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Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

Abstract

Digitalization has increased the speed of communications in all areas, including law. Although in many ways technology has made practice easier, quicker, and more efficient, the dawn of the digital age has increased the need for lawyers to focus on legal ethics. As always, lawyers must be concerned about confidentiality, conflicts, and competency. Those fundamentals remain unchanged. However, the vast increases in storage capacity, the lightning-quick speed of communication, and the ability to allow access to data over the Internet have each made it more important for lawyers to focus on the impact of technology on these core principles of legal ethics.

Digitalization means that breach of a duty of confidentiality can have far greater consequences because more information can be stored today in smaller spaces than ever before. Where once it would have taken a truck and an army of burglars to steal an important but voluminous file, today it can be accomplished by the palming of a memory stick, the taking of a CD, or the theft of a laptop computer. Although lawyers still must be concerned that a brief case or an important folder of papers might be stolen or misplaced, lawyers in the digital world must recognize that a file cabinet full of documents can be lost if a laptop, or even a single CD, is lost or stolen. Similarly, with the ease and speed of digital communications, a conflict of interest can arise in a nanosecond by opening an email.

The ethical duties of confidentiality, competency, and loyalty have not changed, but the means and speed by which they can be breached differ in the digital age. Courts and bar associations have, as yet, given little practical guidance to lawyers on these and other issues. This article describes how lawyers can meet their obligations of loyalty, confidentiality, and competency when working at the lightning fast speeds that have become the speed of normal in the digital age.

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