Category: Communication Media & Internet

8 African American Attorneys Who Shaped the Nation

In honor of Juneteenth, we want to recognize a few African American attorneys who helped shape the legal space. Since the founding of our nation more than 240 years ago, African Americans have experienced, bore witness to, suffered, and ultimately confronted the systemic racial discrimination present in virtually all aspects of everyday life. Although one would hope the legal profession, based on fundamental ideas of equality and due process, would be mostly immune from such a tarnished reputation, reality failed to meet the rhetorical standard set by the ideals of the law.

Here are eight African American attorneys who pioneered the way for generations of legal scholars by challenging the preconceived bias and bigotry of an entire nation:

  • Macon Bolling Allen
  • Charlotte E. Ray
  • James Weldon Johnson
  • Charles H. Houston
  • Thurgood Marshall
  • Jane Bolin
  • Constance Baker Motley
  • Fred Gray

1. Macon Bolling Allen (1816-1894)

 

 

Considered to be both the first African American attorney to practice law in the United States and to hold a judicial position, Macon Bolling Allen broke numerous barriers. He passed the Maine bar exam in 1844, but racial prejudice in Boston kept him from making a living as a lawyer, so instead, he embraced a rigorous qualifying exam and became Justice of the Peace of Middlesex County, Massachusetts in 1848. In doing so, Allen became the first African American in the United States to hold a judicial position, despite not being considered a U.S. citizen under the Constitution at the time.

2. Charlotte E. Ray (1850-1911)

 

 

Charlotte E. Ray was the first black female lawyer in the United States. She studied at the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth in Washington, D.C., and went on to teach and study law at Howard University. Upon admission to the District of Columbia bar in 1872, Ray became not only the first woman admitted to practice in the District of Columbia but also the first black woman licensed to practice law in the United States.

Unfortunately, Charlotte Ray’s career was cut short due to racial prejudice. She opened a law office in the nation’s capital but was unable to obtain enough clients to sustain her practice. She ultimately returned to New York City to teach in the public school system.

3. James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)

 

 

Best known for his role in the creation of the Harlem Renaissance, James Weldon Johnson was not just an attorney; he was also an early civil rights activist and a leader of the NAACP.  After founding a newspaper called The Daily American, Johnson became the first African American attorney to pass the Bar in the state of Florida. He was also a noted author; his published works include The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) and God’s Trombones (1927).

4. Charles H. Houston (1895-1950)

 

 

Charles H. Houston served as the Harvard Law Review’s first African-American editor, the vice dean of Howard University’s law school, and head of the NAACP’s legal fight against “separate but equal” schools, culminating to the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

During his time at the NAACP, Houston accumulated legal precedents against the “separate but equal” doctrine, specifically in cases related to education for African Americans. Arguably his most significant victory came in 1938 when the Supreme Court ruled in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada that it was unconstitutional to give African-American students funds to attend an out-of-state law school instead of offering them admission to the only law school in the state. He was widely known as the mentor of Thurgood Marshall.

5. Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993)

 

 

Thurgood Marshall was the first African American justice of the Supreme Court, serving from 1967-1991. After studying law at Howard University, Marshall went on to serve as counsel to the NAACP. In 1954, he won the seminal case of Brown v. Board of Education, which signaled the end of racial segregation in American public schools.

In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson nominated Marshall to serve on the United States Supreme Court. Initially, the makeup of the court allowed Marshall to be an influential liberal voice on landmark cases including Roe v. Wade and Furman v. Georgia. However, as Republican presidents appointed eight consecutive conservative justices, the court took on a decidedly different tone, and Marshall’s later tenure was defined more by his dissents defending the liberal principles that had since been overturned.

6. Jane Bolin (1908-2007)

 

 

The first African American female judge in the United States, Jane Bolin earned her J.D. degree at the Yale Law School in 1931, where she was also the first African American woman to graduate.

After passing the New York bar exam, New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia appointed Bolin to serve as Judge of the Domestic Relations Court in 1939. During her 40 years on the bench, she achieved two significant civil rights reforms: she oversaw the assignment of probation officers in the court system without regard for race or religion, and she also championed a provision that publicly funded yet privately owned child-care agencies must accept children without regard to racial or ethnic background.

