What does ABA Formal Opinion 477R say about sending client information?

What is this opinion?

The ABA lists the opinion as issued on May 11, 2017, under the title Securing Communication of Protected Client Information. It is an ethics opinion on the Model Rules, not a rule itself.

Formal Opinion 477 May 11, 2017 Securing Communication of Protected Client Information

What does it say about the internet?

ABA Formal Opinion 477R says a lawyer may generally send client information over the internet where the lawyer has made reasonable efforts to prevent access by people who should not have it.

The test is reasonable efforts, the same words Model Rule 1.6(c) uses.

A lawyer generally may transmit information relating to the representation of a client over the internet without violating the Model Rules of Professional Conduct where the lawyer has undertaken reasonable efforts to prevent inadvertent or unauthorized access.

When are special precautions called for?

The opinion names three cases: an agreement with the client, the law, and information sensitive enough to call for a higher degree of security. The summary we read names no particular control.

However, a lawyer may be required to take special security precautions to protect against the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of client information when required by an agreement with the client or by law, or when the nature of the information requires a higher degree of security.

What can an outside reading show for this rule?

This rule asks for care across the whole firm. An outside reading cannot see your policies, your training, your devices, your access lists or who can sign in to what.

What it can show, read from outside the way anyone could, is evidence about ways someone could get in: whether your domain publishes a rule telling mail servers to refuse email forged in your name, whether remote access or file sharing services answer from the internet, and whether addresses at your domain are listed in monitored breach databases.

That is evidence toward the duty, never proof of it. Where the text names no control, we add none for it.

Is this legal advice?

No. This summarises the public text; it is not legal advice.

The text itself is the authority. Read it at the source below.