Although law students have good reason to be cautious on Facebook and Twitter, a study suggests they’ll use those networks as lawyers.
Milles's students tell him that Buffalo's career services officers warn them about potential employers snooping on Facebook, but he still recommends that they build their professional reputations on social networks.
"It may be that many law students have not yet developed a sense of what being a professional means, and therefore have difficulty distinguishing between professional and personal uses of social media," he says. "I had a discussion a couple of years ago in my class about how most social media users develop a particular presentation of themselves online, but most of them rejected that idea. What they do online is who they are; they didn't have a sense of a persona online or elsewhere."
[Learn why online law degrees face a hung jury.]
Adam Kaduce, a 2012 graduate of Drake University Law School, says that when social media came up in his studies there, it tended to be accompanied by a warning rather than encouragement to take the plunge.
But law firms have good reason to use caution when using social media for attorney-client interactions, which clients consider more personal than their relationship with, say, their local grocer, he says.
"It's not like buying a Pepsi or a Coke, where you just grab one," Kaduce says. "It's really something where you need to trust your attorney."
Searching for a law school? Get our complete rankings of Best Law Schools.
Reader Comments (