Ride the Lightning

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE: REPORT FROM SEATTLE ON DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEES

May 9, 2008

Miraculously, it is sunny in Seattle – and with luck, we can shortly remove the manacles which bind us to our keyboards and go enjoy the sunshine. John and I have just wrapped up speaking at the ALA annual conference here – the topic was “Disgruntled Employees in Law Firms: The Enemy Within.” Probably the most surprising thing to us was the sheer number of attendees that have experienced cases involving disgruntled employees and electronic evidence – nearly all of them, in fact. Equally astonishing were the range of cases, from sex/age/gender discrimination to theft of confidential data, destruction of data, hostile workplace, embezzlement and insider trading.

At the large firm level, it appeared that firms are increasingly trying to plan for these circumstances and guard against them, but finding that some policies meet with stiff resistance from employees and that partners – big surprise – often wish to be exempted from policies. This is particularly true for policies involving the use of USB devices, the installation of “rogue” software, encryption and Internet and e-mail policies.

One suggestion we made to keep employees from becoming incensed at their employers is having outside experts (whether HR, compliance, legal tech, etc.) come in and educate employees about the need for the change and explain that the experts recommended the change. At least this deflects some of the heat from management and permits employees to better understand the change and ask questions. The truth is, no one likes restrictions, but they are necessary to secure data and to insulate law firms from many kinds of liability.

For those who are letting the infantry run the regiment, it is indeed time to wake up and smell the coffee.

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