Technology--the elusive balance.

• Author: Downs, Mayanne
• Position: President's Page

If you ever need a reminder of how clever, convenient, and engaging technology can be, check out Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's new website, www.icivics. org, designed to attract students into learning about the law and the judicial branch by playing interactive games on their computers.

In one game called "Do I Have a Right?" you choose your character and name and play the part of the owner of a new law firm. You score points as you handle new clients, listen to their cases, and determine if they have rights. If they do, you send them to court with skilled lawyers matching their issues. As the instructions say, "If you do well, you earn prestige, which will let you hire more lawyers, upgrade your office, and become the best law firm in town!"

Technological advances in time management and communications are ubiquitous, bringing us the ability to learn more information more efficiently than was even imaginable a short time ago. Technology allows us to time-shift, to work from home, to be more responsible to clients, family, and friends--but carries with it two dangers. One is ethical, the other is balance.

Ethics and Technology

The pitfalls are many for the "ethical lawyer in an electronic world," to borrow a phrase from The Florida Bar's Ethics Counsel Elizabeth Tarbert:

* Computers, printers, and scanners have hard drives that retain copies of your client's confidential information. When you discard that old printer, make sure valuable, confidential information doesn't leave your office with it. Vultures are lurking out there, ready to swoop in and feed on information to which they're not entitled.

* A pesky thing called "metadata" means that anyone can obtain information from the electronic files you provide, including what you thought were hidden editing changes and personal notes that were once included in the document. It's your job to ensure the confidentiality of all info in the document, including metadata. And it's also an ethical expectation (Florida Ethics Opinion 06-2) that lawyers on the receiving end not try to ferret out info from metadata that lawyers know or should know is not intended for them to read.

* If your computer crashes, you will instantly feel the pain of keeping only electronic copies of files. Keep backups in a safe place.

* Securing your office means more than locking the file cabinet and front door. Computers can be hacked and searched. Just ask a recent Florida lawyer who made the chilling discovery that...