7. Constance Baker Motley (1921-2005)

 

 

Constance Motley was the first African American woman to be appointed as a federal judge. She was the first African American woman to serve as a member of the New York State Senate. Additionally, Motley was the first woman to serve as Manhattan borough president.

Motley was keenly involved in the civil rights movement, once visiting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in jail. She also sang freedom songs in churches that had been bombed and spent a night under armed guard with civil rights leader Medgar Evers, who was later murdered.

Her legal contributions cannot be overlooked, as Judge Motley was a force to be reckoned with in the courtroom. Her contributions to the battle to extend civil rights for the disenfranchised is an invaluable chapter of American jurisprudence.

8. Fred Gray (1930-)

 

 

During the Montgomery bus boycott, Fred Gray played a vital role in the successful desegregation of Montgomery buses, both as legal counsel and as a strategist. When Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks were criminally charged for refusing to give up their seats to white passengers, Gray defended the women in court. He also challenged the constitutionality of Alabama laws mandating segregation on buses in Browder v. Gayle, which was affirmed in 1956 by the United States Supreme Court.

In 1970, Gray went to the Alabama State Legislature to serve as an elected representative from Tuskegee. His election made him one of the first two African American public officials to serve in the legislature since the Reconstruction era. President Jimmy Carter nominated Gray to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama in 1979, but Gray was forced to withdraw his name from consideration in light of massive opposition from conservative political foes.

Conclusion

For all its specifications about the provision of equality, the American legal system must be examined for the various instances in which it has failed to follow through on those promises to its African American citizens. Since colonial times, African Americans have comprised the backbone of a country that was founded on principles of liberty from which they were expressly excluded for far too long.

This Juneteenth, we acknowledge a fraction of the African American attorneys whose trailblazing careers shaped the American legal system, gearing it towards bridging the gap between its inequitable promises of liberty and their actual application to all Americans, regardless of the color of their skin. These men and women, in their perseverance and commitment to upholding the law, have challenged biases, discrimination, and imbalance of opportunity to secure the American promises of liberty and justice–for all.

© Copyright 2021 PracticePanther
ARTICLE BY Practice Panther
For more articles on the legal industry, visit the NLRLitigation / Trial Practice section.

Mastering Remote Work: Does Returning to the Office Mean Bringing Pets to Work?

With so much of the workforce going remote this past year, there has been a huge shift in the way many people view pet ownership. In fact, the national pet adoption rate jumped more than 30% at the beginning of the pandemic, and animal rescue organizations reported an overall increase in adoptions of 30 – 50% in 2020. Not only has the spread of remote work helped match pets to homes, but we know that animals have been shown to reduce stress and provide much needed comfort and social support to many workers during the pandemic.

The shift to work-from-home has also opened our doors to our colleagues’ pets, whether meeting them on Zoom or hearing them interrupt conference calls. This has made it seem more normal to have your pet – or your colleagues’ pets – around during the work day.

With the potential for going back to the office seemingly closer, some offices are considering whether to go pet-friendly. Here are a few steps to consider before your office makes this decision:

  • Consider Your Workforce and your Workplace

    • Not every office will be the right place for pets, but it could be a perk your employees really appreciate (and could make it easier for employees to come back into the office). Consider if the office space allows for pets to stay in their own areas, out of the way of those who do not feel comfortable with animals around. Think about how easy your employees can take pets outside, or remove them from distracting other employees. Finally, take account of employee pet allergies, and determine what limitations would need to be in place.

  • Require Authorization

    • There should be a process for employees to receive authorization to bring their pet to work, and provide necessary information regarding their pet’s health and vaccine history. Any employee bringing a pet to work must agree to observe certain requirements or risk losing their pet-privileges.

  • Establish Guidelines

    • Employers need to determine what types of pets can come to work (e.g., dogs, cats, fish, etc.), and designate certain areas pet-friendly, and certain areas off-limits for animals. Strict cleaning guidelines should be in place to ensure the workplace remains clean and safe for all.

