Litigators, be careful about sending friend requests on Facebook. The Office of Attorney Ethics (OAE) brought disciplinary charges against Robertelli, asserting that he violated Rules of Professional Conduct (“RPC”) 4.2 when, in 2008, his paralegal sent a Facebook message to, and was granted “friend” status by someone, who had filed an action against Robertelli’s client. RPC 4.2 prohibits a lawyer from communicating with another lawyer’s client about the subject of the representation without the other lawyer’s consent. The charged violation occurred when Facebook.com was a new social media platform. A Special Master concluded that the OAE failed to prove that Robertelli violated the RPCs. The Special Master determined that Robertelli, “an attorney with an unblemished record and a reputation for integrity and professionalism,” reasonably believed that his paralegal was merely exploring “publicly available information for material useful to his client” while his young paralegal, experienced in social networking, “was unaware of potentially applicable ethical strictures.” Following a de novo review, the Disciplinary Review Board reversed and determined that Robertelli violated the RPCs. The New Jersey Supreme Court reversed and ruled that the OAE failed to establish that Robertelli violated the RPCs. The Court found that Robertelli did not know how Facebook worked, did not know about its privacy settings, and did not know the language of Facebook, such as “friending”. Moreover, no jurisdiction had issued a reported ethics opinion giving guidance on whether sending a “friend” request to a represented client without the consent of the client’s attorney constituted a communication on the subject of the representation in violation of RPC 4.2.