It goes without saying that social media has become such an important part of our daily lives, and that in the business world, businesses and companies often use it for marketing, customer engagement or communication.

It is important to note that in every state, social media is considered a public record when it is not made private. If you’re part of a business litigation case, public content such as posts, messages, and comments could significantly alter the outcome of your case.

Social media could impact your case in various ways, such as:

• Causal Impact: Under US Tort Law, legal issues could arise from social media and its usage for businesses, such as copyright infringement, defamation litigation, false advertising and misrepresentation, intellectual property theft, contract breaches in the form of violations of agreements via direct messages in different social media outlets since courts nowadays consider electronic communication as binding and be ground to file breach claims.

• Evidentiary Impact: According to FRE(federal rules of evidence), in order for social media to be considered admissible, it has to meet standards of relevance (FRE RULE 401), authenticating ( FRE RULE 901), also FRE RULE 801, for hearsay. For instance, in the case of a lawsuit, relevant information can be part of discovery, since parties can request access to it.

• Impact on Litigation Process: Social media can have a significant impact on public opinion, in the sense that it could possibly affect settlement talks or even jury decisions.

In all types of cases, it is crucial to have a lawyer by your side to evaluate the effect of social media post on your case, since it’s vital to have professional legal counsel to help you interpret federal and state law and well as the evidentiary impact of such content, and advise you on the defensive and affirmative claims that you can make, minimizing the harm and maximizing the benefit of using such content.