There are also legal concerns when addressing pets at work. Beyond a full pet-friendly policy, employers must remember that pets may need to be allowed as a reasonable accommodation for employees with disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires service animals be allowed in all areas of public access, and employers are required to engage in the interactive process with employees if a pet may be an appropriate accommodation for a disability. The ADA generally requires service animals be allowed in an employer setting, if doing so will not create an undue hardship for the business. This is not the case for emotional support animals, however, which are not necessarily trained for a specific service, but simply to provide comfort and companionship. Either way, when faced with the question, employers should consider whether a pet would be an appropriate accommodation that enables an employee to perform the essential functions of his or her job.

© Polsinelli PC, Polsinelli LLP in California
For more articles on remote work, visit the NLRLabor & Employment section.

Ancestry.com Prevails in Yearbook Database Class Action

This week, Ancestry.com Inc. prevailed in a class action which alleged that it misappropriated consumers’ images and violated their privacy by using such data to solicit and sell their services and products. The court granted Ancestry.com’s motion to dismiss the amended complaint with prejudice because the plaintiffs “did not cure the complaint’s deficiencies” after being granted leave to amend the first complaint.

As we previously wrote in November 2020, Ancestry.com was hit with a class action in the Northern District of California for “knowingly misappropriating the photographs, likenesses, names, and identities of Plaintiff and the class; knowingly using those photographs, likenesses, names, and identities for the commercial purpose of selling access to them in Ancestry products and services; and knowingly using those photographs, likenesses, names and identities to advertise, sell and solicit purchases of Ancestry services and products; without obtaining prior consent from Plaintiffs and the class.” In March 2021, the court dismissed the lawsuit based on lack of standing, but allowed the plaintiffs to amend and address the deficiencies. Although the plaintiffs added allegations of emotional harm, lost time, and theft of intellectual property, that didn’t sway the court. U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler said that the new allegations “do not change the analysis in this court’s earlier order.” The court held that the plaintiffs still did not establish Article III standing because they had not alleged a concrete injury.

Additionally, the court noted that even if standing were established, Ancestry.com is immune from liability under the Communications Decency Act (CDA) because it is not a content creator. Magistrate Beeler said that Ancestry.com “obviously did not create the yearbooks [. . .] [i]nstead, it necessarily used information provided by another information content provider and is immune under [the CDA].”

Copyright © 2021 Robinson & Cole LLP. All rights reserved.
ARTICLE BY Kathryn M. Rattigan of Robinson & Cole LLP
For more articles on cybersecurity litigation, visit the NLR Litigation / Trial Practice section.

Coca-Cola Sued For Deceptive Sustainability Claims

Last week, Coca-Cola was sued by Earth Island Institute for deceptive marketing regarding its sustainability efforts “despite being one of the largest contributors to plastic pollution in the world.”

In the Complaint, Earth Island Institute, a not-for-profit environmental organization, alleges that Coca-Cola is deceiving the public by marketing itself as sustainable and environmentally friendly while “polluting more than any other beverage company and actively working to prevent effective recycling measures in the U.S.” Coca-Cola has developed a number of initiatives to advertise its commitment to plastic waste reduction and recycling, in part through its “Every Bottle Back” and a “World Without Waste” campaigns. It touts its goal to collect and recycle one bottle or can for each one it sells by 2030. Coke also claims that its plastic bottles and caps are designed to be 100% recyclable. The Complaint presents a number of examples of these allegedly misleading statements across a range of mediums, including on its website, in advertising, on social media, and in other corporate reports and statements.

Meanwhile, according to the Complaint, Coca-Cola is the world’s leading plastic waste producer, generating 2.9 million tons of plastic waste per year. It uses about 200,000 plastic bottles per minute, amounting to about one-fifth of the world’s polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle output. This plastic production also relies on fossil fuels, resulting in significant CO2 emissions.

This waste generation is complicated by significant deficiencies in recycling. Despite the public’s common understanding that plastic bottles can be recycled, only about 30 percent of them actually are. According to the Complaint, the plastics industry has long understood this problem, but it has sought to convince the consumer that recycling is viable and results in waste reduction. The Complaint even quotes former president of the Plastics Industry Association as saying, “If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment.”

The Complaint alleges that not only has Coca-Cola failed to implement an effective recycling strategy, it has actively opposed legislation that would improve recycling rates. According to the Complaint, Coke has actively fought against “bottle bills”—laws that would impose a small fee on plastic bottle purchase that would be returned to the consumer when that bottle is returned to a recycling facility. Jurisdictions with these laws tend to have better recycling rates, albeit at a small additional cost to the consumer at the point of purchase.

