[jacquesm]

No, but they are contractually required to keep their customers (and their own) data confidential. And that can lead to them deciding to run their own mailservers as well as other infrastructure. Whether that's a good decision or not is another matter, that mostly depends on execution.

[pvg]

Right, what I mean is that your average legal practice, notary public, journalist doesn't actually have this problem like you said. Cloud services cover them just fine.

Somewhat unrelated, your comment gave me the idea to look up the MX records of the last few law firms I've interacted with: mostly cloud, as expected. The biggest and fanciest likely probably has their own servers. Their terminating MX is some middling cheapo hosting company. Disturbing.

[jacquesm]

Yes, I would agree that for most companies that are in this position rolling your own could easily end up being more problematic than going with gmail or office365. That doesn't mean it does not happen and when it happens they are usually sitting ducks.

The chances of your average law office having an IT staff with capabilities comparable to Google are nil. At the same time the legacy of Snowden has caused a lot of companies to wonder if they're wise to put anything off-premises. And then there's dropbox, weshare and a million other 'handy' services that could easily hoover up and analyze everything that passes through (or whoever hacked them).