How To Protect Yourself and Preserve Confidentiality When Negotiating Documents Electronically
Original Program Date :
Opposing lawyers routinely email versions of a document back and forth during the negotiation process; and many instruments are never reduced to paper until they’re ready to sign. This approach is unquestionably fast and convenient compared to mailing or faxing paper documents. However, electronic document exchange presents many issues that practitioners need to be aware of and risks to protect against. In this seminar, you'll learn when it's appropriate to use word processor files and when it's appropriate to use PDFs. We'll cover how to track your changes in a document and how to ascertain what changes were made by others (even if there are attempts to conceal those changes). You'll also learn how to add comments and annotations to Word or PDF files, how to lock documents down to prevent further changes, and how to avoid including hidden (and potentially damaging) information in the files you're working with (this hidden information is known as metadata). Finally, using plain email arguably affords you no reasonable expectation of privacy. We'll also discuss your email encryption options which ensure that only the intended recipient can open your emails and/or attachments thereto.
Speaker:
Barron K. Henley, Affinity Consulting Group