Lawyers on social media delight, inform, raise ethics questions about attorney-client relationships

An attorney panel earlier this month shared the joys and hazards of lawyers addressing the general public through social media.

A hat tip to Mississippi attorney Kye C. Handy, Balch & Bingham, for introducing me to California attorney and influencer Reb Masel on TikTok, the J.D. genius behind Reading Iconic Court Transcripts and other legal commentary.

@rebmasel i dedicate this one to Kohl’s cash #transcripts ♬ original sound - reb for the rebrand

Reb Masel's Rebuttal
(Spotify, Apple, YouTube)

Reb Masel hosts the Rebuttal podcast at Spotify, Apple, and YouTube. Read more about her at Tubefilter, where she said in fall 2023 that she practices in defense-side civil litigation "for now." If you must know more about Pepperdine Law alumna Reb Masel in the muggle world, the Daily Mail wrote about her in 2022.

Handy served on an ethics panel at the Next Generation and the Future of Business Litigation program of the Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section (TIPS) of the American Bar Association (ABA) at the 2024 ABA Midyear meeting in Louisville, Ky., earlier this month.

A key takeaway of the panel for attorneys: be careful you don't create an attorney-client relationship through social media posts. If giving legal advice, disclaim, disclaim, disclaim.

Florida attorney Richard Rivera said that ethical obligations may arise merely from a viewer's subjective belief that an attorney-client relationship exists. I presume there is a reasonableness check on that, but the objective measure would be lay perception, not the knowledge and experience of the attorney. Thus, a social media post can trigger an attorney's duties of confidentiality and timely response to questions.

Accordingly, Washington attorney Matthew Albrecht warned attorneys to keep up with their inboxes in all media. If a viewer or listener reaches out through a web form, social media direct messaging, etc., asking a question in response to a post, failure to respond promptly can be an ethics violation.

Moreover, an attorney must be wary of questioners who overshare, Albrecht said. They might post comments on a public website that compromise their cases, and the attorney may be obliged to delete the comments to protect the prospective client. A questioner also might provide information that puts the attorney in conflict with prior or existing clients. So an attorney with any online presence should have and adhere to a careful policy for receiving and processing incoming communications.

I wish I could count on a response from a doctor's office when I ask a question. Clearly, the bar for attorneys is higher.

Probably needless to say, some attorneys give advice in mass media that might be accurate in context and not run afoul of ethics rules, but might at the same time invite trouble in problematic misunderstanding. For example, many online videos present Texas lawyers schooling viewers on the use of force in defense of property under the state's generous castle laws. Handy shared one video by a lawyer who described a property owner vs. trespasser confrontation in which the property owner might lawfully "beat her ass."

To inform professionalism, Handy recommended to law students and new lawyers the podcast Young Lawyer Rising from the Legal Talk Network, an ABA partner.

The ABA TIPS panel comprised Albrecht, Handy, Rivera, and D.C. attorney Josephine M. Bahn.

Facebook shields records from Mass. AG inquiry

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court today ruled on efforts by Facebook to resist disclosures arising from an internal investigation into application development.  The disclosures are sought by the commonwealth attorney general, which is investigating allegations of consumer data misuse.

AG Healey
(Zgreenblatt CC BY-SA 3.0)

The court's ruling is mixed, but, overall, Facebook gained ground.  The court allowed Facebook more latitude than it won in the lower court to resist disclosure on grounds of attorney work product.  On remand, the lower court will have to scrutinize the records to separate attorney opinion, which is protected, from mere facts, which are not.  The SJC agreed with the lower court that one set of records was within attorney-client privilege, and Facebook will have to produce a privilege log.

Facebook seems to be taking seriously the investigation by the office of Attorney General Maura Healey, and it should.  The company hired fixer-firm Gibson Dunn to handle its internal investigation and is represented by Wilmer Hale in the Massachusetts investigation.  Massachusetts data protection regulation is antiquated relative to the latest generation of regulations in Europe and California, but the law has been on the books for more than a decade.  The AG was represented in the SJC by attorney Sara Cable, whose appointment last year as the office's first chief of data privacy and security signaled an intent to ramp up data protection.  Massachusetts consumer protection law, "93A," the basis of the AG investigation here, is famously expansive, often displacing common law tort in private enforcement and affording generous damages.

Justice Scott Kafker wrote the lengthy opinion for the court in Attorney General v. Facebook, No. SJC-12946 (Mass. Mar. 24, 2021).  Justice Kafker is on a tear of late, having written the court's opinion in a sea change in tort law in late February and the court's unanimous ruling against Gordon College in a First Amendment religious freedom case on March 5.