Vol. 29, No. 4 #4 (August 2006). Disgruntled Employees in Your Law Firm: The Enemy Within.

• Author: By Sharon D. Nelson, Esq. and John W. Simek

Wyoming Bar Journal

2006.

Vol. 29, No. 4 #4 (August 2006).

Disgruntled Employees in Your Law Firm: The Enemy Within

WYOMING LAWYER August 2006/Vol. 29, No. 4

Disgruntled Employees in Your Law Firm: The Enemy WithinBy Sharon D. Nelson, Esq. and John W. Simek

"I can take these guys out of business anytime I want." ~ a law firm system administrator If that doesn't chill your bone marrow, you need to lower your dosage of Xanax! The truth is, most law firms give the keys to their kingdom (their data) to their IT employees and pay very little attention to the inherent dangers in trusting them. Hackers and other external intruders surely remain a legitimate threat, but the greatest threat invariably comes from within.

Why do employees become disaffected? Perhaps they didn't get a raise, or feel they are not treated with sufficient respect. Perhaps they want to prove their machismo or illustrate how stupid their high paid bosses are. Some are not disgruntled but greedy, and seek to win the lottery by lifting their employer's data. The worst threat of all is the fired employee. This employee is always unhappy, and sometimes vengeful. What better way to seek revenge than to bring the law firm's technology to its knees? Without its networks, the average law firm today is virtually paralyzed.

So what can happen? Here is an example that we once had to cope with. The head of a local lawyer referral office resigned under pressure. Angry at her bar association, she performed wholesale deletions on the server, wiping out agency forms, procedures, correspondence, and historical records. Fortunately, she was not technically adroit and, with a little technical wizardry, all the deleted material was recovered despite the inexplicable absence of backup tapes. Not every employer is that lucky.

What law firms tend to worry about are power failures, system crashes, hackers, spyware and viruses. To be sure, those are all things that can and should be worried over, but the greatest danger is often close to home. It is much easier to create all manner of mayhem from within given an insider's knowledge.

Real Life Nightmares

* An AOL software engineer stole the personal information of 92 million (million!) customers in May, 2003 and sold the data to various and sundry spammers. He originally sold the data for the less than princely sum of...