by: Peter J. Gallagher (@pjsgallagher)
Please check out a recent article I wrote for law360.com on whether judges can be “friends” with attorneys on Facebook or other social media without running afoul of the relevant ethics rules. Here is the opening paragraph:
“Social media has become a part of most lawyers’ personal and professional lives. The same is true for many judges. However, it is still not clear when, if at all, it is appropriate for a judge to be “friends” with a lawyer on social media, particularly when that lawyer appears regularly before the judge. While it is certainly true that, as some courts and ethics committees have observed, social media is fraught with peril for judges, no uniform rule has emerged on the issue. Some jurisdictions prohibit judges from being ‘friends’ with any lawyer who appears regularly before them, while others donot prohibit the practice unless the social media ‘friendship’ also implicates one of the canons of the Code of Judicial Conduct. The latter seems to be the better approach, but it has not been universally adopted and it is not clear that it ever will be.”
Check out the rest of the article here.
Pete's Take 