A group of 83 large U.S. law firms has thrown its weight behind Covington & Burling’s effort to resist a demand by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to identify clients caught up in a cyberattack on the firm.
The firms, often fierce competitors for clients and legal talent, joined forces in a friend-of-the-court brief that called the SEC’s subpoena for Covington’s clients a breach of client confidentiality that any firm would resist under similar circumstances.
The SEC’s subpoena would risk turning attorneys “into witnesses against their own clients,” the firms wrote in a filing in Washington, D.C., federal court.
Source: 83 law firms back Covington in SEC subpoena fight | Reuters