Research Guides : Social Media: Law, Ethics and Current Awareness: Databases and Articles

Articles form Heinonline

Here are a few relevant articles from Heinonline.

Articles from SSRN

Do You Have a First Amendment Right to Social Media? This article analyzes recent court decisions, and a pending case before the United States Supreme Court, concerning the degree to which individuals have a First Amendment right under the United States Constitution to use social media. More specifically, this article analyzes the constitutionality of state laws which criminalize social media usage amount convicted felons.
#Advocacy: Social Media Activism's Power to Transform Attorneys influence the actions of legislators, courts, and community leaders by working alongside social movements. Together, these advocates seek to challenge the status quo by setting precedent that will ensure equality and justice for all individuals. While social movements often use social media to convey their message or to gather support for their cause, many attorneys are unfamiliar with leveraging this powerful new technology. Social media platforms provide a low-cost, fast, and easy-to-use tool that effectively disseminates information and helps advocates garner support for their cause. However, some social change advocates, including lawyers and policymakers, are hesitant to get involved in social media activities. These advocates are missing unique and powerful opportunities to move their causes forward, and are perhaps doing so at their peril. Online activism has both amplified the voices of marginalized individuals and shifted national conversations on important legal and social issues. This Article explores the role of social movements in cause-lawyering, and introduces advocates to social media’s role in creating meaningful legal change. It first discusses social movements and community activism in the context of law. Next, this Article illustrates the unique power of online advocacy (often referred to as #activism) to create legal and social reform. This article concludes by proposing that attorneys understand and embrace social media, as it has revolutionized how laws are created and enforced in all aspects of society.
Technology and Client Communications That the use of technology has radically changed the legal profession is beyond dispute. Through technology, lawyers can now represent clients in faraway states and countries, and they can represent even local clients through a “virtual law office.” Gone are the times in which the lawyer’s choices for communicating with clients primarily involved preparing formal business letters to convey advice, holding in-person client meetings in the office, or conducting telephone calls with clients on landlines from the confines of the lawyer’s office. Not only do lawyers have choices about how to communicate with their clients, but they also frequently choose electronic modes of communication. Though using technology for client communications is typically faster and often more convenient than traditional modes of communication, a lawyer’s ethical obligations impact whether or how to use technology. The use of technology impacts three of the lawyer’s most fundamental obligations – the lawyer’s duties to communicate with the client, to protect the confidentiality of that communication, and to provide competent representation. For those reasons, whether a lawyer’s use of technology comports with the lawyer’s ethical requirements has been the source of numerous ethics committee opinions over the last twenty years, as well as a series of amendments to the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Though it is now universally accepted that lawyers can use technology for client communications, the prevalence of technology does not dictate that its use is always appropriate. Part I of this Article analyzes state and ABA ethics opinions that consider the propriety of a lawyer’s use of technology for client communications. Part II discusses changes to the Model Rules since 2000 relating to the use of technology by lawyers and its impact on the practice of law. Part III proposes that law professors and lawyers charged with instructing or mentoring law students and new lawyers regarding client communications educate them regarding not only the content of those communications, but also how and when to use technology. Perhaps ironically, the additional instruction regarding how and when to use technology is a necessity because of the frequency and ease with which the current generation of law students uses technology.
The Twenty-First Century Lawyer's Evolving Ethical Duty of Competence Just twenty years ago, lawyers were not expected to know how to protect confidential information from cybersecurity threats, use the Internet for marketing and investigations, employ cloud-based services to manage a practice and interact with clients, implement automated document assembly and expert systems to reduce costs, or engage in electronic discovery. Today, these skills are increasingly essential, and many lawyers want to know whether they are adapting quickly enough to satisfy their ethical duty of competence. This short article describes several relevant recent changes to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct and identifies new skills and knowledge that lawyers should have or develop.
Technology: A Motivation Behind Recent Model Rule Revisions As long as technology has been available, lawyers have taken advantage of it to communicate with clients. As technology evolves, so do the ethical issues lawyers face with its use. Because of this, technology was a motivating force behind the recent revisions to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Two primary issues addressed in the rule revisions are the impact of technology on confidentiality and the interplay between technology and client development. The rule revisions begin by adding language to the commentary of Model Rule 1.1 [Competence] making it explicit that competent representation requires lawyers to understand relevant technology’s benefits and risks. Model Rule 1.6 [Confidentiality of Information] was amended to include a new subsection, requiring lawyers to make reasonable efforts to prevent the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of, or unauthorized access to, client information. Model Rule 4.4 [Respect for Rights of Third Parties] was changed to add electronically stored information to its mandates, as well as help define some terms, such as "inadvertently sent." New commentary to Model Rule 5.3 [Responsibilities Regarding Nonlawyer Assistance] now addresses the use of nonlawyers outside the firm, with a specific reference to using an Internet-based service to store client information. As for Rules addressing technology and marketing legal services, Model Rule 1.18 [Duties to Prospective Clients] was amended to clarify when electronic communications give rise to a prospective client relationship. Commentary to Model Rule 7.2 [Advertising] was amended to give lawyers guidance on using new client development tools in a permissible way. Rule 7.3 [Solicitation of Clients] added a new comment providing language to define solicitation, and subsequent language to clarify when a lawyer’s online communications constitute the type of direct solicitations that are governed by the rule. While conservative in their approach, the recent Model Rule revisions provide useful information to lawyers, amplifying and clarifying existing principles.
140 Characters or Less: An Experiment in Legal Research In 1995, Robert Ambrogi, former columnist for Legal Technology News, wrote about the Internet’s potential to revolutionize the accessibility and delivery of legal information. Almost 20 years later, Ambrogi now describes his initial optimism as a “pipe dream.” Perhaps one of the greatest problems facing the legal industry today is the sheer inaccessibility of legal information. Not only does this inaccessibility prevent millions of Americans from obtaining reliable legal information, but it also prevents many attorneys from adequately providing legal services to their clients. Whether locked behind government paywalls or corporate cash registers, legal information is simply not efficiently and affordably attainable through traditional means. There may, however, be an answer. Although the legal industry appears to just be warming up to social media for marketing purposes, social media platforms, like Twitter, may have the untapped potential to help solve the accessibility problem. This Note attempts to prove that assertion by showing an iteration of social media’s potential alternative use, as an effective and free information sharing mechanism for legal professionals and the communities and clients they serve. Generally speaking, law review editors and other academicians demand that authors support every claim with a citation, or, at the very least, require extensive research to support claims or theses. This Note seeks to fulfill this requirement, with a variation on conventional legal scholarship. Almost all of the sources in this Note were obtained via Twitter. Thus, this somewhat experimental piece should demonstrate social media’s potential as an emerging and legitimate source of legal information. By perceiving and using social media as something more than a marketing tool, lawyers, law schools, and, most importantly, clients, may be able to tap into a more diverse and more accessible well of information. This redistribution of information accessibility may not only solve some of the problems facing the legal industry, but also has the capability to improve society at large.

SSRN is a good place to look for current research.

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Communication Law and Policy	Computer Law and Security Review
International Data Privacy Law	International Journal of Law and Information Technology

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