Ethics Has Left the Building! Is Your Law Firm Ready to Meet Today’s Stringent Confidentiality and Compliance Requirements?

In this the summer of 2010, with the front pages littered with tales of BP, JP Morgan, Lehman, UBS, Goldman Sachs, Société Générale, Wachovia, Madoff, AIG, many believe that ethics has left the building – the skyscraper to be more specific. The public is convinced that the corporate world is bereft of any moral code and runs on greed and an insatiable desire to “win”.  “Don’t let your kids grow up to be bankers” might be a new hit country western song.

The natural outcome of all this is increased pressure from the public for governments to intervene and take control.  The result is an influx of rules and regulations for how public companies need to govern themselves, and ultimately, how law firms should appropriately represent them.

This new, highly regulated world requires a well-structured confidentiality infrastructure for law firms, one that self-governs and produces a comprehensive, full-fledged audit trail for the likely future investigations of how customers and their information were handled.

What does this mean for law firms?  Gone are the days where so called “ethical walls”, “chinese walls”, “ethical screens” or “information barriers” can be created and managed by IT staff manually and just on the document management system.  The cost and _risk_ of such an endeavor is simply too great for a law firm.  The modern, digital law firm requires a proper, automated, proactive approach to comprehensive information governance and confidentiality management across all systems.

Enter the era of simple, automated, integrated, seamless information governance.  New solutions like Compliguard Protect from Frayman Group now provide a web-based, wizard-driven confidentiality management solution that is designed from the ground up to empower the lawyer, while providing control and management capabilities to firm IT and management staff.  This is a must-have component of the future law firm infrastructure, a necessity for firms to survive and thrive in the highly regulated new world.

But wait! Don’t implement a comprehensive confidentiality management system just to meet the regulatory requirements. Increasingly, this compliance infrastructure is not just a requirement, but also a competitive advantage, providing the firm with the ability to take on sensitive, confidential cases, and prove to prospects that they can easily establish and automatically monitor information barriers across all their systems.

A word of caution that confidentiality management is now more than just a check box item.  Not all solutions in the market are created equal.  Do your homework and pick the right solution for your firm.  You want to make sure you get a modern system that was designed with the current and future needs of your firm in mind.  A system that can grow as your firm’s needs grow.

Is your firm ready for the new world?