Text Messaging Considerations For Lawyers and other Professionals

In today’s digital age, many clients desire to communicate with their lawyer by text message. Text messages offer a quick and concise medium for communication. However, for the lawyer they can be fraught with peril. A practitioner must weigh issues of privacy and confidentiality against convenience.

To provide your clients a secure means of communicating by text message, consider foregoing the stock texting app on your cellular telephone for any of the encrypted text messaging apps available.  Your client will take comfort in knowing that their sensitive communications are protected.  Many of these applications also offer a feature that deletes the text message from the recipient after an elected period of time.

FOUR DO’s When Text Messaging Clients

-inform your client to consider downloading a secure encrypted texting application to communicate with you.

-consider the sensitivity of the information being texted and inform them of the deleting text feature available on many encrypted texting applications.

-investigate the effectiveness of the application you chose to be sure it supports end to end encryption utilizing the latest technology.

-encourage customers and clients to utilize secure deleting messaging applications internally as well, to avoid their messages potentially becoming evidence in the case of  litigation.

By following these simple steps you can provide your client with suitable and convenient platform for communication.

Are Speed Cameras Legal?

If you live in the Mahoning Valley Ohio, chances are you know someone who has received a traffic camera speeding ticket in the mail. These wonderful letters display a poor quality photograph of your vehicle allegedly speeding down the roadway and invite you to pay the municipality a fee for your offense. But are these speed cameras legal?

 

In March of 2015 the Ohio Senate passed Senate Bill 342. Effective immediately, the bill banned communities from using stand alone traffic cameras. However, it allowed traffic cameras that were manned by a police officer. Communities such as Youngstown, and Girard in Ohio, employ light detecting and ranging cameras (LiDAR) that are operated by or in the presence of a police officer.

 

If you drive through one of the various Ohio communities utilizing these cameras, and you are lucky enough to receive a ticket in the mail, the violation is a civil violation. This means it will not result in points on your driving record. There will however, be a fine.

 

DO I PAY THE FINE OR FIGHT IT?

 

The municipalities are counting on you paying the fine without a fight. To entice you, the fines are relatively low and the violations do not result in points on your driving record. They simply do not want to risk you challenging the constitutionality of the process. However, there has yet to be expert testimony demonstrating the scientific reliability of the LiDAR device in the jurisdictions issuing citations. For a person to be convicted of speeding based on laser-device evidence, evidence must be introduced that the laser device is scientifically reliable. East Cleveland v. Ferell, 168 Ohio St. 298, 301. Ohio law does not require an expert to testify each time the scientific reliability of the LiDAR device is brought into question. An expert would need to testify one time and be sufficiently cross examined on the scientific reliability for the court to take judicial notice of the LiDAR’s scientific reliability. This has yet to be done.

 

The future of LiDAR remains unknown. It appears that the process may continue status quo so long as municipalities keep the fines for tickets low enough to deter individuals from hiring a lawyer to challenge the process. But if history be our guide, the capitalistic nature of mankind dictates that you can expect a challenge soon.

1 Easy Step To Clearing Your Record!

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/1-easy-step-clearing-your-record-robert-rohrbaugh-ii

Today many young people are finding that their past is effecting their future, at least as it relates to employment. Most employers who are willing to invest in an employee are also willing to pay the small sum required to perform a background check. If you have a criminal record this could exclude you from the job of your dreams.

Fortunately, most jurisdictions have provisions in their laws allowing those with criminal records to petition the proper court to seal the record of conviction or arrest. However, in most jurisdictions this provision is not without limitation. In Ohio for example, the individual petitioning the court to seal their record must demonstrate that they have not been convicted of more than one felony, not more than two misdemeanors, or not more than one felony conviction and one misdemeanor conviction in this state or any other jurisdiction. (R.C 2953.31) Additionally, certain convictions can not be sealed.

Contact a lawyer in your jurisdiction to determine if you qualify to have your criminal record sealed. If you are eligible, invest in yourself. Sealing your record allows you to enter the workforce with a clean slate and the confidence to go after that job you always wanted but were afraid you would never get.

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