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Protecting Legal Data

By Eric Smith
November 28, 2006

In today's environment of well-deserved hypersensitivity to corporate compliance as mandated by the SEC and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), the thought of unauthorized parties viewing or altering privileged corporate records should strike fear in the heart of any corporate compliance officer. That threat can quickly evolve into a reality if your corporation's law department implements an electronic invoicing and matter management system in an application service provider (ASP) environment.

In the past 3 years, ASP-based legal electronic invoicing providers have collectively processed an estimated $6-$10 billion worth of privileged legal invoices on behalf of the law departments of Fortune 500 corporations. These third-party providers, popular for their easy-to-install systems, automate the invoice delivery process from law firms through a corporate law department's approval and payment cycle. In doing so, these vendors also accumulate a database of legal information and store it in a warehouse outside of all established security procedures and protocols.

These same providers also host matter-management systems for many of their clients. The matter-management systems catalog and document sensitive legal case information, such as early case assessments, key strategy documents and case-by-case budget reserve amounts. This data is also stored outside of a corporation's infrastructure.

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