Memo to Law Firms: Raise Cybersecurity Bar or Risk Client Losses
Law firms may not be the safe repository of client confidences—such as trade secrets and merger plans—that they once were, as hackers recognize firms as prized vaults of proprietary corporate data, warns Bloomberg Law. And clients are starting to view law firm data breaches as serious business considerations.
Daniel R. Stoller talked with Christopher Dore, privacy partner at plaintiff-side firm Edelson PC in Chicago, who told him that “if hackers want to get data from Alphabet Inc.’s Google, the best path may be through a law firm rather than directly from the company, because the law practice likely has an almost ‘unlimited variety of data.'”
And Lucian T. Pera, legal ethics partner at Adam and Reese LLP in Memphis, Tenn. and former treasurer of the American Bar Association, told Stoller: “Cybersecurity protections are becoming a serious factor in client decision-making,” at law firms, and large firms stand to lose business if they don’t take care of cybersecurity.
