David Bilinsky, the Practice Management Advisor for the Law Society of British Columbia, writes about his continuing experiences in switching from PC to Mac in I'm a Mac - Day 10 on his blog Thoughtful Legal Management.

Nerino Petro of the State Bar of Wisconsin points to a helpful listing of 13 Free Backup Tools on his blog Compujurist.

On Reid My Blog!, Reid Trautz writes about some new competition for the iPhone: Blackberry Storm to Take on Apple iPhone

Jim Calloway of the Oklahoma Bar Association points out the continuing importance of Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User on his blog Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog.

Want to stay up to date on what practice management advisors around the web are writing? Add our PMA Pipe to your favorite RSS feed reader.

Over the past few weeks, productivity blog Lifehacker has asked its readers to list their favorite mice and keyboards. From trackballs to tablets, from old-fashioned mechanical keyboards to sleek low-profile models, Lifehacker's editors culled the replies and assembled reviews of their readers' six favorite keyboards and ten favorite mice. Read about each of the choices here:

Mouse: the Best Mouse You've Ever Had (Lifehacker)
Keyboards: The Best Keyboard You've Ever Typed On (Lifehacker)

Managing Online Research with Firefox and Internet Explorer 7's Multiple Tab Bookmarking Features

Fire(fox) Up Your Browser!

One way to minimize your frustration and maximize your results is to create your own search engine. With tools like Google Custom Search and Rollyo, building your own search engine is as easy as picking out the websites you’d like it to search. The custom search engines are ideal for users who have a specific interest area to which they’d like to confine their searches. For example, in October of last year the LTRC built the Legal Technology Web Search tool – a search engine that looks exclusively at legal technology sites. You can try out the search engine on the LTRC home page or you can even add it to your iGoogle page.

Ready to learn more about custom search engines? Jim Calloway and Courtney Kennaday address the topic in some detail in their article for the September 2008 GP Solo Technology eReport Newsletter: Build Your Own Search Engine.

Read the full post at her blog - The Last Word - for a good example of one system in particular you may not have thought to backup.

More on disaster preparedness:
     ABA Site-tation: Hurricane Season Again: Do You Have a Disaster Plan?

The need for secure electronic transmissions is an issue that goes well beyond the limits of this statute and beyond Nevada. According to the 2008 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report, nearly 80% of attorneys admit to sending confidential information to their clients once or more per week via email. With such a significant amount of confidential data being passed through electronic communications, security should be a concern for all attorneys.

Read more:
     Nevada Deadline on E-Mail Encryption Looming, Bottom Line
     FYI: Playing it Safe With Encryption, ABA LTRC

Instructions on using the ClearType Tuner to adjust ClearType display settings

Follow the link above to an online “tuner” Microsoft provides with which you can adjust the way ClearType displays text in Vista, XP, and Office 2007 programs.

Instructions on turning ClearType on/off in Windows Vista (click on the “How do I get ClearType?” heading)

ClearType is turned on by default in Windows Vista.  Follow the instructions linked above to turn ClearType on or off.  Turning ClearType off or on in the Vista system settings should also determine whether ClearType is used in individual Microsoft Office programs.

Instructions on turning ClearType on/off in Windows XP (click on the “How to Enable ClearType” heading) 

ClearType is turned off by default in Windows XP.  Follow the instructions linked above to turn ClearType on or off.  Turning ClearType on or off in XP does not affect whether ClearType is used in individual Microsoft Office programs.

Instructions on turning ClearType on/off in Internet Explorer 7 

ClearType is turned on by default in IE 7.  Follow the instructions linked above to turn ClearType on or off.  

Instructions on turning ClearType on/off in Office 2007 programs (click on the “Method 2: Turn off ClearType fonts” heading)

ClearType is turned on by default in Office 2007 programs.  Follow the instructions linked above to turn ClearType on or off.  Turning ClearType on or off in one Office 2007 program should affect whether ClearType is on or off in all Office 2007 programs.

Instructions on how to set the default font in Word 2007

The default font in Word 2007 is Calibri, a new font designed to be used with ClearType.  Some users think Calibri looks worse than other fonts once ClearType is turned off.  Follow the instructions linked to above to change Word 2007’s default font, such as to a more typical font such as Arial or Times New Roman.

Instructions on how to set the default font in Outlook 2007

The default font in Outlook 2007 for messages is Calibri, a new font designed to be used with ClearType.  Some users think Calibri looks worse than other fonts once ClearType is turned off.  Follow the instructions linked to above to change Word 2007’s default font, such as to a more typical font such as Arial or Times New Roman.  However, the default font for the user interface in Outlook seems to be the font Segoe, another font apparently designed to be used with ClearType on.  There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to change the user interface font from Segoe, other than removing the Segoe font from Window’s font folder (be sure to contact your IT person first if you decide to try to change the user interface font from Segoe).

Here are some guides and helpful tips on getting your firm ready for the worst:

     It Could Happen to You: Disaster Preparedness (ABA Site-tation)
     Hurricane Katrina Disaster Resources (ABA)
     Master Your Disasters (Dennis Kennedy, ABA Journal)
     Preparing for a Disaster (Rodney Dowell, Massachusetts LOMAP)
     Disaster and Emergency Preparedness (South Carolina Bar)

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.

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.]]> Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:04:36 0000

• 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%).

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

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.

• 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)

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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.

• 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

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.

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

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)

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.

• 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.

With Google Sites, individuals, companies, and organizations can quickly and easily set up websites to disseminate information or to facilitate collaboration. The websites may be limited to a company, team, or other small group, or they may be opened to the public. The pages themselves are easily edited through a user-friendly graphical interface that allows the user to change and insert text, embed video and pictures, add attachments, or directly link in documents created in other Google applications. Users may also embed a wide variety of “gadgets” into their pages, ranging from RSS feeds to calendars to games.

While Google Sites was initially a part of the Google Apps suite available only to Google Apps customers, Google announced last week that it was opening Google Sites to anyone and everyone starting immediately. You can get started with your own Site at the Google Sites web page or you can learn more on Google’s official Google Sites Blog.

Improved Blawg Directory Search

The ABAJournal.com has enhanced its search engine! Powered by legal information powerhouse Justia.com, this robust search engine lets you quickly search not only the ABAJournal news and magazine, but hundreds of legal blog postings with a single click. After running a search simply look behind the "BlawgResults" tab to see keyword matches to hundreds of blog postings from the blogs listed on the ABA Journal Blawg Directory.  The Advanced Search options let you specify whether to search the ABA Journal Daily News, the ABA Journal magazine (5 years of free online archives), the Blawg Directory, and/or the blog posts to the blogs in the directory with date ranges. Don't see your (favorite) legal blog? Just submit it to the ABAJournal (http://www.abajournal.com/blawgs/submit):

Other Resources

It’s always gratifying, therefore, to read about an online persona that’s helped rather than harmed a young attorney. Carla DeVelder of the Career & Professional Development Blog shares the story of a law student who parlayed her participation in a Facebook alumni group into a job offer at a fellow alum’s law firm. Carla’s post also includes a number of helpful tips for managing your online persona.

See also:
   ABA Site-tation: Online reputation management

This should also serve as further notice to Mac users - particularly those in the legal profession or others who regularly handle sensitive and privileged information: as Apple continues to swallow up new market share, security threats including bug exploits, viruses, and Trojan horses are likely to become more prevalent. Establishing good, vigilant security practices now while the threat remains relatively low will serve to insulate Mac users in the future when and if the full host of Internet ne’er-do-wells turn their attention to OS X.

Past ABA Site-tation posts on Mac Security:
   Mac Users: Do You Need Antivirus Software?
   Downside to popularity - Mac Viruses

One of the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center’s longest running features is designed to help legal professionals find these research resources: ABA Lawlink: The Legal Research Jumpstation. This legal research portal features links to research tools in categories ranging from federal resources to legal associations to continuing legal education and much, much more.

Notice one of your favorite resources is missing? Just use the Lawlink suggestion form or send an email to the LTRC staff with your preferred sites, and we will consider them for inclusion on ABA Lawlink.

• The 2008 survey observed a significant migration of respondents’ use of desktop computers to laptops.  Use of laptop computers jumped to 83% in the 2008 survey from 69% in the 2007 survey for solo respondents and to 73% from 59% for respondents from firms of 2 to 9 attorneys.

1. File Server availability has increased in this year’s survey to 85% from 73% in 2007.  This figure was nearly doubled for solo respondents, to 51% from 28%. Dell (59%) and HP/Compaq (17%) were the most-named brands, with 19% using custom servers. 

