Paralegal Social Media Ethics

A Focus on Facebook Groups

As a business owner, I have to spend time on social media.  My marketing person keeps telling me that I should do more on social media.  So, after months of him bugging me about it, I finally joined a few Facebook paralegal groups last week.

They were “closed groups” which meant that only the members of the group could see posts on that page.  Each of them had 5000+ members in their groups. I removed myself from those Facebook paralegal groups this week because I was seeing posts and comments that made me concerned about where all of this is heading, and I didn’t want to be a part of it.

What I wanted to do is reply to some of these paralegals and say “Delete this! Hurry! Before it wrecks your career.”

There were posts complaining about attorneys (some were very funny and probably true, but still very negative), complaining about HR, complaining about lazy colleagues, complaining about lots of things that should not be on social media – even in a “closed group.” I took a few screenshots of those posts, just to remind me why it’s never a good thing to post anything in a group, no matter how private the group settings are – because any one of those 5000+ members can screen capture copies of everything you do in that group.

There is no such thing as privacy or confidential discussions on social media. This concern doesn’t just come from the former manager’s side of me.  It also comes from the former paralegal in me who wondered…what kind of damage could I have done to my career if social media existed in the early 90s?!? It’s taking “the water cooler gripe session” to a whole new level. Social media ethics is more important than ever.  Don’t let social media be the downfall of paralegal careers.