Industry · Professional Services
29% of law firms
breached this year.
29% of law firms reported a breach in the last 12 months (ABA TechReport). Only 40% carry cyber insurance. Mid-law spends $1,500-$3,000 per attorney per year on cybersecurity — not enough to cover the modern threat surface, and usually allocated to the wrong layer. ABA Model Rule 1.6 isn’t a checkbox; it’s a fiduciary obligation. We run it as one.
Combined practice for law firms + accounting firms + consulting firms. Same threat surface, same regulatory crosswalks, same partnership envelope.
What we run for professional-services partners
Eight components. All privilege-aware.
ABA Cybersecurity + Model Rule 1.6
Privileged-client-data security program built to ABA Formal Opinion 477R + 483 + 498. Documented reasonable-efforts standard. Counsel-defensible in disciplinary proceedings.
AICPA TSC + SOC 2 for CPA Firms
AICPA Trust Services Criteria scoping for accounting + advisory firms. SOC 2 Type 2 readiness + audit. Cross-walks to ISO 27001 for international clients.
E-Discovery Security
ESI hold defensibility, e-discovery vendor risk, data-room access controls, attorney-work-product segregation. Encryption-at-rest with documented chain-of-custody.
Privileged-Communication Hardening
Email + IM + collaboration tool hardening for attorney-client privilege. Outside-counsel access patterns. Inadvertent-disclosure prevention. ABA-compliant client portal patterns.
Insider Risk + Lateral-Hire Risk
Pre-onboarding background + OSINT review for partners and senior associates. Departure-protection controls (data exfil, conflict checks). Lateral-firm bring-along risk.
Insurance Carrier Coordination
Coalition, Beazley, Chubb, Resilience, Travelers carrier liaison. Sub-limit review (only 40% of law firms carry cyber insurance — most are under-covered). Renewal-grade evidence package.
BEC + Wire-Fraud Defense
Trust-account + IOLTA + escrow protection. Vendor-impersonation detection. Codeword-callback policy for client wires. The #1 mid-law loss event.
MDR + IR Retainer
24/7 SOC monitoring tuned for professional-services attack patterns. Counsel-coordinated IR retainer ensures privilege protection from minute one. Pre-vetted breach counsel relationships.
Buying triggers
When firms evaluate a new partner.
Peer-firm breach in legal press. Law360, ABA Journal, Above the Law coverage of a peer-firm breach drives a 60-day cybersecurity reassessment cycle. Ransomware peer-incidents at law firms typically cost $3-7M in business interruption + breach response + notification.
Cyber insurance renewal. Most carriers now require 24/7 MDR + immutable backup + MFA on all admin accounts before binding above $5M coverage. We document the controls in the format underwriters score against.
Client cybersecurity questionnaire. Big-corporate clients now flow down cybersecurity questionnaires to outside counsel. Boutique firms often lose work because they can't answer. We answer, defensibly, with continuous evidence.
Lateral hire / book-of-business move. Lateral partner moves between firms create concentrated insider-risk windows. Pre-arrival OSINT + departure-protection at the prior firm + onboarding controls.
Outside-counsel guidelines update. Banks, healthcare systems, defense contractors update their outside-counsel cybersecurity guidelines annually. Failing to comply = no work in that vertical.
Specifics
Read the detail.
SOC 2 Type 2
AICPA TSC scoping. Auditor-coordinated. Continuous evidence.
Read moreProfessional-Services vCISO
ABA-aware vCISO. Outside-counsel-guideline-aligned. Quarterly board reporting.
Read moreManaged Detection & Response
24/7 SOC tuned for professional-services attack patterns. BEC + wire-fraud + insider-risk detection.
Read moreCounsel-Coordinated IR
Pre-vetted breach counsel network. Privilege protected from minute one. Carrier-accepted retainer.
Read morePricing for professional-services partners
Real numbers. In the partnership envelope.
Mid-law / regional firm partnership: $250K-$1.5M/yr depending on attorney count + global office footprint + regulated-client load.
Big Law tier: custom-scoped, typically $1M-$3M/yr for the full Modernization Partnership across global offices.
Standalone SOC 2 program (CPA / consulting firm): $75K-$200K fixed-fee + ongoing $3K-$8K/mo evidence-collection.
Outside-counsel-guidelines compliance audit: $25K-$60K fixed-fee, 3-6 weeks. Standalone deliverable; often consumed before bidding regulated-corporate work.
Six months minimum. Schedule directly or call.
Who you’ll work with
Quinnlan Varcoe
CEO and Founder · OSCP · GIAC × 10 · 17 credentials across the practice
Decade of forensic + e-discovery + privileged-counsel coordination work. Court-admissible reporting. Privilege-protected IR from minute one.
Every partnership begins with me. Not a sales rep, not an account executive, not a junior. The first call, the diagnostic, the strategy work — that’s mine.
Client questionnaire on your desk?
Schedule a callTrusted by partners across the practice
Reviews
From the senior people
who’ve worked alongside Quinn.
The named companies beside each reviewer are their employers — not Varcoe partnerships. Each quote is a professional reference from someone who’s shipped work alongside Quinn directly.
“The partnership model isn't marketing language with Quinn — it's how she actually works. Senior judgment, single accountable contact, and the rigor to integrate across IT, security, and AI under one roof.”
Aaron Birnbaum
Managing Partner
“Quinnlan brings more than expertise — she brings strategic alignment. The ability to scale operations without sacrificing depth is exactly what serious organizations need from a modernization partner.”
Caroline Lombard
Threat Specialist
“I've worked with Quinnlan on incidents most teams couldn't navigate — Log4j among them. The technical depth and the calm under fire are real, and they're rare.”
Justin Cox
Senior AWS Security Analyst
“One of the most seamless collaborations I've had in this industry. Composure under pressure, technical precision, and the kind of credibility that compounds — exactly the senior bench a modernization partnership needs.”
Soufiane Jihadi
Senior Incident Response Consultant
Original references collected on the legacy Varcoe site · LinkedIn endorsements available on request