E-mail scams targeting attorneys are nothing new, but a recent scam described in the ABA Journal today certainly reaches a new level of sophistication.

The scam goes something like this: an American attorney with a record of handling international transactions is contacted via e-mail by a faraway potential client who is seeking help collecting a debt from an American business. Almost immediately after the targeted attorney agrees to represent the foreign client, the debtor agrees to pay and sends a very legitimate seeming cashier’s check to the attorney. The attorney deposits the check, waits for the funds to become available, and then wires the funds (minus fees) to the foreign client.

As one might expect, that’s when the scam emerges. The check turns out to be an elaborate counterfeit, the American company never existed, and the foreign client vanishes with the money. In the end, the attorney is left owing the bank (or other clients, if the money was deposited into a trust account) a significant sum of money.

The best protection against this and similar email scams is extreme caution. Clients should be carefully vetted – especially when they initiate contact by email alone – and all received payments should be given ample time to clear. Simply waiting for the funds to become available may not be enough. Furthermore, attorneys should make an effort to stay informed about new email scams that may be circulating. Bar association publications, legal technology blogs, and even Google alerts can be effective ways of learning about the latest scams before they strike your practice.

For more on avoiding these types of scams, check out this article from Laura Calloway and David Bilinsky: How Not to Get Stung by Promises of Easy Offshore Work.

Building a Web Site That Works
The LTRC announced a new, detailed guide for law firms and legal organizations looking to get a website. Topics include developing content, picking a domain, finding a web host, and actually building the site.

It’s Just a Phone with Cool Features, Right?
Security is essential in legal computing, and Smartphones – as “extensions of the modern office” – are no exception. Read the LTRC’s guide to security on the go.

Safeguarding Attorney/Client Privilege
Encryption is a valuable tool in securing your sensitive legal documents and files. Take a look at our FYI: Playing it Safe – Using Encryption.

Electronic Document Redaction and the FTC
How sure are you that the sensitive information in your electronic documents has been properly redacted? The LTRC brings the story of an FTC redaction slip-up and provides some guidance on avoiding a similar embarrassment in your practice.

In our recently published overview of Cloud Computing / Software as a Service (“SaaS”), we discussed several of the factors that distinguish it from traditional software – both good and bad. Some of these factors included cost, accessibility, and security concerns. ZDNet now brings another view of SaaS, courtesy of contributor Archie Black: customer service.

Black writes:

“In the traditional software sales model, the idea is to impress the customer in the beginning, make the sale and collect the big check… Conversely, SaaS is a recurring revenue model where vendors gain maximum value by retaining customers over the long term… As such, each transaction and interaction with the customer is critical and SaaS providers must work continuously to earn the customer’s business.”

While Black’s commentary is directed more at SaaS developers than at SaaS consumers, his listing of customer service “best practices” may be helpful for attorneys evaluating a current or potential SaaS provider. For example, Black advises that a dissatisfied customer “should get a return call from a supervisor and/or executive in 24 hours – preferably less.” That type of customer service expectation, and others mentioned in the article, may be well-suited to a Service Level Agreement between the attorney and the SaaS provider.

See also:
     ABA Site-tation: Avoiding Rain in "the Cloud": Ensuring Access to Your Online Information
     eWeek: Google Gmail, Google Apps Outage in the Cloud
     CloudStatus by Hyperic

• Desktops lost some ground as primary computers in favor of laptops—64% of all respondents report desktops as their primary computers in this year’s survey versus 70% in the 2007 survey; 35% of all respondents report laptops as their primary computer this year versus 29% in the 2007 survey.

• Case/practice management software is available at 55% of respondents' firms… Overall, 37% of respondents report using case/practice management software.  Half (50%) of respondents from firms of 2-9 attorneys and 40% of solo respondents use the software, in comparison to 33% of respondents from firms of 10-49 attorneys and 24% of large firm respondents. 

• Overall, 72% of respondents report that they or their staff file court documents electronically, up from 55% in the 2007 survey.

• Respondents are asked how they collaborate on documents.  The methods reported most often are e-mail attachments (92%, up from 80% in the 2007 survey), fax (65%), Microsoft Word track changes or equivalent (64%), and in person (58%). 

• RSS feeds are still used relatively infrequently by respondents for current awareness: 5% report using RSS feeds daily, and 5% one or more times a week.   Twenty-five percent of respondents report using RSS feeds with any one of the listed frequencies for current awareness purposes, up from 17% in the 2007 survey and 12% in the 2006 survey. 

