Social media is a game changer in many ways, and litigation is no different. While social media has been the newest way to connect with friends and family, users are not always careful in what they post. At times, this may come back to haunt them. Add to that the fact that the amount of public information that is now readily available online, and you’ve got an entire new set of data to pull for litigation support.

I came across an interesting article that discusses, at length, the role of social media in litigation. Within this article, one lawyer poses the idea of responsibility as it relates to searching online information when preparing a case.

“Attorney George” is cited in the article sharing his thoughts on the importance of reviewing social media content as a part of trial preparation. He states, “We believe that running a social media search of clients, opponents, and witnesses is now part of the minimum level of due diligence expected of a competent litigator. Indeed, some courts have questioned whether lawyers who have not run Google searches on a defendant but are asserting that the person cannot be found have in fact made reasonable efforts to locate the defendant. In our view, it’s just a matter of time before malpractice claims begin to surface based on a failure to use information publicly available on the Internet.”

Since this is still new territory, so to speak, it raises a good point; can social media content be used for trial preparation, specifically when it comes to witness, defendant, or plaintiff research?

In one word: yes.

Social media monitoring has come a long way since we first entered the space back in 2007. It emerged as a way for brands to monitor what others were saying on social sites, but is much more extensive, thanks to users who like to share every moment of their lives with others. The technology behind it has evolved to a point where it goes beyond simple social sites to be all inclusive of online public content.

Google searches can provide preliminary, basic information about a person of interest; however, there is a lot of “touching” in that 1) one needs to confirm that they are correctly identifying a person, 2) that relevant data is found, with nothing missed, and 3) that the search goes beyond the first few pages of results.

Social media monitoring services have made this process easier and more streamlined. Many law firms and starting to outsource this practice, as service providers have the technology readily available to easily identify persons of interest and provide relevant results in a timely manner.

In addition to public facing content users post on social sites, a strong monitoring service can go well beyond a basic Google search and include:

• Public data, including known addresses and phone numbers
• Content posted on what is not considered “traditional” social sites, such as blog post comments, message boards, or commentary left on news articles
• Content that was posted at the time of the social media research that may be deleted by the user by the time the trial hits. This is especially useful for content that may affect the case in some way.
• Connections on social sites to other people, businesses, or entities that may be of interest and relate to the trial

I agree with the attorney cited in the article in that, at minimum, an online search should be done related to the case. Given that this information is so readily available, it will become more important for this to be done as time passes, and I anticipate that more law firms will turn toward professional social media monitoring service providers to assist with this task.