State Bar of Arizona Ethics Committee Opinions

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.