• Proceed with caution!  While only eight percent of respondents report that their firms have experienced a security breach, 47% report that their law firm technology has been infected with a virus, spyware or malware.  However, no significant business disruption or loss resulted from the infection for 53% perhaps due to diligent backup practices; more than four-fifths (82%) of respondents report that their firm has a backup strategy.

Arnold presents an interesting challenge for attorneys who travel internationally: how do you safeguard the sensitive client and firm data on your laptop when a security person, sans any reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, can investigate your files? The easiest and best solution is simply to avoid placing sensitive or confidential information on your laptop. Such information can be stored on secure servers at an attorney’s main office and accessed remotely via VPN, or encrypted and stored remotely with an online backup vendor. If internet access will be unavailable on your trip or you otherwise require local copies of your sensitive information, consider encrypting the data and perhaps also relocating it to a storage device such as a USB thumb drive or CD-R. While such methods won’t guarantee you privacy, they may reduce the likelihood that your client’s confidential information will be revealed in a casual search of your laptop.

Nominees are broken down into nearly 70 categories with websites representing the majority of nominees. Some of this year’s nominees include Eyes on Darfur (Activism Category), HowStuffWorks (Best Copy/Writing), Apple (Best Use of Video or Moving Image), Yahoo! Sports (Sports Category), and the ABA Journal website (Law Category).

The Webby Awards’ website offers a full list of nominees (as well as nominees and winners from the past 11 years). As a research and reference tool, the list of former winners and nominees offers a great directory of high quality websites by category. If you’d like to vote for your favorite Webby Award nominee, you can visit the public voting page now.

- The range of providers who are using technology to provide legal services through the Internet and the scope of those services.

- The benefits and detriments that have resulted from the use of technology to provide legal services over the Internet.

- Emerging trends and possible future directions of technology providing legal services via the Internet; and 

- The policies and authorities (rules, statutes, case law, ethics opinions, etc.) that have emerged to govern the use of technology for the delivery of legal services and whether those policies are consistent with the need to balance consumer protection with access to affordable legal services and justice.

The hearings will be held as follows:

- May 9, 2008, Noon to 3:00 PM, in conjunction with the Equal Justice Conference, Hilton Minneapolis, 1001 Marquette Ave South, Minneapolis, MN 55403;

- Friday, August 8, 2008, hotel TBD, in conjunction with the ABA Annual Meeting in New York. 

- Virtual Hearing, Date to be announced.

Those interested in appearing and/or submitting materials should contact Janice Jones at 312/988-5787, janicejones@staff.abanet.org. Further details and on-going hearing archives are posted at http://www.abanet.org/legalservices/delivery/techhearings.html

Virtual Help: An Outsourcing Relationship with a Virtual Assistant Can Complete Your Team – An ABA Law Practice Management Article

Virtual Workers Cut Overhead at Law Firm - A Law Technology News article (Subscription required).

The Virtual Lawyer - Leveraging Your Time - Part 2 – by Roger Glovsky, author of The Virtual Lawyer blog

Virtual Law Clerks Take Over the World! – By Enrico Schaefer, author of The Greatest American Lawyer blog 

Virtual Paralegal/Clerk Update – By Enrico Schaefer, author of The Greatest American Lawyer blog

Virtual Paralegal Services™ ("VPS")

The Virtual Legal Assistant

Virtual Legal Assistant

S.T.A.R. Professional Services

RedRoller, allows you to compare several carriers and ship with any of them from a single location.  You can setup a free RedRoller account, import your address book and add a payment method.  RedRoller also lets you customize your shipments with your preferences, set package details and delivery options.  If you frequently ship similar types of packages or to the same location, these packages and locations can be tagged for quick shipments. This is a good option if you want to do a rate check but appreciate the time savings of being able to ship to multiple carriers from a single site.

ShipGooder compares shipping rates for local, regional and national courier companies and provides a link to each carrier’s website to complete shipping.  This is great if you already have accounts setup with various carriers but just want to do a quick rate check. You can display shipping rates by delivery dates or carrier/courier. Additionally, Ship Gooder will allow you to print your comparison results, e-mail the results to someone or quickly download the information to a spreadsheet.

As phishing attempts grow more sophisticated, it is becoming difficult to distinguish between legitimate and dangerous emails. One of the latest tricks has been dubbed “spear phishing,” and it refers to phishing attempts that are carefully crafted and targeted at particular individuals or groups rather than mass-mailed to a general audience.

David Bilinsky, the Practice Management Advisor and staff lawyer for the Law Society of British Columbia, recently blogged about one such spear-phishing attack involving the legal community. In that case, phishers sent emails to executives that purported to be US federal court subpoenas. When the executives clicked a link within the “subpoena,” their computers were infected with malware that gathered personal information including passwords and credit card numbers.

What can you do? Commercial anti-virus and anti-spam software may help reduce your risk to some extent, but the number one safeguard is caution. Be wary of emails from senders you don’t know. Review emails carefully for suspicious misspellings or obvious errors, and avoid clicking links or downloading files if you aren’t confident that they’re safe.

For example, an attorney considering the purchase of a Tablet PC can do a simple search on YouTube for “tablet pc review” and turn up lengthy reviews for products including the Fujitsu Stylistic ST5112, the HP TC4400, or the Motion Computing LE1700. An attorney considering a new Smartphone could watch hands on reviews of the iPhone, the BlackBerry Pearl, or the HTC Kaiser. Indeed, a simple search for most any mainstream product will turn up a review – and often more than one.

Beyond product reviews, YouTube can also serve as a helpful educational tool. Lawyers can use videos such as this overview of a technologically advanced courtroom or this Cardozo Cyberlaw Society e-discovery lecture to help them grasp technology concepts that may seem overly complicated or inaccessible in print.

Know of an especially useful YouTube video we should highlight? Let us know!

Typically, if a domain owner hasn’t set up a sub-domain, it isn’t accessible; a user trying to access a non-existent sub-domain will simply receive an error message. According to TechCrunch, however, popular domain registrar and web host NetworkSolutions is filling their customer’s unused sub-domains (that is, any sub-domain the customer hasn’t explicitly set up) with pages full of advertising links. NetworkSolutions' customers experiencing this issue may be surprised to learn that they agreed to allow NetworkSolutions to do just that via their service agreement. Schedule A, Section 11 provides:

You acknowledge and agree that any or all domain names that are (i) registered with Network Solutions, (ii) hosted on a Network Solutions domain name server, and (iii) do not otherwise resolve to an active Web site, may resolve to an "under construction" or similar temporary Web page ("Under Construction Page"), and that Network Solutions may place on any such Under Construction Page promotions and advertisements for, and links to, Network Solutions' Web site, Network Solutions product and service offerings, third-party Web sites, third-party product and service offerings, and/or Internet search engines.

Thankfully, NetworkSolutions allows its customers to “opt-out” of these advertisements via a check box in their account settings. With the variety of advertising restrictions placed upon attorneys by their respective codes of professional responsibility, it is probably advisable for them to do so. Likewise, attorneys using hosts other than NetworkSolutions should check to see if their host has a similar policy – and a similar opt-out function.

In that vein, the blog MacLitigator has published a detailed report (with screenshots!) of a piece of software called Journler that provides much of the same functionality as the well-known Windows software Casemap. MacLitigator explores the benefits and the limitations of Journler, the former including its non-proprietary data files and modest ($34.95) cost and the latter including the absence of transcript management or Bates stamping.

And if you’re interested in Macs in the law office, check out some of our other recent Site-tation posts:

Mac Users: Do You Need Antivirus Software?
Downside to popularity – Mac Viruses

The readily available drives may, however, present a significant security threat for any firm or business whose employees regularly handle sensitive information. It isn’t difficult to imagine an attorney loading a flash drive with client files and then accidentally dropping the drive – and the client’s confidential information – on the train, nor would it be difficult at all for an unscrupulous employee or contractor to plug a flash drive into a firm computer and copy over vital, confidential data without detection.

How do you balance the usefulness of such flash drives with their potential security risk? ComputerWorld reports one solution: Washington State’s Division of Child Support banned its employees from using their own personal flash drives, and instead issued employees state-owned SanDisk Cruzer drives with built in encryption and password protection. This move not only protects sensitive information contained on the drives in the event they’re misplaced or stolen, but also helps prevent unauthorized flash drives being used to break the department’s security.

For more on flash drives, read our FYI: Computing on the Go: Thumb Drives.

