Careers

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Experience

Innovation

Interactive Maps

Locations

About

Pages

Meet our team of innovators
Ask us how we do it

Professionals

Insights

Services

Thompson Hine LLP, a full-service business law firm with approximately 400 lawyers in 11 offices, was ranked number 1 in the category “Most innovative North American law firms: New working models” by The Financial Times and was 1 of 7 firms shortlisted for The American Lawyer’s inaugural Legal Services Innovation Award. The firm has been recognized by the National Law Journal as a Legal Technology Trailblazer and featured by Bloomberg for its innovative service delivery models, which drive accuracy and predictability. The firm’s commitment to innovation is embodied in Thompson Hine SmartPaTHTM – a smarter way to work – predictable, efficient and aligned with client goals. For more information, please visit ThompsonHine.com and ThompsonHine.com/SmartPaTH.

Home | Thompson Hine LLP

Atlanta

Chicago

Cincinnati

Cleveland

Columbus

Dayton

Los Angeles

Minneapolis

New York

Silicon Valley

Washington, D.C.

<img style="max-width: 100%;height: auto;max-width: 100%;height: auto" loading="lazy" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-3958" src="https://www.thelawforlawyerstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/754/2018/06/Banana-peel-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200">Four quick&nbsp;takes on social media pratfalls by judges,&nbsp;lawyers and others&nbsp;&mdash; just from the last few weeks.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t let these happen to you!
<ul>
<li>A Kentucky state court judge posted a comment on a pending murder case on her &ldquo;official&rdquo; Facebook page:&nbsp; &ldquo;This murder suspect was RELEASED FROM JAIL just hours after killing a man and confessing to police.&rdquo;&nbsp; The judge agreed to a <a href="https://courts.ky.gov/commissionscommittees/JCC/Documents/Public_Information/PublicReprimandMcLaughlin061218.pdf">public reprimand</a>, for violating judicial ethics rules, including refraining from public comments that could affect the outcome of pending cases.</li>
<li><a href="http://filehost.thompsonhine.com/uploads/Olga-Zuniga-vs-Kevin-Yeary_76d2.pdf">Another judge was sued last month</a> in federal district court because he allegedly scrutinized his secretary&rsquo;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&rsquo;s immigration policies, and those of some Texas politicians.&nbsp; The secretary had worked for the court for 14 years.</li>
<li>You&rsquo;ve undoubtedly seen the <a href="http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/i_am_not_a_racist_lawyer_says_after_viral_rant_about_spanish_speakers/">rant of a New York City lawyer</a> against Spanish-speaking staff in a restaurant.&nbsp; His profanity-laced tirade&nbsp;was captured on a cell-phone (of course), and went viral.&nbsp;&nbsp;His apology on Twitter was called &ldquo;too little, too late&rdquo; by a United States congress member, who filed a formal complaint with the attorney discipline system, as reported by the ABA Journal.&nbsp; <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/22/us/aaron-schlossberg-attorney-racist-rant-apology/index.html">According to CNN</a>, he was kicked out of his office space, too.</li>
<li>Last,&nbsp;a grand juror is <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/former-grand-juror-pleads-guilty-obstruction-justice">awaiting sentencing</a> after pleading guilty to sending a Facebook message disclosing a Florida federal grand jury indictment to the girlfriend of the man charged.&nbsp; 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.</li>
</ul>
Facebook and&nbsp;LinkedIn and Twitter (oh my)
Social media is great &mdash; we are bombarded with messages about&nbsp;the benefits for us as lawyers in credentialing and marketing ourselves&nbsp;(love to blog!) and educating the public on legal issues.&nbsp; And lots of lawyers and judges&nbsp;use it successfully.&nbsp; The downside, of course, is that it&rsquo;s so easy to use these tools, that we can get careless and&nbsp;make missteps.&nbsp; And when we do, social media is&nbsp;also there to show our gaffe to (potentially) millions.
Interestingly, there are&nbsp;lots of&nbsp;stories about Facebook follies &mdash;&nbsp;but anecdotally, it would seem that fewer lawyers use it&nbsp;for professional purposes&nbsp;than&nbsp;LinkedIn, for instance.&nbsp;&nbsp;A <a href="http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/are_you_considering_deactivating_your_facebook_account">recent&nbsp;ABA Journal &ldquo;question of the week&rdquo;</a> asked if lawyers planned&nbsp;to de-activate their Facebook accounts in light of the flap over&nbsp;FB&rsquo;s disclosure of information to Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining company.&nbsp; While not a scientific poll, the responses seemed to show that respondents weren&rsquo;t very much into using FB professionally anyway.
The ABA&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/groups/law_practice/publications/techreport/2017/social_media_blogging.html">2017 Legal Technology Report</a> suggests a similar conclusion.&nbsp;&nbsp;Less than 40% of firms (of all sizes) reported having Facebook accounts.&nbsp; (In contrast,&nbsp;75% of respondents said they had an individual LinkedIn profile.)
Of course, the watchword here is to be sensible and cautious.&nbsp; Speed kills:&nbsp; slow down, and think before you click.&nbsp;&nbsp;Don&rsquo;t do anything on social media you wouldn&rsquo;t want millions to see &mdash; because they might.&nbsp; And of course, check your local rules and ethics opinions.&nbsp; By now, there is lots of such guidance about friending judges, social media as advertising, pretexting to gather data on opposing parties, not disclosing&nbsp;client information&nbsp;and other issues.

core/freeform

Ethics

Legal Ethics, Professional Responsibility and the Business of Law

Social media follies:  watch your step