Legal and Patent Workspaces

Law professionals are keenly aware of the need to keep communications private and protect client confidences. As such, lawyers and patent attorneys are using Lockbox to facilitate communications, protect sensitive information and provide secure file transfer between clients and the practice.

Limitations of Email

Email is pervasive because it is convenient and easy for both attorneys and clients. However, email may fall short of the high standards set by many lawyers, judges and courts in providing reasonable care to ensure reliable communications and protect client confidences and secrets.

Cautious clients may sometimes find email unacceptable. For example, clients involved with protecting intellectual property may be nervous about the risks of email and may insist that highly sensitive matters be dealt with outside email.

Misdirected emails have the same serious issues as sending a paper message to the wrong party. For example, accidental "reply to all" or careless acceptance of "auto-filled" addresses in an email program can result in sending an e-mail message to a party outside the scope of privilege. Apart from the ethical questions this raises, there may be adverse consequences, for example the necessity to change tactics in sensitive family law or litigation cases.

Emails that bounce have been described as the new "fax out of paper" problem. It can be very time consuming to chase down email addresses that have changed or the reasons why emails weren't delivered, especially if the message about the failed delivery has taken days to be returned.

Email is inherently unreliable. Messages may be blocked due to spam or content filters and so it is not safe to assume that all "sent" email messages are delivered. Even if they are delivered, a client may deny that they received them. As such, email is not an advisable way to transmit important matters or those with ethical implications such as a settlement offer or demand to a client. Even more mundane things, like sending of invoices, have the potential not to be delivered or to be ignored.

Sending large files via email can be a frustrating and time-consuming problem. For example, patent attorneys often need to exchange large drawings with drafting, or prior art documents with inventors, or send packages of files and instructions for foreign filing. It is not uncommon for attorneys to send multiple emails (e.g. with a subject "1 of 4", "2 of 4" etc) and then chase the recipient to check that the emails were received.

Lockbox Workspaces

Legal firms have found Lockbox private workspaces and customer portals an extremely convenient, safe and reliable way to exchange confidential information with clients and partners.

Attorneys and lawyers value the way Lockbox can save time when dealing with clients. Instead of attaching documents to emails, they can simply be added to the client workspace ("dropped in their box"). All activity in a workspace is monitored, so both client and attorney get notified when new content appears and when documents have been read. These notifications and receipted delivery features are particularly important in shortening the review cycle on urgent matters and reducing delays when exchanging large files.

From the client's perspective, a secure client area is a value added service provided by the law firm. Technology aware clients appreciate the strong security and privacy that Lockbox workspaces provide. Clients also find it useful to have a single place for finished matters and the latest version of ongoing matters, instead of always having to plough through emails to find documents.

Further Benefits

Many law and intellectual property firms have found great marketing value by embedding the Lockbox portal in their website. The "secure client area" makes clients feel special and enhances the trusted relationship. The Lockbox portal keeps bringing clients back to the website which is an opportunity to highlight the latest articles or upsell new services. The use of "best practices" in security and privacy is useful in promotion and referrals.

In more sensitive areas, Lockbox provides a simple but powerful way to partition complex matters from different parties. For example, patent infringement litigation may need to involve different people inside the same company such as management for legal instruction and inventors for expert opinion. Similarly, it may be important to ensure separation of a set of ongoing matters, such as multiple inventions from different inventors at different stages of filing, perhaps involving overseas associates. In each case, different Lockboxes ensure that only the appropriate people get to see and exchange information on a particular matter.

An important benefit for both attorney and client is that Lockboxes help keep client correspondence organized. A client Lockbox can keep a history of all finished matters in their customer portal which avoids having to worry about clients contacting the practice to resend the latest copy of something, such as a will, trust deed, shareholders agreement etc. For ongoing matters, a client Lockbox ensures that the latest version is always available, which avoids clients referring to the wrong document or previous advice which has been already dealt with.

In more complex cases, Lockbox can also help with chain of custody of documents by leveraging Lockbox's ability to do tracking, notifications, signed receipt, receipted delivery, guaranteed delivery and non-repudiation.

More Information

Please contact us for more information.