Legal Aid Society of San Mateo CA Suffers Data Breach Including Health Info

On October 10, 2013, the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County, California sent out a letter notifying potential victims of a data breach suffered by the Society. As the letter states,

On the night of August 12, 2013, our office was burglarized and ten of our laptops were stolen. The stolen laptops were used by our attorneys to assist individuals in getting services. We believe that your personal information may have been stored on the stolen laptops. The personal information believed to be stored on the stolen laptops includes your name, Social Security number, date of birth, medical and health information.

What makes this data breach particularly noteworthy is that, although it occurred at a legal aid organization, the information stolen reportedly included health information. The notice does not discuss how and why health information might have been collected and stored by LASSMC; it may relate to the Society's health advocacy services.

Beyond the immediate impact on the LASSMC clients and others whose stolen personal information may be misused, this incident serves as a reminder that even non-medical professionals may hold, and must keep safe, health information. Even where the formal privacy and security requirements of HIPAA may not directly apply, organizations may still need to comply with HIPAA's Business Associates rules as well as general consumer protection obligations. Attorneys in particular should be aware not only of these requirements, but of their ethical obligations to keep client information confidential, which may further be relevant in a data breach situation.

The California Attorney General's list of reported data breaches may be found here; the LACSSMC letter and information is at this link.

Impressions from LegalTech New York

Greetings from the lobby of the New York Hilton, site of this year's LegalTech NY conference and trade show. I've been touring the show floor this afternoon, learning about the state of the art and best practices in all aspects of the technology supporting legal practice. The vast majority of the exhibiting companies are offering products and services relating to electronic discovery (or e-discovery), from computer forensics to predictive coding (a big buzzword this year) to document review and production to analytics.

There are, though, other industry categories that are well represented here, mainly relating to law practice management. Numerous vendors offer ways to put your practice online and loft it to the cloud, whether for software as a service (SaaS), backup, document sharing or all of the above. There are a fair number of back office management solutions as well: bookkeeping, billing, resource management and cost controls. Data security makes a good showing, whether from companies with tiger teams to seek out and identify firms' and companies' security holes, or hardware and software to close the holes before they are found; some do both. Finally, there are some translation service companies, mobile practice tools, and printing/document creation and management offerings.

From the number of people here, and the filled-to-bursting floor space, it appears that legal technology is a thriving area, and no wonder:electronic discovery is now a part of almost every litigation, firms and in-house departments alike are desperately seeking ways to reduce their costs and increase efficiency, and clients are demanding instant response and full access to case files. As a legal educator, I see some small challenges in this technological expansion (some of the most common entry-level lawyer jobs for our graduates could be made obsolete by technology and outsourced service providers), but much more opportunity for law school graduates to learn about, master and implement these solutions in their own practices and with colleagues.

There are a few other points that are clear after walking around LegalTech NY. First, based upon the "drop a card and win" prize assortment, iPad Minis are thought to be the hot item to pull in people's contact data. Second, based upon the food being given away, vendors are well aware that lawyers and IT professionals alike live on caffeine and sugar (coffee and chocolate abound). Finally, there seems to be no geographic center of legal tech companies; I've spoken with vendors from Utah, Kentucky, all over Canada and many other places.

For more about LegalTech NY, you can follow the #ltny hashtag. Meanwhile, I'm on my way back in. Wish me luck winning an iPad Mini! {Jonathan}