Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Metadata Raises Legal Risks




http://ow.ly/650yZ

Article on Inside Counsel website, written by Michael Kozubek.

This article describes certain risks associated with metadata that has been inadvertently provided, and the ethical obligations that might be triggered in certain circumstances.  Metadata mining is often restricted by ethical guidelines, depending on the jurisdiction that an attorney practices in the restrictions may prohibit such actions entirely.

The article discusses a new proposed ABA rule that addresses the topic of inadvertently disclosed metadata, "A 2006 ABA ethics opinion “does not squarely address whether a lawyer has a duty to notify the sender of a document when the document was intentionally sent but happened to contain privileged metadata,” says Perlman. However, the ABA proposes to address that issue by amending Rule 4.4 of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which says that a lawyer who receives a “document” that he knows or should know was inadvertently sent should notify the sender. The amendment would replace the word “document” with the more expansive “information or material” to include metadata."

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