• Nearly all respondents report the ability to check work e-mail while away from the office (98%).  The method reported most often by respondents as used to check e-mail while away from the office is via Smartphone/BlackBerry (59%).

• When Google Owns You

• FYI: E-mail Backup (“You've Got Mail! - And Lots Of It”) 
• FYI: Software as a Service (SaaS) for Lawyers
• The Cost of Free

• FYI: The Ethics of Online Backup Systems

• How do I forward my mail to another email account automatically?
• I can't access my account (information on info needed to regain access to an account)
• Overview: What is Google Docs Offline?

• Close your MSN Hotmail account (information on inactive account deletion)

Laptop computers are increasingly popular amongst attorneys and they’re regularly being used in places other than the office, our 2008 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report found. Respondents reporting that their primary computer is a laptop grew from 29% in 2007 to 35% in 2008, with a corresponding decrease in those primarily using desktop computers. The survey also found that 65% of attorneys are regularly using their laptops at home, 37% in hotels, 18% in airports, and 15% while “in transit.”

For all of those attorneys turning to laptops and taking them on the road, here are some headlines – some good, some bad – worth reading:

• WiFi Nearing Takeoff. Delta Airlines has announced that it’ll be offering its fliers broadband wireless Internet service on domestic flights starting in October. The service won’t be free: Delta will charge between $9.95 and $12.95 depending on the length of the flight. Other airlines, including American, Continental, Southwest, and Virgin America, appear poised to follow. The ability to check email, access the firm network, or even conduct legal research from the air may prove invaluable to attorneys who find themselves traveling on a regular basis.
  
  
• Be careful when travelling internationally: Traveler’s Laptops May Be Detained At Border. We reported on this a while back, but the issue has been thrown back into the spotlight after the official U.S. Customs and Border Protection Policy Regarding Boarder Search of Information (PDF) surfaced. The policy grants customs agents wide latitude to seize and search electronic devices – including laptops – as they’re brought across the U.S. border. For attorneys who may carry a laptop loaded with sensitive client information, this presents an obvious concern.
  
  
• Tired of digging your laptop (and announcing to any potential thieves that you’re carrying one) every time you go through airport security? Good news: TSA to Allow Laptops in Approved Bags. The TSA has been working with bag manufacturers to develop bags that will allow travelers to send their laptop through the scanner without removing them from the bag. Mobile Edge, Skooba Design, and Targus are among the manufacturers selling TSA-approved laptop bags.
  
  
• A laptop carrying the unencrypted personal information of more than 30,000 air travelers disappeared from an office at the San Francisco International Airport last week. The laptop reappeared in the office yesterday, but officials haven’t determined how or where it went missing in the first place. The lesson: the same quality that makes laptops so desirable – their portability – also makes them easy to lose or steal. Attorneys using laptops must be diligent about keeping them within their personal control at all times while travelling, and should avoid saving unencrypted sensitive client data directly onto the computer.

Dennis Kennedy's excellent article in the ABA Journal on becoming a Google Master gives some super tips on searching Google. He also points to LifeHacker's Google School, where they collect Google tips and search tricks. One great tip helps zero in on search results by currency. Users can restrict search results according to when the content was indexed by Google. For instance, searchers can see results from the "past 24 hours", "past week" and so on. There are a couple of ways to generate this search:

1.) Users can go to the advanced search in Google and choose from a dropdown menu. 

2.) If the defaults are too stifling, the intrepid searcher can add parameter restrictions. First perform a search in Google. Then add “&as_qdr=d” (without the quotes and with no spaces) to the end of the  URL in the address bar, and simply change the =d to d5 for 5 days, or w5 for five weeks, or y5 for 5 years, etc. Hit enter and the search results will refine. Additionally, the Google search bar at the top of the results page will now reflect this restriction by displaying a drop down menu. 

Go to Google and enter the search parameters to search only the ABA's website for the word "google" by typing: site:www.abanet.org google into the search bar (or surf to ABAnet.org and enter the search terms into the Google toolbar and select "search site" from the dropdown menu). Hit "enter" to see the results. To add a date restriction add &as_qdr=w5 to the end of the URL to see results only indexed by Google in the last 5 weeks.

This date search parameter doesn't work in image searches. It is not available in blog search or news search, primarily because the date parameters are built in to the results for these date-sensitive searches, and appear in the left column in the search results. Check out more Google School, which covers Google Apps tips as well as Google search and more.

