Don’t Push Send

Every day, attorneys transmit spreadsheets, documents and PDFs, to courts and adversaries, to third parties, and to clients. Either they intend to transmit only after “scrubbing,” or else they don’t believe the documents contain important hidden data. Many have heard that “metadata is data about the data,” but most fail to appreciate the potential impact of sharing it because they are prey to certain myths about the issue. This article by attorney Susan M. Usatine examines those myths and the risks that come with them. She concludes that attorneys would best either delegate the sharing of client data to someone who knows what they are doing, or proceed with due caution. She proposes a three-step checklist and advises hitting “Send” only after you have gone through these three steps.