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Huge law firm's records handed over to government
Posted on Dec 22, 2006 by Tom Fragala
What do you think happens when a huge law firm goes belly up? Would you guess that all its records would be handed over to the government, lock, stock and barrel? It’s happening.
Brobeck was a 900 lawyer firm, one of the most well known for tech companies and IPO’s. It was a hugely profitable and successful law firm. They expanded too fast, racked up loads of debt, had some internal issues and dissolved in 2003. Now their former customers are being informed, three years hence, that if they take no action, their records will be turned over to the Library of Congress’s National Digital Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), in parternship with the University of Maryland. Why? To “memoralize the Dot Com Era by preserving the Brobeck Digital Records…that will be established upon closure of the bankruptcy estate.”
If recipients (former customers) take no action, “the estate will turn over all Digital Files to the archive and your digital files will be preserved…”. One has to physically opt-out in order to prevent the hand over. Imagine the treasure trove of sensitive data in those archives. Litigation records, employment agreements, depositions, customer records, and all manner of legal and HR documents.
To make it worse, all these digital records are being handed over to an outside vendor first.
Update: Here's two links referencing the Brobeck data on the NDIIPP web site, here and here.
Update 2: Here’s a copy of the 2–page letter (PDF format).
Update 3: I pulled this from the Internet archive. Brobeck had offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, Orange County, San Diego, New York City, Denver, and Austin, and Washington, D.C. They represented more than 2,000 companies in the technology, life sciences, medical devices, health care, financial services, venture capital and investment banking, real estate, and chemical/oil/gas/energy industries. Between 1998 and 2000, "we've been involved in more than 260 public offerings, and have counseled clients in 260 major M&A deals worth more than $57 billion."
And here's a small sampling of business clients: AT&T Corporation, Banc of America Securities LLC, Broadcom Corporation, Cisco Systems, Inc., Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown Incorporated, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Securities, DoubleClick, E*TRADE Group Inc., Hambrecht & Quist LLC, Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., Inc., Motorola Inc., Netscape Communications Corp., Wells Fargo & Company. And some of the venture capital firms they represented: Accel Partners, BlueStream Ventures; Boston Ventures; Cardinal Ventures; Crescendo Ventures; Crosspoint Venture Partners; Ho2 Partners; Infinity Capital; Integral Capital Partners; Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Liberty Partners; Lightspeed Ventures; Pantheon Ventures; Paul Capital Partners; Sierra Ventures; VantagePoint Venture Partners.
Update 4: I want to calrify what I said above. Brobeck didn't simply "dissolve"; it was a Chapter 7 bankruptcy and that's what set this whole problem in motion int the first place.
Filed under: Data Breach, Privacy
Comments
Jonathen Gibson on Dec 23, 2006
The records are vitally important to the public discourse and must be made public.
Tom Fragala on Dec 23, 2006
"Vitally important"?? So are you saying that every law firm should hand over their client records to a public archive? You must be kidding. Or you are somehow involved with the NDIIPP.
David Kirsch on Dec 24, 2006
Tom,
I am the professor who is organizing the effort to preserve the Brobeck records. I think you are needlessly raising the alarm. The court order is very clear about how seriously we intend to protect the interests of the various parties.
We are the good guys here, trying to preserve a small piece of digital history that will otherwise be lost forever.
If you would like to talk about the issues at stake, please contact me, dkirsch [ at ] umd.edu, and we can exchange views.
Sincerely,
- david k.
Tom Fragala on Dec 24, 2006
David,
Thanks for posting a comment. I'll follow up with you when I get a chance.
I was a recipient of the letter and there wasn't much in there to make me feel good about the privacy implications. My social security number, and that of all my former investors and officers is in those documents.
Now, your intentions might be entirely different than the tone of the letter (and I'll read the website asap); it's just that the letter I received didn't give me any comfort at all. And I don't feel the burden should be on me to do the research to see if loads of sensitive confidential data is going to be avaialble to some subset of the public. Also, I can only imagine how many former clients didn't get letters. However, I thank you again for offering to engage in discussion I would be delighted to get your input and I'll post it here.
David Kirsch on Dec 25, 2006
Hi Tom,
I posted a longer reply on TechCrunch to your comments there. The short explanation for why the Notice was so brief (and stark) is money. We had to pay to print and distribute the notice. And including the entire Closed Archive Methodology for 11,000+ recipients would have cost us an additional $20,000 out of pocket that I couldn't justify to my funders.
The website (BCA.org) was something we thought up after the fact when we realized that many recipients were confused by the text of the notice.
And, the court agreed with you: you don't have to do a lot of research. If you do nothing, the public will never have access to confidential information. We plan to develop an access protocol modeled on the US Census Bureau Research Data Centers, where highly confidential records have been successfully aggregated for social science purposes for many years.
Please look and read further as your interests and time allow, and let's connect at some point in 2007.
Best,
- david k.
Jonathan Rosen on Dec 27, 2006
I think the idea that information I shared with a law firm may become accessible to the public, even if it can't be linked directly back to me, is abhorrent.
I see absolutely no reason why researchers should be able to benefit from the information. If the firm had not gone belly up, then this would not even be an issue! Have financially viable law firms been getting approached for their confidential records because the need for historical preservation and research is so great as to warrant access to them?
Jon
Erica on Dec 28, 2006
What ever happened to 'attorney client privilege'? Couldn't attorneys be disbarred for sharing this type of information while they are still practicing?
Anon Lawyer on Dec 28, 2006
I have no doubt that Mr. Kirsch thinks he and his staff are "good guys," but as an attorney I am utterly disgusted by this. To suggest that attorney-client privilege should fall by the wayside because the attorney's workproduct happens to contain information of historical interest is to create an exception that swallows the rule.
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