Every firm-wide email list claims a victim eventually. This time it was a billion-dollar plan. Freshfields’ global managing partner and its US M&A co-head were trading emails about carving out Freshfields Lab, the firm’s legal tech unit, and bringing in outside investors. Two Wall Street banks had already been contacted. Then the chain made it to the whole firm.
The emails compare the unit to Harvey and Legora, valued at $15.5 billion and $5.6 billion. For clients this raises a practical point. If your law firm’s tools become a separate company, who owns the data and who is your vendor? Somebody in procurement will want answers…
“But the plans were inadvertently shared more widely over the weekend when Mason forwarded the email chain to a large internal distribution list named “$Freshfields All”. Although the email was quickly recalled, some recipients had already taken screenshots.”
