An excerpt of an quiz question posed by a law professor and a law student’s answer:

1) Judge [name redacted] indicated that emails and other electronic communications are becoming a larger part of the evidence in divorce and paternity cases.  Do you believe that people of your generation understand the implications of their electronic communication, including email, chat rooms, Facebook and MySpace pages, on possible family law litigation in the future?

Yes, in a general sense.  For the most part, people of my generation do understand the implications of their electronic communications on possible family law litigation in the future.  First, I do not think that people, of any generation, fully understand the implications of most any of their actions with respect to family law litigation.  This was evidenced by some of what Judge [name redacted] said with respect to family law cases where one spouse says: “but it was only a little bit of marijuana.”  Clearly, this person does not understand the implications of their actions.  Does any generation really and fully understand the implications of ANY of their actions on possible family law litigation in the future?  NO.

Therefore, I do not think electronic communication is the problem.  People will express themselves, albeit to their own determinate, through numerous mediums whether by electronic communication, acts of aggression, verbal comments, physical actions, written letters, and more.  Social media networks such as Facebook and MySpace are not to blame for sheer stupidity.  Stupid people will be stupid regardless of whether they are using Facebook or MySpace.  These are new mediums for people to be stupid on but people are no less aware of the implications of their actions than the generations before them.

From emails, text messaging, banking, making hotel reservations, and even taking law school exams – most everything my generation does is conducted via electronic communication.  I do not have a Facebook or MySpace page but I do advocate the use of social media technologies by the legal profession for many reasons.  These include: staying in touch with the reality that social media technologies are here to stay, marketing, building a reputation, increasing business, networking with other lawyers, having conversations with others in the legal community, and learning from others.  These are all reasons to engage in social media technologies.  The top social media technologies imperative to the modern lawyer is a blog, Twitter page, and a LinkedIn page.

Electronic communication is not to blame.  The people of my generation do not know a world without electronic communication.  The generations who came before my generation will not stop the social media trends and the movement towards electronic communication.  We have a web 2.0 president who used Twitter, Facebook, and blogs to win the votes of my generation.  The White House of the United States has its own blog.  We grew up with Email, Facebook, and MySpace.  The tools to express ourselves may look different but I do not think those of my generation assume any more privacy, using new social media technologies, than with any other form of communication.  Actually, we may assume less privacy as a result of the electronic age we grew up in.  We know our phone conversations are being recorded, we know everything typed into a computer is logged, we know each day there’s a good chance of being filmed on a security camera, and we know the social media technologies save all the data we enter.  In fact, this data is even sold by companies like Facebook to marketers who will turn around and sell us something we’ve already told them we can’t live without via Facebook!

This is the world we inherited.  All the changes I make to this word document are saved in the “metadata” of my computer.  We are aware.  At times we too are concerned.  However, we are no less diligent than those who came before us.  This ability to prove our stupidity in court may be faster with electronic communication but, for the most part, we understand the implications of our actions.

Related posts:

1. Facebook in the Courts
2. Sexting: Think Twice Before Pressing Send
3. A Lawyer Can Have a Facebook Page
4. How Cyber-Stalking Can Get You a Job
5. What Career Service Office Advisors Should be Telling Students About Social Media [Part 2/2]
6. What Kind of Value Do You Provide?
7. Can Lawyers Afford to Ignore Social Media?
8. All Things ABA TECHSHOW 2009 (Day 1)
9. Facebook Cuts Junk Launches Facebook Lite
10. Court Order Tweeted Instead of Served