See also: ABA Site-tation: Downside to popularity - Mac Viruses

ABA TECHSHOW BUZZ

Monica Bay's The Common Scold:
LIVE FROM CHICAGO, ABA TECHSHOW

Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog:
ABA TECHSHOW 2008 Wrap Up
Law Practice Tips From ABA TECHSHOW 2008
More Law Practice Tips from ABA TECHSHOW 2008

Reid My Blog:
ABA Techshow 2008 Keynote Discusses Privacy Issues

Kevin O'Keefe's Real Lawyers Have Blogs:
Back in Seattle from ABA TechShow
Other TECHSHOW Posts

Dennis Kennedy:
I am the Worst Liveblogger Ever: A Report from ABA TECHSHOW 2008

TechnoLawyer Blog:
ABA TECHSHOW 2008: Eliminating the Paper Chase: From Boxes to Bytes (Paperless Office Track)

See any other good TECHSHOW coverage that we've missed? Let us know!

ADDED:

Dominic Jaar's Wines and Information Management Blog:
Various live reports from ABA TECHSHOW 2008

Information Week: Google's JotSpot Wiki Reborn As Google Sites

Webware: Don't call it a wiki: Google Sites finally launches

Zdnet: Google Sites - spoiled by usability issues

Webware: Google Sites: Not so pretty in the morning

ABA Site-tation: Building a Web Site that Works

ABA LTRC Website: Online Collaboration with Basecamp

ABA Site-tation: Web Design and Web 2.0

ABA LTRC  Presentation (PDF file): Managing Information Overload

Also announced was the release of the iPhone SDK – a toolkit that will allow software developers to write programs specifically for the iPhone. iPhone owners will then be able to use the iTunes App Store to load third-party software directly onto their phones, something that had previously required warranty-voiding hacks and elaborate workarounds.

Previously on ABA Site-tation:

- Apple's iPhone: Proceed with Caution
- Of iPhones and Early Adopters

• Up to 142,800 digital photos
• Up to 125,000 songs (MP3)
• Up to 12,500 songs (uncompressed CD quality)
• Up to 38 hours of Digital Video (DV)
• Up to 220 hours of DVD quality video
• Up to 60 hours of HD video

LaCie 500 GB Desktop Hard Disk - $129.00 at Abt Electronics

Maxtor OneTouch 4 500GB External Hard Drive - $169.99 at Circuit City.com

Seagate - FreeAgent Pro 500GB External Hard Drive - $119.99 at Best Buy

Western Digital MyBook Essential 500GB External Hard Drive - $129 at TigerDirect.com

FYI: Data Backup

The Importance of Having Backups

10 Things You Should Know About Automated Backup Programs

For a convenient starting point to determining what legal obligations you may have in the event of such a data breach, check out the Data Breach Notification Laws map created by CSOonline. Simply click on your state, or any state you’re curious about, for a brief summary of their current laws regarding data breach notification. If the state has applicable legislation, you can click on the summary for a link to the full text.

Microsoft Office Online: 
Add names to the Junk E-mail Filter Lists
and

Add a name to your Safe Senders or Safe Recipients List

Creating an e-mail whitelist in Hotmail involves adding the desired e-mail addresses or domains to a “Safe List.”

         See: 
         Msn.com: 
         Create a Safe List for incoming messages

Gmail Help Center:
Legitimate mail is marked as spam

and
Mail from contacts is marked as spam

Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog: 
Spam Filter Traps Law Firm: You Can Avoid This Trap

“…at home, where printers are slow, noisy and devour expensive ink cartridges, people are more cautious about hitting the “print” button. What little paper comes into the home – receipts, bills, innovations – can be scanned and then shredded. Filing cabinets can be emptied, the data kept, the paper gone.”

Read the whole article for some examples of how others have cut paper from their homes, and for some interesting graphics on the paperless home and on global trends in paper reduction.

Have you ever received a “low disk space” message while using your computer, and puzzled over figuring out just what could be taking up so much space on your hard drive?  There are several programs available that analyze the contents of your hard drive and give you a visual representation of hard drive space usage.

For example WinDirStat, a free program for Windows computers, displays the percentage of your hard drive space used by files on your computer broken down by folders/directories and file types.  It also displays a visual representation of your hard drive space with rectangles representing the different files on your hard drive.  The larger the file, the larger the rectangle, and the color of the rectangles corresponds to file types.  These various displays make it easy to pick out and examine large files or groups of files that may be individually small but which take up a lot of hard drive space when combined, like mp3s and video files.  You may discover large files you may not need, such as large temporary files left behind by various software programs which can often be deleted (research the files first to determine whether you need them before deleting them in order to avoid software problems).

The hard drive analysis features offered by programs such as WinDirStat can come in handy when you are deciding what files you would like to leave on your computer and what files can be backed up and deleted when you begin to run out of hard drive space, or if you want to proactively manage your hard drive to avoid running out of space.  This Lifehacker article discusses WinDirStat and other useful hard drive analysis programs available for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers.

First, Consumerist relays the story of a Beaner’s Coffee customer that contacted the company’s customer service to inquire when and if the company would be eliminating partially hydrogenated vegetable oils – a source of much feared trans fats – from its product lines. While the response the consumer received from the company’s Vice President of Operations was harmless enough, the trail of emails the VP accidentally included with the response featured rather embarrassing advice from the Director of Training to “sidestep the question” because he felt the company would be “hopelessly mired in partially hydrogenated oils for a while.”

A far bigger and potentially costly e-mail gaffe came from an attorney at Pepper Hamilton in Philadelphia. The attorney, who was among those representing pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly in settlement negotiations with the U.S. Government over alleged advertising irregularities, accidentally mis-addressed an e-mail containing detailed information on the negotiations. Rather than sending the e-mail to a colleague at Sidley Austin (who was also representing Eli Lilly), the attorney sent the e-mail to a reporter at the New York Times who shared the same last name. Unsurprisingly, the New York Times ran an article shortly thereafter exposing the negotiations and greatly embarrassing both Eli Lilly and its legal representation.

The lessons to be learned are obvious: though e-mail is easy to use, attorneys (and others) must apply just as much scrutiny and care – if not more – to its use than they would any other communication tool. Addresses should be verified before sending, content should be checked for sensitive client or case information, and care must be taken to avoid inadvertently including files or e-mail trails that contain privileged or otherwise sensitive information. Failure to do so could be embarrassing and harmful to both your clients and your career.

UPDATE: The ABA Journal is covering the Pepper Hamilton story as well. In an update posted this afternoon, the Journal links to a follow up on the Drug and Device Law Blog which reports that, while the author of the NY Times piece did indeed receive the misdirected e-mail, he was independently aware of the settlement talks and used a different source for the details mentioned in his article.

• A current Listing of States That Have Enacted E-Discovery Rules
• Local Rules, Forms and Guidelines of United States District Courts Addressing E-Discovery Issues
• A link to "Managing Discovery of Electronic Information: A Pocket Guide for Judges" published by The Federal Judicial Center.

FYI: Electronic Discovery

Charting a Course for Discovery

eDiscovery Glossary of Terms

The Federal Judicial Center
Created by Congress in 1967, the Federal Judicial Center is the educational and research agency for the federal courts.

How can you protect yourself from drop-catching? Simple: don’t let your domain expire. Know your expiration date and make sure you renew well before that date. Consider using auto-renewal – a feature most domain registrars offer – to ensure that your domain is automatically re-registered in your name each year. And if you really want to protect your domain, go long term on your registration: some domain registrars will allow you to register your domain for ten or more years at once, and they often offer significant discounts to those who do so.

And while you're thinking about domain protection, also give some thought to registering other reasonable permutations of your domain name. For example, if you owned genericlawfirm.com, you might want to register genericlawfirm.net, genericlaw.com, and so forth. Pre-emptively registering these domains prevents squatters from purchasing them and co-opting your hard earned brand capital.

The issue was pushed into the spotlight recently when it emerged that a leading domain registrar – Network Solutions – had adopted a policy of temporarily registering all domains entered into the “Find A Domain” box on their web page. While Network Solutions claims that the policy was meant to protect users from front-running by guaranteeing that the domain would remain available for several days after they initially checked it, others accused Network Solutions of engaging in front-running themselves: due to the temporary hold on the domain name, customers had no choice but to register their domain through Network Solutions or risk losing it to another front-runner when the temporary hold was removed.

Since the controversy erupted, Network Solutions has taken steps to improve the temporary hold process to prevent front-runners from spotting the domains being held. Nevertheless, if you’re in the market for a domain name, this should serve as a cautionary tale. Pick out your registrar before you start searching for domain availability, and when you find the domain you want, register it immediately.

For more on domains and starting a web site in general, check our FYI: Starting a Website.

If you find yourself in that position, there’s some hope: The Wayback Machine, run by the Internet Archive, is an archive of more than 85 billion web pages dating back as far as 1996. The pages are gathered by automated computer programs that wander around the web and preserve “snapshots” of sites on the Internet Archive’s servers (albeit imperfectly – images are often missing and not everything is saved). Whether you’re trying to find an old page you had bookmarked, a snapshot of a news site from a particular day in the past, or if you’re just curious to see what Yahoo looked like in 1996, there’s a good chance The Wayback Machine has saved it.

