If you grew up watching any type of crime drama or law and order show on television, than you know that anything that is said between a client is confidential. This is often called the attorney/client privilege. A lawyer risks loss of business and even disbarment if they violate this code in any way.
However, in the 21st century much of what is said between a client and a lawyer is in electronic format stored in emails and documents. “Everyone in the law firm who has access to client records, e-mails, memos or letters must hold the information contained in those documents and all communications confidential,” noted Bob Russell, partner with Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch LLP in a 2007 article in Insights Legal Affairs.
The big law firms with huge IT staffs are most certainly stepping up to the plate and putting in place security measures to protect all their confidential data. However, according to data from the Law School Admission Council, 72.9% of the lawyers in the US are in private practice, with the majority of those lawyers in small one or two person law offices. I suspect that the ratios hold in most other industrialized countries – regardless of whether they are referred to as lawyers, barristers or solicitors.
While there are hundreds of security steps that a business can take with regards to protecting their data assets, at the very least every law office should set out to ensure that:
- All computers require passwords and those passwords are required to be changed on a regular basis – This can be setup on any PC regardless of what version of Windows is being used.
- Backups (which should be done for other reasons than confidentiality) should be secured.
- Anti-virus and anti-spyware software should be on each computer with a automatic updating setup to ensure regular updating of this software. An anti-virus program with a 2 year old list of viruses won’t ensure security.
- Any computer that is on the Internet should have a personal firewall. Again, in a process that is making it easier for small businesses all of the popular anti-virus products mentioned above now come bundled with a firewall.
- Encryption of the hard drives on all computers. I have hesitated to put this into earlier security recommendations due to the technical skill required to set this up. However, with Alertsec you can now roll out hosted (Software-as-a-Service) solutions that can even be setup and installed by a non-techie. This is a huge step up in making encryption possible for smaller organizations.
Technology may not be the first love for a lawyer. However, to ensure confidentiality lawyers must put electronic safety and security on their to-do list. With the hosted solutions offered by Alertsec there are now simple solutions that will ensure that the lawyer’s computer respects the attorney/client privilege in the same way that the lawyer does.
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