Email for lawyers (professional secrecy & GDPR)
The challenge at a law firm
As a lawyer, clients entrust you with their most sensitive matters, and that trust stands or falls with confidentiality. Your mailbox fills up with case files, advice, correspondence with the opposing party, submissions and clients' personal data. Precisely the information that, if leaked, harms your client and touches your professional secrecy.
A law firm is moreover rarely a one-person operation when it comes to mail. There are often several lawyers, trainees and secretarial staff, all of whom want to work from a professional, recognisable address: name@yourfirm.be instead of a free address. That looks trustworthy to clients and courts, and it makes clear that a message really comes from the firm.
So the core is twofold: strict confidentiality and a tidy, shared office environment that you manage with several people. On top of that, you often need to be able to retrieve correspondence around a case for years. A stable mailbox with automatic backups is then not a luxury but simply a working tool that mustn't let you down.
What professional secrecy and the GDPR require
Lawyers have a duty of professional secrecy, and client data also falls under the GDPR. That means you must take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect that data, including for email. Unsecured communication is a poor fit for such sensitive information; secure connections and good access security are among the basics.
Exactly how this duty is fulfilled is determined by your bar and the data protection authority. In Belgium you look to the code of conduct of the Orde van Vlaamse Balies or the Ordre des barreaux francophones et germanophone, and to the Belgian Data Protection Authority (GBA) for the privacy side. The main line is fixed, the way each firm fills it in is not.
This article is informative and not legal advice, as you know better than anyone. For the precise rules in your situation, consult your professional body or a specialist. The broader GDPR question is covered in may I send personal data by email?.
What your email then needs to do
From that context, email for a law firm concretely calls for:
- European hosting and GDPR compliance: so you know where client data resides and under which law it falls.
- Encrypted connections (TLS): so correspondence is protected in transit.
- Strong access security: with two-factor authentication (2FA) as an extra lock per mailbox.
- Filtering against spam, phishing and malware: firms are a favourite target for fraud and fake invoices.
- Backups: so case correspondence isn't lost.
- Management for the whole firm: one place to create and manage mailboxes for lawyers and secretarial staff.
Email for lawyers and the GDPR: why Mailflux fits
Mailflux gives you professional mailboxes on your own firm domain, hosted in Europe and GDPR compliant. That's the foundation that suits professional secrecy: your client data resides in Europe, connections run encrypted via TLS, and you optionally enable 2FA per mailbox so a stolen password isn't enough.
Every plan includes antivirus, antispam, antimalware and automatic backups. The ML-driven filtering helps against phishing and fake invoices that pose as a client or colleague. Working with several staff? With bulk account management you create mailboxes for the whole firm at once and manage them centrally. The webmail works in the browser on any device, without installation, and with a shared calendar and shareable contact management the firm keeps appointments and contacts aligned.
That this works in practice is confirmed by Viki, a lawyer and Mailflux customer: for her work a secure, GDPR-compliant mailbox is essential, and the webmail helps her keep working productively. Exactly the combination a legal profession calls for.
What Mailflux deliberately does not do is worth mentioning just as honestly: there is no end-to-end encryption and no separate legal certification. What you do get is EU-hosted, GDPR-compliant professional email that forms a strong, secure foundation for your confidential communication. For documents that require the greatest possible protection, you combine that foundation with the channels and rules your bar or Bar prescribes.
Looking for a similar approach for an adjacent profession? Then take a look at email for bookkeepers and accountants or at the overview who Mailflux is for.
Getting started
Want to put your firm's confidential communication on a solid foundation, with a mailbox on your own domain, EU-hosted and GDPR compliant? That's easily arranged, and we're happy to help you get set up, including if you want to switch the whole firm at once. Request your mailbox with no obligation.