Article
Clinics, the Cloud, and Protecting Client Data in the Age of Remote Lawyering
Clin. L. Rev.
(2023)
Abstract
Technology has become central to law practice. Attorneys have an ethical obligation to understand how that technology works, how it can facilitate client representation—and the risks it poses to the confidentiality of clients’ electronically-stored data. Law school clinics seem to fall behind the curve on this obligation. Some maintain outdated protocols, and some have no protocols at all, to manage and safeguard client data. This leaves client data less secure than it ought to be, risking harm to clients, ethical violations for attorneys, and missed opportunity to communicate the importance of ethical technology use to clinic students.
This Article offers a comprehensive overview of the potential ethical pitfalls relating to client data in law school clinics, and outlines the practical steps needed to avoid them. First, the Article describes the legal technology landscape, identifies what is at stake, and unpacks the many ways in which technology creates both opportunities and risks in the law school setting. Next, the Article surveys the ethical norms governing the use of technology with respect to client data under rules of professional conduct, the American Bar Association’s leading ethics opinion on the topic, and state bar associations’ various opinions. Finally, the Article lays out a series of questions and topics clinic law firms must answer to comply with ethical rules. For each, the Article proposes concrete steps that clinic personnel can take to reasonably protect client data in the unique context of universities, law schools, and clinical programs with student attorneys. This piece is meant to serve as both a wake-up call and blueprint to bring law school clinics into compliance with prevailing ethical norms around technology use and data privacy, to the extent they are not already doing so.
Keywords
- clinical education,
- data privacy,
- legal ethics,
- rules of professional conduct,
- law and technology
Disciplines
Publication Date
2023
Citation Information
Andrew Budzinski. "Clinics, the Cloud, and Protecting Client Data in the Age of Remote Lawyering" Clin. L. Rev. Vol. 29 (2023) p. 201 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/andrew-budzinski/3/