New book focuses on social media risks to businesses

Today, as employees confuse the line between business and personal, electronic gaffes, outbursts and spontaneous blasts can span the globe in seconds.

So, how can businesses of any size manage these growing risks? A new book by prominent consultant, attorney and professor Adam I. Cohen focuses on the legal and business concerns surrounding employee and corporate use of websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other interactive communities.

“Social Media: Legal Risk and Corporate Policy,” is produced by Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, a global provider of information and digital solutions for legal and business professionals, and the parent company of CCH, which develops professional accounting and tax solutions.

In the book, Cohen outlines how businesses and organizations can create and communicate policy the right way, and confidently manage the risks associated with social media.

“People are now overwhelmed with the ever-increasing social media outlets around us—Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter—and I am bombarded with requests for guidance from companies and professionals on how to manage their social media,” Cohen said. “My book directly addresses their needs and concerns around social media and risk and litigation.”

Attorneys, corporate policy-makers and communication professionals can master the legal landscape and prepare for the coming wave of social media civil litigation with the book’s hands-on and practical approach:

How to best manage employment matters and regulatory concerns involving social media
Insights on how to successfully navigate conflicts between policy and privacy
A time-saving toolkit to quickly create a detailed social media policy with key must-have provisions for inclusion
A review of social media case law and its implications

“With so many people interacting with social media in one way or another, and with many companies actually using social media, themselves, “Social Media: Legal Risk and Corporate Policy” is a timely step-by-step guide to help both attorneys and executives navigate various issues and form corporate guidelines and policies,” said Ken Litt, Developmental Editor at Wolters Kluwer.

Social Media: Legal Risk and Corporate Policy, published by Wolters Kluwer Law & Business is available at aspenpublishers.com .

The author, Adam Cohen, is a Principal in Ernst & Young LLP’s Forensic Technologies and Discovery Services practice. He has more than 15 years of experience in law and technology, and routinely advises some of the world’s leading businesses on data management and electronic discovery compliance issues. Cohen’s client engagements focus on large-scale investigations and litigations as well as proactive information management policies, procedures and technology. He is a well-known author and lecturer in the field of electronic discovery, and has served as a court-appointed expert on electronic discovery issues in Federal Court.

Prior to his career in consulting, Cohen was a litigation partner in the New York office of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, where he represented large corporate clients in complex litigation involving computer and Internet-related issues. He is the author of Social Media Legal Risk and Corporate Policy (2013) and co-author of the treatise Electronic Discovery: Law and Practice (2d Ed. 2013), in its eleventh year of publication. It has been cited as authority in several landmark Federal Court opinions involving electronic discovery.

Cohen is also co-author of the ESI Handbook: Sources, Technology and Process (2009) and the primary author of the New York State Bar Association’s Best Practices in eDiscovery in New York State and Federal Courts, as well as many articles in national legal and technology publications.

An adjunct faculty member at Fordham Law School and Pace Law School in New York, Adam teaches Electronic Discovery courses designed to prepare the next generation of attorneys for effective practice in this area. He serves on the advisory board of Georgetown Law School’s Advanced eDiscovery Institute.