He everyone welcome to another episode of hashing out the law I’m your host rashami on this episode my guest is Mr Ethan wall uh Ethan is a founder of the social media Law Firm he is a lawyer uh he’s also author of seven books about how social media affect uh the practice
Of law but instead of me taking up time and introducing everyone I’m gonna let Ethan tell us about his background and how he started hi Ethan how are you hi Ros thanks so much for having me today it’s my pleasure now Ethan uh you are a
Lawyer uh and you you founded the social media Law Firm could you tell us a little bit about about um how you found it or what inspired you to find the social media law firm and what it’s exactly about please sure uh I founded the social media Law Firm largely by
Mistake when I began practicing in 2007 I was focusing on internet and intellectual property law and a couple years after I began practicing we hit that economic downturn around 200920 and I was on the board of directors for my law school and they asked me to come in to speak about how
Lawyers can Market their practice during an economic downturn and so I talked about how you can use social media to promote yourself for free if you’ve got limited budget during this time people in the audience were kind of enamored about social media for lawyers began asking me to speak at different
Conferences on topics that related to social media and the law and I found the topic really interesting and so me and six other attorneys researched the effect of social media on the practice of law for over 450 law firms from across the world use this data to
Publish a book called the social media guide for lawyers and everybody else on my research team said hey this is cool but you take the ball and run with it and so I just became very interested in how social media intersects with the practice of Law and how it intersects
With all different types of law from intellectual property contract law uh you know when our founding fathers drafted the Constitution uh social media didn’t exist at the time and so I just found the topic to be really interesting and I kept writing more books on the subject speaking on it more often and
About 2014 and seven years of practicing law for a truly wonderful Law Firm we kind of came in a Crossroads together where their firm was more traditional and didn’t really get social media or that it was going to be around for a while they’re like Ethan why don’t you focus
On real estate law instead there’s so many more buildings out there than there are social media profiles and um I just had a hunch that this was something that I found interesting and so I set off on a journey to focus on social media exclusively I had no idea what the
Social media Law Firm would ultimately look like but in 2015 I opened up the world’s first social media Law Firm focusing on protecting and growing businesses online seeing if instead of being a litigator and charging people by the hour to solve their problems instead I was going to use my research on social
Media and the law to be able to predict how the law is going to apply to many different types of situations in the social media realm and provide solutions to everything from trademarks intellectual property compliance giveaways influencer law everything that touches upon social media itself so
That’s really kind of how I got started by accident and what the social media Law Firm does in a nutshell that’s that’s very interesting actually um uh I am involved in Social media a lot and I always wondered you know what the laws are if you want to have influencer
Promoting you and stuff like that so that’s where your firm comes in your firm is is there to to help people that that or law firms that want to use social media and you’re there to direct them on how they should do it to be not within just the the laws of the
Community they’re in but ethical laws as well is that correct that’s right and really at the very beginning you mentioned you know helping CL s or helping lawyers I came to that crossroads itself when I left the traditional practice of law I actually didn’t want to be a lawyer anymore I
Just wanted to teach and speak and write and serve as a consultant uh to both lawyers and the business Community but of course the legal ethics rules were right staring in front of me saying how can you do this and I realized that in
Order to be able to do what I wanted to and how I wanted to be able to help people I couldn’t do it under one umbrella because if I ran everything through a law firm then all of my marketing that I might do to help lawyers use social media would be
Governed by the legal advertising rules and it would tie my hands a little bit on the other hand I couldn’t consult with businesses with my specialty being the fact that I was a lawyer because even though I’d be serving as a consultant I would be having myself
Promoted as a lawyer and that wouldn’t be okay so what I ultimately did was I created two companies the first was the social media Law Firm which is an actual Law Firm set up under the State of Florida that helps businesses with social media legal issues and I created
A separate company called social media Law and Order which is a Consulting and marketing company for lawyers to help them use social media in a way that can help accomplish either their marketing or their practice objectives but be able to do so in a way that complies with the
Ethics rules so yes Ethan wall himself both kind of helps lawyers and law firms on the one hand and helps startups and small businesses and even large companies with unique social media legal issues but they’re done through different entities and different websites for exactly the reason that you
