With the current coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic crisis, many law firms have been faced with the difficult situation of needing to reduce overhead. Making personnel and other cuts may be great for the finance department, but any money saved doesn’t extend to a reduced need for legal work. Cases and clients must still be handled.
With reduced administration staff, many firms are forced to try and do more with less. Attorneys may be obliged to take on important tasks like online evidence collection themselves. Worse, non-attorney administrators who are unfamiliar with the evidence collection process may be assigned to the task. Such an attempt to save money can be very costly – resulting in evidence that is indefensible in court – risking not only a waste of time and money – but quite possibly losing a case altogether.
An even worse scenario is that people who are unfamiliar with acceptable online collection practices may engage in unethical conduct – such as “catfishing” subjects, attempting “friending,” or connecting with them on social media platforms. Such tactics potentially expose your firm to serious legal ramifications, not to mention the harm to your company’s reputation. If the infraction is serious enough – it could put your firm out of business for good.
There is no need to take these types of risks. SMI Aware specializes in internet evidence research. Feasibility, defensibility, and ethical data collection are why our firm exists. We’ve been engaged in this work since 2011, so we are well-positioned to take on the data collection tasks that your firm is ill-equipped to handle. With SMI Aware, you can reduce your firm’s overhead for far less than the salary of an administrative person – and handle your firm’s data collection in an ethical and legally defensible manner.
Check out our website to learn more about how we handle data collection – or contact us to set up an appointment with our sales staff today.