Anne Klinefelter, Negotiating for Privacy and Confidentiality in Electronic Legal Research

Anne Klinefelter, Negotiating for Privacy and Confidentiality in Electronic Legal Research

Comment by: Michael Zimmer

PLSC 2010

Workshop draft abstract:

Legal researchers’ privacy and confidentiality interests are poorly protected under current laws.  Legal research raises issues of attorney-client privilege as well as concerns about the private nature of facts at issue such as personal health information, trade secrets, and family matters.  Tracking of individuals’ legal research and insecurity of research results posted through cloud computing challenge both individual and societal interests in unfettered intellectual exploration and in a stable and effective legal system.  The porous line between commercial tracking and government surveillance increases the potential for compromise of these privacy and confidentiality interests.  Relatively long-standing systems such as issuance of personal passwords for LexisNexis and Westlaw are now joined by less-apparent tracking in legal resources such as Google Scholar’s offerings of patents, legal opinions and journals.  While state and federal laws fail to provide adequate protection, legal researchers are in a position to demand higher standards for privacy of online legal research and can help build and shape the market for privacy in online reading more generally.