Had set forth which is the ethics rules are there for a reason and if I’m going to be Consulting with people about ethical issues as they relate to social media I know that I’m going to have the radar on me and I want to make sure or
Need to make sure that I stay above board with the ethics rules as well that’s that’s very interesting so that brings up a question for me I know you created two different companies one is a law firm and one is a marketing firm uh and I know that from what you said the
Rules of ethic responsibility for lawyers doesn’t apply because it’s a marketing firm but even though you’re ster a lawyer and you are the marketing firm because technically it’s a marketing firm it doesn’t attach to you the rules of ethics for lawyers so it it depends uh buy and large and I think the
The easiest example of when you have a lawyer doing non- lawyer business and then we’ll kind of bring it back into my example let’s say that you opened up W I’m gonna ask you what’s your favorite food um hamburgers okay you opened up a hamburger restaurant okay uh and you
Have your Law Firm on the one hand and you have a rash’s hamburger stand on the other hand I think it’s pretty obvious to everybody out there that you are a lawyer but you’re running clearly a non-legal business providing a non-legal service unless you are located near Yale University and you’re running the
Educated Burger which is a US Supreme Court themed Burger Joint but it’s pretty obvious that the legal ethics rules wouldn’t apply to your marketing or use of the the hamburger joint seems pretty obvious in this scenario where I have a law firm on the one hand and a legal marketing
Agency on the other hand there is a possibility that these things might blend or kind of be confused if the marketing agency was serving business clients meaning if my client is an influencer marketing agency and I’m providing both legal advice in terms of the contracts and compliance with truth
And advertising laws and I’m also providing marketing services for them that could be really confusing and it could create um a blur between the legal ethics rules in that company and that’s why I decided my marketing agency doesn’t serve businesses at all it only serves lawyers and usually solo and
Small law firms and so for that company itself I might be helping with email marketing campaigns or creating social media content using the assets that they provide or providing strategy for how they can use SEO or their website to attract more clients and so in that way that company only serves
Lawyers um and while I think there is um a value proposition that people would want to work with my marketing agency because I am a lawyer and understand the legal ethics rules more than let’s say a marketing company that you find you know locally and wherever
It is that you live um you know that company doesn’t provide any legal services itself and so I Ethan wall I’m always governed by the legal ethics rules regardless of what I do but kind of just like the hamburger company I make sure to separate the assets the
Websites The Branding the contracts the bank accounts everything between the two companies are separate so that I’m always making sure I’m following the ethics rules even if I’m doing marketing work but I don’t blend my marketing and consult in Agency on issues of social media with any of my business or Law
Firm type clients makes perfect sense now before we continue I asked this question of all my guests who are attorneys I know we talked about that moment where you decided you don’t want to necessarily practice law anymore and you wanted to do what you do now but
Let’s let’s go back in time a little bit tell me that moment that you decided that you wanted to be a lawyer what was that moment that that clicked in your head so I hate to be uh someone that repeats something but it was another mistake or at least it wasn’t something
That was on my mind at all and the only reason I became a lawyer is because I failed at what I had really wanted to do in the first place so I’ll tell you what I mean when I was in high school I was in the television production in
Class so I was both behind the camera learning how to use the editing tools but I was in front of the camera as well doing you know the entertainment segment for the high school TV news and so I said this is great I’m going to go to college for television and radio
Production and while I really wanted to learn more about the TV production where I became most popular was on the radio I was living in a fraternity house my fraternity brother stole my shoes one day as a joke and I had to walk across campus Barefoot and I see a sign on the
Door that said UCF my college was having a new radio station and they had sign ups today for a show so I walked in put my bare feet up on the table and said I’d like a radio show please and they’re like what are you gonna talk about and I
Said I don’t know college stuff partying and you know what the kids are doing these days and they’re like do you have any plan do you have any anything prepared I said nope and they said well thanks very much and I went off to my class Barefoot I then get an email
Saying that that not enough people signed up to have a radio show so we have to give you one but we’re going to give you the absolute worst time slot Friday mornings at 11 o’clock like people are already at work people are like not at lunch yet like No One’s
Gonna listen to your show but but we have to give it to you anyway turns out that all of the Greek students the fraternities and sororities had their Greek nights on Thursday so they never had classes on Friday mornings and so I would take my pledges like the people
Who are being recruited into my Law Firm to go to all the fraternity and sority houses and turn their radios and TVs on on Friday morning so that they could listen to the show and it turned out to be such a wildly popular show that they mve me to Prime Time Monday Wednesday
