Bryan Feldhaus presented a Hennepin County Bar Association seminar on Professionalism & Ethics: Downloading Technology in Legal Practice; Amendments to the Rules of Professional Conduct on September 8, 2017.
Legal professionals are under increasing attack by cybercriminals and must remain cognizant of their professional obligations to protect client data under Minnesota’s Rules of Professional Conduct. This presentation will focus on recent trends in law firm cybersecurity and cyber risk along with the professional obligations associated with those trends. It will address the 2015 amendments to the Minnesota Rules of Professional Conduct, with particular emphasis on legal technology as it relates to competency, confidentiality and attorney-client communications. It will also address ABA Formal Opinion 477, Securing Communication of Protected Client Information, which was released in May 2017, and which may introduce new professional obligations relating to technology in legal practice. Finally, this presentation will identify best practices to avoid becoming a victim to business email compromise schemes or other cyber attacks, and will discuss insurance products available to professionals to mitigate against such risk.