The Complaint does not allege that Coke has violated any environmental laws. Instead, Earth Island Institute seeks to hold Coke accountable under the Washington, D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act. The Complaint alleges that Coca-Cola’s misrepresentations mislead consumers, and that Coke’s products “lack the characteristics, benefits, standards, qualities, or grades” that are stated and implied in its marketing materials. Earth Island Institute does not seek damages; it only seeks to stop Coca-Cola from continuing to make these statements.

This case is the latest example of ESG—Environmental, Social, and Governance—factors playing out in practice.

Copyright © 2021 Robinson & Cole LLP. All rights reserved.
ARTICLE BY Megan Baroni of Robinson & Cole LLP
For more articles on Coca-Cola litigation, visit the NLR Litigation / Trial Practice section.

Class Action Following Ransomware Attack on Colonial Pipeline

Last week we posted about a ransomware attack on the American Colonial Pipeline Company. This week, the Company has been hit with a class action alleging that a range of US businesses and consumers suffered loss as a result of Colonial Pipeline’s decision to cut its supply of fuel until the ransomware attack was resolved. Meanwhile, the Company is still not entirely back on track – Colonial’s main website is still offline.

The class action is open to all fuel consumers who were impacted by the closure of the pipeline across the east coast which includes a range of businesses that rely on fuel (such as airlines and trucking companies) as well as ordinary retail consumers.

Reuters reported that 88% of petrol stations were out of fuel in Washington, 65% in North Carolina, while in South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia, just under 50% were without fuel.

One of the points that will be considered in the case is whether Colonial actually needed to close the pipeline – it’s been suggested that the pipeline could have been left open and that the Company could have reversed billed its customers based on estimated usage.  The ransomware hack was one of the most disruptive attacks on critical infrastructure that the US has ever experienced and it will be hard to determine whether Colonial’s decision to ‘turn off’ its pipeline was necessary to contain the breach or not.

Colonial has already paid a $US4.4 million (~$5.7m AUD) ransom to the hacking group DarkSide and if this action is successful, it could stand to lose hundreds of millions more. Flow on effects of attacks on critical infrastructure clearly have the potential to seriously damage businesses and the economy generally.  Even the cost of defending litigation makes the cost of a security breach much higher than merely paying a ransom.

Jacqueline Patishman also contributed to this article.

Copyright 2021 K & L Gates

ARTICLE BY Cameron Abbott of K&L Gates
For more articles on ransomware, visit the NLRCorporate & Business Organizations section.

SCOTUS Slashes Scope of Cybercrime Statute

The Supreme Court handed down a decision significantly narrowing the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”), a federal statute that can impose both criminal and civil liability on anyone who “intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access”, in its first-ever decision addressing this law.

In a 6-3 opinion in Van Buren v. United States, No. 19-783, authored by Justice Barrett, the Court reversed the Eleventh Circuit’s decision to uphold the conviction of a former police officer who was charged under the CFAA for searching a license plate in a law enforcement database for unofficial purposes.  His conviction concerned a provision of the statute that made it illegal “to access a computer with authorization and to use such access to obtain . . . . information in the computer that the accesser is not entitled so to obtain”.  The officer appealed, claiming that the CFAA did not cover unauthorized use of a database that he was otherwise authorized to access as part of his job.

Recall that the CFAA, which was passed in 1986, is considered to be the primary anti-hacking law and prosecutorial tool against outside actors who are accused of breaking into computer networks (although the statute has also been litigated recently in the commercial context, including in relation to data scraping).  It forbids individuals from intentionally accessing a computer without authorization or “exceed[ing] authorized access.”  The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a split in authority among the Courts of Appeal regarding the scope of liability under the CFAA’s “exceeds authorized access” clause.

The majority opinion closely parsed the language of the CFAA and examined the types of activities that constituted “exceed[ing] authorized access.”  Ultimately, the Court concluded that the provision that Plaintiff had been convicted under “covers those who obtain information from particular areas in the computer—such as files, folders, or databases—to which their computer access does not extend.  It does not cover those who, like [Petitioner], have improper motives for obtaining information that is otherwise available to them.”  Op. at 1 (emphasis supplied).  Justice Barrett’s opinion also focused on the statute’s scope, noting that the government’s broad interpretation would criminalize a “breathtaking amount of commonplace computer activity,” including mundane activities such as using a work computer for personal purposes.

