Faxing provides a solution to ethical challenge for lawyers

Those of us who work in offices and exchange documents regularly often use the Track Changes feature in Microsoft Word. It’s a handy way to make edits without losing the original text, just in case we want to go back to the original later.

For lawyers, though, Track Changes can present an ethical problem according to this post from the Internet Business Law Services web site. A legal document may contain all sorts of information that someone makes a decision not to share down the road. If Track Changes was used, though, it’s possible that the “hidden” data can be exposed, thus creating a potential breach of ethics and confidentiality. It doesn’t take much effort to make that happen, either.

Toward the end, the post talks about ways to prevent these potential breaches. Of course, one of the first ones listed is to fax the document instead of emailing it. A fax has no Track Changes function, so as long as you remember to accept all the changes before sending it the person on the other end can’t get at that confidential information.

Even if you’re not a lawyer, there may be things that have been removed or changed in certain documents that you don’t want to share. If that’s the case, avoid the risks. Use MyFax to send them.