What Every Clinician Should Know About Digital Security and Using Technology to Leverage your Impact

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Session Type: AALS Programs

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: N/A

Room: Salon 3

Floor: Third Floor

The purpose of this session is to address issues of digital security and to explore how clinicians can offer students valuable skills and promote access to justice by integrating technology and process management into the curriculum. Presenters from Suffolk Law School will discuss how Suffolk is integrating technological training across its clinical programs, as a possible model. The session will include a description of Suffolk’s Accelerator-to-Practice Program and newly created Legal Innovation and Technology (LIT) Fellowship Program and Legal Innovation and Technology Law Lab (“LIT Lab”), in which students provide consultation and legal technology and/or process mapping services to organizational clients such as courts and non-profit organizations. Participants will then share their experience using technology or process management in their clinics, and brainstorm strategies for future application of these tools to maximize the impact of their work.

This session will also address issues of digital security. While digital platforms offer convenient modes of communication and easy access to information, these same digital platforms present new threats to the security of client information. Recent high profile cases raise questions that every law office, including clinics, should be asking. How secure is our information and the information we maintain about our clients? If we contract with a webhosting or cloud computing company, what information is that company keeping? How secure is that information? When it comes to emails, texting, and other digital communications, what are our ethical duties of competence, confidentiality, and loyalty to our clients? Participants will provide an overview of what every clinician should know about digital security, and explain what we should be teaching our students about their ethical duties and new technologies. The presentation concludes with a list of best practices for digital information security.