Security Information

A personal security certificate includes two unique, electronic keys for the encryption of information, a public key and a private key. With e-mail, your certificate is put to use by adding a digital signature to a message. A digital signature is used to confirm your identity and to deliver a copy of your public key. Your public key can be used to encrypt messages to you. Once a message is encrypted with your public key, it can be decrypted only with your private key. Your private key is stored on your computer and, unlike your public key, is not distributed to anyone (under normal circumstances). Put in other words, your freely distributed public key can lock messages to you but only the securely stored private key can unlock them. Similarly, our identity is confirmed and our public key is sent to you with a digitally signed message.

Similarly, a site certificate from us, when installed on your browser, allows a secure connection to be established with our browser. Information exchanged over a secure channel is encrypted for transmission and is not decrypted until it reaches your browser. This allows you to safely access confidential information from our site.

Our site employs industry standard technologies including Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for web site security and Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) for e-mail security. The pages linked to the menu at your left provide additional details concerning the security features at this site. If you have additional questions or comments concerning our security, please call us at (573) 341-2266. Alternatively, you can contact us over the internet using our contact form. However, please do not send any confidential information unless we currently represent you. If you are not a client of ours, your communication may not be treated as confidential. If you want us to review confidential information in connection with the possible employment of a lawyer in our firm, please contact us in person or by phone.