Our social media principles

We know social media is an important way for you to communicate with us, and it’s an important tool for us too.

Our house rules help keep our social channels useful for everyone. We expect everyone to do their bit - that includes us too.

We're here to help in any way that we can, but we expect users to offer us the same level of courtesy that we offer them. We want our social media channels to be safe spaces and a place for healthy, open and insightful discussion, which is why we have a short set of house rules:

• All users must comply with the social media platform's Terms of Use as well as our own terms of use.
• We will remove, in whole or in part, posts that we feel are inappropriate, or discriminatory against any individual or group.
• You are wholly responsible for any content you post including content that you choose to share.
• We will remove messages and/or disable comments (where function allows) including reporting and/or blocking users on our social media channels who post messages at us which we believe are:
• Abusive or obscene
• Deceptive or misleading
• In violation of any intellectual property rights, including copyright
• In violation of any law or regulation
• Spam and off-topic content (persistent negative and/or abusive posts in which the aim is to provoke a response)
• Promotional material, including links to external websites and promotions

Anyone repeatedly engaging with us using content or language which falls into the above categories will be blocked and/or reported to the associated social media platform and/or the police. We will not tolerate or respond to abusive messages.

In addition to the general duty of social media users, lawyers have specific professional duties as to how they should conduct themselves publicly.  The Law Society of Scotland’s Social Media Advice and Information for the Legal Profession is a useful resource in considering this.