11:00 a.m. MST/10:00 a.m. PST (60 minutes)
Teleseminar/Audio Stream
Sponsored by the Idaho Law Foundation in partnership with WebCredenza and Peach New Media

The course of litigation often depends on what’s uncovered in pre-trial investigations. Indeed, attorneys are required by ethics rules to investigate a case before a lawsuit is even filed.  Zealous representation requires a thorough investigation of the parties and underlying facts and with the advent of social media, together with the vast amounts of email and text messages that are discoverable, there is more information available than ever before. But there are also ethical restraints on how aggressive attorneys – or their third-party investigators – can be in investigating a case.  Some dissembling is allowed, but most is prohibited.  Ethics rules generally permit social media and other digital research, but “pre-texting” to obtain information is circumscribed.  This program will provide you with a real-world guide to the ethics of pre-trial investigations, what attorneys can and cannot do ethically.

• Attorney ethics in pre-trial investigations – the do’s, don’ts, and common traps
• Duty of an attorney to investigate a case before filing a lawsuit
• “Pre-texting” – the ethics of deception when attorneys represent themselves to be someone else and when dissembling is allowed in investigations
• Determining who your client is in an investigation and determining conflicts of interest
• What you can and cannot do when investigating a party’s social media profiles and usage, including ex parte communications
• Does using a third-party investigator to conduct the investigation instead of doing it yourself matter?
• Limitations on investigating members of a jury or jury pool
• Real world consequences when investigations go awry – discipline, sanctions, exclusion of evidence obtained