Social Websites becoming new tool for lawyers seeking information

Lawyers USA featured an article in late June about the types of information that can be found in social networking sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.  The article correctly states that these sites have opened up a potential treasure trove of legal evidence, especially in divorce cases where a person’s whereabouts, “friends” and employment status are often relevant.

Lee Rosen, Melissa Brown, and Ben Stevens of South Carolina were all quoted.

Michigan Lawyers Weekly also published a similar article on July 27, 2009, Social Websites becoming new tool for lawyers seeking information, by Alex Lundberg. Dan Victor, John W. Allen and I were all quoted. A portion of my interview is below:

"[T]he existence of a MySpace or Facebook page can have a tidal force effect on a judge's perception of a person.

"I'm astonished how stipulid people are," Hasnnah said. "What people think is funny or OK is not what a judge thinks is funny or OK."

"She counsels her clients to either get rid of or make their social networking sites private as soon as possible and the change the passwords associated with them and their email accounts, All the information found there, she siasd, could be potentially damaging to a case before a judge.

"Embarrassing pictures are hard enough to overcome in court, she said, but there are other bits of information that can cause problems, too, such as statements that help opposing counsel impeach a client."

See also an earlier post on this blog: "Disgracebook | Fools' names and fools' faces"

See Ben Stevens' summary of the Lawyers USA article here. "Divorce Attorneys Are Missing Evidence on Social Media Sites" by Sylvia Hsieh, published at Lawyers USA.

Comments

[Timothy P. Flynn, Esq.]

Once again, very sharp informative post Jeanne. Time magazine touched on this very subject a few months back. Here is the link:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1904147,00.html

[Jeanne M Hannah]

Thanks, Tim. I blogged the Time magazine article as well here. For those of you who missed it, you can read that post here. http://tinyurl.com/kt6pyp

[Ben Stevens]

Jeanne, you correctly point out that knowing how to properly deal with these social media sites can make a huge difference in domestic cases. Thanks for your link back to my post about this subject, and keep up the great work. Your blog is a tremendous resource for practicing attorneys and the general public.