Friday 4 to 6: PM my own co-host my own interns the Ethan wall show became one of the largest shows uh at the the University at that time uh and as part of doing the radio television class I had taken a mass communication Law class where they talked about how people
Like George Carlton the comedian said the seven dirty words you can’t say on TV and how or the radio and how he took that all the way up to the US Supreme Court and the he got the law changed based upon him just putting his foot
Down and saying like no I’m an adult I should be able to say bad words and just because there are kids out there doesn’t mean I can’t do that and I thought that was so interesting so it turns out I got kicked off the radio because I had
Content that was too much of pushing the envelope at the time and the dean was listening and he’s like what is this guy doing on the radio and they they kicked me off and they wouldn’t let me as a senior finish the radio and television program I sat there like man this might
Be the first time in my life that someone is told me I can’t do something you know no matter how hard I worked at it or or how outside the box that I thought I was doing to be successful at being on the radio and being in television the university said we’re not
Going to let you finish the program and they blamed it on my grades but really it’s because I ruffled people’s feathers and I remembered that mass communication Law class I remember George Carlon saying like oh you’re telling me I can’t do this let me show you and I took the
Same mindset and I said okay I’m not going to be on radio TV anymore I’m just going to go pivot to legal studies and the law and I remember there was a Mock Trial Competition and I walked into the competition without preparing and I’m like yeah I’m gonna compete tomorrow
What do I need to do and I stayed up all night and read all of the briefs and came in and made it onto the mock trial team went to Yale University to represent the university in mock trial ended up graduating with honors in the major not overall but having a 3.98 GPA
In legal studies and I realized wait a minute maybe I’m good at this uh and I remember walking into my advisor’s office and I know that you told me before the show that it’s okay to get into controversial R racy topics I looked at my adviser this is probably
Immature but I said f you I’m going to law school now like thanks for the rejection I’m going to go do something better and I went to law school and I practiced law for for those seven years and at that point at 2015 when I ended up leaving the firm right I
Remember asking myself at one point how did I get here how did I become a lawyer in the first place and I realized it was because someone told me I couldn’t do what I really wanted and I wanted to prove them and show them up and that
Fast forwarded to 10 years of my life going to law school and then becoming a lawyer and realizing wait a minute what is it that I really wanted out of life and that was both having that leverage of social media law with finally checking back in with myself and
Realizing that our time in life is short we don’t know how much time we have like what do I want to do with my life that’s how I was able to Pivot the traditional practice of law into the practice that I have now because I realize I can take
That background as a lawyer and my interest in social media and create something new and unique and something that I was really good at as opposed to continuing down the path of being a more traditional lawyer which was great for many people but just wasn’t great for me
So I kind of became a lawyer again almost by accident and then pivoted into this direction once I realized wait a minute I never wanted to be a lawyer in the first place how can I use the skills and knowledge that I’ve learned and use it in a way that aligns with my
Strengths and and what I enjoy most in life that’s a great story um maybe it wasn’t an accident maybe it was Destiny and you were supposed to to end up where you are and take that path but thanks to the dean to kick kicking you off off
That show now he put you where you’re supposed to be um now that you you have looking for the right word mastered social media and the law um tell me a a interesting fact or interesting story about how social media has affected the law uh in particular the practice of law
Or or another area that you think is important oh sure I mean first of all thank you for calling me a master in social media ni thing anybody has ever said to me I’m not from an ethic standpoint I can’t endorse being a master of it but but it is it is
Something that I really do love um what I really love about this area of Law and how it changes both the practice of Law and changes both the state of kind of the Universe at the moment is that we’re in this unique time in history where technology is advancing so
Much faster than the law can adapt that we as lawyers or the legal system itself is constantly playing catchup and this is whether or not you are a lawyer listening to this podcast and saying how should I use social media or how should I use AI
Um but there’s no ethics rules out there to give me precedence so as lawyers we kind of sit in our hands and wait until there’s some sort of clear direction as to what we should do and what we shouldn’t do because we don’t want to inadvertently violate the ethics rules
And so there are so many times through my career uh and through the career of so many other lawyers that we want to innovate and we want to take advantage of of these really cool technologies that are there but there’s no clear rules or guidelines on what we can or
