pls hndle thx

Pls Hndle Thx: A Cry for Yelp

By  
on

Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com.

Dear ATL,

I’m a future 1L and I’m doing a little pre-law education worrying. I have to apply to the bar in my state in October for a background check. The Florida Bar doesn’t check social networking sites right now, but there is the possibility they will begin doing this before I graduate. My Facebook is set as private as it can get, and I’m “friends” with my grandmother, so there isn’t anything on there I wouldn’t show to the Bar. However, I’m an active Yelper and have been writing on that site for about 3 years. I am wondering if it is prudent to scrub all my reviews off the site. Do any bar associations have rules against writing reviews on businesses?

Bar None

Dear Bar None,

When I first read this question, I thought “she’s got to be kidding me,” but then I activated my legendary critical thinking skills and realized that the answer to your question is not so obvious…

It really depends on what you’ve been Yelping. If you’re yelping drug lords, small arms dealers or slave traders, then yes, a bar association may take interest. They may also take interest if you’re naked in your Yelp photo.  But if you’re friends with your grandma on Facebook (or, as my grandmother calls it, “The book of faces”) and are this paranoid about your character and fitness BEFORE you have even entered law school, odds are you’re reviewing locksmiths and cleaners, not hitmen. Bar associations are not concerned with your mean-spirited review of Raj Mahal’s curry or the strength of the drinks at your local dive bar. In fact, I’m pretty sure they don’t even care about your “Thunder from Down Under” or edible Kama Sutra dust reviews. These people are human; they’re probably licking flavored dust off themselves as they Google you, because it’s a free country.  Srsly.  Plus, they’ve got bigger fish to fry, like ferreting out perverts and people who like to jet ski (theoretically the same thing). Bar associations care about judgment liens, arrests and prior convictions, so unless if you Yelp reviewed the clerk at the court who issued your arrest, you should be fine.

I mean, if you feel like you have to go back and scrub your Yelp account, what’s next? Taking the Dan Brown’s The Solomon Key off your Amazon wishlist? Asking your high school to delete your embarrassing cross-country time? Contacting BMG music club and getting them to pull your CD list from 7th grade? Please. All these things make you who you are: a savvy person who paid 99 cents for 13 CDs.  Bar associations aren’t looking for a bunch of robots to enter the legal profession wait a minute, and if they are and for some nutbag reason they DO care about your eBay bidding history or your Yelp reviews, it is simply god’s way of telling you that you weren’t meant to be a lawyer. But based on your paranoia, it seems like you’d be a good fit.

Sponsored

Your friend,

Marin

Agree with Marin that you sound like way too much of a dork to have said anything interesting, much less damaging, on Yelp.

Lawyers and potential lawyers really do need to watch what they say online. But it’s only something you have to worry about if you like to go online, “anonymously,” and talk like you are bats*** crazy. So the question isn’t “am I going to get dinged on character and fitness?” The question is “Why do you need to go online and talk like a crazy person?”

Let me put it this way: when I go to sporting events, I like to heckle. I’m a world class heckler. I once got Bobby Abreu (then with the Phillies) to give me the finger. At halftime at a Knicks game, I heckled nine-year-olds that had won some silly contest (my section was horrified). I’m brutal.

But, no matter how drunk and angry I get, I never curse. I never hurl racial or homophobic insults. Despite being (relatively) protected by the anonymity of a sports crowd, I never lose my mind and start talking like I’m in a lynch mob.

I’m not a good person (I still remember doing everything I could to make Kaz Matsui cry after another botched groundball), but I am a basically decent human being. It turns out that it’s not that hard to act like a human, even when you are drunk, angry, and anonymous.

If you’re really at the point where you are worried your Yelp comments will cause a character and fitness problem, then you really need to work on your anger management. You won’t get dinged from the American Bar because you can’t keep it together anonymously, but you might want to work on your humanity skills.

— The guy that’s one month away from turning on David Wright.

Earlier: Prior installments of pls hndle thx

Sponsored

Topics