A piece in Met. Corp. Counsel, April 2011 at 13, brought to my awareness a new consideration: matter management systems that allow law firms to access them directly. Most typically, law firms log on to upload their invoices.
Mark Poag of Datacert warns that “Although collaboration is imperative, it should not come at the expense of security.” He warns against competitor’s SaaS (software as an online service) solutions that rely on only their internal permissions and precautions to prevent data security breaches. Passport, from Datacert, “supplies a secure pipeline and leverages advanced security technologies” for the interchanges between a law department and its firms on the matter management system.
I take no position on this issue (and don’t know what a pipeline is). It is good to let law firms make use of a matter management system; it is not good to put sensitive information on the system at risk. I wrote this post to raise awareness and perhaps to elicit comments.