This case is a game changer for pending and future cases brought under the CFAA.  As CPW readers will remember, the hiQ/LinkedIn data-scraping saga ongoing in California federal court had been paused pending a ruling from SCOTUS in Van Buren.  All eyes will be back on that case now, in light of the circumscribed interpretation of the statute adopted by SCOTUS.

© Copyright 2021 Squire Patton Boggs (US) LLP

ARTICLE BY John A. Burlingame,  Kristin L. Bryan and Christina Lamoureux of Squire Patton Boggs (US) LLP
For more articles on SCOTUS, visit the NLR Litigation section.

White House to Business: “Take Ransomware Crime Seriously”

As we come out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it appears that another type of infection is threatening business and ransomware continues to spread.

  • Colonial Pipeline
  • JBS (world’s largest meatpacking company)
  • Massachusetts Steamship Authority
  • Scripps Health
  • City of Tulsa

A roll call of entities suffering major ransomware attacks just in the few weeks.    After the Colonial Pipeline attack, President Biden issued an Executive Order establishing some baselines for cybersecurity with respect to government contracts and improving detection of cybersecurity incidents on federal government networks, among other things.   The White House has now issued a rare “wake-up call” to private business in the form of an open letter “to corporate executives and business leaders.”

Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology Anne Neuberger wrote that while the Biden administration has placed an emphasis on resilience, the “private sector has a distinct and key responsibility.”

“All organizations must recognize that no company is safe from being targeted by ransomware, regardless of size or location.  But there are immediate steps you can take to protect yourself, as well as your customers and the broader economy.”   Neuberger continued that private companies that “view ransomware as a threat to their core business operations rather than a simple risk of data theft will react and recover more effectively.”

The letter encourages business to do what regular readers of this blog, or attendees at our webinar events, have heard for many years:  understand your business risk, convene leadership teams to discuss the ransomware threat, and review corporate security posture and business continuity plans.

Neuberger’s letter highlights best practices to help defend against ransomware attacks:

  • Implement the best practices from the President’s Cybersecurity Executive Order
    • Prevent Intrusion (Section 3 – multi-factor authentication)
    • Minimize impact of intrusion pre-detection (Section 3 – data encryption, zero-trust environment)
    • Detect and respond to intrusion (Section 6 – incident response playbook, Section 7 – endpoint detection and response, centralized threat-hunting, Section 8 – logging)
    • Learning (and disseminating) lessons from intrusion
  • Backup your data, system images, and configurations, and keep the backups offline
  • Regularly test your data resiliency
  • Update and patch systems promptly
  • Test your incident response plan (do you have one?)
  • Check your security team’s work using a third party pen tester
  • Segment your networks

In April, the Federal Trade Commission published a Business Blog post entitled “Corporate boards:  don’t underestimate your role in data security oversight”   This piece, combined with today’s open letter from the White House, should be mandatory reading for board members.   The need for proactive and preventative measures increases by the day.   We can assist with a wide range of activities, including:

  • Cyber Risk Assessment/Management
  • Employee Training
  • Incident Response Planning
  • Disaster Recovery/Resiliency Planning
  • Cyber Liability Insurance Placement

©1994-2021 Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C. All Rights Reserved.

ARTICLE BY Cynthia J. Larose of Mintz
For more articles on cybersecurity, visit the NLRCommunications, Media & Internet section.

Lessons from the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware

Thankfully, it appears that the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack is behind us and the panic over gas lines and hoarding can subside. But after an episode like this, it is helpful to take stock and search for what we can learn.

To start, everyone has now heard of ransomware, but to give a bit fuller background, this kind of malicious software is delivered into an information system—such as a computer or a database—and then renders all of the information inaccessible. Backups can sometimes help restore functionality unless the ransomware’s operator or programs decided to wait to activate the malicious software for long enough that it is in the backups. Once the information is rendered inaccessible, the person or group behind the malicious software demands payment in exchange for returning the information. Recently, there has even been reporting that the person or group behind a ransomware attack will begin calling the clients and consumers whose information was exposed as a pressure tactic to get the business to pay up.

