Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar Opinion #196

Date 10/21/2008.

Professional Ethics Commission

Topic: Transmission, retrieval and use of metadata embedded in documents

Conclusion of the Commission:

“1.     Without authorization from a court, it is ethically impermissible for an attorney to seek to uncover metadata, embedded in an electronic document received from counsel for another party, in an effort to detect confidential information that should be reasonably known not to have been intentionally communicated.

2.        A sending attorney has an ethical duty to use reasonable care when transmitting an electronic document to prevent the disclosure of metadata containing confidential information.”

Main Rules of Professional Conduct: 3.2(f)(3) and (4); 3.6(h)(1) and (2); 3.6(a)

 

Cited Ethics Opinions:

 

The full text is available at http://www.maine.gov…