Posts about Law Firms by Professor Daniel J. Solove for his blog at TeachPrivacy, a privacy awareness and security training company.
Before the pandemic, which seems like eons ago, I spearheaded a group of legal academics and practitioners in the field of privacy law who sent a letter to the deans of all U.S. law schools about privacy law education. The pandemic occurred not too long after our letter, and deans had many other things to […]
In the annals of what must be one of the most ridiculous data security incidents, a law firm employee sent a client file on an unencrypted thumb drive in the mail. The file contained Social Security information and other financial data. Seriously? The envelope arrived without the USB drive. The firm contacted the post office. […]
Last year, major incidents involving law firm data breaches brought attention to the weaknesses within law firm data security and the need for more effective plans and preparation. An American Bar Association (ABA) survey reveals that 26% of firms (with more than 500 attorneys) experienced some sort of data breach in 2016, up from 23% in 2015.
There is a significant degree of confusion and lack of awareness about attorney confidentiality and cybersecurity obligations. This issue is especially acute when it comes to using the cloud to store privileged documents. A common myth is that storing privileged documents in the cloud is a breach of attorney-client confidentiality. In other instances, many attorneys […]
By Daniel J. Solove Law firms are facing grave privacy and security risks. Although a number of firms are taking steps to address these risks, the industry as a whole needs to grasp the severity of the risk. For firms, privacy and security risks can be significantly higher than for other organizations. Incidents can be […]
In the August issue of the ABA Journal, Scott Turow calls for an end to the billable hour [link no longer available]:
Ever since the Washington Post exposé about the AutoAdmit discussion board, it has been in a downward tailspin. According to the Washington Post article of March 2007:
I recently heard the name of a law firm that struck me as incredibly funny, and so I immediately thought “blog post fodder.” I went searching for a few others. Here is a list of some of the funniest law firm names I found. All of these are real: