By Henry Ea -
As the boundary between private discourse and public evidence continues to blur, the Law Society’s Annual Conference has set the stage for a critical discussion on the future of legal practice. The upcoming session, ‘Court Etiquette and Protocols’, will offer practitioners a rare "bench-eye view" of modern advocacy.
Moderated by Ronan MacSweeney, President of The Law Society of NSW, the panel brings together a powerhouse of judicial expertise from every level of the state’s court system including The Honourable Justice Ian Pike, Supreme Court of NSW, Judge Judith Gibson, Acting Judge of the District Court of NSW, and Magistrate Lucas Swan, Local Court of NSW.
Together, the panel will examine best practices and appropriate etiquette for lawyers appearing in their respective courts, with a particular focus on how technology is fundamentally altering traditional protocols.
Speaking to LSJ Online ahead of the conference, Judge Gibson, a long-standing authority on the intersection of technology and the bench, promises a deep dive into the single most dangerous trap for modern practitioners: the social media ecosystem.
“For lawyers, the biggest trap is that it undercuts the right to silence, discovery issues, it’s capable of tremendous misuse and there are specific problem areas like personal injury [and] family law. And social media is so dangerous in these cases that one of the first things lawyers would have to do is say ‘don’t post things on social media’,” she says.
Judge Gibson hopes to provide lawyers with a roadmap to protect their clients—and their own professional reputations—from the next generation of digital traps.
Building on her landmark 2013 paper, Should Judges Use Social Media?, and former Chief Justice Tom Bathurst’s 2016 speech, Tweeters, Posters and Grammers Beware: Discovery and Social Media Evidence, Gibson will explore the three critical areas where social media is rewriting the rules of engagement.
First, attendees will confront the crushing reality of modern discoverability, where the sheer volume of digital footprints has become a logistical nightmare. The session then strips back the complexities of “proof of content”, arming practitioners with strategies to secure digital documents and the insight to know exactly when expert evidence is required to verify a post’s authenticity.
Finally, Gibson points to the broader reputational stakes. In an era where platforms host deeply concerning material, from AI-generated “nudification” programs to racist tropes, she poses a provocative question: “Do you really want to be associated with that sort of social media?”
The session arrives at a turning point for the judiciary. With the Supreme Court of Canada recently withdrawing from X (formerly Twitter), the signal to the legal community is clear.
“Increasingly, lawyers are moving away from Facebook and Twitter,” Gibson notes. “This is the place for cat memes and family photos. Neither are suitable for lawyers dealing with the big issues of the day or trying to impress clients … Is it really worth it?”
The Law Society of NSW 2026 Annual Conference – Uniting the Profession, will be held at ILUMINA, 1 Elizabeth St, Sydney on 11 March 2026. The full program can be seen here.
