Call of Duty, Jury Duty, Carpool Duty, Civic Duty...all things that garner very specific opinions from people…
But, what about The Duty of Loyalty? In corporate law, The Duty of Loyalty involves corporate directors having the legal responsibility to avoid conflicts of interest. The business comes before personal interest.
Right now, with companies seeking to maintain customer loyalty, employee loyalty, and all other relationships they form while doing business, it is difficult to decipher when this Duty of Loyalty comes into play.
This is especially difficult when we factor in Cloud computing, IT service providers, software, and data security. Who do we trust when it comes to legal? Where do we draw the line? Is the line supposed to be difficult to draw?
eMazzanti technologies wrote a pretty cool piece about loyalty and conflicts of interest spurring us to provide the key takeaways behind the importance of loyalty as we all acclimate our businesses with up-to-date technology.
1. Our worries about the cloud
What’s happening: Law firms are moving data and services to the cloud making loyalty more and more of a discussion. Within cloud computing, resources are shared with customers and creates an inherent conflict of interest.
Potential conflict of interest: Cloud computing is a shared service. While cloud providers was to maximize and often acts as security for documents as well. At times, some cloud users have accidentally been granted access to another customer’s files by mistake. This creates concerns for law firms along with other worries such as,
- What happens to confidential files when they leave your control?
- What happens to sensitive info when an employee leaves the firm taking their devices with them?
- Does my Cloud service provider have access to my confidential files?
Loyalty: Managing online contracts through the cloud is valuable because it provides ready-access to everything you could possibly need. Loyalty and trust is most important and a lot of times, technology makes confidential information safer and more reliable than it would be sitting in a red folder.
2. Those dang humans
What’s happening: When there are errors in online contract management housed by the Cloud, it is because a person didn’t live up to the trust that was put in them. That means they were negligent or disloyal to the company they served, which can often be costly.
Conflict of interest: Having data and programs on the cloud means firms are potentially giving the staff of their cloud provider the key to their intellectual property and other confidential information.
Loyalty: A cloud or IT service provider will put those they are serving (firms) first if they want to remain loyal. They will eliminate any chance for potential human error or programming error because they value the long-term partnership.
3. Trust is a pretty simple concept
What’s happening: Firms and everyone else doing business are moving to CLoud computations and storage. That allows for easy access to all files people may need; whether that means sharing a file with your co-worker whose desk is right next door, or managing risks with customers in other countires, online contract management provides easy access. But, you should still make sure that whatever provider gets your business is trustworthy.
Conflict of interest: You need them and they need you. B2B at its finest. But, you have to start somewhere. Extend trust to your Cloud base providers, and they will do the same for you.
Loyalty: Make sure to ask these questions in the process:
- Are the sales presentations and discussions about how to grow and protect your firm or business?
- Does the provider encourage usage of their product in order to streamline your processes and grant easier access to records?
- How do you feel about the humans you’re interacting with, are they trustworthy?
The Duty of Loyalty is important to anyone providing services because if their loyalty fails, they lose business and could face even bigger problems. Having up-to-date technology is important, but so is loyalty and trust.
Bad technology = your company falling behind...however, technology is only as good as those standing behind it. 
