Get Your Head out of the ‘Cloud’ When Protecting Client Data (New York Law Journal)
New York Law Journal, December 31, 2015
Get Your Head out of the ‘Cloud’ When Protecting Client Data
In addition to the duty of confidentiality, a lawyer’s use of technology also implicates Rule 1.1 of the Rules, which deals with an attorney’s ethical duty to provide competent representation….Recent ethics opinions have confirmed that Rule 1.1 of the Rules encompasses technological competence. See, e.g., New York State Bar Association Ethics Opinion 1020 (stating that the use of electronically stored information may not only require reasonable care to protect electronically stored information under Rule 1.6, but may also, under Rule 1.1, require the competence to determine and follow a set of steps that will constitute such reasonable care.); New York City Bar Association Formal Opinion 2015-3 (“The duty of competence includes a duty to exercise reasonable diligence in identifying and avoiding common Internet-based scams, particularly where those scams can harm other existing clients.”)
