In general, Google Voice is reliable for getting a phone number for your legal office, even if you're working from home. As long as you have Internet or have the Google Voice app on your mobile phone, you can receive calls. Google Voice is a free “Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)” call management system. You can create a unique Google Voice phone number, which works through your current device and works similar to a regular mobile phone line, to share with customers.
Customers can call or text your mobile phone with your Google Voice number, while your personal mobile phone number remains private. It can be a great tool for lawyers who want to call or text their clients while traveling without giving out a personal cell phone number. This service can be particularly useful for professionals who work alone, lawyers who travel frequently or work from different locations, and lawyers who don't use the office phone or who simply need to connect with clients outside the office. They hand out the Google Voice number to their customers and customers, and their personal number is for their friends and family.
This means that the microphone must remain on to hear the keyword and, potentially, hear everything a lawyer says. Digital voice assistants such as Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana and Google Voice are now also being implemented in law firms. However, both Amazon's Echo and Google Home recently added support for multiple users, allowing their devices to respond differently depending on the user's voice. Google Voice is ideal for small law firms or individual professionals looking for a voice mail system or a call forwarding system, and the best part is that it's free.
Basically, Google Voice is a voice over IP (VoIP) application for your smartphone that provides you with a free phone number and, basically, allows you to carry two phone numbers on one phone: a work number and a personal one. In her article “Amazon Echo is useful and risky for lawyers”, author Anna Massoglia states: “This means that anyone who is within a conversation distance has access to all the accounts that you have linked to the digital assistant. Similarly, Google's Android smartphones have an offline voice recognition feature that can be used for the same purpose. In addition, most digital voice assistants, as well as IoT products such as Amazon Echo or Google Home, for example, require an activation or “activation” word that activates them in order to be able to answer a question or command.
If a voice assistant or their host company overhears a lawyer talking about a case with their client, perhaps because the lawyer has a voice assistant device on his office desk, the lawyer could be violating the lawyer's home state analogy to ABA Rule 1.6, or even compromising attorney-client privilege due to the disclosure of information by third parties. In the context of Internet communications, the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility of the United States Bar Association recently concluded that “an attorney may need to take special security precautions to protect against involuntary or unauthorized disclosure of client information when required by an agreement with the client or the law, or when the nature of the information requires a greater degree of security.
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