Blackberry introduces its white paper “File Sharing Without Fear: 5 Key Requirements for Law Firms When Choosing a Content Collaboration Platform” with this overview:

Overview

Law firms of all sizes have become appealing targets for hackers for multiple reasons. They are one-stop shops for valuable confidential information such as trade secrets, business transactions, insider information, social security numbers, financial information and more. Cyber criminals are also attracted to law firms’ large trust accounts. Add to this the fact that law firms are known for relatively lax data security compared to financial institutions, which have long been prime targets, and the urgent need for coordinated, firm-wide cybersecurity practices becomes obvious.

In today’s mobile, collaborative legal environments, any workforce productivity orcybersecurity strategy is incomplete without a secure content collaboration platform (also referred to as Enterprise File Sync & Share (EFSS) solutions). Attorneys need anytime, anywhere document access and collaboration across all their devices – especially for the most sensitive files – to keep pace with the demands of their profession. They also need to keep those files safe.

The overview neatly summarizes the file sharing part of the problem.

Beyond that is the whole problem of authentication. And without secure authentication there is no such thing as secure file sharing. No matter how good the technology used to protect files from being exposed to the wrong people, that technology is worthless if the law firm does not have a way of knowing with measurable certaingy the validity of the identity claims of the users.

The white paper itself presents what others are presenting as a solution – a solution that does not work and which, even if it did work, purports to offer only a solution to a small fragment of the problem.

AuthentiLaw solves the problem described in that overview through the application of PKIDR, or PKI Done Right. 

According to a American Bar Association report, in 2005, there were 47,562 law firms in the United States with more than 2 lawyers in the US. Given that the legal market has not grown much since then (0.3% annual growth), the number of firms today probably hover around 50,000. Several sources (e.g. Mitratech) cite 50,000 as the approximate number. Counting solo practitioners and 1-person firms, the US Census says there are 173,248 total establishments under the code “54110 Legal Services”. The worldwide number of law firms is difficult to discern. The CCBE (EU association of bar associations) does not keep such statistics, but their figures for total licensed lawyers suggests similar numbers for Europe as for North America. Numbers for the rest of the world are more sparse than for Europe; however, it’s safe to say that there are over 100,000 law firms in the world. They all need an information and communication platform that better protects themselves and their clients.

This business plan narrative is prepared for the benefit of those who have expressed an interest in becoming involved in the planning and launch of AuthentiLaw. While The Authenticity Institute, Inc., which licenses the the Authenticity Infrastructure to Authenticity Enterprises such as AuthentiLaw, can provide tools with which its licensees can develop projections, we leave the formulation of those projections to the prospective licensee.