Lawyers often receive or download a form that is not "fillable" in its native format. Options for filling out the form include printing it out and filling it in with a typewriter, creating a form with Acrobat or other similiar software, or running it through a program like OmniForm. However, all of these methods take time and if the form in question will be a one-time use there is a shorter, simpler way to fill out the form and send it out - the Acrobat Typewriter Tool.

In Acrobat 8.0, under the Tools menu select “Typewriter”. A cursor will appear. Place the cursor wherever you want to insert text and start typing. The default font for the Typewriter tools is Courier, and that cannot be altered in Acrobat 8.  However some customization is possible through increase and decrease of font size and line spacing. An enhancement to the Typewriter Tool available in Acrobat 9.0 is the ability to change the font type, color, size, and spacing. Additionally in Acrobat 9 (Standard and Pro) there is no need to continue to select the Typewriter Tool each time the user moves to a new section of the page. Once finished filling out the form simply save it, and email or upload to the intended recipient.

For users of Acrobat 8.0 Pro and up another use of the Typewriter Tool is to enable it for those who only have the Acrobat Reader. If creating a fillable form is too time consuming or difficult simply enable the Typewriter Tool by going to Tools - Typewriter - Enable Typewriter Tool for Adobe Reader. Then save the document. When a user with only the Reader opens the document the Reader will prompt the user to use the Typewriter tool to fill out the form.

Do you ever feel like you’re retyping the same e-mail for the 100th time? You aren’t alone: attorneys often find themselves needing to e-mail the same snippet of information several times per week (or even per day). Perhaps you’re informing a potential client about your fee structures and initial consultation procedures, or maybe you’re just asking a marketer to remove you from their distribution list. Either way, retyping the messages eats time that would be better spent elsewhere.

In the past, common solutions to this problem included copying and pasting from a saved text document or creating complicated e-mail templates. For users of the new Microsoft Outlook 2007, however, there’s a better solution: Quick Parts. Outlook 2007’s Quick Parts feature allows you to easily and quickly save snippets of frequently used text directly in Outlook, and then later insert those snippets back into e-mails with just a few mouse clicks.

Check out this recent Lifehacker post for detailed instructions (with screen shots) on using Outlook 2007’s Quick Parts feature: Save Time and Typing with Outlook 2007’s Quick Parts.

In our June FYI Poll we asked you about online backup and the methods you're using to secure data stored remotely or online. The Law Office Technology volume of our 2008 Legal Technology Survey Report showed that 47% of respondent attorneys had access to online backup at their firms, though only 36% used online backup personally.

For our new poll, we're sticking with the "backup" theme but this time turning our attention to email:

To learn more about email backup, read our article in the latest YourABA: You've Got Mail! - And Lots Of It

Compujurist.com

Are there any recognized “best” practices for file naming conventions?

ABA/State Bar of Wisconsin

Real-World Pile Management (PDF)

ABA LTRC:

FYI: Records Management/Document Retention

ABA GP Solo:

Where's the Brief? Document Management Goes Beyond Just Keeping Track

ABA GP Solo:

Case Management and Document Management Retooling Law Office Information

ABA GP Solo:

Document Management

Last month we wrote about Lawyers and Twitter, pointing out some of the interesting ways lawyers and other legal professionals are using the micro-blogging tool in their professional lives. Now we’re joining in: you can follow the LTRC on Twitter. We’re constantly adding new content to our site, publishing articles, and giving presentations on legal technology issues, and we’ll be using Twitter to announce all of those great resources.

If you’re already on Twitter, following us is as easy as visiting our Twitter page and clicking “follow”. If you don’t have an account yet, you can either sign up by clicking the big green “Join today” button (it’s free, and fast!), or you can use the Twitter RSS feed to pipe our updates directly to your favorite feed reader.

Other resources:

ABA Site-tation: Online reputation management

CNN.com: Unrepentant on Facebook? Expect jail time

The Wharton School: Privacy on the Web: Is It a Losing Battle?

Law.Com Legal Technology: Web 2.0 Collides With E-Discovery

If there’s one common denominator between the major branches of the law, it’s the importance of writing and writing well. While most of the emphasis in writing is placed on grammar, spelling, word choice, prose style, and of course content, it’s important not to neglect another element of good writing: text style. Wayne Schiess, the Director of Legal Writing at UT Law School, brings some guidance to this issue in a recent post on his Legal Writing blog: Schiess’s basic document design for lawyers.