If the concept of The Wayback Machine has you thinking about evidentiary rules and intellectual property, you aren’t alone: The Wayback Machine has been involved in a few legal scuffles, mostly settled out of court, but makes a policy of removing content from their archives and allowing web site developers to protect their content against archiving. It remains unclear whether their archived web sites are admissible as evidence in court.

FYI: Starting a Website

FYI: Hiring a Freelancer or Consultant

FYI: Web Accessibility

Accessible Web Sites and the ADA

The Lawyer's Guide to Marketing on the Internet, Third Edition

Inspiring Law Firm Web Design and Marketing: 2007 WebAwards

MacSpeech, developer of the popular Mac voice recognition software iListen, licensed Dragon NaturallySpeaking from its Windows developer Nuance Communications and ported it over to the Mac. NaturallySpeaking is the top selling Windows speech recognition software and by far the most popular voice recognition software in use by respondents to the 2007 ABA Legal Technology Resource Center Technology Survey.

MacSpeech will be selling the Mac version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking for $199, but registered users of iListen can get it for $99 (or just $29 if they purchased iListen in 2008).

Dennemey and Co. Intellectual Property Management Software

http://www.dennemeyer.com/DIAMS-XErelease3/

Trademark Web Services

http://www.tmwebservices.com/

AspenGrove IP Workflow

http://www.ipworkflow.com/ or http://www.aspengrove.net/

First to File

http://www.firsttofile.com/

FoundationIP - a web-based intellectual property management system for attorney firms and corporations.

http://www.cpaglobal.com/software/foundationip

Intellectual Property Software Resources - http://www.ipmenu.com/ipsoftware.htm

Findlaw Software Guide - For a list of IP software products with descriptions:

http://marketcenter.findlaw.com/scripts/browse/5/365/378/NO

PatPDF

Downloads patents from the US Patent and Trademark Office, and converts them to PDF.

http://www.patentpapers.com/

Simulation Software for the USPTO Registration Examination.

http://www.regnow.com/softsell/nph-softsell.cgi?item=13515-3

ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law

http://www.abanet.org/intelprop/home.html

Google Patent Search
http://www.google.com/patents

Thankfully, several rating systems -- such as Energy Star and LEED -- have been developed to identify truly green products. If a new computer is in your future, one such rating system might be of use: the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool ("EPEAT"). EPEAT, which was recently adopted by executive order of the White House for all federal agencies, rates desktops, laptops, monitors, and integrated systems (e.g. the iMac) as bronze, silver, or gold based on their compliance with 23 mandatory criteria and 28 optional criteria. You can use their convenient search tool to check your current equipment or to look for something new that fits your needs.

If you'd like to learn more about taking your law firm green, check out our FYI: Going Green.

Tech Greats for '08
Legal technology consultant and attorney Dennis Kennedy writes about tech purchasing for 2008 in the January issue of the ABA Journal. The article covers six technology investments Kennedy thinks attorneys should be considering this year.

TechnoLawyer's 2008 Predictions
From head TechnoLawyer Neil Squillante, these predictions published on the TechnoLawyer Blog cover several areas of legal technology including PDF and web applications.

Technology in 2008
While not focused specifically on legal technology, the Economist's article makes three broad predictions about how technology - particularly internet technology - will evolve in 2008.]]> Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:15:38 0000

What do "de-duplication", "load file", and "hashing” have in common?  They are just a few of the terms you'll have to become familiar with when facing ediscovery.  The 2007 Socha/Gelbmann EDD Survey, released in August, pronounced that EDD (Electronic Data Discovery) is now a $2 billion business -- that will double by 2009.  Whether you are a seasoned litigator or a new litigation paralegal, you’ve probably noticed that electronic discovery has a language all its own. While considering your EDD options and reviewing the incredible volume of information and offerings, a list of key terms is helpful.  Several organizations have created a glossary of popular terms.  Because the vocabulary is constantly expanding each provider has some unique terms, remarkably free of vendor hype.  Here are a few that I’ve found helpful during my own research;

Glossary of e-Discovery Terms by Jamie B. Schwartz

From an article in E-Discovery, a special publication of the ABA Section of Litigation

The Tech Side of E-Discovery - Understanding Electronically Stored Information by Robert L. Kelly

From the ABA Section of Business Law, Business Law Today, Volume 17, Number 1 September/October 2007

The Sedona Conference® Glossary: E-Discovery and Digital Information Management (Second Edition).
A downloadable PDF and comprehensive guide from The Sedona Conference (TSC), an educational institute dedicated to the advancement of law and policy in the areas of antitrust law, complex litigation and intellectual property rights.

Working With Automated Litigation Support - A Plain Language Glossary

Provided by Commonwealth Legal, Canada’s first national, full-service litigation document management company.

Tape 101 - The Basics of Tape Backup Media

Provided by eMag, a 41 year old former tape manufacturer and Electronic Discovery company specializing in accessing data from a variety of archived sources.

e-Discovery and Metadata Definitions

Provided by Lexbe.com is a web-based case analysis and document management application.

Prepare for E-Discovery in Four Easy Steps - Identify the Who, What, Where, and When

By Sean Flynn

An article from the ABA Section of Litigation

Additional Resources from the LTRC:

• FYI: Electronic Discovery
  
• The Uniform Law Commission Approves the Uniform Rules Relating to Discovery of Electronically Stored Information
  
• Free E-mail Accounts and Electronic Discovery
  
• FRCP changed re: Electronic Discovery
  

]]> Wed, 09 Jan 2008 09:05:37 0000 One of the features that has made YouTube so successful is the ability to spread videos virally by embedding them in web sites, blogs, and intranet pages. This embedding requires little more than a few clicks or cutting and pasting a snippet of code, and the resulting videos are viewable by nearly all users without the need for special software.

Now Google (which happens to own YouTube) is bringing the same feature to Google Docs, allowing users to embed their Google Presentations exactly as one would embed a YouTube video. This feature may be an attractive alternative for attorneys who are used to sharing clumsy PowerPoint slides by email or converting their presentations to PDF to upload to the web.

For more information - and a demonstration of an embedded presentation - visit the Official Google Docs Blog.]]> Mon, 07 Jan 2008 10:25:06 0000 For attorneys without a dedicated technology staff, there often comes a time when their technology needs either outpace their know-how or simply can't be addressed due to a busy schedule. To fill the need, attorneys instead turn to trained professional consultants and freelancers, many of whom specialize in assisting law firms with their particular technology needs. To help attorneys navigate the sometimes intimidating process of selecting and working with such specialists, the LTRC staff has prepared a new FYI on the topic:

FYI: Hiring a Freelancer or Consultant

]]> Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:52:04 0000 Last January, Sarah Palmer wrote about the web application Gabbly. Gabbly allows multiple users to view the same web page, each from their own computer, and chat about the content in a specialized instant message ("IM") style window. In a profession that increasingly relies on collaboration over the web, social apps like Gabbly (as well as stand-alone apps like AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger) can prove to be valuable--if unexpected--resources.

Read Sarah's original post here: ABA Site-tation: Gabbly - everyone's on the same page (01/29/07)

]]> Fri, 04 Jan 2008 08:40:19 0000 The International Consumer Electronics Show ("CES") is less than a week away. Running from January 7th through January 10th in Las Vegas, the convention will feature 2,700 exhibitors filling 1.7 million square feet of exhibit space. Many companies use CES as an opportunity to unveil new products or to showcase emerging technologies. Keynote speakers include Microsoft's Bill Gates, Comcast's Brian Roberts, Intel's Paul Otellini, and General Motors' Rick Wagoner.

For a more detailed preview of this year's convention, check out Forbes.com's CES Preview.

]]> Wed, 02 Jan 2008 10:33:05 0000 InformationWeek relays some grim news on the data security front: according to the Identity Theft Resource Center (a consumer rights advocacy group), there were 443 publicized data breaches in 2007 - up from 315 in 2006. The 443 breaches exposed around 127 million data records (94 million from the infamous T.J. Maxx breach alone) versus just 20 million records in 2006. Just 13 of the 443 breaches involve encrypted data. While the study attributes some of the increase to better reporting of data breaches, the overall results make it clear that data security is an ongoing concern for any business that handles sensitive customer or client information.

