Welcome back to the roundup. Ease into the week with some of the latest law links:

• This should be obvious, but one local lawyer says when when handling a social media crisis, don’t act like Anthony Weiner.
• An American lawyer and a professor celebrated the first public lesbian wedding in Nepal.
• What’s the best way to cross-examine defense medical experts? Why, use their own ethics code against them, of course.
• Isolating race bias in the workplace is difficult.
• Mirriam Seddiq rants on the latest inaction on immigration reform and the FBI’s new guidelines.
• NFL’s Mr. Irrelevant wins a $5.4 million default judgement.
• Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (above) is drawing more attention to himself with what the New York Times calls an “ethically sensitive” friendship with a Dallas real estate magnate.

The use of Twitter in courtrooms is a topic near and dear to my heart.

Our Danny Jacobs was able to use Twitter to break the news of verdicts against ExxonMobil in Baltimore County Circuit Court, but tweeting was banned in Baltimore during then-Mayor Sheila Dixon’s corruption trials. And our “Judge on the Jury” columnist, retired Judge Dennis M. Sweeney, has written on the topic several times.

So, imagine my joy on reading this bit of news from the Associated Press: A judge in Connecticut has rejected a defense motion to ban courtroom tweets during a fatal home-invasion trial.

The defense team raised an interesting point, though. They claimed that, in a co-defendant’s trial, “sudden typing of tweets by reporters and spectators signaled to the jury what evidence observers believed was significant.”

In that other trial, the co-defendant was convicted and got the death penalty. Not that they’re blaming the tweets for that; just sayin’ what happened.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that a sudden burst of tweets could affect justice more than the gasps, laughter or any other response of spectators in the courtroom. Litigators? What say you?

“A Maryland newspaper.”

Really, The Wall Street Journal? You write about news The Daily Record broke, and you credit “a Maryland newspaper”?

What, your story ran over by a line so you had to cut out our name? Or maybe all your fact-checkers had the day off?

Or were you trying to be cute, since today’s article — “Anonymous Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury” — is, after all, about withholding names?

In the article, reporters Ashby Jones and Nathan Koppel use the trial of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich as a news hook to discuss the practice of withholding the names and addresses of jurors.

Read the rest of this entry »

I highly recommend that anyone interested in lawyers and social media read this article about why most law firms are doing an awful job with Twitter and how they can improve. Jordan Furlong makes an apt comparison between the just-for-personal-use kind of tweeters who post things like, “OMG, look at this hairball my cat just coughed up” (my wording, not his) and law firms that post nothing but news about themselves. He writes that after reviewing tons of big-firm and small-firm Twitter accounts, he has found that:

The firm’s Twitter feed is essentially a 140-character encapsulation and rebroadcast of its Media Page — and as a former member of the journalistic cabal, I can tell you that the Media Page is generally the most useless page on a law firm website, even (especially) for the media. These Twitter feeds assume that you, the reader, care exclusively about what the law firm and its lawyers are doing or saying.

Furlong proposes that firms supplement the non-stop us, us, us tweets with links that might be helpful to their clients. I also wonder if firms may want to consider encouraging their tech-savvy, personable lawyers to set up individual accounts and tweet about things that may be of particular interest to their clients and to other practitioners in the field. I see a few, but not many of these accounts; I suspect most large firms are weird about their attorneys tweeting.

HT: Above the Law.

On Monday, I had a cover story in Maryland Lawyer about an innovative and mildly controversial new program in Baltimore that will bring a service dog into child abuse forensic interviews and courtrooms. If you haven’t checked it out, please do, and make sure to watch the amazing audio slideshow accompanying it, created by our photographer Max Franz.

I got the idea for the story via Twitter, proving once again that the micro-blogging service is not (just) a time-waster. Here’s how it worked: a few weeks ago, one of the fine people I follow (I wish I could remember who) tweeted a link about how best to use dogs in the courtroom. It sounded pretty odd to me, which is often the hallmark of a great story.  I clicked on the link and got to a fact sheet hosted by the main site of Courthouse Dogs, a Seattle organization that promotes the use of dogs in the judicial system.

I called the group to find out more and asked whether anyone in Maryland was using a courthouse dog. Happily for this journalist, Baltimore had just gotten a dog, Kelly, only a few weeks before. I set up a meeting with Kelly and his human colleagues, and the article came together quickly after that. The Daily Record was able to bring you the story of Kelly the Baltimore courthouse dog before any other news outlet.

So there you have it, folks: Twitter is, in fact, useful.

Ohio State law professor Christopher M. Fairman offered his take Sunday about the controversy over the use of the word “retard.” Fairman said he would not be signing a petition championed by the Special Olympics to ban the use of “the r-word,” which is not surprising considering he is the author of this book.

There were two main points I took away from Fairman’s essay in The Washington Post:

1. “Words themselves are not the culprit; the meaning we attach to them is, and such meanings change dramatically over time and across communities”
2. “Invariably, negative connotations materialize around whatever new word is used. …This illustrates one of the recurring follies of speech restriction: While there may be another word to use, a negative connotation eventually is found. Offense – both given and taken – is inevitable.”

Fairman also notes courts have found government-backed “speech codes” unconstitutional.

Reaction to Fairman’s essay has been strong, including opposing views from Post columnist Michael Gerson and Timothy Shriver, president of the Special Olympics. And perhaps the most prominent opponent of the word “retard” lately has been Sarah Palin.

