The Role of a Sidebar in Court and Its Digital Parallel

The University of Geneva develops its DAS Communication digitale program which gives room for exchanges between social media strategies and the way of managing the relationship in a legal process. It’s a new challenge for this public institution with well established benchmarks. In this program we study for example the comprehensive sidebar in court discussions. So I am going to explain how this concept can help to manage digital communication today.

First let’s define what is a sidebar in court. A sidebar in court is a discussion between counsel and law officers. This exchange is often held in front of the jury. The judge requests the jury to leave the courtroom for a minute. Then the judge asks the jury to come back and questions the counsel. Then the judge dismisses the jury for a longer period. So we see that the sidebar in court has four main purposes: information and discussion. But the sidebar is very important in order to keep the process mysterious. We never disclose what has been said in a sidebar.

Now if we translate this concept into the digital world, we can easily grasp some similarities. When you run a project with online collaboration, you need to discuss, exchange information, and at times delete the visibility of this discussion. As a matter of fact, the sidebar is a confidentiality barrier in court as much as in Google Docs or Facebook groups. Information can be shared and erased, but confidentiality is a must.

I would like to explain now what we could do with our social media strategy on the analogy of a legal sidebar in court. First, when we operate in social media, we have to understand that one of our objectives is to keep control of the information. So we have to make the necessary arrangements to avoid any unwanted leaks of information. That said, we should organize a real dialogue on a regular basis. This is also a priority; in a sidebar in court, we may decide at times to dismiss the jury to state strategic matters. Here it’s about managing a company with social media.

Privacy and confidentiality are big issues in every legal procedure, but in social media strategy as well. In criminal law, for example, police, prosecuting officers, judges, lawyers, and others must respect a secrecy. They can’t talk about what is said or decided during the process. Now in social media strategies, we can do the same. It’s useful to keep some negotiation and discussion private. That’s our sidebar.

Now what we really need is to moderate efficiently what may come out of the digital tools and to keep control. We talk of moderation in law as well as on the web in general. As a lawyer looking for case law and legal doctrine, we can say that visibility of information is useful to inform the general public. But we have to moderate our visibility so as to keep our social media strategy efficient. So we should naturally control the interactions in such a way that the coherence and moderation of the message remain.

I would like to develop this strategy of indirect communication. In court, there are multiple parties involved in the procedure of civil, commercial, and criminal matters. The negotiation of the plea and other judicial conversations takes place between the judge and the parties involved. This dialogue is recorded, so we understand the dynamics of exchange and play. In digital strategies, we have to do the same. While the information appears on a webpage, it’s the background work of the team in charge of digital communication who strategizes and negotiates alone. As a result, they can develop a total social media strategy and control the content.

In such a way, we can deliver powerful messages to the online public and maintain assets. The sidebar in court deserves to get as much attention as any other legal concept. We can no longer refuse to integrate digital communication and social media into our social network. Bringing together academic research and hands-on projects is a wonderful opportunity. This is why we will keep an eye on this type of social media investigation. Stay tuned on the subject of the sidebar in court…