I was in California this week for a family funeral, and I was prepared to write this blog entry about all of the grace and understanding colleagues and adversaries have shown. Extensions, offers to cover, and forgiveness for delays were free-flowing. And that’s true, and maybe I will write about that at some point, because this profession is a whole lot less horrible when we can acknowledge each other’s humanity.

No, today I’ll write about that time (today) someone walked off with my laptop at LAX and it did not break my ethics brain.

To back things up a bit, I am, at times, terrible at taking care of my own (as I think many lawyers are—I was unable to find statistics on what percentage of lawyers don’t have wills or other estate documents, but I suspect it’s in line with similarly situated non-lawyers). I advise contemporaneous timekeeping but do not always follow through. I loathe multi-factor authentication with the fire of 1,000 suns and only use it when I have to. I’ve never enrolled in Pre-Check even though doing so would save me some hassle.

Anyhow, I had to fly for the first time since early 2020. Getting there was uneventful. Getting home, not so much.

I got to the airport on time and made it to security. I dutifully put my shoes and bag in a bin, and was told to put my laptop in a separate bin and send everything through the x-ray. After my scan and the pat-down triggered yet again from a belt on my dress that was made from the same material as my dress, I retrieved my bag and my shoes.

My laptop was gone.

I shared that bit of information on social media and I’m sure I set off vicarious panic among the lawyers with whom I’m connected. Just hearing about laptop going missing, prior to a 3-hour flight with a tight connection to a 2-hour flight, is enough to send most of us into palpitations. (To spare you some of that experience, I will spoil it and advise you that the TSA and Los Angeles Airport Police Officer Lu were spectacular. My laptop and I were safely reunited after TSA reviewed security footage and Officer Lu—on a bicycle, no less—tracked down the presumably mortified woman who grabbed the laptop that looked similar to hers.)

Why do I write about this here? Well, in this instance, I actually did what I was supposed to, to ensure the confidentiality of materials on my laptop and ensure that no important data (client or otherwise) were lost. So, while I was freaking out a bit in the moment, I didn’t have to rehearse awkward client conversations for later.

First, the laptop was password protected with a complex password I don’t use elsewhere. As soon as I realized it was missing, I used my iPhone’s “find my” capabilities and locked it so nobody else could access it. Multi-factor authentication was required to bring it back out of lock; it was more or less an inert brick (albeit one that pinged the “find my” server so I knew it never left the airport).

Most importantly—I do not store client material locally on my laptop. Everything is on our cloud server which also requires multi-factor authentication to access.  The only non-app materials stored locally are some personal photos (which are backed up), maybe a couple of half-completed blog entries (which may not be backed up but they’re far from mission-critical).

I even had all work-related browser windows closed and the only thing open in Word was my February 2021 CV (don’t ask). I will admit this is a lucky anomaly and something I should endeavor to make less anomalous, particularly while traveling.

But if the laptop had been permanently lost, the damage would have been primarily monetary (and plane boredom), but I would not have had to notify clients or anyone else of a data breach, and I wouldn’t have had to piece together lost work (or explain why I couldn’t).

I offer this not to brag (though it was the one sort-of bright spot in the comedy of errors it took to get home), but to show that sometimes the “in case of fire, break glass” scenarios do happen and best practices do make things a little more manageable, even if it doesn’t seem so in the moment.

Oh, also, the next time I fly, my laptop will have some stickers or something to distinguish it from the thousands of other chrome-colored laptops. Any suggestions?