Cyberlaw, Cyberlawyers and e–Law

involves more than just software contracts and employment agreements.

Much as Environmental law has become an enterprise-wide concern of American business since the 1970s, Cyberlaw should now be an enterprise-wide concern of every business using the Internet in any way.

With Courts no longer reluctant to impose substantial financial sanctions upon lawyers, law firms and their clients for violations of many of the new practice requirements of “e–law” where the lowercase “e” stands for all things electronic down to the level of bits and bytes, the need for special legal service providers to assist General Counsel of small and medium-sized businesses and the in-house Law Departments of large business enterprises in the areas of e-Law is obvious. Yannacone provides the full spectrum of e-Law services on an “of counsel” basis.

 

Cyberlaw: some etymological history

Regardless of their area of practice, every attorney must have some fundamental knowledge of Cyberlaw.

The prefix “cyber” comes from the word “Cybernetics” which was coined by the famous mathematician and scientist Norbert Wiener shortly after World War II, to characterize self-regulating mechanisms. His book laid the theoretical foundation for servomechanisms, automatic navigation, analog computing, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and reliable communications

While the philologists argue over whether the prefix cyber should be treated as a descriptive adjective, an adverb, or even a noun, and whether it should be connected to an associated word with a hyphen or whether the hyphen can be omitted, attorneys must still make the effort to master at least some of the basic elements of Cyberlaw.

 

Cyberspace

Cyberlaw begins with cyberspace — the place where you practice Cyberlaw. Cyberspace is where the Internet or World Wide Web (www) exists. Depending on your mathematical view of topology, cyberspace is either n-dimensional or dimensionless.
Attorneys enter cyberspace through a computer on their desktop, a laptop, a tablet, a cell phone, or some other electronic device which connects them to the Internet or uses the Internet to connect them with other human beings or to access materials which used to be found in on-line virtual libraries.

Cyber risk and Cybersecurity

Cyber attacks have become an almost daily event affecting all sizes and types of businesses. The rapidly expanding supply chain supporting the cybercrime economy is empowering cybercriminals, cyberterrorists and even nation-states in ways that put companies, critical infrastructure and governments at increased risk.

Whether based in Russia, China, Africa, the United States or anywhere else on the globe, organized syndicates are leveraging the anonymity provided by the web to garner wealth from the sale of malware kits capable of penetrating the most well-protected databases and computer networks.

Sophisticated criminals armed with innovative technologies are an immediate and major threat to American business and the American Free Enterprise System.

Cyberthreats are escalating and business trade partners and consumers are insisting on safeguards for their private information. It is vitally important for businesses and their law firms to understand the actions needed to maintain cybersecurity and the insurance coverage necessary to cover the damages from cybersecurity breaches.

 

Meeting the need

Victor John Yannacone jr. is an advocate, trial lawyer, and litigator practicing today in the manner of a British barrister by serving of counsel to attorneys and law firms locally and throughout the United States in complex matters.

He has been continuously involved in computer science since the days of the first transistors in 1955 and actively involved in design, development, and management of relational databases since his landmark DDT litigation in 1966.

In 1969 he pioneered in the development of environmental systems science.

During the Agent Orange litigation (1979–1984) he designed and developed the first successful real-time relational database for medical records which eventually established that exposure to dioxin-contaminated herbicides during the war in Southeast Asia was responsible for a complex constellation of diseases for which combat veterans are finally being compensated.

 

e-Discovery

Yannacone and the client/matter-specific teams he assembles on a case by case basis provide full service E-discovery support to companies and their law firms engaged in document intensive litigation including comprehensive Technology Assisted Review (TAR) of all ESI (electronically stored information) and data analytics. They can provide cost-effective management of discovery and its associated motion practice supervised by a highly skilled, well respected, senior attorney, trial lawyer and litigator who can be integrated seamlessly as “Discovery Counsel” within an in-house legal department.

 

Data Mining & Analytics; Predictive Coding; TAR

Yannacone and his teams can provide Predictive Coding based on unique, proprietary Conceptual Models for Litigation utilizing advanced seeding and model training based on evolving E-discovery case law and court rules together with De-NISTing and Cross-trained mathematical models for search, and validation metrics pursuant to the “reasonable inquiry” requirement of Rule 26(g) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

 

Additional case specific support

Among the general services included in the scope of work agreement for a matter requiring specialized e-Law services are:

• Drafting litigation hold notices
• Scoping and documenting data preservation activities
• Coordinating and overseeing data forensics
• Arranging and attending pretrial conferences and negotiations
• Drafting document requests and objections
• Organizing and monitoring team training, supervision and quality control assessments
• Quantifying discovery burdens and when required advocacy for a “proportional” response under the “new” discovery rules
• Managing contracts and engagement of third-party vendors and consulting experts
• Strategic support for jury selection with behavioral analytics utilizing public and social network text mining and notional data extraction for summary persona and factor analyses; advanced clustering, classification and proprietary “Juror Scoring” using behavioral data including credit history, consumer and political propensity, motor vehicle, prior history and other public records data
• Identifying relevant admissible evidence of scienter and other critical elements of a case by means of enhanced entity/event link analysis using semantic, lexical-statistical and probabilistic (HMM) approaches; deep-learning neural networks, shortest path and two-tree priority-first search, advanced complex network mechanics, and contextual document identification that includes relational, geospatial, temporal, statistical, time-series and stochastic analyses
• Electronic Data Discovery (EDD) database review services and tools development to mitigate spoliation and malware infection risk while retaining substantial advantages in review efficiency, searching, privilege review and e-discovery process documentation
• Big Data and Predictive Analytics for in house Legal Services, including
  generic text mining and sentiment analyses to create human resource predictive models to facilitate fraud detection and evaluate risk exposure from piracy, confidentiality, data security breech and whistleblowing
• Development of Operational Risk Models for property and casualty insurance analysis and evaluation, particularly in the areas of cybersecurity and data breach insurance
• Director and management Liability Analysis
• Litigation Propensity Modeling
• Support for marketing, new product launches, business expansion, real estate and equity deals