social networking sites. Also last week, the Fort Lauderdale City Attorney issued a memorandum warning the mayor and other elected officials to stay off of Facebook and avoid having any type of website if possible. In his memo he wrote:

It is a simple fact that the state of the law is lagging woefully behind the state of the art in communications technology. This presents unique challenges in following the intent and the letter of these laws regulating public meetings and communications of local government.

It’s only a matter of time before law firms begin the same practice, if they haven’t already done so. As we’ve stated before, keep a close watch on your behavior on such sites. Make sure you aren’t the one for which a new rule will be written. If you wouldn’t do it in person, don’t do it on the web.