Social media is the new email. And just like email reshaped litigation over the past two decades, social media is slowly but surely transforming how law is practiced today, creating vast new sources of evidence, raising important questions about information governance and individual privacy, and posing difficult interpretative questions as lawyers and courts struggle to make sense of social media’s idiosyncrasies.
Virtually every person with internet access uses social media today—there are 3 billion social media users worldwide, more than 93 percent of the world’s 3.2 billion internet users. On Facebook alone, 300 million images are uploaded everyday, and 510,000 comments are posted every minute. Your smoking gun could be buried anywhere in that mountain of social media ESI. Indeed, 52 percent of attorneys report seeing an increase in litigation or eDiscovery matters related to social media and mobile devices, according to to a recent survey by Robert Half Legal. Only one percent reported any decrease.
Social media is impacting legal practice in manifold ways. Sure, there are judges with Twitter accounts and law firms on LinkedIn. But there are also the Snapchat-related motor vehicle accidents and the disputes over how deep you can pry into a party’s Facebook history during discovery.
Then there are emojis, with their heart-shaped eyes and stuck out tongues. These modern day hieroglyphics certainly aren’t unique to social media—they’re even used in performance evaluations now—but they certainly proliferate there, where their informality and ambiguity can be a perfect fit for a social media message. And just like tweets and Facebook posts, emojis are finding there way into litigation.
Logikcull’s Upcoming Webinar on Social Media and the Law
To help you navigate this new frontier, Logikcull is hosting a webinar on Social Media and the Law next Wednesday, September 6th. Attendees will learn:
-- Tips for finding and using social media evidence in litigation
-- How courts are treating social media evidence in the discovery process
-- Ethical concerns attorneys must be aware of when dealing with social media
-- The many ways emojis are changing and complicating the practice of law
The panel is not to be missed, featuring some of the top minds in the field:
Eric Goldman is a professor of law and director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law, where his research and teaching focuses on Internet law, intellectual property, and marketing law. He previously practiced in Silicon Valley, as general counsel with Epinions.com and a technology transactions attorney at Cooley Godward LLP. He blogs on internet law matters at the Technology & Marketing Law Blog. He is currently working on a paper on emojis and the law, surveying the impact of emojis on the legal system.
John Isaza, Esq., FAI, is an internationally recognized expert in the fields of information governance, records and information management, and social media law. A partner at Rimon Law, he heads the firm’s Information Governance & Records Management practice and is also the CEO of Information Governance Solutions, featuring Virgo. He is the past chair of the ABA’s Social Media Law Subcommittee and current chair of the Consumer Privacy and Data Analytics Subcommittee. John is also and a contributing author and Editor in Chief of the Handbook on Global Social Media Law for the Business Lawyer, to be published by the ABA and co-author of 7 Steps for Legal Holds of ESI & Other Documents, published by ARMA International.
Aryan Kushan is an adjunct professor of law at American University’s Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C., where he teaches about the intersection between social media and the law. His academic interests include current and emerging technologies used in, and for, the practice of law. He is also an associate registrar for Georgetown Law.
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