The Importance of Social Media Investigations During this Pandemic

Social Media Use is Peaking at its Highest Levels 

People are using social media now more than ever. Prior to COVID-19, Facebook was the most widely visited website in the world. Since the pandemic hit, there has been 25% increase in the social media use across the globe. People are sheltered at home using Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and even new social media technologies like TikTok now more than ever before. This means there’s an abundance of social media activity that you need to be aware of and investigate in order to advance your cases and serve your clients. The problem is that law firms are struggling to keep up with social media investigations.

Law Firms Struggle to Keep Up with Social Media Investigations

With employees and staff members increasingly working from home, social media investigations are becoming more difficult. Attorneys and staff are distracted on a daily basis with family, pets, and other obligations. There’s also less collaboration amongst team members who are accustomed to walking right down the hall to visit their colleagues. 

To make matters more difficult, there is generally less technology available to remote working teams. While many law firms have implemented virtual systems to move their cases forward during this time, the technology is relatively limited to in-office capabilities at a crucial time period where firms need to be conducting social media investigations. Collectively, these struggles result in fewer social media investigations during this pandemic which can have serious consequences for your law firm.

Failure to Keep Up with Social Media Investigations Can Result in Serious Consequences  

When law firms don’t keep up with social media investigations, they miss out on valuable information and evidence about opposing parties and witnesses that are need to protect their clients. It also results in missing opportunities to advance cases by finding and collecting that “smoking gun” evidence that can be posted on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.

 More importantly, law firms that don’t regularly search social media evidence can expose themselves to serious ethical risks. Each attorney maintains duty of competence diligence to serve our clients, even during a pandemic. This duty of competence extends to our ability to evaluate, assess, investigate, and preserve online information that’s critical to the firm’s cases. If your law firm isn’t keeping up with its social media investigations, its attorneys may fall short of those ethical responsibilities and could expose the firm to potential malpractice claims.

So, what can law firms do to keep up with social media investigations during this pandemic? They can contact SMI Aware. 

SMI Aware Can Help Your Law Firm Conduct Social Media Investigations

SMI Aware is fully operational and can help with your law firm’s social media investigations even during this pandemic. SMI Aware combines innovative technology with human expertise to collect online information in each of your cases. SMI Aware searches across all social media sites, public records, and across the Internet to ensure you are getting complete social media information about your witnesses, opposing parties, and people of interest. 

SMI Aware uses the same process for every single social media investigation. They use the same tools to search, collect, and preserve social media evidence. And most importantly, their methods are done in a manner that complies with the legal ethics rules.

So, if your law firm needs help conducting social media investigations during this pandemic, you owe it to yourself to reach out to SMI Aware today.