As part of Above the Law’s 2015 Academy for Private Practice (APP) event last Friday, October 2, Jeff Bennion and Roe Frazer ran a workshop on the cybersecurity challenges facing lawyers today. They also gave their opinions on the advantages and necessity of engaging in eDiscovery for the efficiency of your practice.
The sheer mention of the “cloud” seems to incite paranoia among lawyers and clients due to the security threat posed to government and financial institutions who have had sensitive information leaked in recent history. These issues also raise ethical concerns for lawyers who are put in trust of their clients’ personal information. Yet as Jeff and Roe reiterated throughout the workshop, no system of storage provides absolute security. It is the role of lawyers to educate their clients on the efficiency and safety of using the cloud. “Nothing is 100% secure, the cloud is the best solution available today and offers lawyers more control over their data security.”
The workshop provided various tools available to protect information through Dropbox, Google Docs, and Spider Box, all of which are evolving their technologies to offer enhanced security. This includes viewing and editing tools, password protections, and expiry dates for external links.
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Jeff emphasized the importance of having universal accessibility to your caseload in order to maximize your ability to acquire and keep clients. Within this gambit, the importance of having clear language over document storage should be outlined in any retainer agreement you have with a client.
The second half of the workshop focused on eDiscovery and the role it has in establishing your own solo practice. Based on a Natural Language Analytical framework, Roe Fraser urged the importance of eDiscovery for picking up the “Black Swans” of any case that can often be missed and make the all important difference in a trial.
“Using software for every case will make you more efficient as an attorney and improve your overall quality of life.” As technology becomes increasingly embedded into legal practice, eDiscovery has simply replaced traditional notions of discovery.
Lawyers must adapt to the benefits and challenges of advancing technology in order to remain competitive within their practice area.
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Jeff Bennion, Of Counsel at Estey & Bomberger, LLP, is a solo practitioner from San Diego and a regular contributor to Above the Law. When not handling his own cases, he’s consulting lawyers on how to use technology to not be boring in trial or managing eDiscovery projects in mass torts/complex litigation cases.
Roe Frazer is CEO and General Counsel of Cicayda, an eDiscovery software and services company based in Nashville, Tennessee.
The ATL APP 2016 National Conference will be held on September 15–16, 2016, in Philadelphia. Click here to register at the Super-Early Bird Rate of $49.