Does your technology put at risk your attorney-client privilege?

The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) released the results of its 2008 Law Department Survey. Forty-five departments responded, and about 34 of them were in companies with more than $10 billion in revenue, so we have a substantial population of large law departments. The report provides some very useful information.

For example, one question asked how law departments protect the attorney-client privilege for their information. The most widely used method is to use “access control lists” to control who can see confidential material on servers that others can access. I think this means that only certain users are granted permission to log on and view information. Next was to “maintain a separate physical server that has all the attorney/client materials on it with limited IT support having access.” A third method, selected by four departments is to “use VM technology to isolate attorney/client materials on a separate ‘virtual server’.”

Law departments have to pay attention to how it protects confidential information such as reserves, litigation strategies, numbers of matters and the like (See my post of Feb. 16, 2008: attorney-client privilege with 18 references.).