Florida Proposed Advisory Opinion 14-1

Professional Ethics Committee of the Florida Bar

Topic:

“A Florida Bar member has asked the committee regarding the ethical obligations on 4 advising clients to “clean up” their social media pages before litigation is filed to remove 5 embarrassing information that the lawyer believes is not material to the litigation matter”

From the opinion:

In summary, a lawyer may advise that a client change privacy settings on the client’s social media pages so that they are not publicly accessible. Provided that there is no violation of the rules or substantive law pertaining to the preservation and/or spoliation of evidence, a lawyer also may advise that a client remove information relevant to the foreseeable proceeding from social media pages as long as an appropriate record of the social media information or data is preserved.

 

The full text is available at: https://www.floridabar.org…