There was a time when cyberattacks in the legal industry could be thought of merely as a consequence of law firms representing or taking on the powerful, connected, or controversial; when the risk of cyberattacks seemed inextricably linked to the case at hand.
In 2010, for example, the California law firm of Gipson Hoffman & Pancione began receiving malware-laden phishing emails days after the firm filed a lawsuit against Chinese firms and China’s government, alleging the illegal appropriation of their client’s software. While the firm detected and identified the phishing attempts early on, their client, who was also attacked, was not nearly as lucky.