Can’t do and we’re risk adverse most of us by Nature I think the same thing happens with businesses all the time and you mention influencer laws let’s just roll with that one um influencers are such a major business right now people are are just becoming content creators for a living and
Creating content and photos and videos that have that are entertaining and brands are paying them hundreds of thousands millions of dollars to create this content but the law is still trying to catch up in a way as to how do existing laws such as the FTC or the Federal Trade commission’s truth and
Advertising laws apply to influencers and even though they now have a firm law in place and have um finded and created press releases in certain instances finding people like Kim Kardashian $1.25 million for violating influential laws for promoting Bitcoin on her accounts they still have
Yet to catch up to how they’re going to enforce this against everyone and so businesses are even operating in an environment where it’s like we know there’s a law but we don’t know how it’s going to be enforced and businesses unlike lawyers are willing to push forward more often to despite the risks
Because the likelihood of them getting caught maybe is low um and the consequences are unclear where with lawyers we know if we violate the rules we can lose our license to practice law and so it’s much more of a deterrent so I would say that whether
You are a lawyer or whether you are a business we are existing in the universe in such a unique time in history where technology just keeps moving so fast and by the time our legislator or our ethics boards have meetings and come up with guidelines advisory opinions rules or
Law the law or the rules itself or the technology has modified so many new times that that the issue is completely changed and and a hord of new issues are there and so that’s really what is both challenging and really exciting about being in the realm of social media that
Unlike criminal law it’s probably been the same for a long time it only has changes as new case laws come out social media is changing and adapting by the minute and that makes it really challenging on the one hand to try to stay ahead of these things and predict
What’s going to happen but it’s also really exciting and really fun I can imagine let me ask you this is there different ethics regulations and laws uh in different jurisdictions like does one state come up with one for social media and another state come up with contradictory law they do and it’s just
Like I say the best analogy is thinking about different states or different Federal circuits passing different laws on the same issues and so um you might have for example um there are one of the reasons that cases get up to the Supreme Court is that there’s a split between the
Federal circuits the 11th circuit and the fifth circuit come with different conflicting opinions on the same issue and it needs to be resolved and because the Supreme Court has such a slow cycle for cases to get there this unresolved issue might take a year or two until we
Get clarity from the US Supreme Court and the same thing happens with lawyers and the ethics rules and so I’ll give you an example um one of the real popular strategies on social media nowadays is running online giveaways like my post for a chance to win a prize
And we’ll pick somebody at random and this is really effective people want to engage with your content because they want a chance to win free stuff and so there are gaming laws out there that apply from a legal standpoint but a question arises as to whether lawyers ethically can run these online
Giveaways because we don’t have a specific ethics rule on the subject but we do have a rule that says that when it comes to providing online reviews or testimonials for a lawyer you can’t ask for those in return for something of value I can’t pay somebody 20 bucks to
Leave me a five-star review on Google because that would violate the ethics rules and so one state has released an advisory ethics opinion saying that lawyers should not run online giveaways because you are giving something of value in return for people potentially endorsing you such as liking your post
On social media and let’s just say for hypothetical purposes that that ethics opinion came out of North Carolina well now you are an attorney in California and you want to know whether you should run online giveaways or not there’s no ethics rules in California there’s only
One ethics rule in a different state but one it’s not a binding rule in that state it’s only an advisory ethics opinion and it’s certainly one that doesn’t govern you and so lawyers now have to make a choice and that choice is do I want to say this is the only
Guidance that exists and I believe that a practical application of that advisory opinion at different jurisdiction would also apply to me or are they going to say it’s not a binding rule it’s not on me and more often than not the ethics board in California rules differently
Than other states across the country and so I don’t have confidence that it’s going to apply to me and up until there’s clear rules or guidelines saying I can’t do this I’m going to go ahead and do it and as lawyers that decision of what we do was always up to us
We’re left with our own internal guideline and Compass of you know what’s black and white and what’s a gray area and how much do I want to be able to push and we have to come up with those decisions to ourselves and there are attorneys out there who have said I’m
Going to blatantly violate this ethics rule from a marketing perspective because I believe it infringes upon my first amendment rights and I’m willing to take this to get clarity and change these ethics rules because I think they’re infringing upon my rights to be able to do so uh and there are other
