Don’t Fear Technology-Change is Good.

Good question. That’s one of the issues I intend to explore during the webinars. it’s not an easy question to answer.

First, a lawyer has to exercise due diligence to ensure that confidentiality is preserved as required by applicable ethical rules and guidelines. Lawyers utilize services every day that could potentially violate confidences. Cleaning crews clean offices, companies deliver and file pleadings for our offices, computer servers are hosted off site. In my mind, many of these services are in some ways comparable to Gmail in regard to confidentiality issues.

That being said, I recommend that businesses consider using Google Apps, rather than the free versions: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html
The cost is only $50 per year per user, technical support is available and that step likely would ensure that privacy/confidentiality issues were given due consideration sufficient to satisfy the rules of many jurisdictions.

And, as I’ll discuss, using gmail and gcal makes it far easier to use other online apps available for little or no money, since many apps are intended to be compatible with Google products, given their market share.