For information on securing your valuable client and firm data, check out these resources from the LTRC:

• FYI: Computer and Network Security: Selected Resources
• FYI: Playing it Safe With Encryption
• FYI: Security on the Go
• Security Issues When Preparing for Disasters

]]> Wed, 02 Jan 2008 11:15:21 0000

In October 2007  SC Magazine reported on what is believed to be the first professionally crafted malware targeted specifically to Mac OS X users. Though rare, Macs are not invulnerable to computer viruses and malware. Apple’s increasing market share may have drawn the attention of hackers and script kiddies, as well as new buyers.  TWICE (This Week in Consumer Electronics) reviewed the findings of Gartner and IDC, research firms that track the computer market. In October 2007 Gartner revealed that Apple computer shipments grew a tremendous 37.2 percent, placing them third behind HP and Dell.  IDC reported similar findings, placing Apple in the top five vendors for US PC shipments with growth of 15.9%. 

As far back as 2005 The Mac Observer reported the findings of the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report and predicted the following; "It is now clear that the Mac OS is increasingly becoming a target for the malicious activity that is more commonly associated with Microsoft and various Unix-based operating systems. Symantec believes that as the popularity of Apple's new platform continues to grow, so too will the number of attacks directed at it." The first virus developed specifically for a Mac was reported in 2006 by Sophos, an IT Security firm. During the same year Apple notified users that a small number of Video iPods were shipped carrying the Windows RavMonE.exe virus.

Intego, a developer of Internet security and privacy software for Macintosh, reported in October 2007 that identity thieves used porn video lures to deliver malware to Mac OS X users. This particular application, a Trojan horse, makes system changes that hijack some web requests, leading users to phishing web sites (for sites such as Ebay, PayPal some banks), or simply to web pages displaying ads for other pornographic web sites. In the case of the phishing web sites, users are led to believe they are on legitimate sites and enter a user name and password, a credit card, or an account number, which will then be stolen.

With the increasing popularity and awareness of Apple computers, there's greater interest in knocking Apple off the throne of perceived invincibility. Play it safe and devote some time to educating yourself about networking and security options for your Mac.  

Resources

Apple.com - Networking and Security
MacWorld Magazine - First Look: Trojan horse warning: What you need to know
About.com - Macintosh Viruses and Mac Virus Resources

Additional Resources

SecureMac - Started in February of 1999, this site is devoted to the security of your Macintosh computer and the programs or servers you run on it.

]]> Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:49:33 0000

End of the year holidays often mean gifts, gadgets, and lots of batteries to power those shiny new gadgets.  The proper disposal of batteries, whether rechargeable or non-rechargeable, has always represented something of a mystery: is it okay to put batteries in the garbage?  Can they be put into recycling bins along with other paper, plastic, and metal items?

To help solve this mystery, we’ve created a resource, FYI: Battery Disposal and Recycling, which details programs which can help you recycle your rechargeable and non-rechargeable batteries.  

For more technology equipment recycling and disposal tips, and for information on “greening” your law practice, also see the following resources:

FYI: How to Dispose of Your Mobile Phone

FYI: How to Dispose of Computer Equipment

FYI: Going Green

]]> Wed, 19 Dec 2007 12:20:10 0000 From the ABA TECHSHOW Blog (reposted with permission): 

Nominations are being accepted for the James I. Keane Memorial Award For Excellence in eLawyering.  The awardee will receive a free registration to ABA TECHSHOW 2008 and be recognized at a special luncheon. If you or anyone you know is involved in innovative delivery of legal services over the Web, please consider a nomination. Submissions are due by December 31, 2007. 

]]> Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:16:52 0000

Get some inspiration for your law firm’s web design and marketing strategies by checking out the legal category winners of the Web Marketing Association’s 2007 WebAwards.  

For more information on law firm websites and online marketing, see the following resources:

FYI: Starting a Website

The Lawyer's Guide to Marketing on the Internet, Third Edition

Thanks to the ALM Research Blog and the Law Marketing Blog for the tip!

]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:48:59 0000

If you’ve been dragging your feet on implementing a backup strategy, you aren’t alone. According to Macworld, “if Apple’s figures are correct, less than four percent of Mac users perform regular, automated backups”. Mac OS X (Leopard), the latest operating system upgrade for Apple computers, comes standard with a backup application called Time Machine that is nearly effortless.  Apple boasts during Time Machine setup that “Time Machine keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac.  It not only keeps a spare copy of every file, it remembers how your system looked, so you can revisit your Mac as it appeared in the past”.

In reviewing Time Machine, Macintosh News Network notes that “when a fresh drive is connected to the system, Time Machine brings up a prompt asking whether or not the drive will be used for backups. If the drive is formatted for Windows (FAT32 or NTFS), the drive must be reformatted before Time Machine will use it for backup. About the only extra detail required is choosing which volumes to exclude from the backup, such as a Boot Camp partition, or drives holding non-essential data…”

The first backup is a comprehensive one of everything on the drive.  This initial backup takes the longest so you might want to begin this process right before you go to bed or leave the office for the day.  After the initial backup, Time Machine performs incremental backups hourly, copying just the files that have changed since the previous backup.

If you are an Apple user, this tool will help to create and maintain a consistent backup program.  If you are thinking about making the leap to a Macintosh system, Time Machine gives you another strong reason to consider.

Resources:

Macworld - Leopard first looks: Time Machine

Macworld Magazine’s review of the Time Machine feature

Ross’ Great Truths About Data Backup

Attorney Ross Kodner discusses the importance of data backup

FYI: Data Backup
The ABA Legal Technology Resource Center presents a variety of backup options

]]> Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:06:11 0000 The ABA Law Practice Management Section is gearing up for the annual ABA TECHSHOW, the world's premier legal technology conference and expo. They've just updated the ABA TECHSHOW 2008 web site with full descriptions of this year's sessions. New tracks this year include Mac Track, Client Relationships, Going Green, and Large Firm/Corporate Counsel. There'll also be a complimentary luncheon and keynote as well as an After Dark Networking Bash.

ABA TECHSHOW 2008 will be held March 13-15, 2008 at the Hilton Chicago. Registration is open now (and discounted until 2/1/08).

]]> Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:06:14 0000 Law Technology News just unveiled a new feature: the Law Technology Now podcast. This monthly podcast, hosted by Law Technology News editor-in-chief Monica Bay, will feature interviews with legal technology experts on a variety of important issues facing the legal profession. The inaugural podcast features David Whelan, manager of legal information for the Law Society of Upper Canada (and former LTRC Director!), discussing the power of RSS feeds for tracking information.

Want to read more on RSS? Check out some of these resources from the LTRC:

FYI: RSS
No Mess with RSS by Catherine Sanders Reach

]]> Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:15:41 0000 Jim Calloway (Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips) and Sharon Nelson (Sensei Enterprises, Inc.) deliver more useful tech-related holiday gift ideas in the most recent edition of The Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology Podcast Series. The ideas range from practical (a personal luggage scale) to extravagant (an automated doughnut maker) with plenty in between. Prices and links for all of the products mentioned in the podcast can be found on the Law Technology Today web site.

More Holiday gift ideas:

ABA Site-tation: Tech Gifts: What Not to Buy
ABA Site-tation: Technology Giving for the Holidays

]]> Mon, 03 Dec 2007 10:19:56 0000 The ABA Journal has put together a collection of the 100 best Web sites by lawyers, for lawyers. The list includes a wide variety of legal blogs divided into categories such as Generally Speaking, JDs in Training, Gossip, and Lawyer's Toolkit, and Journal readers are encouraged to vote for their favorites in each category. The LTRC is particularly excited to point out that our blog, ABA Site-tation, is among the Top 100 blawgs and can be found in the Lawyer's Toolkit category.

So head over to the Journal's site and vote for your favorite blawgs, including ABA Site-tation!

]]> Wed, 28 Nov 2007 12:58:38 0000 Custom ringtones are a popular (if sometimes annoying) feature of modern cell phones. By setting custom ringtones for different callers – perhaps the theme to Leave it to Beaver for your kid brother, or Don’t Fear the Reaper for the boss that only seems to call to ask you to work over the weekend – you know exactly who is calling and how important the call is likely to be the moment the ringer starts. With a little bit of know how, you can now do the same thing for your email.

Two guides from InspectMyGadget.com and Lifehacker provide simple, illustrated directions to setting up custom alert sounds in Outlook, Mail (OS X), and Thunderbird. The guides also provide a number of suggestions on how to use these alerts, such as warning you when an important client or supervisor emails you, alerting you when emails flagged high priority are received, or differentiating emails originating from inside or outside of your company.

And of course, try to be considerate about the noise: the last thing your coworkers want to hear is a blaring trumpet every five minutes as a new email hits your box. Custom alerts will be more useful, and more workplace-friendly, if they’re applied only to very important incoming emails.

]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2007 11:44:52 0000 The Holiday shopping season in full swing and buying guides and gift ideas seem to be everywhere you look. Between the LTRC, Engadget, CNN, and numerous other web sites, there is no shortage of gift suggestions. With that in mind, ZDNet offers a slightly different take on the holiday gift guide: Holiday tech gifts not to buy.

