The customer is always right

• Author: Karen Painter Randall and Steven Kroll
• Pages: 30-32

30 || ABA JOURNAL AUGUST 2018

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY SARA WADFORD/LIGHTSPRING; MPFPHOTOGRAPHY; PLUIE_R; IVAN KURMYSHOV; COLOR4260/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

Business of Law

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SPECIAL EDITION

THE

CUSTOMER IS

ALWAYS RIGHT

HOW CLIENTS ARE PUSHING THEIR OUTSIDE

COUNSELS TO ADOPT STRICTER CYBERSECURITY

STANDARDS AND PROTECTIONS

BY KAREN PAINTER RANDALL AND STEVEN KROLL

In a profession defined by zealous repre sentation of clients,

it’s no surprise that client s are starting to push their out side

counsels to beef up cy bersecurity.

“The possibilit y that your outside law firm could be

breached and your sensitive d ata stolen is a huge nightmare

for in-house lawyers,” says Sterli ng Miller, general counsel

of Marketo Inc., an onli ne marketing technology company.

“Outside counsel need to st art taking this ver y seriously. If a

breach happens, that law fi rm is probably no longer working

for you and the malpractic e claim could be very large.”

These aren’t just idle words. In fa ct, they underline how

serious clients have become when it comes t o cybersecurity.

According to the A ssociation for Corporate Counsel’s 2018

cybersecur ity report, one in three in-house c ounsels have

experienced a dat a breach—a significant increase f rom the

previous year, when only 15 percent rep orted a breach. As

such, companie s are expending more m anpower and money

on keeping their data safe. The st udy found that two-thirds

of respondents expect ed their legal department’s role in

cybersecur ity would increase over the following 12 months,

compared with 55 perc ent in the 2015 survey.

Further, 63 percent predict t hat their company’s cyber-

security budget w ill increase this yea r, an 8 percentage

point increase over two ye ars ago. Additionally, more than

70 percent of responding companies s tated they were

somewhat confident in their outside couns els’ protection

of their data, whi le 9 percent were “not at all confident.”

Thus, the quest ion becomes what should a cor porate

legal department do to en sure the data collected, used

and stored by outside counsel s is protected? For one,