Rather than adjusting the style for each document you create, however, you can automate the process by editing your default “Normal” template or by creating custom templates for the different documents you create on a regular basis. For more information on templates, check out these resources:

    Changing the Normal Template in Word 2003 (Microsoft.com)
    Changing the Normal Template in Word 2007 (Tech Republic)
    Creating Microsoft Office Word 2007 templates (Microsoft.com)
    Template Basics in Microsoft Word (Addbalance.com)
    Introduction to Word Templates (About.com)

The day-to-day practice of law presents a wide variety of challenges to attorneys, ranging from tricky questions of law to the more mundane business decisions that allow a practice to live and thrive. To help meet these challenges, attorneys turn to sophisticated software tailored to the profession. This software can automate time and billing, organize complicated evidence, boost efficiency, and much more.

Traditionally, this legal software is sold to attorneys on a “per license” basis and is installed from a download or CD/DVD directly onto the attorney’s computer. Recently, however, some software developers have broken with tradition and embraced a different model for software delivery: Software as a Service (SaaS). SaaS differs from traditional software in that SaaS applications are web-based, meaning that no software is installed on the attorney’s computer. SaaS applications typically also eschew substantial one-time license costs in favor of lower monthly “subscription” pricing.

Want to learn more about SaaS? The LTRC has prepared a new “For Your Information” overview of the topic: FYI: Software as a Service (SaaS) for Lawyers.

• Twenty-five percent of respondents report using weblogs/blogs with any one of the listed frequencies for current awareness purposes, up from 17% in the 2007 survey. Large firm respondents are the most likely to report using weblogs/blogs for this purpose daily (21%), compared with 8% of solo respondents.

• The percentage of respondents who report using Smartphones or BlackBerrys to conduct legal research while away from the office with any frequency is 42%, up from 31% in the 2007 survey; for laptops the percentage has increased to 85% from 77% in the 2007 survey.
  

• In the 2008 survey, the most often reported regularly-used features of PDAs/smartphones/BlackBerrys are telephone (76%, up from 60% in the 2007 survey), real-time e-mail (75%, up from 68% in the 2007 survey).
  
  
• Almost all respondents report using a computer for law-related tasks while away from the office (94%, up from 84% in the 2007 survey).  Nearly a third report using computers regularly for law-related tasks in hotels (32%, up from 23% in the 2007 survey).
  

Optimizing Your Web Site: The ABC's of SEO - ABA Law Practice Magazine — April/May 2008

Advertising on the Internet: How to Build Online Awareness for Your Law Practice – ABA Law Practice Magazine — March 2007

Internet Marketing 101 for Attorneys:  How to Reach Prospective Clients through Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing – GP Solo Technology e-Report - May 2008

Is Your Firm’s Web Site Really Producing Results? – ABA Law Practice Today - November 2005

Electronic Marketing: Harnessing the Web's Whizbang - Law Technology Today Podcast, June 2007

Faulkner's Practical Web Strategies for Attorneys: How to Select a Website Designer  LLRX.com - June 2006

LLRX.com has a collection of articles about law firm website creation and marketing.

The Law Firm Search Engine Optimization Blog 

Search Engine Marketing 101 – an introduction to important concepts of search engine optimization including how search engines work, how they rank pages, search engine placement tips and terminology.

Google Webmaster Guidelines –help Google find, index, and rank your site. Also outlines some of the practices that may lead to a site being removed from the Google index. 

How to Search the World Wide Web: A Tutorial for Beginners and Non-Experts

How To Use HTML Meta Tags

E-Discovery is an immensely complex topic replete with confusing terminology, tricky rules, and potentially astronomic costs. Many attorneys unfamiliar with the topic might prefer to simply avoid it by outsourcing e-discovery tasks to consultants or delegating the process to junior associates and paralegals. Nevertheless, e-discovery is here to stay, and it behooves attorneys of all experience levels – from the junior associate to the solo practitioner to the managing partner – to have at least a basic understanding of the process and the ways they can use it to their advantage.

Thankfully, the American Bar Association’s Young Lawyer Division has provided a simple roadmap for managing e-discovery in the latest edition of The Young Lawyer. “E-Discovery: A Survival Guide For New Lawyers,” by attorneys David R. Cohen and Lynn Reilly, traces the e-discovery process from assessing the project to drafting a preliminary plan to managing the actual e-discovery, while also introducing basic e-discovery lingo and discussing the need for experts and education. Though the article approaches the topic from the perspective of a young attorney dealing with e-discovery for the first time, the lessons are applicable to anyone new to the topic.

