Florida to Judges: Do Not Make Friends with Lawyers

While we understand that conflicts of interest are a serious matter in the judicial realm, a recent ban on friending between judges and lawyers on social networking sites does seem a bit extreme. The ruling, from the Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee arm of the Florida Supreme Court, would prevent judges from adding lawyers who may appear before the judge as “friends” and vice versa on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, et al.

The reasoning behind the ban is to prevent the appearance to the public that friended lawyers might wield some sort of undue influence over the judge. Because the judge’s friends list is most likely available to the public (even more true with Facebook’s recent privacy changes), the committee found that friending a lawyer would violate Canon 2B of the Code of Judicial Conduct, which states, “A judge shall not lend the prestige of judicial office to advance the private interests of the judge or others; nor shall a judge convey or permit others to convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence the judge.”

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Turn Car On; Turn Phone Off

Like drivers chattering on their mobile phones, the cellphone industry was for years too distracted — by rising profits — to see the dangers ahead. As Matt Richtel wrote in The Times last week, the mobile phone industry promoted the glamour and convenience of “car phones” for years while failing to heed warnings that driving and phoning can be a deadly mix….

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