Last year, the American Bar Association Law Practice Division created a webpage entitled “Disaster Resources.” This page is to help law firms and lawyers navigate their way through difficult times should they ever be impacted by a natural disaster. Sensei’s Sharon Nelson co-wrote an article about this very topic with colleague Jim Calloway, which is featured on this page. This year, Jim and Sharon have made some important updates that you don’t want to miss.

Excerpt: With so many recent disasters and perhaps more ahead, the ABA Law Practice Division advises you to do some planning now.

Have a Disaster Recovery Plan which you review annually. Define who is responsible for what. It should be electronic and in the cloud as well as on paper. Several trusted members of the firm should also keep a paper copy at home.

Communications are always the number one problem. An emergency contact list should be in writing and in the cloud where it can be accessed via a computer or a phone.

In case of flooding or mass destruction, it is best to have a backup in the cloud. Test your backup regularly to make sure it is working. There are many reputable cloud providers—examples include Mozy, Carbonite, Backblaze, CrashPlan SMB, and Acronis.

See the entire page here.

“13 Cybersecurity Questions Lawyers Often Ask” by Sensei’s Sharon Nelson and John Simek was featured in the June 2019 issue of the Wisconsin Lawyer. The Wisconsin Lawyer is a publication of the State Bar of Wisconsin.

Excerpt: As many readers know, we lecture a lot. A whole lot. So we thought it might be interesting to relate the questions we have been asked most often in the past several months. Always fascinating to see what is “top of mind” at conferences and CLEs.

“I’ve been thinking about cybersecurity – what’s most important? A security assessment, penetration testing or employee training?”

Well . . . let’s start with penetration testing. For most solo/small law firms, this is probably overkill unless you have major league clients or extremely high value data. In pen testing, you are asking a company to pretend they are the “bad guys” and attack you – it is scary stuff, and tends to be expensive. The company will generally require a “get out of jail” free agreement, saying that they are not liable for any damages resulting from a successful compromises of your network.

A security assessment (sometimes also called an audit) is far less expensive. The assessment is usually done using software tools and involves a thorough review of your network. The result is generally a report identifying your critical vulnerabilities, medium-level vulnerabilities and low-level vulnerabilities. As a rule, it tends to come with a proposal for (at least) remediating the critical vulnerabilities along with the estimated cost. We believe it is wise to do these assessments, using a certified third party cybersecurity company, annually. Many clients and cyberinsurance companies are beginning to require these assessments as well.

There is no getting around the absolute need for annual employee cybersecurity training. It is generally fairly inexpensive and covers the basics of current threats and how to avoid such things as clicking on suspicious links/attachments, going to sketchy websites, giving information over the phone (duped by social engineering), and many other easy-to-make mistakes. A solid hour of good training each year is a small price to pay for educating your employees and creating a culture of cybersecurity.

See the entire article here.

Recently, Sensei’s Sharon Nelson was featured in an article in the Big Law Business section of Bloomberg Law. Sharon gives her thoughts on ethics surrounding the use of artificial intelligence in the practice of law in the article, “Courts, Lawyers Must Address AI Ethics, ABA Proposal Says” by Melissa Heelan Stanzione.

Excerpt: Legal technology experts welcomed the proposal by the ABA’s science and technology law section to be put before the membership group’s House of Delegates in coming days in San Francisco, but said it’s long overdue.

“We’re falling in the wake of other organizations trying to get a handle on this,” said Sharon Nelson, a science and tech law section member and co-founder of Sensei Enterprises, a digital forensics, information technology, and cybersecurity small business.

The legal profession is known to be resistant to change, and it’s been slower than other industries to embrace modernization through legal technologies. But tech experts say lawyers’ lack of fundamental understanding of them will soon put them at a disadvantage if they don’t change their ways.

Read the entire article here.