TELESEMINAR: Ethics and the Use of Metadata in Litigation and Law Practice – A National Perspective

Most electronic files contain unseen information about when and how they were created, and how they were edited over time. In legal documents –pleadings, briefs, letters and even email – this information can be highly sensitive, revealing confidential information such as the true nature of a client’s position, its negotiating strategy, or otherwise unknown or misrepresented facts. Discovery of this information by an adversary can be both highly damaging to a client’s case and may constitute an ethical breach by a lawyer. In the same way, if you discover this information in an adversary’s documents, it may greatly aid your client’s case. But this area is fraught with significant ethical issues. This program will provide you with a guide to ethical issues in shielding your client’s metadata from disclosure and using the metadata you find in an adversary’s documents. 

Highlights:

• Ethical issues in your protecting your client’s metadata and in using the metadata of adversaries
• Duties of competency, confidentiality, zealous representation, and preserving the attorney-client privilege
• Are attorneys required to find and destroy their clients’ metadata?
• Can attorneys ethically look for metadata in the electronic files sent to them by an adversary and use it?
• Metadata issues in the creation and exchange of email
• Best practices to avoid ethical liability and adverse outcomes in a case

Program Speaker:
Elizabeth Treubert Simon, Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP, Washington, D.C.

*Professional Responsibility MCLE credit subject to approval

Elizabeth Treubert Simon is of counsel in the Washington, D.C. office of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP, where the primary focus of her practice is the defense of attorneys and other professionals, trademark and copyright infringement litigation, and insurance coverage litigation. She also provides counsel to insurers regarding insurance coverage and counsels clients regarding professional ethics and attorney disciplinary procedures.  Ms. Simon is a member of the Committee on Professional Discipline of the New York State Bar Association.  She received her B.A. and M.S. from the University of Pennsylvania and her J.D. from Albany Law School.
 

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