A key requirement of the legal profession, and many other industries and/or professions, is to be able to quickly respond to their clients regardless of their physical location and thus the use of e-mails for both business and private communication has become all pervasive.
However, use of this technology is not without its issues. These generally relate to e-mail delivery and the generation of false positives; e-mail continuity; record keeping in respect of conformance to a country's legal requirements, eg South Africa's ECT Act; and inevitably, spam.
Nevertheless, despite the legal profession being renowned for its reluctance to embrace new technologies, the acceptance of Mimecast into its environments has been remarkable in both the UK and South Africa.
Not surprisingly, the reasons are straightforward in that the product set from Mimecast completely addresses all the issues identified above. In the UK alone, 11 law firms have adopted Mimecast in the last two months and a similar trend is emerging in South Africa.
"Generally, the duty of an attorney to keep a client's affairs confidential is absolute and may only be disclosed by the former where disclosure may be rendered necessary or is permissible, eg where expressly authorised by a client. There is a difference between 'privilege' and 'confidentiality'," commented Lance Michalson of Michalsons.
"One of the livelier questions in legal ethics today is whether an attorney who sends unencrypted e-mail sent over the Internet, as opposed to within an office over a local area or wide area network, breaches confidentiality or attorney-client privilege. E-mail is different to other means of communications since unencrypted electronic mail sent over the Internet is susceptible to interception, and such an interception may sometimes jeopardise the privilege. The sending of unencrypted e-mail is akin to sending postcards, whereas the sending of encrypted e-mail is akin to sending sealed envelopes. The technological sophistication of the issue cannot simply be ignored," continued Michalson. "Neither our courts nor the Law Society have yet considered the application of attorney-client privilege to e-mail transmitted over the Internet and even in the USA, lawyers only have to encrypt e-mails in the case of 'highly sensitive' matters.
"It is important to bear in mind that the right to claim privilege attaches to the client and not the attorney and must therefore be claimed by the former. Very often, the client unwittingly sends sensitive information to her attorney without realising that it is a sensitive document. This highlights the need for companies to start implementing effective information management programs and ensure that their information is properly classified according to its sensitivity and recorded in a properly drafted information classification and security policies," concluded Michalson.
"Mimecast's use of Transport Layer Security (TLS) addresses the above issue in that it automatically sets up a secure and encrypted 'connection' between two communicating e-mail servers to prevent e-mail interception/visibility over the Internet. TLS however, still leaves the e-mail itself in its original unaltered state, which can then be indexed, stored and retrieved in an e-mail archive," added Garth Wittles, MD of Mimecast SA.
"In our particular situation, our choice of Mimecast Online came down to a few factors," continued Jan Durant, Head of IT at Lewis Silkin LLP. "Among these were Mimecast's ARMed SMTP which offered us what no other anti-spam solution did, ie full mitigation against the business disruptions caused by spam filter errors and a comprehensive virus protection strategy. We also liked the real-time e-mail continuity facility and its advantages over alternative e-mail Disaster Recovery options. Mimecast effectively replaces four different products for us and will also help us to finally solve the problem of ensuring legitimate e-mails aren't blocked, while freeing-up our IT staff's valuable time from sifting through quarantine folders."
"We are also delighted with Mimecast and have calculated a 100% ROI in less than 100 days," concluded Chris Petrie, IT Director, Stephenson Harwood (number 35 in the UK's Legal Business 100). "This is one of the best technology purchases we have made in years."
Mimecast's customers in the UK legal profession include Taylor Wessing a member of the 'silver circle' (ie in a position between six and 20 in the rankings); Ince & Co, Mills & Reeve, and Stephenson Harwood, all members of the Top 100. In South Africa the list already includes Brink Cohen le Roux, Buys Inc and Van Gaalen Attorneys.
For further information, please contact Niki Wittles, Mimecast RSA: telephone (011) 555 5464, fax (011) 555 5479, e-mail niki.wittles@mimecast.co.za.
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Mimecast Ltd is a technology innovator in e-mail, messaging and utility Information Technology headquartered in London, UK. Its unified, next-generation e-mail, security and information management platform combines a number of business critical functions into a modular suite of products. Accessed and managed via a single Web interface, Mimecast helps companies avoid an accumulation of IT point solutions and provides system administrators with flexibility, best-practice features and functionality and unprecedented ease of use. Current modules include: Mimecast Smart Perimeter for security, continuity and control of business e-mails; Mimecast Message Warehouse for on demand storage, compliance and rich e-mail information management; and Mimecast Marketing Advantage for enhancement of everyday and campaign based e-mail communications. Mimecast's scalable software solutions are instantly configurable and can enhance or replace existing technology, improving effectiveness and radically reducing total cost of ownership and operation for any business where communication or communication management, is mission-critical.
Mimecast RSA customers include AFGRI Operations Ltd, the South African agricultural services group; Moores Rowland; one of the world's top ten associations of independent accounting firms; South Deep Mine, the world's deepest mine and a major gold resource; TransNet, South Africa's largest transport & logistics company; and Touchline Media, a company within the media giant Naspers.
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