The Problem
Only ~22% of small law firms in the United States have protected their clients’ web submissions at a very basic level.1
Given how sensitive many of these client inquiries are, this ends up being pretty alarming. The solution? It’s actually simple: Have your web firm add “SSL” (secure socket layers) to your site.
What happens if I don’t have SSL?
If your site doesn’t have SSL it’s like you’re allowing messages to be carried to your email inbox via a convertible with the top down. Public WiFi connections at, say, a Starbucks via laptop or mobile phone are particularly vulnerable. In these environments you’re putting your drop top convertible on a highway with a bunch of strangers.
If your website doesn’t have SSL, messages travel openly down the highway and can be read by snoops before reaching you.
And with SSL?!
When clients visit your website and then submit inquiries from your website, that submission has to travel from their computer to you. When your site is secured with SSL (secure socket layers) this message travels through a protected, private tunnel to you. Others can’t look into the tunnel and read the submission during it’s journey.
Private, encrypted tunnel
The Solution
You can’t get your clients or prospective clients to NOT contact you on public WiFi connections. You also want to make it as easy as possible for people to contact you by making forms available on your site and / or allowing people to email you directly. Because of this, it’s important to protect these confidential client messages with SSL.
- Talk to your web firm about getting you an SSL certificate.
- LAWFIRMLIFT.com provides this as a part of the standard hosting package.
Footnotes:
[1] LAWFIRMLIFT ran a scan of over 10,000 randomly selected law firm websites to conduct this analysis.