Cybersecurity is an essential element in the strategy of law firms. Sometimes there are problems in the firm's data systems because they are attacked, and clients' data privacy is violated. This has negative consequences, it highlights the lack of security of law firms and clients will lose confidence.

Although new technologies and digital tools help law firms to achieve a better optimization of work and time, simplifying processes and automating them, there is always a risk: an information leak.  That is why law firms must make their employees aware of the importance of cybersecurity and implement measures to prevent data extraction by third parties.

Firms must have a policy in place to know how to act and manage the situation when an information leak occurs. All law firms should have a management plan, based on six phases.

1.       Detect the incident

Once the company's security has been violated and information has been extracted, the most important thing is to detect the problem quickly so that action can be taken as soon as possible to resolve it. Once the law firm has become aware of the incident, the action protocol must be activated and all team members must be informed of the situation.

2.       Crisis cabinet

Just as the first thing the security forces tell you when there is a fire is not to panic, the law firm's team must act calmly and not take decisions without thinking properly. The members of the crisis management committee must meet and decide in a coordinated way what actions should be taken.

3.       Obtain information about the leak

In the third phase, an internal audit and an external audit will have to be carried out in order to prepare, in the shortest possible time, a report of what information has been leaked, what kind of data that information contained, whether it is the law firm's or the clients' data, the origin of the leak and the level of dissemination abroad.

4.       Valuation

Once the phase three report has been prepared, the company has to start the process of assessing the incident, that is to say, the level of severity and the consequences it may have for the firm in economic, legal and reputational aspects.

5.       Reduce the impact

The fifth step in crisis management is to minimize the impact of the information breach and reduce the dissemination of the data by identifying the online sites where the information has been published and requesting its removal.

6.       Evaluate the measures implemented

The last step is to evaluate the effectiveness of the actions taken by the company's crisis committee, to find out whether the measures implemented have managed to put an end to the incident. In addition, a process of global assessment of the problem will be initiated and new strategies will have to be designed to prevent a cybersecurity failure from occurring again in the law firm.