Teaching “Professional Responsi-bility” at UNT Dallas College of Law makes a person more sensitive to the marriage of technology, social media and legal ethics. The rapid scale of change is disorienting. As the Herman Hupfeld song featured in “Casablanca” starts off, “This day and age we’re living in/Gives cause for apprehension/With speed and new invention/And things like the fourth dimension.” Are we consigned to perpetual vertigo or can we regain our footing? Let’s talk.

We kick off with the February 2016 opinion of the Ohio Supreme Court in Disciplinary Counsel v. Brockler, in which a frustrated assistant district attorney believed that a defendant was literally getting away with murder. He cues in on some telephone tapes between the defendant (who is languishing in jail) and his girlfriend (who is a key alibi witness). The tapes revealed that the girlfriend believed he was cheating on her with a woman named “Teisha.” So what does a frustrated ADA do? That’s right, he creates a fictitious Facebook page for a “Teisha Little,” populates it with characters and stories gleaned from the tape recordings, and then contacts, through Facebook, the defendant’s girlfriend. The story line? I have an 18 month-old child fathered by your boyfriend. The big idea is to pry the girlfriend away from her alibi testimony. No such luck. Brockler discontinues the ruse.

This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.

To view this content, please continue to their sites.

Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now

Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now

Why am I seeing this?

LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law are third party online distributors of the broad collection of current and archived versions of ALM's legal news publications. LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law customers are able to access and use ALM's content, including content from the National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, Legaltech News, The New York Law Journal, and Corporate Counsel, as well as other sources of legal information.

For questions call 1-877-256-2472 or contact us at [email protected]