The State Bar of Arizona Ethics Committee has addressed the issues raised in cloud-based solutions in a series of Ethics
Opinions.
Specifically, Arizona has addressed the issue of online storage. Of course, issues of online storage go beyond just practice management software - virtually every e-mail program stores at least some of your data on-line and the growing trend is for more and more of the programs you may use everyday (such as word processing and accounting software) to store data online.
Frankly, if the computer sitting on your desk is connected to the Internet (and now-a-days, few are not), it is accessible over the Internet.
Given this reality, it is not surprising that when Arizona gave consideration
to the issue of electronic storage in Ethics Opinion 05-04, the Ethics Committee held that electronic storage of client files is permissible, as long as the
attorney takes competent and reasonable steps to safeguard client
confidences.
This opinion was clarified and
expanded by the Arizona Ethics Committee in Ethics Opinion 09-04, which held that having online access documents was fine – again, so long as
reasonable steps were taken to safeguard client data – SSL encryption and
passwords were considered reasonable steps.
Online Legal Software uses bank-level encryption while every user has
password-protected access to the system.
Your data is safe with us.
