Scam I Am: Understanding and Fighting Cybercrime in the Age of AI

Active

Program Number

36170

Program Date

2026-08-17

CLE Credits

Cybercriminals increasingly target law firms, attorneys, legal staff, and their clients through sophisticated scams, fraud schemes, and data breaches designed to exploit trust, confidentiality, and professional obligations. From AI-generated phishing emails and business email compromise schemes to client impersonation, wire fraud, ransomware attacks, and social engineering tactics, legal professionals face unique risks that can jeopardize client information, firm operations, and ethical compliance.

This program examines the evolving cyber threat landscape affecting the legal profession and provides practical guidance for identifying, preventing, and responding to these threats. Participants will learn how cybercriminals leverage emerging technologies and psychological manipulation to target legal organizations, as well as attorneys' ethical obligations relating to technological competence, confidentiality, supervision, and the protection of client information.

The speakers will discuss these issues through the lens of the ABA Model Rules and Formal Opinion letters, including: Model Rules 1.1 (including Comment 8), 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 3.3, 5.1, 5.3, 5.5, 8.4 and ABA Formal Opinion letters 477R, 483, 498, and 512.

Learning Objectives:

Upon completion, attendees will be able to:

Identify common and emerging cyber threats targeting lawyers, law firms, legal staff, and clients, including AI-generated phishing, business email compromise, deepfakes, voice cloning, ransomware, wire fraud, and impersonation schemes.
Recognize how cybercriminals use artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, social engineering, and psychological manipulation to make scams more convincing, scalable, and difficult to detect.
Implement practical defensive strategies to reduce the risk of cyberattacks, protect client information, verify suspicious communications and financial requests, and respond effectively when a security incident occurs.
Evaluate attorneys' ethical obligations concerning technological competence, confidentiality, communication, supervision, and the protection of client information under ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct 1.1, 1.4, 1.6, 3.3, 5.1, 5.3 and 5.5.
Apply the guidance of ABA Formal Opinions 477R, 483, 498, and 512 to secure electronic communications, cyberattacks and data breaches, virtual practice, and lawyers' use of generative artificial intelligence.