Case Study on an Investigation of Information Security Management among Law Firms

Abstract

The integrity of lawyers trust accounts as come under scrutiny in the last few years. There have been many incidents of trust account fraud reported internationally, including a case in Australia, where an employee of a law firm stole $4,500,000 from the trust funds of forty-two clients. Our study involved interviewing principles of ten law companies to find out solicitors’ attitudes to computer security and the possibility of breaches of their trust accounts. An overall finding highlights that law firms were not current with technology to combat computer crime, and inadequate access control was a major concern in safeguarding account data. Our conclusions revealed the urgent need for law firms to adopt security controls, implement information security policies and procedures and obtain cooperation from management to communicate these policies to staff.