Attorneys that might say look giveaways are great but I don’t want to take that risk and and both attorneys have to be able to make that kind of decision for themselves but yes just like changes or splits in the law between different states there is not uniform ethics Rules
By and large across the country and until the ABA sets a a rule that the states are then willing to adopt you kind of live in this gray area where there may not be clear answers to ethical questions or legal questions in this realm those like the Wild Wild
West yeah do you think the ABA is g to come up with uh general rules for social media and attorneys pretty soon or do you think it’s something that’s going to go back and forth and it’s going to take a while so they they will be they are
And they have um so the ABA has released different types of guidance as it relates to social media and one example of this well I’ll give you a couple examples one of it might be you know creating social media profiles for the purposes of um collecting evidence in your cases and
Whether those violate different types of rules and usually what the ABA might do is take a look at the different states conflicting advisoring ethics opinions take these into account and release their own I would say one of the most clear and recent ones is whether attorneys have the ability to
Practice their own States law from living in other places through the use of Technology like Zoom or otherwise and during the pandemic this was a big issue some states were closed some states were open attorneys in Florida got a cabin in in the woods in Wyoming and wanted to
Practice law there but wanted to seek clarity about whether they were violating the ethics rules the ABA did come out with an opinion that said you can practice your State’s law from another location so long as you comply with all of the ethics rules that would otherwise apply such as you don’t say
That you have offices in Wyoming you don’t advertise in Wyoming you don’t hold out an office in Wyoming and and Market to people but if you’re just living in a cabin somewhere but you’re practicing your own States law that’s going to be okay so I think part of the
Aba’s responsibilities are to help both advocate for legal issues on behalf of its membership which is many of the lawyers in the country but at the same time also try to the extent possible to prepare these ethics opinions in a way that help and I think that both the ABA
Legislatures and our our state ethics opinions are unfortunately playing a game of whack-a-mole which is you know by the time they release an opinion on one issue three more issues have popped back up or or things have changed so it is both a challenging job job that our
Legislatures our state boards and the ABA has but I think we can’t also be an ostrich and stick our head in the sand and say just because it’s hard and complicated and things change that we’re going to do nothing U but I do think that this results and opinions coming
Out very slowly because there are new factors to take into consideration all the time as these technology and online tools continue to evolve makes sense now Ethan if I am a attorney and I need to get a hold of you how do I do that where
Do I find you sure if you’re a lawyer and you just want to get a hold of Ethan wall you can just find me by Googling Ethan wall online but if you are looking for help as a lawyer in uh marketing on social media or learning about how the
Ethics rules might apply to your use of social media you can visit our site social medial lawand order.com and of course if you’re a business and you want to learn about what we do to help protect and grow businesses online you can find us at thesocial medal
Lawfirm.com and again you can search on any of the social media sites for social media Law and Order or the social media Law Firm or just Ethan wall and find us there as well all right and for all the listeners and viewers we’re gonna make sure to include uh Ethan’s links in the
Comment section or in the description section depending on the platform you’re watching H Ethan I know you wrote seven books uh are those books available for purchase and if they are where can I get them sure so we’re actually going to make many of these books available for
Free download um and you can visit Ethan wall.com we are opening up a new page that’s going to aggregate all the different books and have many of these downloaded for free um and if you want to learn more about the effect of social media on the law as well but not read
The entire book we do have a podcast as well called the social media lawcast and on that podcast we discuss a lot of the late breaking issues with social media and the law including ones that you mentioned like AI and how that’s affecting the law as well awesome uh
This is a very interesting subject and usually when I have guests on it’s because of my own selfish reasons because I want to learn something new I learn a lot from you I could pick your brain all day but I know you’re a busy man I thank you for coming on uh before
We sign off is there anything else You’ like to say or leave the viewers and listeners with all I would just say is that our time in life is short and we don’t know how much time we have so to spend spend your time doing things that
You love and enjoy in life is Paramount and the fact that you took this half an hour to listen to the hashing out the law podcast with us means a lot to me personally I know it means a lot to you so thank you for listening and Raj thank
You so very much for inviting me on the show it’s been an absolute gift and pleasure to be your guest thank you Ethan it was a pleasure speaking to you I hope to speak to you sooner than later
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