I'm just taking over the administration of our company's existing Exchange 2003 setup and we use Public Folders for each employee. Anytime we have a new employee come onboard, I create their account in AD and then go into System Manager and create a Public Folder for them. Where it gets tricky is each public folder's client permissions have to be edited to only allow access by a specific list of authorized people. Is there a way I can set the default client permissions so that when I create a new public folder, it automatically has the correct client permissions?

Not that I am aware of, because the way that you are using public folders is not how they are designed to be used. Therefore you will have to continue with your manual process. Simon.Simon Butler, Exchange MVP Blog | Exchange Resources

Per my search, there’s no feature to accomplish this task in the exchange natively. Agree with Sembee Since public folder can propagate the permissions from a folder to all subfolders, you can set the default client permissions on a top level public folder, and create the users’ public folders under it. Then, you don’t have to do it every time when creating a new public folderPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.