Privacy Issues in a Zoom World

This is a continuation in a series of blogs based on information gleaned from a Women in Law Empowerment (WILEF) virtual meeting presented by the WILEF Chicago Young Lawyers Committee to address impacts on women lawyers of practice during the pandemic. The first installment, published on August 5, 2020, addressed the subject of setting boundaries, and today’s topic is dealing with privacy issues in a Zoom world.

Although Zoom and its competitor programs have become de rigueur during the COVID-19 isolation and working from home, these new technologies are not wholly satisfactory substitutes for our needs to interact for the purposes of business. Most of us will agree that allowing business colleagues and clients into your home with a full front view of your lifestyle in this virtual world is a little daunting. It conjures up issues like how much of your private life do you want to expose and what is your comfort level with these new “meeting” formats? Sure, you can elect a substitute background to make it appear that you are on a beach in Tahiti instead of in your rather modest living room, but that strikes some people as a little disingenuous and not quite as transparent as they would like. But getting into a competition about whether your wall art is up to the challenge, which inevitably becomes a topic of conversation, is a useless waste of energy.

So, what is the compromise position? Although it may be fun to see the way your colleagues live and have them share your home surroundings, the visuals also come with some audios of the cat or the dog or, yes, the kids. As I have noted before, telling the kids not to disturb daddy because he is on an important call usually works. But, it does not work with mommy, who is presumed to be available 24/7 and to have no other purpose in life than to satisfy the every need of her family. It is not clear whether seeing these more intimate aspects of your life at home matters, but certainly comfort levels will differ from one person to another. It is your job to identify whatever suits you and make it happen.

And what about client calls? That surely ups the ante. Most of us are not comfortable having clients know too much about our personal lives lest they take advantage of breaching the privacy barriers whenever they experience a particularly compelling need. So, the suggestion of making client calls while walking the dog, as suggested by one panelist, made sense to me. If you don’t have a dog, borrow one or power walk without one. The effect is the same — unless Fido gets into a puppy brawl and blows your cover.

The bottom line is that you need to find your comfort zone and stick to it. I attend all of my virtual Zoom meetings from my office with the door locked! (Even my husband has been known to “storm the Bastille” in need of something he identifies as urgent, and that is unacceptable — unless of course the house is burning down or we have run out of wine). So I lock the door and throw away the key for the duration of my virtual call or meeting. It works for me.

Next up: The Critical Need for Interaction with Colleagues During a Pandemic