Lance Michalson

16/09/2008 – 10:43 am by Lance Michalson

Lance Michalson

Lance Michalson (BA LLB) - PARTNER
Email: lance@michalsons.com
Tel: 0860 111 245

Lance Michalson is an experienced commercial lawyer who understands technology. He has been practicing IT law exclusively since 1996.

He focuses on:

Electronic risks: Electronic signatures, authentication, retention of electronic documents and admissibility; email and internet use policies; security policies; interception and monitoring of communications
IT Contracts: From licensing and support, to SLAs and outsourcing to customer agreements (including reseller, sub-contractor etc) acting for both vendors and customers
eBusiness: Online trading terms; disclaimers; terms of use; privacy policies for e-commerce sites; domain name dispute
Privacy : steps that need to be taken to establish a “privacy compliant” company, including privacy impact assessments, interpreting the legislation, awareness and training
Moving to the paperless environment: many organizations would like to save the expense of storing volumes of paper by having all documents stored on computers, but many are not sure about the value of the documents as evidence if they have been scanned. This need not be a problem if dealt with properly

Background

Admitted as an attorney (1994)
Director Hofmeyr Inc (now DLA Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr) (1998 to 2000)
Partner at Harty Rushmere (2000)
Partner at Arthur Andersen and head of SA IT Law Practice (2001)
Attorney at Michalsons Attorneys (2002 to date)
Co-founder and director iForest Information Management (Pty) Ltd (2004 to 2009)
Director of Lematics (Pty) Limited trading as Online Legal which provides online legal solutions ondemand (2008 to date)

Expertise

Member of Government Working Group 1 on Security and Privacy (1999)
Advised government on possible policy approaches towards encryption (2001)
Member of Department of Communications ECT Act drafting Committee (2001)
Member of Task Team responsible for drafting Regulations Accreditation Authority (2002)
Member of drafting team of Information Security Best Practice Guide to King II (2005)
Member of drafting team of Escrow Best Practice Guide to King II (2007)
Member of the King III IT Governance Sub-Committee (May 2009)

Memberships / Affiliations

Accolades

One of South Africa’s Top Internet Personalities (1998)
Profiled in Who’s Who of Southern Africa (2007)
Mentioned in the 2006 and 2008 editions of The Legal 500 (Europe, Middle East & Africa)
Mentioned in the 2008, 2009 and 2010 editions of the International Who’s Who of Internet & e-Commerce Lawyers
One of 12 IT and telecoms lawyers in South Africa selected for inclusion in the 2008 edition of Expert Guides, an international guide to the best lawyers in different countries

Publications

Author of several publications in journals and magazines
Author of “South Africa and the Millenium Timebomb - A guide to the legal issues” (1998)
Contributed chapter titled “The use of e-mail and the Internet in the workplace” in Cyberlaw, the law of the Internet (2000)
Co-author of the South African Chapter in “e-Commerce, Getting the Deal Through” published by the International Bar Association (where the same questions and answers were posed to leading practitioners in 27 jurisdictions worldwide), 2008 and 2009 editions
Co-author of the South African Chapter in “The Global Privacy and Security Law Reference“, published by Aspen Publishers (2009).

Speaker

Guest speaker at many conferences

Lecturer

Guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town and the University of the Western Cape

Media

Summit TV, SABC, Radio 702, 567, Business Day, Sunday Times, Finance Week, Financial Mail, IT Web

Michalsons Attorneys