Why email is still the biggest cybersecurity risk for law firms
Email remains at the centre of day-to-day legal work. Lawyers use it to receive client instructions, exchange contracts and court documents, share financial and identity information, and discuss matters that may be highly confidential.
That makes the inbox more than a communication tool. It can contain a valuable record of clients, cases, transactions, and business relationships, while also providing an entry point into other systems if an email account is compromised.
For law firms, the question is therefore not simply whether employees can recognise an obvious scam. Modern phishing, business email compromise (BEC), and account takeover attacks are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from legitimate correspondence, making stronger email security an important part of protecting both the practice and its clients.
So, why does email security deserve particular attention from law firms? Here are the key risks legal practices should be aware of, and the steps they can take to better protect their people, clients, and confidential information.
Your inbox contains more than just emails
For many legal practices, email sits at the centre of the relationship between lawyers, clients and other parties.
A single inbox may contain client instructions, draft contracts, court documents, invoices, identity documents, financial information and confidential correspondence. Lawyers may also communicate with clients, counterparties, banks, accountants and other professional advisers throughout the course of a matter.
This concentration of sensitive information makes legal practices attractive targets. But the value of compromising an email account is not limited to the information stored inside it. Email also represents a trusted channel and identity, which in many businesses can be connected to other workplace systems.
For example, the same business account may provide access to shared drives, cloud storage, document management platforms, calendars and collaboration tools. A compromised email account could therefore give an attacker opportunities to access additional files and information, particularly where the account is connected to services such as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.
Attackers may also use access to a legitimate mailbox to monitor conversations, identify valuable matters and convincingly impersonate a lawyer when communicating with clients, colleagues or other parties. This can make subsequent phishing or payment fraud attempts considerably more difficult for recipients to recognise.
This is not simply a theoretical concern in Singapore. The Law Society of Singapore regularly publishes scam alerts involving the impersonation of law practices and legal practitioners, highlighting the need for firms and clients to remain vigilant.
What is phishing and why is it becoming harder to spot?
To define phishing simply, it is a type of cyberattack in which criminals impersonate a trusted person or organisation to trick someone into revealing sensitive information, clicking a malicious link, or taking another unsafe action.
For businesses searching for the meaning of a phishing attack, the important point is that phishing relies heavily on deception. Phishing means making a fraudulent message appear legitimate enough that the recipient acts before realising something is wrong.
For a law firm, that might be a client sending documents, a colleague sharing a file, a court-related communication, an invoice requiring attention, or a familiar online service asking the recipient to sign in.
The challenge is that many of the traditional warning signs are becoming less reliable. Singapore’s Cyber Security Agency (CSA) has warned about the use of generative AI to create increasingly sophisticated phishing content, making it easier for criminals to produce convincing messages without the spelling and grammatical mistakes commonly associated with scams.
Lawyers and support staff also regularly deal with attachments, links, document-sharing requests, and time-sensitive correspondence. When these activities are already part of a normal working day, a carefully crafted malicious email can be much harder to distinguish from legitimate work.
Employee awareness therefore remains important, but it should not be the firm’s only line of defence. Strong email security can add another layer of protection by helping identify suspicious messages, links, and attachments before they reach employees.
The bigger danger may be an email that looks completely legitimate
Account compromise can make this even harder to detect. If an attacker obtains an employee’s login credentials, they may gain access to a genuine mailbox rather than having to imitate one.
That access can allow an attacker to monitor conversations, learn how the firm communicates and identify opportunities to intervene. Information from previous correspondence including names, transaction details, timing, and communication styles, could then be used to make a fraudulent request considerably more convincing.
For practices handling conveyancing, corporate transactions, or other matters involving significant payments, this creates a serious risk. A fraudulent instruction arriving from what appears to be a trusted party may not immediately look like a cyberattack at all.
Email security needs multiple layers of protection
No single email security control can stop every phishing attack or account compromise.
Employee training remains essential. Staff should be equipped to recognise suspicious messages, verify unusual payment or information requests through a separate channel, and report anything that seems suspicious.
Strong authentication and account controls can make stolen credentials more difficult for attackers to exploit. However, firms should complement these measures with email security solutions that analyse suspicious senders, links, and attachments to identify potential threats before they reach employees.
Email security should also account for threats that emerge after a message reaches the inbox. A link that appears harmless when a message is delivered could lead to a malicious site later, while compromised accounts may exhibit unusual login or device behaviour.
The aim is to create multiple opportunities to identify and stop an attack, rather than relying on a single employee, spam filter, or security measure to catch everything.
Protect the communication channel your practice depends on
For law firms, stronger email protection is ultimately about safeguarding the confidentiality and trust on which client relationships depend.
MyRepublic Email Guard provides an additional security layer designed to detect sophisticated email threats, including phishing, sender impersonation, and business email compromise.
Powered by Check Point, it uses AI to analyse emails, links, attachments, and sender behaviour. URL click-time protection checks links when users click them, while sandboxing technology analyses suspicious attachments before delivery. Account takeover protection can also monitor login and device behaviour for suspicious activity, helping address threats involving legitimate accounts as well as malicious incoming emails.
For firms that collaborate beyond the inbox, Email Guard can extend protection to cloud services such as OneDrive, SharePoint, Google Drive, and Dropbox, helping identify malicious files and links as information is shared.
Email is essential to legal work, which is exactly why it needs protecting
Law firms are unlikely to stop relying on email. It is fast, familiar and deeply embedded in the way lawyers communicate with clients, colleagues and other parties.
The goal, therefore, is not to avoid email but to make it harder for attackers to exploit it.
Combining employee awareness, strong account controls, careful verification processes and dedicated email security can give firms multiple opportunities to detect a threat before a convincing message becomes a costly incident.
With MyRepublic Email Guard, legal practices can strengthen their email security with AI-powered threat detection and 24/7 managed security, without having to build and manage a dedicated email security operation in-house.
