New York State Bar Association Ethics Opinion on Social Media Investigations

The ethics opinion is here.  The New York State Bar essentially supplements an earlier Philadelphia bar opinion, which says that lawyers cannot use deception to gain access to information contained on social media sites, like Facebook.  The New York opinion states that, as long as the lawyer does not use deception, a lawyer can typically use any other information that is either publicly available or accessible to anyone who is a member of the network.  (Our earlier commentary on the issue is here.)