Washington Post readers had a chance to respond to Fairman as well during an online chat. What do you think of his position? Should “the r-word” be considered on par with “the n-word”?

I’ve come to view the social norms of the courtroom as very similar to a house of worship. You dress up nice, speak in hushed tones and try not to snore during a sermon or closing argument.

I also know you don’t whip out your cell phone in either sanctuary. If you have to call someone or need to have an in-depth conversation, you step out into the hallway as far away from everyone else as possible. It’s both considerate and common sense.

I was thinking about this as I read Andy Green’s criticism of the Baltimore City Circuit Court’s ban on Twitter in the courthouse, prompted by the Dixon trial and verdict. As The Daily Record’s Official Dixon Verdict Tweeter, I guess I’m part of the reason why the ban was enacted.

My tweets, for the record, came from the hallway outside the courtroom. Granted, most of my tweeting was done while we were awaiting a verdict, so I wasn’t leaving the courtroom during any proceeding. But when court was in session, I would try to leave quietly during a break in the action, even if that was simply someone else speaking.

Of course, the nature of the Dixon trial meant there were at least a half-dozen people “quietly” leaving the courtroom at the same time as me. Judge Dennis M. Sweeney solved the problem on at least two occasions by allowing a group of reporters to sit in the back of the courtroom and leave to Tweet and report on his cue. Once we left the courtroom, though, we were not allowed back inside until the proceeding ended.

So while you’re “working” from home today, answer me this: How would you handle Twitter if you were a judge?

When it comes to text-messaging from court, apparently some people just don’t know when to quit.

(And Judge Sweeney thought the reporters at the Dixon trial had a problem…) 

HT: Baltimore Sun

Marylander Carolyn Elefant at My Shingle weighs in on how lawyers should handle the “specialties” field on LinkedIn. Many state bars, including Maryland’s, have rules forbidding a lawyer from holding him or herself out as a “specialist.” Elefant writes:

Eric Mazzone, North Carolina’s law practice management expert and blogger at Law Practice Matters and the Illinois State Bar Association advise lawyers against filling in the “specialties” box on Linked-In without including some nerdy little caveat like “My state bar does not recognize specializations” or “I am not a certified specialist” BUT I focus on the following.

That’s silly, Elefant continues:

As for me, thanks for the advice, but I’ll politely decline. In my view, filling in a standardized box labeled “specialties” that everyone from college students to seasoned professionals completes as part of their profile does not amount to holding myself out as a specialist given the context. And I’m not inclined to muck up a simple profile with a bunch of legal-ese only because someone up at the bar stretches the meaning of “specialties” beyond any reasonable interpretation.

Unless and until the bar issues a formal ethics opinion or propagates a rule about the specialties box, Elefant will be filling it in without caveats or disclaimers, she says.

Has LinkedIn’s “specialties” field ever given you pause? Did you fill it in? With or without caveats?

The Twitterverse is abuzz today with the news that the microblogging service has removed tweeter @Peter_Angelos. As I wrote in April, the person using the name of the personal injury mogul and Orioles owner was obviously not Angelos himself, but he did deliver some funny parody.

It shortly became clear that @Peter_Angelos isn’t really dead, though. He’s now known as @UnPeterAngelos. The same photo used for @Peter_Angelos is used for the new account, with the addition of a black bar over the eyes. The profile for the new account contains the sentence, “Disclaimer: This is a fake account, stupid.”

I conducted an e-mail interview with the guy behind @UnPeterAngelos this afternoon. He (yes, he confirmed that much) said he didn’t want to do a phone interview because he’s still debating whether he wants to “come out” as the man behind the tweets.

He said that he got an e-mail from Twitter telling him that someone had complained about the account. The Twitter folks let him keep all his followers and his tweet history; they just changed the name to @NotPeterAngelos (which he then changed to @UnPeterAngelos) and took down the photo (which he doctored and reposted). He writes:

From the beginning, I tried to keep the persona as absurd as possible to ensure that there was no confusion.  And every major news organization that caught wind of the account was quick to identify it as parody.  Unfortunately, I think this was less a situation of confusion and more an instance of someone personally disliking the satire.  For the record, I’m a fan of Peter Angelos.  I think he’s been unfairly maligned by folks who have no clue how the baseball business works.  He’s been a stalwart supporter in the community and a guy who’s shown a genuine love for the game – even if he’s not always right.

I don’t begrudge Twitter.  They have to cover their behinds, especially now that they’ve come under greater scrutiny.  And if they ever expect to monetize and actually profit from their service one day (tee-hee), they have to make sure to stay on the up-and-up at all times.

So for the foreseeable future the owner who’s number one in our tweets (even if he’s number one on SI’s list of worst owners) will live on as @UnPeterAngelos.

@UnPeterAngelos said he doesn’t think Angelos himself was the complainer:

The guy is rich and influential, and he didn’t get that way by wasting his time trolling time-sucks like Twitter and chasing down smart-assed chumps like me.  Besides, compared to some of the brutal, awful stuff I’ve seen printed about Peter Angelos, this Twitter account borders on flattery.  If I had to guess, I’d say it’s someone in the organization who’s looking to impress the brass by proactively “protecting” Angelos’s reputation.

Readers, do you agree with @UnPeterAngelos’ guess about the complainer?