Ambivalent Imbroglio posted a question about "the ethics and boundaries of blawgging a summer job."
On the Legal Ethics Forum site Brad Wendel posted a broad admonition not to do it at all. I took issue with his response, and posted the following in the comments:
"If the word 'blogging' were not mentioned, if the question had been simply 'what is ok to talk about from the summer associate experience,' what would your advice have been then? Gossiping about co-workers? That seems ill-advised in any context. Discussing clients' cases? Rule 1.6 frowns upon that even among as small an audience as friends and family.I suspect you wouldn't suggest that summer associates completely sequester themselves and never speak a word about the experience to anyone, ever. Surely when they leave for work every day they do not disappear into a black hole, from which no information - not even the color of the office walls - is permitted to emerge.
In fact, such secrecy would be bad for the profession. Strong policy arguments can be made for making lawyering seem a lot like less of a black box, for the benefit of both future and current practitioners as well as the public. How the practice of law really works, and the general policy issues that the practice will inevitably raise, should be able to see the light of day. Blogging simply is more efficient way of communicating these points than having numerous individual conversations, which in many situations would otherwise likely be considered completely acceptable. (I presume, but please correct me if I'm wrong.)
So it would be more helpful if instead of issuing a broad interdiction on blogging, you could instead provide guidelines for helping summer associates evaluate which of the types of information they might be inclined to disclose would either further the cause of transparency, or instead run afoul of the ethics rules (or worse, the dreaded label of 'bad judgement.') All summer associates - all LAWYERS - need to know this, whether they are bloggers or not."
I think what set me off is that it overgeneralized bloggers. There are likely some who have no cognizance of the impact of their blogging, but it strikes me that anyone thoughful enough to ask the question is not one of them. There are also good, important things that blogging can impart, so the expectation that the entire summer job experience should be so verboten to blog about - yet not so verboten to speak about generally - seems overreaching, and itself unfortunate in its consequences.
Edit: See the post at Legal Ethics Forum for responses to my comment.
Comments (1)
I think that the simple answer is that regardless of what may or may not be appropriate (or commonly done) in private conversations between you and your friends, or between you and folks you trust in your career development, there are very few things about a summer law job that are so inncouous and so non-privileged that it would be advisable to publish them to the world in a blog.
Even to the extent that such publications wouldn't be a violation of the rules of legal ethics, they would very likely disturb your employer, and concern potential future employers who think that you might blog about their workplaces or your cases at their firm.
Its a tough road to hoe. Latter in your career, when you are more established, some commentary on the law might be appeciated as a business development mechanism. At this stage in your career, though, I don't think any employer would fail to be annoyed by blogging. You just run too much of a risk of exposing office politics to the public or exposing your cases and legal practices to the public. And taht won't be appreciated.
My two cents.
Mark
Posted by Mark | May 11, 2005 3:46 PM
Posted on May 11, 2005 15:46