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25% of Law Firms Have Been Breached

January 4, 2022

What We Learned in 2021

In December 2021, Dave Ries, a frequent co-presenter with the authors, wrote an excellent summary of the cybersecurity portion of the ABA’s 2021 Legal Technology Survey Report. You can find his summary at https://www.americanbar.org/groups/law_practice/publications/techreport/2021/cybersecurity/.  Perhaps the most striking statistic is that 25% of the survey’s respondents reported that their law firm had been breached at some time. Clearly, law firms are an attractive target for cybercriminals – with a plethora of data about so many people and businesses, law firms are a one-stop shop for harvesting a wealth of information.

Quick Refresher on the Ethics Rules

Several of the ABA Model Rules are particularly related to safeguarding client data, including competence (Model Rule 1.1), communication (Model Rule 1.4), confidentiality of information (Model Rule 1.6) and supervision (Model Rules 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3).

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