In Which I Scold My Friends and Colleagues

I teach in a law school capital defense clinic, in which we mandate that our students never, ever post anything related to the representation of their clients on Facebook or other social media platforms. I didn’t think this was a controversial position, as it tracks the ethics rules in virtually every state.

But I see criminal defense lawyer friends of mine posting about their cases on Facebook all the time. They post about victories, defeats, their travel plans related to case work, the issues they are researching, and the personalities involved in their cases. Some of these posts seem like egregious violations of the ethics rules, other seem more innocuous (but still violate the rules, in my opinion).

One thing that struck me as I thought about this phenomenon is that while many of my criminal defense lawyer friends post about their cases, my corporate lawyer friends never, ever do.

I thought this was interesting, and somewhat disturbing. So I wrote an article about it for the ABA’s Criminal Justice Magazine. You can access it here. I know this makes me a bit of a scold, but I think we in the criminal defense bar can do better: all criminal defense agencies and offices should develop strict rules against posting anything related to a case on any form of social media. I’m curious to know what you think.

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