I sometimes meet with people who think they need an attorney. I listen to what they have to say, look over papers and then inform them that in my opinion they do not (or do not yet) need an attorney. In that case, I will give them advice on how to know when and how, considering the situation they brought to me, that might change. I make sure they have my number if something changes or they have more questions

Having said that, I should mention that I’m an IT person with years of experience working in education. If you are talking about posting information about minors, you should tread carefully no matter what. Forget the legality of what you are doing for a moment and consider the potential impact of what you have written and how this could impact the behavior of the girl in question. There have been instances where suicide has resulted from situations like this. You should consider leaving names out of it.

Even though you published the content in a “private” area, you must consider anything that you write and post on the Internet to be subject to public exposure. Quite simply put, if even 1 person is allowed to read it, it could become exposed to the public at large simply by someone using copy/paste. What you have posted is no more secure than sending an email that could be forwarded.

On a personal level you really need to assess what you intend to gain from writing about specific people by name and then weigh the risks versus the rewards. If the risk of venting your frustration online outweighs any potential rewards then perhaps finding another outlet would be wiser.

Legal advice is important if you are in a legal situation but to me as an outsider it seems pretty clear that you need some solid personal advice urgently. Information posted on the Internet has a way of hanging around for a long time.

Unfortunately, a blog comment space (i.e., here) is not the place to seek legal advice. As my blog disclaimer notes, this blog is not for providing particularized legal advice. (See http://www.rhdefense.com/blog/disclaimer/.) My writing of this blog and your reading of it (any blog for that matter) does not create any legal relationship which would be important to your obtaining legal advice. Not even participating in the comments section will do that.

As I say in my disclaimer, each case is different, even when they look the same. Lawyers are trained to recognize minor things which might seem to be unimportant to non-lawyers, but which could make large differences in outcomes of cases.

For this reason, if you think you have a legal problem, you might consider consulting with an attorney directly about your problem.

Lastly, at least at this point in time, I practice only criminal defense law, juvenile defense law and drunk driving defense law primarily in Fresno, Madera, Kings and Tulare counties. (Sometimes, if someone is willing to pay, I also travel to other areas of California and the federal court system.)

So unless you’ve been charged with a crime in a federal court or a California state court, I’m not the right attorney to handle your case anyway.

But again, thank you for pointing out another way in which social networking sites can potentially have legal ramifications.