Social Media, Technology

This Week In Legal Tech: Stupid Lawyer Tricks, Facebook Edition

Lawyers -- especially lawyers in Florida -- do some pretty stupid things on this ubiquitous social-networking site.

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Facebook dislike thumbs downIt’s Sunday night as I write this. And I have spent the bulk of the weekend preparing for a four-hour ethics presentation I’ll be giving in May. All I can say is, “Thank you Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook.” After all, what would legal-ethics speakers have to talk about if it weren’t for the stupid things lawyers do on this ubiquitous social-networking site?

In fact, I am doubly blessed. My presentation is for a section of the State Bar of Florida. Turns out, Florida has served up its share of stories of lawyers misbehaving on Facebook — which is by no means to suggest that other states are blank slates in this regard.

One that by now has achieved the status of a cult classic involved a Miami public defender representing a man accused of stabbing his girlfriend to death. At some point during the trial, the defendant’s family brought him a bag of fresh clothes to wear in court.

During a routine inspection of the bag, a corrections officer briefly held up a pair of the man’s leopard-print underwear. The quick-thinking public defender did what any self-respecting member of Facebook nation would do – she snapped a pic of the underwear and posted it to Facebook with the caption, “proper attire for trial.”

In her defense, she did post it to her private page that could be viewed only by family and friends. If you want to call them friends, that is. Because somewhere among them was a snitch who saw the photo and notified the judge.

The rest of the story is nowhere near as pretty as those leopard-print undies surely were. The judge declared a mistrial. The public defender lost her job. The only upside was that her client – who had previously tried several times to convince the judge to let him change attorneys – got his wish. No word on what became of the undies.

In another Florida case, a Fort Pierce prosecutor became a courtroom castaway for lyrics he posted to Facebook, to be sung to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme song. It was the end of a felony assault trial involving a reputed gang member. The jury was deliberating. And the apparently bored prosecutor decided to compose a little ditty:

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Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trial that started from this court in St. Lucie County. The lead prosecutor was a good woman, the 2nd chair was totally awesome. Six jurors were ready for trial that day for a four-hour trial, a four-hour trial.

The trial started easy enough but then became rough. The judge and jury confused, If not for the courage of the fearless prosecutors, the trial would be lost, the trial would be lost. The trial started Tuesday, continued til Wednesday and then Thursday With Robyn and Brandon too, the weasel face, the gang banger defendant, the Judge, clerk, and Ritzline here in St. Lucie.

As a point of reference, allow me to interject here that the “totally awesome” second chair was none other than the prosecutor/poet himself, and “weasel face” was the defense counsel. Now let us return to that fateful Facebook cruise:

So this is the tale of the trial. It’s going on here for a long, long time. The prosecutors will have to make the best of things, it’s an uphill climb. The New Guy and Robyn will do their very best, to make the sure justice is served, in the hornets nest. No rules of evidence or professionalism, not a single ounce of integrity. Like My Cousin Vinny, no ethics involved, no ethics involved.

So join us here each week my friends, you’re sure to get a smile, from 6 jurors, a weasel face and two prosecutors, here in St. Lucie County.

Having composed such brilliant lyrics, what else was the prosecutor to do but post them to Facebook? You will be shocked — shocked! — to learn what happened next. The poem was somehow leaked and got published in a local newspaper. As did the leopard-print lawyer before him, the prosecutor defended his actions by pointing out that he had posted the poem on his personal and private Facebook account for only friends and family to see.

For reasons unrelated to the poem, a mistrial was declared in the case. But the Facebook posting prompted the state attorney’s office to take a good, hard look at its policy on social media postings and prompted the defense counsel to threaten a bar complaint.

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As for the prosecutor, he received no discipline for his errant post. He has since crossed the aisle and become a public defender in Tallahassee, where we may presume he continues to be totally awesome — just, hopefully, not on Facebook.

As for me, I’m thinking I need to pare down the Facebook section of my ethics presentation. Gee, I wonder if lawyers ever do anything stupid on blogs?

Robert Ambrogi Bob AmbrogiRobert Ambrogi is a Massachusetts lawyer and journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blog LawSites.com. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an inaugural Fastcase 50 honoree. He can be reached by email at ambrogi@gmail.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@BobAmbrogi).

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