Working offline with web based app’s
June 1, 2007
There’s a lot of chatter these days about the death of the rich client PC. Google is making some strides with Google documents and Gears.
Are we facing a future in which we have a simple shell PC/Mac opertaing through a browser, with applications hosted by someone like Google and files stored in some super protected nuclear bunker-like server centre?
Aside from the technical issues, such as problems with offline/online synchronisation and whether the relative inexpense storage will leave the online application economically unecessary in the first place, there are some issues that seem to me to be insurmountable.
The fundamental problem for me stems out of my responsibilty to my client
Let’s say that I am working on a witness statement for my client. The future, some would say, sees me using a web based word processor. It all looks great in practice, perhaps I am sharing it with my client over the internet and we are working on the draft together seemlessly integrating whether online or offline.
Sounds great, but there is one problem: privilege.
No matter how much a lawyer may want to use online applications his client will always have a veto. Why? The witness statement I mentioned above, is not mine. The property in the statement belongs to my client. Ok it might be on my files, it might, if it is say, a draft contract, never leave my office. I might be able to withhold it should my client not pay his or her fees. However, that changes nothing, the privacy or otherwise of that document is for my client to determine and not me.
So let’s say my client has some wonderful new technical process, say a web based word processing application, and he seeks my advice on whether it is patentable. Is he going to want me to have the details of that patent advice on an application that is hosted by another tech company? Is he going to be happy to have all his proprietary processes documented and stored on “Mega Secure Hosting Inc’s” servers?
Would a wealthy private family trust, that wants me to set up some off shore companies in order to save tax, think the same way?
How about an alcoholic wife beater in the throws of a divorce?
Or a suspected terrorist?
And even if all 3 of those examples I have just given were to agree I would have no choice in having to have a back up rich client in case that client number 4 did not.
This problem recently arose for me. I have some confidental disclosure from a defendant in a case I am working on. It was supplied to me in PDF form. It would have been nice to have my co-counsel look at it in electronic form over the web. I nearly uploaded the files. But the truth of the matter is, that as if I had uploaded it there would have been an instant breach of confidence, I would have effectively shown 4Shared the document and unwittingly involved them in a breach of confidence.
I cannot see a way around this problem. And it goes much further. Commercial data is as jealously guarded as privleged material, just think:-
-personnel records
- banking and financial data
- medical records
- customer/price lists
- proprietary data
