Gonzalo Barr

If you are leading a double life (lawyer by day, blogger or fiction writer by night) you need to consider whether your extracurricular activities can land you in trouble with your day job.  Previously, I linked to an article in Washington Lawyer that listed seven points to avoid getting into legal trouble.  The points are common sense — don’t defame your employer, don’t post any trade secrets, that kind of thing.

But what about that gray area lawyers call “the appearance of impropriety?” You aren’t writing about anything related to your job.  You are doing it on your own time and your own computer.  But the partners think that your activity reflects poorly on the firm.  What happens then?

Take the case of Deirdre Dare.  She was a senior associate at the UK firm of Allen & Overy and was assigned to their Moscow offices.  The Daily Mail reported that she was earning GBP 150,000 (about USD 215,650) a year.  That is a good salary for an associate, even if Moscow is one of the world’s most expensive cities to live in.  By day, she was an international finance and projects lawyer.  By night, she was the author of an online pornographic novel.

According to The Daily Mail, Dare’s online novel –

describes the sordid lifestyle pursued by staff at a British-led professional firm in the capital. [The] heroine describes herself as a ‘part drug addict, part alcoholic’ who regularly turns up for work hours late and hungover. She and her colleagues are constantly seeking new sexual conquests, attend obscene sex shows involving donkeys and dwarves, blow fortunes at expensive restaurants and gossip about where they are planning to get drunk next.

When the partners discovered the online novel, they warned Dare to stop or be subject to disciplinary action. The novel, the partner’s believed, brought disrepute to the firm.  Allen & Overy is considered one of the world’s elite law firms.

Each law firm has its own culture. A lawyer looking to jump should be honest with himself and apply only to firms whose cultures are compatible with his own.  No matter how much they pay you, life will be hell otherwise.  You will dread every minute you have to be there.  You will lose (or gain) a ton of weight. You will take up smoking or drinking or both.  And by the time you’re thirty-five (assuming you are still with the same firm) you will look like you are fifty-five.  Life’s too short for that.

An unidentified source at Allen & Overy was quoted by The Daily Mail as saying about Dare –

‘As it is, we’ve still got her name on our website, so there’s no indication she’s facing the sack.’

That article was published January 17, 2009.  A search of the firm website earlier today did not list anyone by the name of Deirdre Dare, in Moscow or anywhere else.

Sources: Neil Sears, “Miss Dare, the £150,000 lawyer, told to stop putting porn on the net,” The Daily Mail (Jan. 17, 2009), Allen & Overy website

If you have a day job and you like to blog or you maintain an account on My Space or Facebook, you may want to keep in mind the fact that anything you post may become public and affect your employment.  It is not a good idea to post a picture of yourself drunk at the firm’s Christmas party.  Your employer may not like the fact that you were dancing on your boss’s desk swilling from a bottle of champagne. Even if you didn’t go that far, if your employer can see a picture of you, red-faced, tie-loosened, clearly way-past-gone, the clients can see it as well.

You should also keep in mind that if you are applying for a job, firms are increasingly turning to the web to vet applicants.  Say you post something like, “I’m going to interview with Giant Corporation.  I’m selling my soul to those dirty, profit-seeking, greedy bastards, I know, but I need the money.”  Say the prospective employer finds the post.  What do you think the chances are that those “dirty, profit-seeking, greedy bastards” will give you the job?

What?  Did you say zero?  How about less than that?

It is a good idea to remember that anything you post on the web is public.  Start from that proposition and you are likely to avoid embarrassment and potential liability.

Washington Lawyer (the official journal of the District of Columbia Bar), in their December 2008 issue, published an article about the kinds of problems, including legal ones, that you can get into by being imprudent about what you post.  The author of the article listed seven basic rules to keep in order to avoid getting yourself into trouble.  [Note:  Remember that these rules are the result of the article author’s interpretation of US federal laws.  Different states and countries may have different laws.]  I will summarize the seven rules below –

Rule 1: Play It Safe
Avoid visiting social networking sites at work unless you have a good reason.

Rule 2: Become Familiar With Your Employer’s Policies
There is a very good chance your employer has implemented an extensive list of policies that relate to your use of workplace technology and networks.

Rule 3: Do Not Post Anything That Could Be a Violation of Employer Policies
Before you post anything on your blog or social networking page, take a moment to ask yourself whether what you are about to say or display could constitute a violation of employer policies.

Rule 4: Do Not Disclose Confidential Information or Trade Secrets, or Use Company Logos on Your Social Networking Page or Blog
This is an important corollary to Rules 2 and 6. Unless it is very new or small, your employer likely has policies in place requiring that employees maintain the confidentiality of sensitive business information, such as trade secrets, and warning against the misuse of the employer’s logo or brand.

Rule 5: Know Your Legal Rights
Employers generally enjoy a wide berth when it comes to hiring decisions and disciplinary determinations. But that does not mean you are without legal rights if your blog or social networking site cost you your job.

Rule 6: Do Not Defame Your Employer
While you may enjoy the protections of the NLRA [GB Note: “NLRA” refers to the National Labor Relations Act] for concerted activity you engage in through your blog or social networking site, you will lose that protection and be subject to discipline if you are raising workplace issues in a way that is disloyal and defamatory rather than as a sincere effort to effect change.

Rule 7: Do Not Defame Your Coworkers
It is common courtesy not to speak ill of your coworkers, including managers, in a public forum such as the Internet, let alone to do so in a manner that would allow a reader to identify who these people are. Before you write anything about your coworkers on your blog or social networking site, ask yourself first whether you would be angered, embarrassed, or irritated if someone were to make similar public statements about you.

The rest of the article is here.

Sounds like good advice to me.

Source: Lily M. Garcia, “Social Blunders,” Washington Lawyer (Dec. 2008)