Memo to Law Firms: Raise Cybersecurity Bar or Risk Client Losses

•Law firms with data breaches risk lawsuits from clients, damage to reputation •Attorneys may face ethics discipline for failing to protect client data

Law firms may not be the safe repository of client confidences—such as trade secrets and merger plans—that they once were, as hackers recognize firms as prized vaults of proprietary corporate data.

If hackers want to get data from Alphabet Inc.'s Google, the best path may be through a law firm rather than directly from the company, because the law practice likely has an almost “unlimited variety of data,” Christopher Dore, privacy partner at plaintiff-side firm Edelson PC ...