Florida Bar Ethics Committee issues opinion on whether an attorney can advise clients to "clean up" a social media page before starting litigation

Legal Ethics in Motion is reporting that the Florida Bar’s Professional Ethics Committee has just issued Proposed Advisory Opinion 14-1, which discusses the ethical obligations when advising a client to “clean up” the client’s social media pages before litigation is filed.  The opinion is only three pages long and you can read it here.   Agreeing with an opinion by the New York County Lawyers Association published in 2013, the opinion concludes as follows:

In summary, a lawyer may advise that a client change privacy settings on the client’s social media pages so that they are not publicly accessible. Provided that there is no violation of the rules or substantive law pertaining to the preservation and/or spoliation of evidence, a lawyer also may advise that a client remove information relevant to the foreseeable proceeding from social media pages as long as an appropriate record of the social media information or data is preserved.