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Tweeting Jurors and The Rules of Professional Conduct: Should Lawyers Avert Their Eyes from Juror Social Network Postings?
ABA/BNA Lawyers' Manual on Professional Conduct Current Reports (2011)
  • Barry R. Temkin, Mound Cotton Wollan & Greengrass LLP
Abstract
This article examines the ethical obligations of lawyers who learn of unauthorized juror blogging and Twittering during a trial, and, in particular, whether a lawyer may capitalize on this electronically-eavesdropped information to inform the lawyer's settlement strategy. Some but not all jurisdictions require lawyers promptly to report juror improprieties to the judge. However, there is little authority explicitly addressing whether trial lawyers may act upon publicly-posted juror musings to benefit the lawyers' clients, for example, in settlement negotiations. A lawyer who stumbles upon-- or trolls for--juror blogging during a trial may have opened a Pandora's box of potential information that the lawyer may seek to exploit to benefit the lawyer's client. Best practice, as explained below, is for lawyers to abstain from exploiting such information for the benefit of their clients, even if publicly posted by jurors on internet sites.
Disciplines
Publication Date
March 30, 2011
Citation Information
Barry R. Temkin. "Tweeting Jurors and The Rules of Professional Conduct: Should Lawyers Avert Their Eyes from Juror Social Network Postings?" ABA/BNA Lawyers' Manual on Professional Conduct Current Reports Vol. 27 (2011)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/barry_temkin/29/