After the story broke about Bloomberg reporters being able to access traders’ use of its terminals, law professor James Grimmelman tweeted:
Bloomberg Law’s privacy policy doesn’t prohibit sharing users’ searches with Bloomberg journalists. That’s a client confidences problem.
— James Grimmelmann (@grimmelm) May 11, 2013
It’s not clear to me that attorneys can use Bloomberg Law without risking disciplinary sanctions for putting client confidences at risk.
— James Grimmelmann (@grimmelm) May 11, 2013
According to Dewey B Strategic, they can rest assured:
No Impact at Bloomberg Law. According to Greg McCaffery, CEO of Bloomberg Law, reporters have no access to the Bloomberg Law user data. Bloomberg Law resides on a separate cloud platform, not on the same platform as the Bloomberg terminal data. Bloomberg law doesn’t even have the same “command” functions which the reporters used to access customer data. He also pointed out that the Bloomberg BNA reporters who write the Bloomberg BNA newsletters have no access to the customer data. McCaffery stated that “Bloomberg Law takes the privacy of its customer data very seriously. To be clear: no journalists at Bloomberg News or BNA have ever had access to customer research activity on Bloomberg Law.”
The fact is that there are law firms which subscribe to Bloomberg business terminals under separate contracts from Bloomberg Law, so presumably reporters were also able to view the limited account activity described above. The Bloomberg business terminals are generally used by researchers and not law firm partners, but we now have assurance that reporters can not access any law firm Bloomberg terminal usage.