Risk-Averse Lawyers Surf Net Into Stormy Ethical Seas
An Ohio lawyer is potentially poised to become one of the latest examples of lawyers taken to task for online misbehavior.
Scott Pullins should be suspended indefinitely, an attorney disciplinary board has recommended, for abusing his position as a lawyer to pursue investigations against people who posted negative comments about him on the Internet, reports the Mt. Vernon News.
A dissenting member of the Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline said the recommended sanction in the report it filed yesterday with the Ohio Supreme Court is too severe. Meanwhile, Pullins himself says a reprimand would be appropriate and points out to the newspaper that he is still licensed as a lawyer pending any action by the court. It not infrequently lessens recommended attorney discipline, he adds.
He is among a growing number of lawyers facing actual or potential sanctions due to conduct that perhaps might have gone unnoticed in the past but is now documented online.
“It’s not as if lawyers never misbehaved before,” writes the National Law Journal. “But now they’re making the same old mistakes—soliciting for sex, slamming judges, talking trash about clients—online, leaving a digital trail for bar counsel to follow.”
The article cites multiple disputes previously discussed in ABAJournal.com posts.
Among them, Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold has been linked to anonymous Internet comments about cases to which she was assigned, resulting in her removal from a high-profile serial murder case. (The Cleveland Plain Dealer, which now says a Web moniker she has used is linked to online comments related to her cases on a number of sites, has been sued by Saffold for invasion of privacy.)
Other lawyers were disciplined or fired over social media posts. And even less obvious pitfalls, such as befriending an adverse witness online, could also result in discipline, an ethics opinion suggests.
Outdated ethics rules drafted before social networking sites became ubiquitous may be contributing to the growing number of complaints, since prohibitions may not be clear-cut, some believe. But in the meantime attorneys should perhaps count to 10 … or 100 … before hitting the send button, according to partner Michael Downey of Hinshaw & Culbertson, who says the current ethics rules are probably adequate to address the situation.
“They’re disclosing confidences, talking about pending matters, they take potshots … like everyone else,” says Downey, the immediate past chairman of the ABA Ethics and Technology Committee, in explaining the problem to the NLJ. For some reason, he says, attorneys abandon their usual lawyerly tendency to be risk-averse when surfing the Web.
