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and evolving legal statutes. Law firms are under tremendous public scrutiny and pressure. Several high-profile firms have found themselves defending lawsuits that may have been avoided if there had been adequate controls in place for managing client relationships and their confidential information throughout the matter representation. Screens are often erected to avoid disqualification as a result of an attorney's prior work history with another firm, organization or government. In simplistic terms, the function of a screen is to ensure that confidential information known to a disqualified attorney is protected and not disclosed to others in the firm who are working on the matter. Today, law firms are applying confidentiality screens for a variety of reasons, including an increasingly complicated legal and regulatory environment that demands compliance with record-keeping requirements defined by their clients. Law firms are realizing that they must know where their information resides and how it is accessed and stored before they can protect it from inadvertent disclosure. Clients will sometimes exercise their right to audit a firm's internal record-keeping processes to ensure compliance with their guidelines. In a legal proceeding, courts will require evidence that policies were consistently followed. According to Chubb & Son's "A Lawyer's Guide to Records Management Issues," "An effective records retention policy should ensure that documents are stored only in identifiable locations, appropriately backed up, and treated consistently wherever they are located and in whatever media they exist." A firm's IT department is often the last to know when client information requires an ethical or confidentiality screen for reasons other than in response to a potential conflict of interest. CLIENT INTAKE AND CONFLICTS DUE DILIGENCE A survey by Ames & Gough of insurers that provide coverage to law firms ("Lawyers' Professional Liability Claims Trends: 2011") revealed that malpractice claims have increased substantially in 2011. In bad economic times, it is not surprising that unsatisfied law firm clients will seek financial restitution through a lawsuit. Many of the asserted claims are because of conflicts of interest. According to the Ames & Gough survey, "If the lawyers representing a client are not careful during the initial representation, they might well become targets for a malpractice claim as the client's financial situation worsens." One of the primary goals of a law firm's client intake and conflicts due diligence process is to ensure that a lawyer's duty of loyalty and confidentiality to his or her clients is not breached. Increasingly, clients provide their outside counsel with their own retention agreement that stipulates provisions for ensuring that their confidential information is protected and restricted to only the legal team assigned to handle the representation. Bank of America's "Outside Counsel Procedures," for example, state in part, "Outside counsel is responsible for establishing appropriate ethical walls within the firm to restrict access to any legal matter file to those users with a business reason to access the matter." Traditional law firm client intake and conflicts due diligence workflow processes may need to be updated to take into consideration client-mandated procedures surrounding www.iltanet.org Risky Business 35