Whatever you do decide to buy, if you’re shopping online make sure you’re protecting yourself: eWeek offers a guide to The Grinches of Online Holiday Shopping including poor return policies, hidden costs, and bait and switch sales tactics.

]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2007 13:52:08 0000 Even the most technically oriented individual will sometimes feel like technology news is written in a foreign language -- Phishing? Wiki? HTML? RSS? Metadata? Cookies? Java? A year ago on Site-tation, Laura Ikens wrote about several useful resources for helping translate techno-jargon. Read it here:

Site-tation: What Does THAT Mean?

]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:23:59 0000

The legal research company Fastcase and the non-profit organization Public.Resource.Org are discussing plans to make an archive of federal case law available for free online starting in 2008, according to this press release.  The organizations plan to include all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754 in the archive, with the possibility of later adding additional materials such as federal district court cases.  The cases, as public domain materials, will be “usable by anyone for any purpose.”  The cases will be marked with a newly designed Creative Commons mark, CC-Ø, to make it clear that there are no copyrights or other rights restricting use of the cases.  Wiki technology will be used to allow researchers to “add summaries, classifications, keywords, alternate numbering systems for citation purposes, and ratings or “diggs” on opinions.”

Carl Malamud, co-founder of Public.Resource.Org, has a history of working to make government information freely accessible online.  He helped pioneer the free version of the SEC’s EDGAR online database, and helped motivate the creation of the free online patent and trademark databases available on the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s website.

Other organizations are also working to improve access to government information online.  AltLaw is a project dedicated to making federal case law available and searchable at no charge online.  AltLaw and the Legal Information Institute will host the case archive materials to be released by Fastcase and Public.Resources.Org.  Google provides its U.S. Government Search engine (which searches government internet domains) and is working with federal and state agencies to improve online access to government information.  Maplight focuses on links between campaign contributions and legislators’ voting records, covering the U.S. Congress and the California State Legislature.  OpenCongress focuses on the U.S. legislative process and provides information on bills, coverage of legislative voting, profiles of legislators, and official government news.

]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2007 10:44:05 0000

"The average user gets a new phone about every 18 months and they end up retiring the old one." So what do we do with the old phones? Many people pass their old Razrs, Treos and Blackberries on to family members, sell them on eBay or donate them to charity. Are you sure that you removed all your personal contacts along with any possible client data from your mobile phone before you gave it away?  The passage of the Federal Trade Commission's Disposal Rule (16 CFR Part 682) on June 1, 2005, says that companies disposing of computer equipment need to take the necessary steps to remove personal or financial information from the machines.  Mobile phones, with the features of a handheld computer that contains consumer information, must be considered when developing compliance policies.

In this new FYI, you'll find a link to the January 01, 2007 updates to the Federal Trade Commission's Disposal Rule and read about the vulnerabilities of selling or giving away a mobile device before effectively purging its data. Check it out: FYI: How to Dispose of your Mobile Phone.

]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:56:13 0000 As the holidays approach, many attorneys will find themselves spending extended periods of time away from their work and home computers. With a USB thumb drive and a little bit of preparation, however, you'll find that the important files and applications you need or have grown used to can travel with you. To read more about USB thumb drives and how they can help your practice, check out our newest FYI: Computing on the Go - Thumb Drives.

]]> Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:42:57 0000

The holidays are just around the corner and technology prices are steadily dropping.  If you are considering a new computer and your current computer is less than five years old, consider “re-gifting” your old computer.  There are many organizations that will take it off your hands.

"Each year, we dispose of roughly 250 million computers" reports Findlaw's Andrew Zangilli. Moreover, with more than 200 million active mobile phones in the United States alone, electronic waste (e-waste) is a problem that is only going to increase.

Because they are made up of various components that are toxic to the environment, cell phones and computers are both a source of e-waste.  "e-cycling" your old technology by donating your electronic equipment helps put technology in the hands of the less fortunate and keeps toxic waste out of our landfills. Consequently, you can feel as good about disposing of your old equipment as you do about getting that new iPhone or wireless laptop.  Just make sure you remove ALL of your data from your old computer equipment before giving.  See FYI: How to Dispose of Computer Equipment and

FYI:  How to Dispose of your Mobile Phone

Give a Laptop, Get a Tax Deduction

While holiday shopping, if you are looking for an additional end of the year tax deduction, the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) organization is offering a unique giving opportunity.  For a limited time only, between November 12 and November 26, OLPC is offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada. During this time, you can donate a brand new XO laptop to a child in a developing nation, and also receive one for the child in your life.

The XO laptop is typically available only to qualified government ministries for distribution in developing countries, but for a limited time it is being made available in North America.

For a donation of $399, one XO laptop will be sent to a child in a developing nation and one will be sent to the child in your life. $200 of your donation is tax-deductible (your $399 donation minus the fair market value of the XO laptop you will be receiving).

For all U.S. donors who participate in the Give One Get One program, T-Mobile is offering one year of complimentary HotSpot access.  The program ends November 26, 2007.  For more information about the XO laptop computer and this unique giving program visit www.laptopgiving.org.

]]> Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:52:43 0000

Checked your internet profile in the mirror lately? If you are participating in online social networking proceed with caution. Keep your profiles on every site set to private, and write everything as if your employer will be reading it, because they will. With the increased use of online communities comes the increased need to monitor and manage one's online reputation.  Create Google or Yahoo alerts (See Instant Gratification for more information about alerts) that automatically notify you of any online mention of your name.  This practice is referred to by the online culture as ‘narcisurfing’- looking for yourself on the Internet, but knowledge of your online presence is necessary to maintain awareness and control of your online identity.

RESOURCES

Protecting Your Reputation

Your Internet Image – ABA Law Student Division

Calling In Pros to Refine Your Google Image

Clean Up Your Digital Dirt! - Creating Your Digital Identity

]]> Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:02:43 0000

Rumors have been circulating for almost a year that the web search and advertising company Google has been developing its own cell phone model as an entry into the cell phone market, often speculatively referred to as the “Gphone.”  On November 5, 2007, Google announced the development of Android, an open source operating system for cell phones developed by the Open Handset Alliance, a group of more than thirty companies including Google, Motorola, T Mobile, Samsung, and Sprint Nextel.

One of the goals of the Open Handset Alliance is to stimulate innovation in the development of software for cell phones--anyone will be able to develop software for the free, open source, Linux-based operating system.  Android is designed to give software developers access to a cell phone's full range of features in order to facilitate the development of more sophisticated cell phone applications than are currently available.  Individual carriers will apparently be able to limit the extent of internet services and software applications its cell phone customers running Android will be able to access--customers might prefer carriers with the least restrictions.  Google stands to gain in part due to the potential for increased use of its applications and increased reach of its advertisements on cell phones.

Commercially available cell phones running Android are expected to be available “in the second half of 2008.”

For more information see:

The official website of the OHA: The Open Handset Alliance

A posting on the Official Google Blog: Where's my Gphone?

]]> Wed, 07 Nov 2007 09:43:55 0000

In June of 2007, the House Committee on the Judiciary created an online tip line so that Justice Department employees could electronically submit information relevant to the committee’s investigation of alleged politicization at the Justice Department in the hiring and firing of U.S. Attorneys.  

After the tip line had gone live, committee discussions resulted in a change to the conditions governing committee access to the submitted information.  A clerical employee was tasked with e-mailing tip-submitters in order to notify them of the change.  However, the e-mails which were sent out included not only the intended message, but also included the e-mail addresses of other e-mail recipients, visible in the “To:” line of the messages.  This display of recipients' e-mail addresses could be used to expose the identities of whistle-blowers who submitted information via the tip line.  However, some of the submissions and e-mail addresses are thought to have been entered as a practical joke--for example, Vice President Cheney’s public e-mail address was one of the addresses exposed in the e-mails.

According to a House Committee on the Judiciary press release, '[t]he employee’s recollection is that a checkbox in the Outlook Distribution List function was checked which was marked “private.” The employee mistakenly believed that this would hide the names on the distribution list from the recipients. However, in fact, while it appeared to the employee that the name of the distribution list would be the only text on the “to:” field of the e-mail, all addresses were shown when the e-mail was received. This was an inadvertent clerical error, and contrary to speculation, not the result of “hacking” or any malicious act.”'

For more information, see:

PC World article: US Gov't E-Mail Snafu Exposes Whistle-Blowers

House Committee on the Judiciary press release: Committee Statement on "Whistleblower" E-mails”

]]> Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:14:30 0000 Many people have heard the phrase "web accessibility" before, but few fully understand what it means. To help shed a little light on the often confusing topic and what it means for the legal profession, we've put together a collection of helpful resources in our new FYI: Web Accessibility.

