Ethics

The professional responsibility conference rolls on in Seattle, and this morning I'm in a session dedicated to the ethical issues surrounding lawyers' use of social media.  LEFers Andy and Renee have been all over these issues on this blog, and thankfully they're on the panel today.  I confess that I have a creeping sense of guilt as I listen to the various presentations, not because of my lack of scholarly attention to this exploding array of ethical pitfalls and problems, but because I haven't focused any attention in my PR course on these issues.  Especially at schools where a lot of our graduates end up in small firms or solo practice, grappling with these questions (e.g., is your facebook page an ad?  if you "claim" your profile on Avvo, is it an ad?  should you "friend" a judge or a client?  which state's ethics rules will apply to your use of social media?  can you "tweet" about legal proceedings?) needs to be a non-negotiable component of practice management.  Covering Ohralik, Bates, et al. is no longer sufficient to give our students a sense of their ethical obligations when it comes to professional communication.  Are course materials beginning to catch up with the changing reality? 

One more note: An excellent point was just made in the follow-up discussion: Law students who have grown up in a culture saturated by social media have different expectations and understandings of privacy and confidentiality.  I think there's a lot to that, and I think that folks engaged in the project of professional formation need to think more about generational shifts in our approach to communication.