Read the article here:
   E-Discovery Guide for New Lawyers (Part 1)
   E-Discovery Guide for New Lawyers (Part 2)

And from the LTRC:
   FYI: Electronic Discovery

With about 18% market share, Mozilla’s Firefox works on Windows, Mac and Linux computers in more than 35 languages.  Firefox’s built in spell check helps you avoid typos in your web comments or web based e-mail.  If you’ve ever had to unexpectedly restart your computer (and who hasn’t?) Firefox’s ‘Session Restore’ will give you the option of restoring your previous Internet session where you left off.  See Introducing Firefox 3.

Norwegian Opera Software’s Opera web browser is widely known and used on mobile devices such as cell phones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs).  Also, Opera is the only web browser available for the Nintendo DS and Wii gaming systems. According to their website, they pioneered tabbed browsing, the feature that lets you open multiple Web pages within the same browser window, popularized by Firefox and adopted by IE 7.

Apple’s web browser Safari was developed initially just for Apple computers. It is also the browser on the Apple iPhone and iPod touch. Prior to 2003 and the release of Safari, Apple computers used the discontinued Netscape browser and Microsoft Explorer for Mac. Safari for Microsoft Windows was released in March 2008 for WindowsXP and Windows Vista.  Reviewers rave about Safari’s resizable text fields, fast performance and security.  Bookmarks, pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, automatic form filling, and built-in RSS are standard.

Microsoft Internet Explorer has nearly three-quarters of the web browser market (see Wikipedia).  The latest version, Internet Explorer 7, is available on Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2 and later.  This version lets you organize multiple tabs into a single tab group and save it as a favorite, automatically resizes webpage content to print on fewer pages and lets you subscribe to RSS feeds.  Internet Explorer 8 is currently available to the public as a beta (test) version.

A new addition to the browser world is Flock, which bills itself as “the social web browser”.  Flock was built on a Firefox foundation and has built in support for Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, and You Tube just to name a few, with sites to be added.  Flock makes it easy to keep track of your various social networking profiles within the browser.

• Attorney Grant Griffiths is using Twitter and he reports that his blog traffic has increased and correspondingly his business since joining Twitter. His posting Twitter - Rules of Engagement (Blog for Profit) further details his experience.

• According to attorney Kevin O’Keefe, Lawyer marketing with Twitter has arrived. He refers to Steve Matthews’ post Lawyer Marketing with Twitter.

• Steve Matthews’ Legal Voices – is a collection of tweets from Twitter users in the legal industry.

FYI: Blogs

FYI: Starting a Website

Common Craft explains Twitter in plain English

Rule 5.3 of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides that an attorney with managerial or direct supervisory authority over a nonlawyer has a duty to take reasonable steps to assure that the “person’s conduct is compatible with the professional obligations of the lawyer.” This rule presents a challenge in an age when attorneys are increasingly reliant on IT staff and computer/technical consultants. Unlike more traditional “nonlawyer” employees including paralegals, legal assistants, and law clerks, IT staff typically aren’t involved with clients or cases yet often have unfettered access to the digitally-stored confidential data related to those clients or cases. Indeed, in many law firms the duty of safeguarding confidential data - by maintaining computers, implementing security features, or orchestrating backup procedures - is entirely delegated to nonlawyer employees.

In that context, the results of a recent information security study conducted in the US may be troubling to some attorneys. According to the Cyber-Ark study of 300 senior IT professionals, one-third admitted to “snooping” on confidential data ranging from salary details to personal email, and nearly half of the respondents admitted accessing information that was irrelevant to their job duties. In light of this survey and the professional duty imposed by Model Rule 5.3, attorneys would be well advised to consider whether they are taking the appropriate “reasonable steps” to supervise the nonlawyer individuals they hire or retain to handle their technical and computer needs.

But what constitutes “reasonable steps” in supervising your employees? Attorneys will need to investigate their state’s equivalent of the model rule and any corresponding ethical opinions for precise guidance. A first step is educating your employees about the sensitivity of certain information and the duty to guard its confidentiality. Attorneys should also consider formal, written policies for their employees or even a signed confidentiality agreement.