In this new FYI, you'll find links to prevailing standards, accessibility initiatives, assistive technology vendors, and attorney communities focused on accessibility issues. You'll also find some information on ABA resolution 108 and the ABA's recent efforts to promote accessible web sites within the legal community.

Check it out: FYI: Web Accessibility.

]]> Thu, 01 Nov 2007 09:11:01 0000 As new trends in technology reshape the legal profession, a lawyer's formal ethical obligations can at times seem unmanageably complex. Attorneys Sharon D. Nelson and Jim Calloway help navigate the often confusing marriage of technology and ethics in this month's edition of The Digital Edge podcast: "Ethics in the Electronic Era: Staying Out of the Briar Patch."

The Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology Podcast is a regular feature of Law Technology Today. Be sure to check out their past podcasts in the Digital Edge Archive on topics including courthouse technology and electronic marketing.

]]> Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:01:21 0000 Tired of digging through endless pages of Google search results to find the tidbit of information you need? If so, you’re not alone: a study recently commissioned by Autobytel Inc. found that “a whopping 72 percent of online searchers are experiencing ‘Search Engine Fatigue,’ meaning that they become inpatient or frustrated when they are unable to quickly find the information they need.” Indeed, many users leave the computer without ever finding what they were looking for.

In hopes of easing your frustration – at least when it comes to legal technology searches – the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center has put together a new tool: the LTRC Legal Technology Web Search. This search engine, built using Google’s Custom Search feature, will focus your query on some of our favorite legal technology websites, including Law Tech News, Law.com’s Legal Technology, TechnoLawyer, and more. You’ll get the information you need without the dozens of pages of useless results.

Ready to give it a try? Look for the custom search box at the bottom of our home page or add the LTRC Legal Technology Web Search gadget to your iGoogle page.

]]> Thu, 11 Oct 2007 09:19:06 0000

Increasingly lawyers are turning to Apple Macintosh computers to meet their computing needs.  Apple has even developed a Small Business website dedicated to lawyers.  It makes the case for the Mac in the law office, features case studies and provides links to resources for lawyers using or considering a Mac.  Here are some recent features by the LTRC regarding Apple Macintosh technology.

Office 2008 for Mac Gets Release Date

Microsoft has finally set a release date for Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac. Joshua Poje briefly discusses the features and pricing of the ubiquitous productivity software.

Of iPhones and Early Adopters

With sales of 270,000 units in 30 hours, the iPhone was one of the most successful launches in electronics history.  With an initial retail price of $599, this was a remarkable showing.  However since June there have been some interesting developments in the iPhone adventure.  Joshua Poje discusses them in this site-tation.

Attorneys and iPhones

According to New York Times reporter David Pogue, "much of the hype and some of the criticisms are justified. The iPhone is revolutionary; it’s flawed. It’s substance; it’s style. It does things no phone has ever done before; it lacks features found even on the most basic phones."  How does the iPhone the best tool for attorneys.  Here we discuss points for lawyers in consideration of the iPhone for their practice.

CLE to go - Podcasting

iPods are not just for your entertainment.  The American Bar Association offers a number of podcasts suitable for your Continuing Legal Education (CLE) needs. This piece discusses the options of fulfilling your CLE requirements while on the run.

Macintel

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced in 2005 that Apple would switch to an Intel processor.  The resulting computers have been referred to as Intel Macs or Macintels.  This article by Tonya L. Johnson discusses four options to run Windows on the new Macintosh computers with the Intel chip.

]]> Wed, 10 Oct 2007 12:39:29 0000

Autumn is now upon us; the leaves are turning and the children are back in school. Now is a good time to check out some of the great new content found at the Legal Technology Resource Center. The LTRC staff has been busy researching and writing articles on a variety of interesting subjects. Here are just a few:

Getting More from Google

Google is the search engine of choice for millions of people, but it can do more than just find websites. In this article, originally published in the August 2007 edition of the ABA Section of Family Law eNewsletter, Joshua Poje provides some useful tricks for getting more out of Google.

Data Backup

Lawyers increasingly depend upon the integrity of their computer systems and document management systems for access to correspondence, memos, and financial records. This vital electronic data can be threatened due to computer hard drives failure, accidental erasures or malicious attacks. Laptops can be lost or stolen. Additionally, there is heightened awareness of the possibility of natural disasters. Stephen Stine discusses some of the latest options to save the day and minimize the impact of data loss.

E-Mail for Lawyers

According to the 2007 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report, 97% of respondents said they use e-mail at work. While e-mail is easy to get -- if you have internet access chances are you already have an e-mail account -- getting an e-mail account that'll work for you professionally requires some extra thought and planning. Joshua Poje provides many helpful tips on how to better manage your e-mail to further your practice.

Security on the Go

How would your practice be impacted if your laptop computer was stolen? If you lost your Blackberry or Treo would attorney/client confidentiality be at risk? Along with the convenience of our increasingly compact and mobile society, comes the increased potential for loss and theft. Tonya L. Johnson discusses some security options available for mobile security.

]]> Wed, 10 Oct 2007 12:44:04 0000 Bluetooth cell phone headsets are popular gadgets for lawyers on-the-go, but picking out the right headset can be a difficult (not to mention expensive) decision. Thankfully, Laura Moser of Slate.com may have made that decision a little bit easier. In her new article - Can You Hear Me Now? The Best Bluetooth Cell Phone Headsets - she reviews and ranks eight popular headsets based on form and function, sound quality, and value.

Bluetooth headsets were also a recent topic of discussion on the ABA LAWTECH e-mail discussion list -- always a great source of information on legal technology.

More on Bluetooth:

• ABA LTRC - FYI:Security on the Go
• Wikipedia: Bluetooth
• PCWorld: Master Bluetooth Device Pairing Hassles

]]> Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:00:11 0000

On August 2, 2007, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws/Uniform Law Commission approved a new act, the Uniform Rules Relating to Discovery of Electronically Stored Information.  The act is designed “to provide states with up-to-date rules for the discovery of electronic documents in civil cases.”  The rules “conform as closely as possible to comparable provisions in the Federal Rules.  The Uniform Rules are modified, where necessary, to accommodate the varying state procedures.”

The above quotes are taken from NCCUSL’s press release regarding the act. 

A draft of the act, subject to revision by the Committee on Style of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, is available for reading on the University of Pennsylvania Law School’s Biddle Law Library Archives website.

]]> Mon, 08 Oct 2007 09:58:56 0000

Google has been busy adding features and functionality to its free online office application suite Google Docs lately, in what some are calling a further encroachment onto Microsoft's office suite territory.  In addition to online word processing and spreadsheet creation features, Google has added the ability to create presentations/slideshows to Google Docs. That means that Google is offering free online software functionality which allows you to create (or upload and edit) word processing files, spreadsheets, and presentations.

Google Docs’ office software components lack some of the advanced formatting features and other options provided by their offline, for-pay office software siblings. However, Google Docs tools can work well for working on drafts and collaborating on documents with other authors. In the case of Google presentations, the functionality is still quite limited, as this review points out--for example, there are no options yet for "adding transitions, notes, audio files or content from the web," and the presentations are not yet exportable in .ppt (PowerPoint) format.

To use Google Docs you will need to sign up for a Google Account (if you don’t already have one for the purposes of using Gmail), and log in. You can read about Google’s presentation functionality and watch a video on Google Docs in this Official Google Blog posting.

To create PDFs in Google Docs: while viewing a document, click on the "File" menu drop-down, which will display several document file export options, which currently include HTML, RTF, Word, Open Office, PDF, and Text. Choose the PDF option and voila, instant (and free) PDF creation! There are several useful export options available to you when working on a Google spreadsheet including .xls (Excel) format, but unfortunately Google presentations are not yet exportable in .ppt (PowerPoint) format.

]]> Thu, 04 Oct 2007 13:40:17 0000 In addition to covering the most recent developments in the legal world, the ABA Journal also provides practicing attorneys with valuable resources to help make their practices more productive and more profitable. Here are a few recent articles from the Journal you don’t want to miss:

Testing Your Tech
When it comes to everyday tasks – pulling client files, sending out bills – how efficient is your firm? The ABA Journal offers a simple ten question “tech audit” to gauge your firm’s office efficiency.

50 Ways to Market Your Practice
Marketing is a necessary – though daunting – fact of life for solo and small-firm attorneys. The ABA Journal has collected 50 tips from practicing attorneys that can help you ramp up your marketing efforts. (Many of the tips are drawn from the ABA’s Solosez discussion group.)

101 Law Hacks
You can’t add more hours to the day, but you can make more of the hours you have. In this cover story from the July edition of the ABA Journal, Jason Krause gathers together 101 tips, tricks and tools that can make you more productive.

