Ethics and Criminal Practice

Your client leaves the office, and you turn to your computer. Don't we all Google everyone these days? Your client's social media page has no security protections, and you start looking around. His background and history look right, nothing unusual about his friends or contacts. The treasurer is one of them, but that is not uncommon these days. Then you begin to look through his photos, and there they are: He and the treasurer raising champagne glasses at Arthur Ashe stadium; smiling at a charity gala; at a business event, animatedly talking; even out to dinner with their spouses. These photos are not inconsistent with them being mere acquaintances, but what of the optics? You, as counsel, begin to visualize what these will look like at a trial if there is a prosecution. Or, forget trial ' what will they look like when the local media gets hold of them in advance of trial?

New York, Philadelphia, Florida, Pennsylvania and, most recently, West Virginia, have weighed in on these and myriad other issues concerning what advice a lawyer can give to a client concerning the client's social media accounts ' West Virginia's opinion being the impetus for this article. New York County Lawyers Association Ethics Op. 745-13 (July 2, 2013) (NY Op.); Florida State Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics Opinion 14-1, 2015 WL 6484175 (flOp.); Pennsylvania Bar Association Formal Op. 2014-300 (PA Op.); Philadelphia Bar Association Professional Guidance Committee Op. 2014-5 (July 2014) (Phila. Op.); West Virginia Legal Ethics Op. 2015-02 (WV Op.).