Events like the shutdown of Colonial Pipelines, which generate a torrent of media attention, can create a false impression that it is only large or geopolitically sensitive businesses are at risk of these kinds of attacks. This is simply not true. In his 2020 Data Breach Report, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein found that there were over 1600 security breaches reported to the North Carolina Department of Justice. Compromising email constituted 40% of all security breaches reported, and ransomware constituted 22% of all security breaches reported. So there is a wide array of businesses in North Carolina that are susceptible to these issues, and small businesses are getting caught up in the mess.

For example, last year, the News and Observer reported that the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina was the victim of a widespread data breach, and just this past April, WCNC reported that a Charlotte parking app had a serious data breach exposing users’ personal information.

However, while no business can ever prevent all possibility for data breaches, there are steps that any business can take to prepare themselves, and relative to the cost of a breach, these steps have a significant return on investment. For example, making sure a business avoids compliance failures can sidestep significant cost increases in the event of a breach. Identifying an incident response team, creating an incident response plan, and testing both can give certainty and ensure that a business responds as rapidly to an incident as possible. And aligning a business’s internal practices with an established cybersecurity framework can decrease the risk that the business experiences and give strong arguments against any regulatory investigations that suggest the business was negligent.

That being said, cybersecurity and compliance expertise are critical to making sure that these plans do what they are meant to do.

© 2021 Ward and Smith, P.A.. All Rights Reserved.

ARTICLE BY Peter N. McClelland, CIPP/US of Ward and Smith, P.A.
For more articles on cybersecurity, visit the NLR Communications, Media & Internet section.

Potato, Potahto… Email, Slack

First came email.  Then came Slack, WhatsApp, Zoom, Teams, texts, and a host of social media platforms where we can communicate…in writing…and those communications are saved as electronically stored information (ESI).  “Collaboration software,” like Slack, Zoom, and Teams, is the newest eDiscovery challenge.  But the challenge lies in the preservation, capture, and review, as well as the analysis of proportionality, and not in the question of whether it is discoverable.

The United States District Court for the Central District of California recently ruled that Plaintiff’s Slack messages were both relevant and proportional to the needs of the case and ordered their production.  Benebone LLC v. Pet Qwerks, Inc., 2021 WL 831025 (2/18/21).  The main points of contention between Plaintiff and Defendant focused on the cost to extract, process, and review 30,000 Slack messages.

Although the Court described Slack as a relatively new communication tool, it was part of Plaintiff’s internal business communications and there was no real dispute that Plaintiff’s Slack messages were likely to contain relevant information.

On the topic of burden and proportionality to the needs of the case, the court held a (Zoom) hearing and determined that “requiring review and production of Slack messages by Benebone is generally comparable to requiring search and production of emails and is not unduly burdensome or disproportionate to the needs of this case.” Id. at *3.

One of the key takeaways from this case is to get an eDiscovery expert. Defendant’s expert testified that there are readily available third-party tools for collection and review of Slack and that searches of the data could be limited to certain Slack channels, users, or custodians (similar to focusing an email search on custodians and time frames).  Defendant’s estimate of cost for the project was vastly different than Plaintiff’s unsupported estimates ($22,000 compared to $110,000-$255,000).  To that end, Defendant’s expert proposed that contract attorneys could do first-level review at a rate of $40 an hour as opposed to a $400 an hour attorney rate.  Plaintiff failed to provide a declaration or testimony from an eDiscovery expert.

When facing federal litigation, your case will involve electronically stored information. Slack is considered a more dynamic form of ESI, making search, collection, and processing more difficult.  Choosing the right application programming interface (API) is important as Slack data is exported in JSON format, which is difficult to decipher and requires the right processing to get to more user-friendly data for review purposes.  Additionally, the level of subscription used impacts what can be recovered.

©2021 Strassburger McKenna Gutnick & Gefsky

ARTICLE BY Gretchen E. Moore of Strassburger McKenna Gutnick & Gefsky
For more articles on Slack and WhatsApp, visit the NLR Corporate & Business Organizations section.

Law Firms are Switching to the Cloud. Here’s Why

Cloud computing has become ubiquitous in modern society, but law firms have been slower than most in adopting the technology. Recently, however, law firms switching from on-site data management to the cloud has become the norm due to rapid advancements in cybersecurity, increasing client demand, and the appeal of improving efficiency while cutting costs.

