Witnessing Remotely? Don’t Put Your Client’s Data At Risk
Applications Created for the Legal Profession are Safer than Email and Zoom
COVID-19 has fundamentally changed Canadian law practices, for better and for worse. Certainly, the persistence of the virus has made social distancing and mask-wearing feel less like government-mandated protocol and more like a daily habit or routine. For lawyers, one such change (though not mandated) has been to offer clients remote witnessing services for the review and signing of real estate closing documents, Wills and Powers of Attorney.
“Failing to take the necessary precautions could expose your clients to heightened risk of fraud and identity theft, deterioration of client service, and technological uncertainty”
While this change has been welcomed by clients and legal professionals (particularly those cognizant of their own personal health risks) it has exposed them, unnecessarily and unknowingly, to cybersecurity risk. The use of email and third-party web conferencing tools, like Zoom and Skype, means that more confidential and personal information is transferred without proper safeguards in place. Failing to take the necessary precautions could expose your clients to heightened risk of fraud and identity theft, deterioration of client service, and technological uncertainty, as outlined by the Law Society of Ontario.
When we set out to develop the Remote Signing Portal (RSP) in March, these concerns were top-of-mind. Our chief priority remains keeping both your information and your client’s information safe and secure. We don’t take this issue lightly, and we’ve built-in a number of security features into the RSP, RealtiWeb (RW), and WillPowerWeb (WPW), to help mitigate some of the practical risks associated with Virtual Commissioning. In this blog post, we’ll discuss some of the security features built into our private cloud applications that help you and your clients stay safe.
The Remote Signing Portal: Lessening the Legal Profession’s Dependance On Email (and Zoom)
While email continues to be the central tool for communication between lawyers and their clients, there are a number of reasons why caution should be taken when using it to transfer confidential documents. Without taking necessary precautions, notably encrypting documents with a 10+ character password before emailing them, can leave your correspondence with your client vulnerable to interception from hackers and parties with adverse incentives. Moreover, further issues of email clog and a spike in email malware attacks (here, here, and here) may have a deleterious impact on your firm’s level and quality of client service. Rest assured, we’ve been thinking about this issue for a little while - and we’ve developed a solution to fit your needs.
“With the click of a button, you can merge and conveniently display the documents your clients need to sign.”
Our applications allow lawyers and clerks to easily upload documents to a unique signing portal for each and every transaction. With the click of a button, you can merge and conveniently display the documents your clients need to sign. Schedule a meeting time, create a portal password for your client, and send an invitation through email to view the portal. All your client has to do is enter their password, and they’ll have access to their documents through the RSP.
Worried about your email getting intercepted by nefarious web criminals? Don’t be - if they fail to guess the password too many times, the Portal is locked, leaving your client’s documents inaccessible until you unlock it.
So You’ve Sent Your Clients Access to the Portal - Now What?
Most lawyers will be comfortable with the idea of doing remote commissioning over Zoom and other web conferencing tools. Given each platform’s popularity, we can hardly blame you - but there are reasons why you should be cautious. Misleading claims on data encryption, routing encrypted data through Chinese servers (where they may be decrypted at the behest of any governmental authority under the law), and a lack of clarity on if and how data is stored, remain concerns for the Zoom platform, even as the company attempts to redress some of these issues.
“...law firms have a particular sensitivity to the fact that confidentiality is at the core of their work...”
According to Claudiu Popa, a cybersecurity expert and CEO of Datarisk Canada and Informatica Security Corporation, Zoom may not be the best option for lawyers who care deeply about client security and confidentiality. “I think law firms have a particular sensitivity to the fact that confidentiality is at the core of their work; their clients depend on their ability to trust the lawyer and the ability of the medium through which they communicate to have a high level of assurance about the confidentiality and the privacy of the information they share,” he says. He adds that, “this expectation of confidentiality is difficult to get past because no matter what the Company says, if it's written in the letter of Chinese law, they are responsible for sharing [confidential] information with the Chinese government and they can't get away from it.”
More concerning is the LSO note that unreliable video conferencing platforms (or manipulated video and audio) can make it a challenging, if not impossible, task to “confidently verify the distinct attributes of the document commissioned.”
We take your concerns about security and privacy seriously. That’s why we have our own secure videoconferencing application, LDD Meet™, available to all RW and WPW users through the Remote Signing Portal. Our promise is to never store any data from conversations between you and your client without your consent. And you won’t need to download any additional software, or create new accounts - LDD Meet can be activated through the Portal (secured by a password), and accessed seamlessly by you and your client with the press of a button. You don’t need to worry about having random individuals “bombing” your web conference - only those invited to the RSP with the password will be able to join.
One of the chief risks highlighted by the Law Society of Ontario is fraud and identity-theft, given that “in-person meetings between the commissioner and the client are reduced or eliminated”. However, using a reliable video conferencing tool will allow you to confidently verify the individual you are dealing with matches the ID that you have been presented with. You may also be interested in our video conferencing checklist, provided to all legal professionals free-of-charge, which will also help to ensure you’ve taken all the reasonable steps to reduce this fraud risk.
You’ll also want to be wary of what PracticePro refers to as “key red flags of fraud” including requests to deliver funds to unrelated third parties or last-minute changes to payment instructions prior to closing. Finally, if you believe that there may be a fraud taking place, report it to the Canada Anti-Fraud Centre and do not engage any further with the fraudster.
Some Final Thoughts
Even as the country crawls out slowly from the cave that has been the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be a long and precarious road back to any sense of societal normalcy - the traditional interactions between lawyer and client are no exception. Even as we write, the Government of Ontario has finalized legislative changes that make Virtual Commissioning permanent under a new regulatory framework.
For many firms, (particularly those located in densely populated urban areas like Toronto, Windsor, and London), remote closings and witnessing may become the new normal - many will welcome this change, and while it certainly carries defined health and business benefits, it also exposes Canadian lawyers to new risks particularly in the realm of cybersecurity. Legal professionals need to remain cognizant of the risks of using communication tools like email and Zoom, as well as the inherent risks associated with Virtual Commissioning as outlined earlier. At LawyerDoneDeal, we remain committed to developing novel solutions to these emerging issues whether it be through our Remote Signing Portal or any one of our other applications.
Our commitment remains unchanged; to save your practice time, and to keep your clients’ information safe.
Learn More about Remote Signing