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"In Mr. Conway?s case, the post that got him in trouble questioned the motives and competence of Judge Cheryl Aleman, and appeared on a rowdy blog"

Sean Conway and the Broward Blog made the front page of Sunday New York Times. Very cool!! (Our prior Conway coverage is here.)

And it's timely -- the article addresses an issue that we have been discussing on the blog recently: how far can lawyers go in criticizing judges?

Here's the intro to the article:

Sean Conway was steamed at a Fort Lauderdale judge, so he did what millions of angry people do these days: he blogged about her, saying she was an ?Evil, Unfair Witch.?

But Mr. Conway is a lawyer. And unlike millions of other online hotheads, he found himself hauled up before the Florida bar, which in April issued a reprimand and a fine for his intemperate blog post.

Mr. Conway is hardly the only lawyer to have taken to online social media like Facebook, Twitter and blogs, but as officers of the court they face special risks. Their freedom to gripe is limited by codes of conduct.

?When you become an officer of the court, you lose the full ability to criticize the court,? said Michael Downey, who teaches legal ethics at the Washington University law school.

And with thousands of blogs and so many lawyers online, legal ethics experts say that collisions between the freewheeling ways of the Internet and the tight boundaries of legal discourse are inevitable ? whether they result in damaged careers or simply raise eyebrows.

Full post as published by Southern District of Florida on September 13, 2009 (boomark / email).