Social Media & E-Discovery: Riches and Risks

The use of social media evidence in electronic discovery has escalated dramatically in the last year. There are indeed “nuggets of gold” in social media evidence, but you don’t necessarily mine them without peril. There’s a way to do it correctly and a way to get yourself in trouble, perhaps by inadvertently doing something unethical or perhaps by simply not knowing how to obtain the evidence appropriately. Our experts will discuss the role of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Stored Communications Act in dealing with social media evidence and they will also help you understand when to go to the social media provider and when to go to the user to procure your evidence. Case law is new in this area, but recent cases are instructive, and this session will discuss a few of the most noteworthy cases.