Florida Bar Offers Advice on Social Media Cleanups
A new Florida Bar professional ethics committee opinion would allow lawyers to take pre-emptive steps to avoid a client’s past social media posts, photos or videos from being dragged into litigation, chair of Bilzin Sumberg’s Litigation Group's Michael Kreitzer and…
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associate Naomi Alzate wrote in an article for the National Law Review posted Saturday. The opinion comes after an unnamed bar member inquired about the ethical obligations an attorney has when advising clients to “clean up” social media accounts to “eliminate embarrassing information the attorney considers immaterial to the suit,” they said. The lawyer also asked if a client can change his or her social media settings from “public” to “private.” If asked directly, attorneys must “comply with The Florida Bar’s Rule 4-3.4(a), which sets prohibitions on obstructing, destroying, altering or concealing material information the lawyer knows or reasonably should know is relevant to a pending or reasonably foreseeable proceeding,” the article said. The Florida Bar's proposed rule is similar to the New York County Lawyers' Association’s conclusion that “a lawyer may advise his/her clients to use the highest level of privacy settings on their social media pages and may advise clients to remove information from social media pages unless the lawyer has a duty to preserve information under law and there is no violation of law relating to spoliation of evidence,” Kreitzer and Alzate said. The opinion will become final within the next 30 days absent further action by the Florida Bar Board of Governors, they said.