The Duty of Technological Competence: Understanding Cyber Risk in the World of Social Media and AI

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Technology empowers – but also enormously enlarges the risks facing lawyers and law firms. It’s getting worse, not better – more, not less complex. Lawyers’ responsibilities and duties to manage the technology on which they and clients rely are becoming increasingly onerous. All the while, the threats to data security grow exponentially, exacerbated by the many forms of social engineering, not to mention the risks presented by ChatGPT and its ilk. At the same time, the risks within the technology which lawyers use to communicate with clients continue to expand, and these problems are significantly enlarged when client data is moved across international borders, and are further compounded by increasingly intrusive rules governing data privacy. In their spare time, individual lawyers post on blog social network sites which are often viewed more than all their firms’ marketing materials. LinkedIn, X, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and all the other networks are powerful tools, but come with attendant professional responsibility obligations. Using social media (and other Internet search engines) as research tools to investigate adversaries, witnesses and jurors carry significant ethical and legal dangers. 

This program will identify issues and offer suggestions for addressing the ethics and risk management challenges that arise from every aspect of the technology that pervades modern law practice. Finally, the presentation will explore what skills and knowledge future lawyers will need (clue: emotional intelligence – judgment, creativity, empathy and adaptability, critical thinking and analytical skills – and an understanding of technology), as well as how (and where) they will acquire these tools.

 

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