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IS IT ETHICAL IN ARIZONA TO SEND CLEAR-TEXT INTERNET EMAIL TO CLIENTS?

April 26, 2017Arizona clear-text clients email Ethical internet send

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IS IT ETHICAL IN ARIZONA TO SEND CLEAR-TEXT INTERNET EMAIL TO CLIENTS?

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Maybe. Nearly all states’ bar associations have adopted the ABA’s view that communicating via unencrypted email is not a violation of an attorney’s ethical duty to protect client confidences. Arizona is one of the states that specifically approved Internet email as an ethical means of communicating with clients. Like the ABA, Arizona included the same caveat regarding “highly sensitive” information. Arizona’s answer is maybe lawyers can communicate ethically with clients via email about confidential matters. In Arizona Ethics Opinion 07-04, the ethics committee said, lawyers may want to have the email encrypted with a password known only to the lawyer and the client so that there is no inadvertent disclosure of confidential information. The answer is appropriately conservative because of the reality that lawyers, particularly in small firms, may not have the technological sophistication to differentiate between security conscious solutions and buy-it-off-the shelf solutions.