Biglaw

Top Biglaw Firm Impacted By Data Breach

The breach was tracked back to a vendor.

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If you need even more proof (and really, at this point, it should be obvious) that Biglaw firms with their treasure trove of high confidential information on all manner of clients are a target for cyber attacks, well, here you go. Goodwin Procter, a firm ranked No. 22 in the latest Am Law 100, recently found themselves dealing with the fallout of a cybersecurity breach.

According to a report at Bloomberg Law, one of the firm’s vendors that is used for large file transfers reported a hack. The firm’s managing partner, Mark Bettencourt, sent an internal memo outlining the scope of the issue:

Goodwin’s breach investigation revealed that a “small percentage” of the firm’s clients “may have experienced unauthorized access to or acquisition of confidential material” on Jan. 20, Bettencourt said. He said that potentially impacted clients were notified, and all of the firm’s clients were told about the breach.

Internally, “only a few Goodwin employees were affected,” and have been notified as well, according to the memo.

“At this time, we have found no evidence that any Goodwin resources were affected other than the file transfer service, and our business operations have not been affected,” said Bettencourt, whose memo said Goodwin had been running the most current version of the vendor’s service, conducting maintenance, and using security patches.

The whole ordeal shows just how important best practices — such as a quick response when bad things inevitably do happen — really are.

headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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