How to Ensure Data Privacy Compliance in Your Law Firm

Data security is an important part of businesses that deal with clients’ data. It becomes even more important in the case of law firms as they are constantly entrusted with highly sensitive information about their clients. According to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), businesses that process the personal data of individuals in the UK and other European Economic Areas should make protect their clients’ personal data. That means it is the professional and ethical responsibility of law firms to protect client data and to disclose their errors if a breach does occur. 

The rules, regulations, and business practices around data protection changed when GDPR came into effect back in 2018. It remains vitally important that law firms are compliant with the new regulations, and have GDPR-compliant technology and tools for collecting, storing, processing, and transferring data. Moreover, companies and organisations are obliged to give individuals information about how their personal data will be used. That means obtaining the fully informed consent of individuals to the processing of their data is mandatory for law firms.

Data privacy compliance can provide you with numerous benefits including increased trust and credibility and help you avoid potential lawsuits and regulatory investigations that may arise if there is a data breach. On the other hand, non-compliance with the GDPR can make your firm more vulnerable to data breaches and could result in huge fines of up to 4% of global turnover for large firms. Non-compliance can also lead to business loss as clients shy away from reaching out to firms they view as unethical. To comply with the obligation of GDPR and benefit from data privacy compliance, you need to make reasonable efforts to protect your law firm’s data. Here are some important steps to ensure data privacy compliance in your firm.

Have Clear Policies in Place for Data Privacy and Security

A data protection strategy is important for any entity processing or controlling sensitive clients’ data. Therefore, you need to have clear policies for data privacy and security in your law firm. These policies should outline how data will be collected, stored, processed, and shared within your firm and with relevant stakeholders. The policies should be jargon-free and easily understandable for every potential user including your employees, clients, and third-party users like software vendors. Make sure your data privacy and security policies are documented so you can use them as proof of progress toward improved data security.

To make effective rules and regulations around data privacy and security, you need to understand your data estate, security risks, and data protection methods. Your company data can be in a managed estate such as data in a database having access control and unmanaged estate like data including your emails, locally saved documents, etc. After discovering which data sets exist in your firm, you need to identify risks associated with each data set and identify data protection strategies that will be needed to protect your entire company's data.

Your responsibility for the data you control and its protection must always remain your top priority. While you can reduce data security risks by using a secure case management system like Lawsyst, however, unfortunate incidents may occur. Therefore, your data privacy and security policies should outline how your firm will respond to breaches or other security incidents. As with any crisis, a quick and decisive response is critical which is why having clear incidence response policies can help you minimise the effect.

Raise Awareness

Data privacy and security regulations vary between countries, states, and industries, so your employees must understand the specific data protection and privacy requirements in your country. Compliance with one set of regulations does not guarantee compliance with all laws, therefore, raise awareness about the relevant rules and regulations and their impact on your firm. Additionally, each law contains numerous clauses that may apply to one case but not another, and these requirements are also subject to changes. That means you need to remain up-to-date with the latest data protection and privacy laws and ensure your team also understand them.

Data privacy and security are often used together but there is a key difference between the two. Data privacy is about collecting and using data responsibly, while data security is about protecting data from cybersecurity threats. Make sure your staff understands these terms and responsibly manages and uses data. You can support your employees in ensuring safe data management by providing them with the right tools such as cloud-based law firm software. These modern case management systems use access control systems and end-to-end encryption to ensure data protection and privacy.

Train Employees on Policies and Best Practices

Law firms possess a large amount of sensitive clients’ data, therefore, your entire team must understand the importance of data privacy compliance. To create awareness and ensure compliance, you should train your employees on your firm’s data privacy and security policies and best practices. The staff training might include guidelines on good password hygiene, identifying phishing scams, and avoiding public Wi-Fi networks. Investing in employee training will help your team remain up-to-date with the latest cybersecurity threats and best practices.

Training employees on data privacy and security has become more critical with the rise in remote working. If you also operate virtually or have a hybrid working setup, make sure your employees are well-educated and trained on responsibly using data. While providing a policy document to your employees may be the easiest option you can think about, however, that won’t be enough to avoid accidental user errors and cyberattacks. Instead of assuming your workers understand the ways to spot and avoid cyberattacks, invest some time and money to train your staff on data protection and privacy. Providing adequate training can help your employees build essential skills to responsibly collect, store, process, and share data.

In addition to policies and training, you should also use secure and user-friendly software solutions that your team can easily use without worrying about data safety and security. Modern CRM and task management software solutions like Lawsyst are easy to use and safe as they use encryption, multi-factor authentication, and a cloud-based delivery module to ensure data privacy and security.

Review Your Privacy and Security Policies and Contracts

To ensure data privacy compliance, you should regularly review your privacy policies to constantly meet the requirements of GDPR. It is easy to overlook weaknesses in your law firm's data security if you don’t review your security arrangements on regular basis. It is also worth mentioning that law firms should reexamine their agreements with data processors, and draft new ones if required, to ensure compliance. Cloud-based time tracking and billing software like Lawsyst are data privacy compliant, so using this case management system can help you meet GPDR requirements.

Regular review of your firm’s data protection and privacy policies will help you eliminate vulnerabilities that are mandatory to ensure data safety. Therefore, you should consider reviewing your current policies, strategies, and practices so you can identify potential areas of improvement. While using antivirus tools is necessary but it is not sufficient to detect advanced malicious attacks on your business. To avoid advanced persistent threats and ensure data privacy compliance, you should regularly update your data privacy policies according to GDPR requirements and update your security protocols by using advanced legal technology.

Implement Effective Technology Solutions

When it comes to protecting your data, there are many technology solutions you can choose from. Implementing the right solutions can help you restrict access, monitor activity, detect suspicious activities, and respond to threats. Modern CRM and lead management software regularly back up your firm data to a secure, encrypted location so you’ll still be able to access most of your data. For example, Lawsyst provides an access control management system and storage of large volumes of data to secure servers. With the right software solutions, you can ensure data privacy compliance in your law firm.

There are many software solutions available in the market, so you must be careful while choosing a new system for your law firm. Ask your vendor whether their practice management system is GDPR compliant or not. Some law firm software vendors in the UK such as Lawsyst securely manage a law firm's cases, contacts, documents, tasks, time tracking, billing, payments, and more, so you can never have to worry about data privacy compliance.

Data protection and privacy laws like GDPR are not designed to make business operations difficult for law firms. They are there to ensure data protection and the protection of the rights of clients whose data you are using. Therefore, it is important to understand the latest GDPR requirements and work with a data processing partner that understands everyone’s responsibilities. Working with a GDPR-compliant software vendor in the UK will help you survive and thrive under GDPR. Since modern clients demand high-end data privacy and security, so using the right software solutions will help you get an edge over your competitors.