So, what are the most common reasons why cloud computing is still so controversial among legal professionals, and what has caused the industry shift toward cloud migration?

Cloud Computing and Confidentiality

One of the driving forces that used to keep many law firms from using cloud servers is client confidentiality. When practicing law, attorney-client privilege is essential and cannot be taken lightly. Even today, concerns about confidentiality and ethics are the main reasons why cloud computing can be a contentious subject among those in the legal industry.

In the early days of cloud-based systems, these issues were a valid reason to avoid outsourcing data storage to an off-site server. However, cybersecurity advancements have led to the cloud often being more secure than on-site servers. Small to medium sized law firms are particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks since they often don’t have the infrastructure or expertise to keep their servers secure. Even with a secure firewall, a Wi-Fi connection can leave information and files vulnerable to a data breach.

Cloud services offer end-to-end encryption, backup servers, teams of expert IT professionals, and physical safety measures, such as securely locked rooms with top-of-the-line camera systems and 24/7 monitoring. These procedures are impossible for law firms to enact at a lower cost than outsourcing.

Cloud-Based Law Practice Management Software is Efficient

The benefits of being able to integrate and automate systems is one of the greatest advantages to companies using cloud technologies. Time consuming and tedious tasks such as scheduling, billing, invoicing, file management, and the creation of legal documents are all streamlined on the cloud.

With a low barrier of entry and the ability to access their important information whenever and wherever they need it, many legal teams that were hesitant to make the switch are now migrating over to cloud-based systems, as Zoom meetings and online court hearings have become the norm.

Is the Cloud More Reliable than In-House Systems?

While it has been a long-standing belief that in-house servers are more reliable and secure than cloud systems, this is no longer the case. Cloud servers offer redundancy that is unmatched by internal servers, since the cloud is able to utilize a secondary server if the primary system should fail. This leads to less downtime and a much lower risk of losing files to equipment error, damage, or a data breach.

It is also common to forget to create local server backups, leaving law firms vulnerable to data loss. Cloud systems are able to continually sync and update, so companies don’t have to worry about being able to access files or documents.

Cloud Technology Saves Money

While efficiency is important, at the end of the day, companies are trying to improve their bottom line. Cloud technology saves law firms money by allowing them to increase efficiency while eliminating the high cost of local data storage and maintenance. Not only that, but they are able to budget better by avoiding unexpected costs, which are inevitable when dealing with aging hardware.

Another significant cost-saving feature of cloud-based law practice management software is the ability to scale. When data is kept on site, scalability is considerably more expensive (and difficult). Law firms using cloud technology are able to grow without updating or adding equipment, software, IT staff, or other expenses associated with keeping data management in-house. Being able to focus on the growth of the business and having predictable, consistent data management costs is a notable advantage when scaling.

Despite the obvious benefits, many law firms are still reluctant to take the plunge into the cloud. Some of the common reasons why include:

Unpleasant Past Experiences

Whether a law firm was an early adopter of cloud technology, or recently had a poor experience with a particular cloud service, unpleasant transitions can sour an entire legal team against the idea of cloud technology altogether. Since there have been remarkable advancements in cloud computing recently, past exposure to cloud services shouldn’t be considered representative of how most cloud servers operate.

Difficult Migrations

One of the most common complaints law firms have when attempting to switch over to cloud-based technology is a difficult migration process. It’s important for companies to check reviews and find out more about what’s required to import their data to the cloud before committing to a cloud computing service.

Security Concerns

Due to the added scrutiny and obligations regarding confidentiality that legal teams are required to abide by, security concerns persist as an important reason why some law firms remain dubious about using cloud technology. However, modern cloud computing services typically offer considerably more secure data storage options than what law firms can provide in-house.

Control and Possession of Data

Some legal professionals feel as though migrating to the cloud means giving up control over their data and important documents because it gives them peace of mind to have their servers physically nearby. This kind of thought pattern inhibits growth by limiting their ability to scale; in reality they are not giving up control or possession of their data, they are simply moving it to a safer location that is easily accessible.

© Copyright 2021 PracticePanther

ARTICLE BY PracticePanther
For more articles on the legal industry, visit the NLR Law Office Management section.