JOURNAL · CRISIS & REPUTATION · JUL 2026 · 4 MIN

Social Media Scrubbing: Educating Plaintiffs Before You File.

This is a different conversation from cleaning up a case's public record after retention — it's a conversation with the client, before filing, about what's already sitting on their own accounts.

Most plaintiffs have never considered that a defense researcher will read every public post they've made going back years, looking for anything that contradicts the injury, the timeline, or the character the case depends on. A vacation photo posted the week after a claimed disabling injury doesn't need context to become a defense exhibit. The client isn't hiding anything by understanding this — they're being told what already-public information the other side will use.

What this conversation actually covers

Not deletion of anything relevant to discovery — that's a legal question for counsel, not a communications one. What I walk clients through is privacy settings, what's publicly visible versus locked down, and the plain fact that anything posted publicly during litigation should be assumed to be read by the other side before it's read by anyone the client intended. Simple, practical, and it should happen in the first meeting, not after a defense exhibit shows up in discovery.

See How This Applies to Your Case.

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