Are you speaking to your clients?

I read an interesting (if not lengthy) article today. It's about storing data in the cloud (full article Don’t sleepwalk into the cloud - the challenges for law firms and their clients). One of the key take-aways is that lawyers have an ethical obligation to speak to clients about where their data resides. Interestingly enough, an article that appeared in the Orange Rag seems to have reached a similar conclusion and asserts that GCs want to be consulted about how firms store their data. If you're a lawyer, it would seem best practice to ensure that your clients are fully informed about some of your key technology choices - especially if they involve storing their data somewhere in the cloud. Corporates appear more risk averse and view having their sensitive data in the cloud as a risk (whether or not your firm has determined that it poses a greater or lesser risk than keeping it on premises). No longer is this an argument about which technology is more secure but rather it's about meeting your clients' needs.

What this highlights for me, more so, is just another example of why lawyers need to engage properly with their clients. The market for legal services has become increasingly more competitive - there's a downward pressure on fees and a scramble to keep clients happy. It's certainly a recipe for disaster if you're making decisions on behalf of your clients without regard to what those clients' expectations are, or what those clients' needs are. If your client is a financial institution and is subject to specific regulatory constraints such as Sarbanes-Oxley, or if your client is a hospital and subject to HIPAA, you need to be certain that you're not taking any actions that might jeopardize that client's obligations, whatever they may be. That's not to say your current practices are problematic; rather, it suggests that you need to have full consent from your clients - and the simplest way to ensure full consent is by providing full disclosure - including disclosure about technology choices.

You shouldn't need an excuse to speak to your clients. Survey after survey has revealed that clients want, first and foremost, to work with lawyers that they like. They want competency and they want fair pricing. Chances are you're already competent; ideally, your pricing is fair - or, at least, perceived as fair. Better yet, odds are very good that your clients want to work with you (if they didn't, they probably wouldn't still be your clients). Don't ruin that relationship. Speak to your clients - whether you're considering implementing something that might be problematic for them or not.