The Business Of Law

As I’ve written before, here and here, the rules of legal ethics are being forced to adapt to changing circumstances in the profession caused by the social networking revolution.  The latest example of this is a legal ethics ruling out of Florida in which the state’s Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee said that judges and lawyers should avoid “friending” one another on the popular social networking site Facebook.   (The opinion specifically says it isn’t picking on Facebook:  the rule would apply to similar types of social networking sites).

The AP has a nice write up of the Florida situation here.

Specifically, the committee was worried that “friendships” could create the impression that lawyers have a special relationship with their judge friends that could give rise to some kind of undue influence.  I appreciate the concern but am afraid that the cure does more harm than good.

One of the judges from Florida quoted in the AP story said the following: “We as judges can still be good judges and still have friends. Part of our job is to not let that friendship interfere in any way with our decisions,” he said.  Of course, he’s exactly right: Judges will always have relationships with attorneys who practice before them.

But here is where I think that the Florida advisory committee might have gotten this one wrong.  When does less information ever lead to greater safety?  If a judge feels that he or she knows a particular lawyer well enough to allow that person to view the pictures of the judge’s last skiing vacation with the kids, wouldn’t it be better for everyone to know that?

Consider what happened before and continues now in the Facebook age.  Judges and lawyers talk when they meet in the changing room at the country club or when they see each other in the local grocery store.  The medium is different (golf course, grocery store, or social networking site) but the relationship is no different. In fact, on Facebook, one could argue that the relationship is much more transparent.

One of the many advantages of our increasingly interconnected world is the idea that it promotes greater transparency.

We know judges have friends, and we know that the possibility exists that those relationships could influence their decisions.  We hope they don’t, but we know it’s possible.  So again I ask:  isn’t it better to know about those potential relationships?

Facebook and other social networking sites don’t create relationships; they are a manifestation of them, a medium through which those relationships occur.  In the case of judges and lawyers, I’d prefer that those relationships were out in the open, where everyone could see them and thus be the judge (pardon the pun) of whether a judicial decision is influenced by a friendship.