Date: March, 2009
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Type: Report
If you’ve been in a car crash, had some other kind of accident, or end up in court for any reason, your Oregon personal injury lawyer will have all sorts of concerns: who’s fault was it? What’s your medical treatment been? Have you been truthful with your doctors? Have you followed your doctors’ recommendations? Who will the judge be? Does the insurance company play fair?
But in this modern world, there is a whole new set of concerns that accident attorneys are just starting to figure out: Facebook.
When a client comes into our offices as Shulman DuBois LLC, a Portland personal injury law firm, we always discuss Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and other social media that they may belong to. We have to assume that the other side will look at your pages and do internet research on you.
A question that we all had has just been answered, though not in Oregon yet. The Journal of the American Bar Association reports that another state has said clearly that lawyers are not allowed to “friend” a potential witness in order to investigate them, unless the person gives them permission. And the lawyer can’t have someone else do it either.
Lawyers should always be honest, and be completely on the up and up. Most of us are, but a few bad apples give justice a bad name. We at Shulman DuBois welcome this ethics rule, and hope that Oregon follows suit.
Shulman DuBois, LLC, is located in Portland, Oregon, and serves clients in all Oregon cities and counties, including: Portland, Beaverton, Multnomah County, Hillsboro, Gresham, Lake Oswego, West Linn, Tualatin, Troutdale, Sellwood, Corvallis, Salem, Eugene, and Albany.