Other resources:

Washington Post article:

Building a Better Browser: Firefox Keeps Innovating

Mozilla Blog of Metrics:

Firefox Market Share Update and a Perspective on Firefox 3

Macworld article:

Mozilla logs 8 million-plus Firefox 3 downloads in a day

The Register article:

Opera unleashes Kestrel

The ABA Journal brings news of two law firms that have been temporarily forced to relocate their offices as a result of the devastating floods throughout Iowa. According to the Journal, the Cedar Rapids office of Simmons Perrine has set up temporary offices for as many as 75 staff and attorneys in a middle school in a neighboring town, while Shuttleworth & Ingersoll has relocated to the Cornell College campus. The official blog of Simmons Perrine notes that the firm has been able to remain “open for business” in part due to “advanced technology” including BlackBerries, cell phones, and the internet.

These stories should serve as notice to attorneys around the country: disasters of all sorts - natural and man-made - have the potential to force you from your office or otherwise interrupt your practice. Developing a thorough disaster preparedness plan in advance of such an event may allow you to remain “open for business” despite the difficult circumstances.

For a wide variety of disaster-related resources, visit the ABA’s Hurricane Katrina Disaster Resources page, assembled in the wake of the devastating 2005 hurricane. Of particular interest may be the Technology Resources section developed by the Legal Technology Resource Center.

Other resources:

Res Ipsa Blog article:

PreCYdent - A New Tool For Lawyers
WisBlawg article:

Review of Free Citators Available in AltLaw and PreCYdent

Other resources: 

AltSearchEngines article:

10 Reasons Why Librarians Should Use Exalead

Resource Shelf article:

Exalead’s Proximity Operator Offers More Precision

Other resources:

Information Today article:

Addict-o-matic Angles for Web 2.0 Metasearch Turf
Internet News article:

Addict-o-matic is addictive

Phil Bradley's weblog article:

Addictomatic

Information Today article:

Google Universal and Its New Navigation

Search Engine Journal:

Google Universal Search : Invasion of News, Video and Blogs

The LTRC is proud to announce the newest feature on the LTRC website: monthly “FYI” polls. While the LTRC has spent more than decade producing detailed survey reports on technology issues related to the legal profession, these informal monthly polls will allow us the opportunity to focus on some of the latest “hot topics” facing practicing attorneys.

One recent “hot topic” is online backup and the ethical and security concerns it poses for attorneys with a professional obligation to safeguard their client’s information. The topic, including an overview of relevant ethics opinions from around the country, is addressed in the LTRC’s FYI: The Ethics of Online Backup Systems. Now we’d like to know what you’re doing to make sure your online backups are secure -- or whether you’re using online backup at all!

Visit our FYI page to take the monthly poll: Online Backup Security.

Andrew Perlman of the Legal Ethics Forum brings news of yet another ethics opinion addressing metadata, this time from Colorado. According to his post, the Colorado opinion “…concludes that a lawyer should generally be allowed to look at metadata, unless the attorney knows or has reason to believe that the document contains privileged information.” The full text of the opinion is available here: Colorado Bar Association Ethics Opinion 119: Disclosure, Review, and Use of Metadata, Adopted May 17, 2008.

Be sure to read the entire post, which includes a very helpful breakdown (with links to the relevant opinions) of those states and bar associations that have held it is generally acceptable to look at metadata versus those who have held it’s generally unacceptable.

See also:
    ABA Site-tation: Mind Your Metadata: Don't Reveal Strategic Information Through Hidden Comments, Tracked Changes, and Document Properties
    LTRC Presentation: Metadata (and other things that go bump in the night)

• The 2008 Litigation and Courtroom Technology report observed a major increase in the availability of litigation support software at respondents’ firms. Availability jumped to 58% in the 2008 survey from 32% in the 2007 survey.  Among the brand names reported were Summation (51%), LiveNote (31%) and CaseMap (29%).

• In the 2008 Litigation and Courtroom Technology report, more than a third of 2008 respondents report having had training in courtroom technologies (36%), up from 23% in the 2007 survey.  Likewise, almost three-fourths of respondents have received court documents electronically (72%, up from 60% in the 2007 survey).
  
  
• According to the 2008 Web and Communication report there was a 15% increase in the use of videoconferencing with more than half (55%) of respondents reporting having used videoconferencing, up from 40% in the 2007 survey.
  
  
• More than four-fifths (83%) of respondents’ firms have websites in the 2008 Web and Communication report, up from 73% in the 2007 survey. Meanwhile, the percentage of large law firms reported to have blogs has doubled to 17% from 8% in the 2007 survey.