Eli Lilly legal documents wrongfully sent to New York Times in a Billion dollar lawsuit

Eli Lilly could probably have been better protected if they had in place a federated trust with their law firm, Pepper Hamilton, and had the opportunity to protect their confidential communication with their outside counsel. This is truly the case for where Digital Rights Management could really protect their information.

http://news.cnet.co.uk/software/0,39029694,49295453,00.htm

This case of information leak is enlightening in several aspects.

One, Eli Lilly could potentially have lost ground in a serious legal matter

Two, this is an understandable mistake by the outside counsel, albeit one could argue that more care should have been taken. Awareness is key, and an awareness program can reduce the risk of such incidents.

Three, when conducting business with partners, just having legal agreements in place on how information is to be handled is not good enough. Contractual obligations should be audited against. This email could potentially have been stopped at the email server if an information loss prevention solution had been in place