Lawyers join forces to fight common enemy: The SEC and its probes into cyber-victims More than 80 law firms say they are "deeply troubled" by the US Securities and Exchange Commission's demand that Covington & Burling hand over names of its clients whose information was stolen by Chinese state-sponsored hackers. In an amicus brief filed this week, 83 firms with a total of more than 50,000 attorneys employed …
So, if I understand correctly, because Covington is a den of lawyers, they are required to have special priviledge when it comes to dealing with the SEC.
SEC asks the same thing in every case, it's not new.
If it is such an issue for lawyers then, given that even they state that being hacked is inevitable, they should find a way to ensure that client data is not available to hackers - aka don't put it on the network.
It's not like lawyers will ever have a paperless office anyway.
of feeling sympathetic toward a major law firm. Attorney-client priveledge is a long-established legal precedent; you can't ask an attorney to hand over client communications, and I'm not sure they can even list their clients (without the client's permission)
Weirdly the lawyers are 100% right here.
Maybe. I'm not sure privilege extends to the identities of the clients. Communications, yes, definitely. But lawyers are required to disclose conflicts of interest, for example, which may require identifying clients.
Perhaps the court can compromise by requiring the SEC to keep the information confidential.
I tend to side with the lawyers in this one, but I have low confidence in that position.
First, there is a lack of specificity in the article regarding what communications the SEC is requesting. They are asking about communications related to the breach. There is no way that the SEC is seeking to role back attorney-client privilege. It is the bedrock of our legal system, and the attorneys at the SEC are as committed to it as any other.
Second, the purpose of attorney-client privilege is to protect the client in the conduct of legally permitted activity. It is NOT a cover for breaking the law, nor for scheming to do so. Yes, it becomes a fine line when a client proposes a course of action that may break the law. Again, the lawyers at the SEC are aware of this line.
Third, and this is perhaps the most infuriating part, the main tool that the SEC has to pursue insider trading is--wait for it--subpoenas! These lawyers are not seeking to protect attorney-client privilege, but to privilege themselves out of investigation. Read what they are saying. They are not complaining that the subpoena is overly broad. They are objecting to any subpoena being issued under these circumstances at all.
It is any wonder that the first thing is to kill all the lawyers?
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