Listen, mistakes happen. That’s as true for higher education personnel as it is for the students they serve. But, well, this is a pretty epic one.
This email snafu happened at the School of Law at the University of California–Los Angeles. Seems the office of career services sent around a spreadsheet that included a buttload of sensitive data about the rising 3L class to the rising 2L class. The data included everyone’s GPA, what Biglaw firms each person applied to, and the results of their callback interviews — with individually identifiable information. As a tipster at the law school shared with Above the Law:
On Friday, June 3, 2022 at around 8:00 AM PT, the UCLA Law Office of Career Services (OCS) published a spreadsheet including student names, 1L GPA’s, outcomes of screener interviews, and outcomes of callback interviews for its rising 3L class to the rising 2L’s in preparation for on-campus interviewing (OCI). This spreadsheet was downloadable by its rising 2L recipients. Publishing the individually identifiable data was a mistake. However, OCS did not notice the mistake until notified by a rising 2L student on Monday, June 6 at around 12:00 PM PT. Afterward, OCS took down the spreadsheet with the individually identifiable data and sent emails “implor[ing] [the 2L recipients] to disregard” and “delete” the data.
Yikestown.
The law school administration offered the following apology and explanation for what went down:
Dear Class of 2024,
Late last week, the Career Services Office invited you to visit a MyLaw page for OCI so that you could see anonymized information about law firm hiring trends as they correlate to student GPAs and the Class of 2023. Through an error, the spreadsheet on the MyLaw page with this information briefly contained hidden fields, available on a separate tab, that, if clicked on, revealed a subset of student names linked to interview and job offers they received through OCI and interview outcomes as well as their 1L GPAs.
The inclusion of this information on separate tabs was a meaningful breach of confidentiality. On behalf of the Career Services Office, I wish to apologize profusely for this error.
My team and I fixed the spreadsheet as soon as the issue was discovered. In addition, we have looked at our internal processes and put into place steps that will ensure no such mistake occurs again. Once again, I am truly sorry for our mistake. Please know that we take confidentiality and our obligations to safeguard your information seriously.
If you clicked on this tab and saw this confidential information, I implore you to disregard it. Furthermore, if you retained any of this information, you must delete/purge all copies of it permanently. I also thank those of you who brought this mistake to our attention so that we could rectify it promptly. If you have questions about this, please feel free to reach out to me.
Yours truly,
Beth Moeller
Which is all well and good, but doesn’t do much for the students who were potentially embarrassed about the released information. And in the law school’s statement on what occurred, they indicated they’re “working to address [students’] concerns about this matter”:
“Our career services staff recently shared information with our rising 2L students to help them prepare for interviews. Unfortunately, this information included a spreadsheet that contained hidden tabs that should have been removed.”
“Those tabs contained some rising 3L students’ 1L GPAs, along with firms from whom they had callbacks or offers,” according to the statement. “This accidental disclosure was a meaningful breach of confidentiality, and we feel terrible about it.”
“Once the error was discovered, the confidential information was removed immediately,” the statement continued. “We are working closely with the university’s Office of Records and Registration to follow all university rules and federal laws, and to address what happened in order to ensure that no such thing happens again.”
The statement concluded with: “We have apologized to the students affected and are working to address their concerns about this matter.”
So take this as your reminder to check all the tabs and hidden fields in a spreadsheet *before* you share documents.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).
