Endpoint protection for small law firms

A firm's duty of confidentiality extends to reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorised disclosure. On a five-partner firm's network, part of that is knowing every machine is protected.

Where this usually goes wrong

1 Confidentiality obligations are well understood in principle and have never been mapped onto the actual computers.
2 Attorneys work from laptops and home machines that the firm neither licenses nor sees.
3 A corporate client's outside counsel guidelines ask direct questions about endpoint security.
4 Protection was bought at retail years ago and there is no central view of what is covered.
5 Nobody in the firm owns the question, because it sits between the office manager and whoever answers IT questions.

What Corelink does

License business endpoint protection with a central console, so the firm can state what is protected rather than assume it.
Count every device used for client work, including attorneys' home machines and laptops, before quoting.
Deliver licences in the firm's name so the estate belongs to the firm, not to a reseller.
Consolidate scattered renewal dates onto one anniversary.
Be clear about what a licence does and does not evidence when a client questionnaire arrives.

What the obligation is

A lawyer’s duty of confidentiality is older than any of the technology it now has to cover. The modern position in most United States jurisdictions is that the duty carries with it an obligation to make reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorised access to or disclosure of information relating to the representation, and that a lawyer’s duty of competence extends to understanding the benefits and risks of the technology the practice uses.

Two features of that framing matter here. It is a standard of reasonableness, not a checklist, so there is no product that satisfies it and no supplier who can claim to. And it is fact-dependent: what is reasonable for a firm handling routine residential conveyancing is not necessarily what is reasonable for one handling sealed corporate matters.

We are not a law firm and nothing on this page is legal advice or an ethics opinion. Your own jurisdiction’s rules and your state bar’s opinions are the authority. What we can speak to is the software.

Where endpoint protection fits

Firms of five to fifty people tend to have a particular shape of problem. The office machines are reasonably well known. The laptops are less so. The home machines are not known at all, and they are where a meaningful share of the drafting actually happens.

When a corporate client sends outside counsel guidelines, or a cyber insurer sends an application, the questions are not abstract. They ask whether endpoint protection is deployed on all devices used for client work, whether it is centrally managed, and whether the firm can demonstrate it. A firm running retail subscriptions on some machines and nothing identifiable on others cannot answer those questions from evidence, and answering them from memory is its own risk.

A business product with a console changes the answer from a belief into a list. It shows which machines are enrolled, which are reporting, and which stopped reporting in August.

What we provide

We license business endpoint protection to the firm, sized to the real device count, and deliver keys and console access by email. The licence is registered to the firm. If the firm later buys elsewhere, the account and the console stay with the firm.

Before quoting we ask what devices are used for client work, explicitly including attorneys’ laptops and home machines. Firms consistently under-count here, and a seat count that omits the machines where confidential drafting happens is worse than useless — it produces documentation that describes a firm other than yours.

Where renewal dates are scattered we price aligning them onto a single anniversary, so the firm makes one decision a year instead of six.

What we do not do

We do not complete client questionnaires, write policies, give ethics advice, or represent that a purchase satisfies any professional obligation. We do not administer your console or connect to your machines, and we receive no client information of any kind.

How pricing works

Business endpoint products are licensed per device, per year, with per-device cost falling as device count and term length rise. Quotes are itemised by product, seat count, term, unit price and total. Quotes are free and carry no obligation. We do not publish prices, because distributor pricing and publisher promotions both move and a stale number is worse than no number.

Common questions

What exactly do our professional obligations require of our computers?

Professional conduct rules in most United States jurisdictions require lawyers to make reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorised disclosure of client information, and commentary on competence has for some years been read to include the technology a lawyer uses. What counts as reasonable is a judgement, and it varies by jurisdiction and by the sensitivity of the matter. We are not a law firm, and your own state bar's rules and opinions are the authority here, not a reseller's website.

Do attorneys' home computers need licences?

If client work happens on them, they are part of the firm's environment. Business licences are ordinarily counted per installed device, so each one consumes a seat. This is the category most often left out of a device count, and it is usually the category a client questionnaire asks about most pointedly.

A client's outside counsel guidelines ask about endpoint protection. Can you answer them?

We can give you the licence documentation — product, seat count, term, expiry — and your console shows deployment status across machines. We cannot complete a client questionnaire on the firm's behalf or attest to anything. The answers have to be the firm's.

Do you get access to our files or our matters?

No. We sell and renew software licences. We do not administer your console, connect to your machines, or receive any client information.

We already have protection on every machine. Is there anything to change?

Possibly not. If what you have is a business product with a console, correctly licensed and current, the honest answer is that a renewal quote is the only thing worth discussing. If it is a set of consumer subscriptions bought at retail, there is a licensing question worth looking at, and we will explain it without overstating it.

Request a quote for your firm

Tell us how many computers you have and what you run today. We reply with options and pricing during business hours — there is no automated checkout and no obligation.