Herbert Smith has always been in the vanguard of thinking on new areas of legal practice: it was the first City firm to set up a technology practice in 1967. In 2008 it was the first City firm to set up an information governance practice.
What is information governance?
Information governance comprises the law and practice which relates to the way in which organisations handle and share their information. And not just their personal information. Information governance includes data privacy, but also covers areas such as data security, internet and IT use policies, email archiving and much much more. We are accustomed to the notion that we live in the Information Age, but because we are living at the inception of that age we sometimes do not realise how unsophisticated is our understanding of the legal rights and obligation of dealing with the raw material in question.
By analogy with the Industrial Age you might say that whilst we have got used to the idea that there might be a Sale of Goods Act to consider in relation to Information, we are some way off our Donoghue v Stevenson moment in importing a duty of care in relation to the misuse of information. The legal historians amongst you will therefore appreciate that this places us somewhere in the 50 year period between 1882 and 1932. In other words, we have a long road still to travel in terms of seeing how the law should interact with the burgeoning and inexorable growth of Information.
The Herbert Smith information governance group is fascinated by this fertile area of investigation and discovery and has been at the cutting edge of many of the most innovative developments in the field to date. The group was closely involved in the recent Data Sharing Review tabled to the Prime Minister, a member of the group was involved in the drafting of the 1998 Data Protection Act and the group carried out a data privacy audit of an international trading group which resulted in the first opinion given to the Board of Directors of the US parent on its compliance posture in relation to international data handling norms and standards.
In all its work the group focuses on pragmatic cost effective lawyering to see its clients through the Byzantine intricacies of often conflicting regulation. It is prepared to make judgement calls based on its considerable accumulated knowledge and experience and its sound guidance and wise counsel is appreciated by a client base that boasts many of the world's largest and most respected organisations. If you are considering setting up a Binding Corporate Rules Project, are wondering how to comply with your litigation disclosure obligations in the email world, have been served with an information access request from a troublesome third party or have just been told that a member of staff has just mislaid large amounts of your organisation's data, our group will be able to give you an informed, pragmatic solution to the problem you face. Tailored, as with all our work to the unique needs and constraints which your organisation faces.
In Christopher Rees, Edward Walker-Arnott, Nick Gardner and Kate Brimsted, we have a core team of leading experts in the field. Christopher is one of the few lawyers to have been acting on data privacy issues since the passing of the Data Protection Act in 1984, and was involved in the drafting of the 1998 Act. He is one of the 'go-to' names in this area and has been consistently ranked as one of the three top IT lawyers in the world (Euromoney, Best of the Best).
"Chris Rees "runs a tight ship that does serious work" in the field, with one interviewee declaring: "He's definitely a leader - he was doing this work under the old legislation, so he has an enormous amount of know-how!""
Chambers UK 2008
"outstanding" Christopher Rees
Legal 500 2009