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I’m not going to advocate doing this, but if it were me, I would print what I needed directly from wherever it’s stored prior to giving notice. It’s certainly not fool proof and will obviously be difficult to implement at your new firm starting from a paper copy of something, but I reckon it’s the best way to do it without raising any alarms
Subject Expert
Printing documents is what I meant to say.
It depends on what bar you're governed by and what you signed with the firm, but see the below from the ABA.
The American Bar Association has taken the view that to the extent that “documents were prepared by the lawyer and are considered the lawyer’s property or are in the public domain, she may take copies with her.” See ABA Formal Ethics Op. 99-414 (1999)
Subject Expert
Here’s the full text of the opinion btw: https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/professional_responsibility/ethics-opinions/99-414.pdf
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Carefully
Subject Expert
I mean technically, everything you worked on while employed by the firm is work product that belongs to the firm. Publicly available materials are fair game, and the knowledge and general skills in your head are obviously yours. But ANY documents, emails, memos, files, etc created in the course of your work are firm property. That said, there’s probably a sliding scale of risk here. The more something reflects solely YOUR independent effort and judgment, and the less it contains proprietary/confidential/trade secret information, the lower the practical risk tends to be. Now “lower risk” is not the same thing as permissible, though, so it ultimately becomes a personal risk tolerance question, based on both your own comfort level and the vibe/culture of your firm. If you must take a memo or something like that, safest to print it rather than email/download and transfer it to yourself.
Mentor
You can also get permission to take files directly from a client.
You can take screenshots of your screen.
Last year we sued a former senior associate who uploaded to his Google cloud account more than 2,500 emails containing thousands of documents. We also caught him emailing documents to his personal Gmail account and printing documents to use in competition. Trial could be later this year and I can let you know the results. We also filed a complaint against him with relevant state Bar for theft of documents and making false statements in court pleadings.
OP, thus far the firm only has evidence that he used client contact details. We may not have sued yet, however, if he had not first brought a frivolous employment claim against the firm. If he had not brought the frivolous claim, we probably would have waited to sue him until we knew he had used our template documents. But he gave the firm an opportunity for a counterclaim that we could refuse.
Mentor
Partner 1: Since you’re heading to trial, the employee was able to survive a motion for summary judgment on his employment discrimination claims. His claims are not “frivolous,” as you allege above.
You’re clueless A6. His claim is not for discrimination. As an aside, I note that he is a white Catholic heterosexual man like me. (My wife and I even had a front row seat at his wedding two years before his employment was terminated.) Unfortunately the relevant jurisdiction does not have a US federal summary judgement motion concept.
Yeah I think most people print stuff but before they put notice, once you’ve put notice most firms put your computer on a watch where you can’t even email to yourself or it gets flagged and they probably monitor anything printed at that point too
Subject Expert
Your firm has a policy. Many firms require independent review if materials you plan to talk with you. Whatever the policy is, follow it. It’s designed to ensure the protection of client and firm interests and will be applied to you without passion or prejudice. Firms deal with departures all the time and this is part of the routine.
The suggestions here concerning screenshots, printing things without firm permission, etc. are all bad advice. Your entire professional life should be guided by the principle that you should never do anything secretly that you wouldn’t do under the watchful eye of your fin’s management committee. Life’s too short to cut ethical or legal corners.
We also notified his new firm of his theft of documents and the new firm confirmed they will not use them and put him in notice.