Legal Cybersecurity in the Digital Age

Digital communication and its attendant risks – like hacking, data breaches, and government surveillance – create acute harms for the security and confidentiality of attorney-client relationships. Client trust is founded on the promise of confidentiality, and for this promise to be realized in our increasingly digital age a new generation of ethics rules is required. In the digital age attorneys cannot count on the confidentially of their communications without active digital security planning.

This report proposes a set of actions that attorneys and clients can take to maintain the security of online communications, as well as advocacy that clients and attorneys can engage in within professional organizations to ensure broad, permanent ethical rules that reflect the risks of modern communication and surveillance.