Why Buy An Ethical Walls System?

Law firms are required to control access to ‘sensitive’ information under their care. Information can be deemed sensitive and require safeguarding for ethical and/or privacy reasons as defined by the firm itself, its clients, guidelines and regulatory requirements (e.g. ABA, EU, PI) or the courts. Securing information access across all firm personnel, offices and technology systems is no easy task.

Traditional approaches that rely on fee earners and support staff to enforce confidentiality on a per application basis rely heavily on administrative staff, and are no longer sufficient to satisfy clients’ needs and regulatory requirements.

Increasingly, there are many real-life examples of ineffective ethical walls (or lack thereof) and the resulting fines and disqualifications law firms are regularly faced with.  A recent example is of this is Line Trust Corp. Ltd, et al. v. David Lichtenstein, et al, heard before the Supreme Court of the State of New York.  In this case, a lawyer made a lateral move and brought his client with him, which resulted in a firm representing adverse parties.  The firm’s IT department audit revealed document access by an unauthorized party and caused a judge to conclude that an ethical wall either did not exist or if it did, it was ineffective.

At the root of these issues is the inability of an ad-hoc, home-grown system to automatically monitor, identify and resolve ethical wall conflicts.  Today’s regulation-heavy law firm environment requires a system where the firm can manage automatic creation of walls, monitoring of all systems to ensure proper wall enforcement, and ensuring ethical walls extend and encompass all key systems and repositories where sensitive information is stored.

What is needed is an enterprise ethical walls system designed for law firms to manage confidentiality, protect sensitive information and reduce risk exposure by establishing, monitoring and updating security from a single point of entry for all mission-critical firm systems and content, in real-time.

An enterprise ethical walls system automates the creation and monitoring of all ethical walls across all information repositories from a single control center, providing the firm with the ability to defend its position, along with a comprehensive audit trail to demonstrate how and when information was secured, and all attempts to access this information by authorized and unauthorized parties and any actions taken. It streamlines the process of wall creation and monitors all access to ensure compliance throughout the lifecycle of a wall.

In addition, a commercial system is maintained and functionality is further enhanced to meet the ever changing needs of the market. This ensures firms will never fall behind in terms of functionality and will continue to easily comply with ethical wall requests based on ethical and regulatory requirements.

For more information about ethical walls and Frayman Group’s industry-leading ethical walls system Compliguard Protect, see here. Compliguard Protect 6 delivers many industry-firsts and is the most comprehensive confidentiality management application at an affordable price point.