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What Lawyers CAN'T Say in a Blog

By Glen Ashman

A Legal Battle: Online Attitude vs. Rules of the Bar
By JOHN SCHWARTZ  - The New York Times

"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 It's (Barely) Legal on September 13, 2009 (boomark / email).