Editor's page.

AuthorSmith, Michael Franklin

This issue marks my inaugural volume of serving as Editor of the Defense Counsel Journal. I am humbled by the appointment and am grateful for the vote of confidence by the leadership of the International Association of Defense Counsel. I am also excited about working with Editor-Elect, Kenneth R. Meyer. Much gratitude goes to Mary-Christine Sungaila, past Defense Counsel Journal Editor, who maintained the scholarly integrity of the Defense Counsel Journal and showed me the ropes along the way. I hope I am able to continue the Defense Counsel Journals tradition of publishing scholarly, cutting-edge articles.

Change is a constant. Lawyers are used to that as the practice of law is a rapidly changing beast. Technological advancements contribute greatly to the evolution of the practice of law. Remember when lawyers communicated via facsimile using thermos paper? Now we email .pdf or .jpeg versions of pleadings and documents. Speaking of email, and I'm dating myself here, I still recall that fall afternoon in 1995 when one of my law partners came into my office to explain a new fangled tool we'd be implementing called "electronic mail." That new tool quickly became entrenched in my way of practice and it is now the primary communication tool for me as a litigator--allowing instant communication with clients and opposing counsel allows me to practice at lightning speed. Sometimes that's a good thing, and sometimes not so much.

As lawyers, we constantly have to change the way we practice law to keep up with rapid changes in society as well. I don't think anyone could have predicted the growth and power of social media. We didn't study case law addressing social media when I was in law school. However, according to a simple search on Westlaw, the phrase "social media" appears in nearly three thousand cases. Social media is now a topic of discovery and an area of investigation in all kinds of litigation. A client's or a witness's posts on social media...

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