]]> Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:13:22 0000 Good news for Mac-using lawyers: Microsoft has finally set a release date for Office 2008 for Mac. The ubiquitous productivity software, which Microsoft announced would be delayed last month, is now set to begin distribution in the United States on January 15, 2008 -- the first day of MacWorld Expo San Francisco.

Office 2008 for Mac, the first major update to Office on the Mac since 2004, will include many of the features seen in Office 2007 for Windows including support for the Open XML file format. It will run on both PowerPC and Intel based Macs and will be priced at $400 for the basic edition or $240 as an upgrade from Office 2004. Can't wait until January to make your purchase? No problem: customers who buy Office 2004 between today and January 15th will be able to purchase the 2008 upgrade for just the cost of shipping.

Also from the LTRC: Microsoft Office 2007 - Things to consider before making the switch, FYI: MacIntel.

]]> Tue, 25 Sep 2007 11:00:06 0000 NetSnippets is dead, long live NetSnippets. As of March 2007 a great tool to capture web content has been put out of commission. While they will still support existing customers, the application is no longer available to new customers. Why was NetShippets a great tool? One of the dangers of the Internet is finding great information – and losing it. Bookmarks and favorites are great for noting that you found the perfect site, article, or download but the Internet tends to be transient and many of us have experienced the horror of link rot – a link that no longer works. The information contained in that link has been moved, deleted, or is now only accessible for a fee. The trick is to capture the content. Fortunately, though NetSnippets is gone, in its wake there are a number of Web 2.0 applications that have similar functionality. For instance, Google Notebook. Google Notebook allows you to capture a webpage – the link or copied text from a page, organized it, annotate it, share it. and even publish the Notebooks. A browser plugin allows users to add pages to Notebook with a single click. And, since it is Google, users can search across Notebook to find saved content. Other options include Onfolio, Evernote, and esnips. All of these programs help busy lawyers keep up with content as they find it and then retrieve it when they need it.  The sharing capabilities allow work groups to collaborate on research projects or for current awareness.

]]> Fri, 21 Sep 2007 09:32:55 0000 Apple made headlines again last week by announcing a significant price cut to its newly debuted iPhone. The price cut of $200 -- more than 30% off the original $599 price tag -- came just nine weeks after the the device first hit the market and appears to have been made despite strong sales.

While frustrating for the Apple fans who eagerly waited in line to purchase the iPhone immediately after its release, their experience is far from unique at the bleeding edge of the technology market. As noted in a recent New York Times article on the price cuts, average prices for 42" high definition televisions have already dropped by 18% this year and are expected to fall by 25% by the end of the year, while Motorola dropped the price of its popular Razr phone from $499 to $99 within its first year on the market in 2005. Indeed, independent telecom analyst Jeff Kagan was quoted in MacWorld saying:

"The price cut was not a surprise ... This is the way the cell business works - it's the way it has always worked. I don't understand where all the complaining is coming from."

So how do you stay on top of the newest and most helpful technology trends without becoming a victim to the Early Adopter Tax of price cuts and product revisions? The simple answer is to wait. Wait until the technology has been around long enough to be thoroughly tested and reviewed, for prices to be slashed, and perhaps for the first revision of the product to be released. If you can't bring yourself to wait, try to be selective about the new technology you choose to purchase. Stephen Manes, contributing editor of PCWorld, suggests focusing on new technologies that offer significant--not incremental--improvements, and avoiding technology "with serious, basically uncorrectable omissions."

(As for those early iPhone adopters, don't feel too bad for them: Apple has promised a $100 Apple Store credit as recompense.)

See also: Apple's iPhone: Proceed with Caution

]]> Thu, 13 Sep 2007 09:40:53 0000 Signed into law on July 26, 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 ("ADA") may be the most significant piece of civil rights legislation enacted since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The ADA has led to new fields of practice within the American legal profession and to broad accessibility initiatives that have transformed the American landscape. As we move towards an increasingly technology-based society and workplace, however, questions have arisen as to the applicability of the ADA to various technologies -- particularly web sites.

In a recent article published on Law.com's Legal Technology, Sherry Karabin explores the issue of accessible web sites and the legal battles being waged over ADA compliance. Karabin focuses particular attention on the ongoing litigation between Target and the National Federation of the Blind, as well as some of the out-of-court settlements with companies ranging from RadioShack to Priceline.com. While the controversy thus far has revolved around major retailers, it is an issue that may ultimately impact all businesses and organizations -- including law firms -- with a presence on the web.

In light of these concerns and in an effort to promote further integration of the legal profession, the American Bar Association's House of Delegates recently passed a resolution urging that "websites intended for lawyers, judges, law students, and other individuals or entities associated with the legal profession ... be created and maintained in an accessible manner." Click here to read the full text of the resolution.

Interested in learning more about web site accessibility? Check out these resources:

• Web Accessibility Initiative ("WAI")
  An ongoing effort by the World Wide Web Consortium to develop and promote standards for accessibility in web site design.
  
  
• Wikipedia: Web Accessibility
  A good overview of accessibility efforts in the United States and abroad.
  
  
• United States Access Board
  The USAB is a Federal Agency dedicated to promoting accessible design in architecture, vehicles, telecommunications, and more.

]]> Tue, 11 Sep 2007 14:09:17 0000 The DC Bar is the next bar association to issue an opinion on metadata. Opinion 341 states ”A receiving lawyer is prohibited from reviewing metadata sent by an adversary only where he has actual knowledge that the metadata was inadvertently sent. In such instances, the receiving lawyer should not review the metadata before consulting with the sending lawyer to determine whether the metadata includes work product of the sending lawyer or confidences or secrets of the sending lawyer’s client.” 

A recent discussion on the ABA Lawtech discussion list revolved around collecting publicized instances of metadata exposure causing embarrassment, or worse.  Here is a compilation of the responses:

- Hyperlinked examples in "Metadata and Other Things That Go Bump in the Night" (ABA LTRC)
- Metadatarisk.org News
- "Staying on Track with Tracked Changes" (ABA LPM)
- Australian MS Word consultant Shauna Kelly's website article

]]> Tue, 11 Sep 2007 13:45:02 0000

In a controversial move on September 5, 2007, Facebook launched a “public listing search” which allows anyone to search for a specific person. A public search listing provides, at most, the name and profile picture of any Facebook member that has their search privacy settings set to “Everyone.”

According to The Facebook Blog; "we are making limited public search listings available to people who are not logged in to Facebook. We're expanding search so that people can see which of their friends are on Facebook more easily. The public search listing contains less information than someone could find right after signing up anyway, so we're not exposing any new information, and you have complete control over your public search listing".

On Fast Company magazine's website, a blogger notes that this decision by Facebook creates a de facto whitepages directory of its members.  To avoid being "outed" by Facebook, simply login to your Facebook account, and from the Search Privacy page edit your profile and change your privacy settings for "Who can find my public listing outside of Facebook".  By default, the settings for "Allow anyone to see my public search listing" and "Allow my public search listing to be indexed by external search engines (ex. Google, Yahoo, MSN) are enabled.  Which begs the question, was this always Facebook's intention?  On this page you can also specify which Facebook users can find you in a search and what people can do with search results.

The Center for Digital Democracy is committed to preserving the openness and diversity of the Internet.  The advent of Web 2.0, open source and Google apps is the fruit of this preservation.  However, in an open, creative and capitalistic society this also breeds the likes of Rapleaf and Upscoop, sites designed to exploit the information provided by Social Networks.  Cause for real concern however is the Google acquisition of DoubleClick.  This pairs the Internet's most popular profiler search engine and Internet's largest targeted advertising company. The potential for abuse is staggering.  Already questions have arisen regarding anti-trust issues and privacy safeguards.

Facebook's blog doesn't name a specific date but says that “in a few weeks” they will allow these Public Search listings to be found by popular search engines.  As of July 2007, according to Wikipedia, Facebook had the largest number of registered users among college-focused sites and non-collegiate networks with over 34 million active members worldwide.  In light of the recent security breach of Monster.com and the resulting fraud due to violations of privacy, it remains to be seen what effect, if any this decision will have on Facebook's popularity.  While the situation at Monster.com was a clear case of thieves sneaking in the back door, the very nature of social networking is to throw the doors wide open.

]]> Fri, 07 Sep 2007 12:09:28 0000

Business travel can be very expensive but web conferencing can help minimize this cost.  Minimizing business travel can improve employee morale and increase business productivity by reducing the number of hours spent traveling, as well as reduces time spent away from the office.  If you are trying to make a case for web conferencing, there are two calculators available to help you determine the benefits that web meetings can provide - to your bottom line and to the environment.

BP has a conference center website with a Web Conferencing Savings Calculator. According to this calculator, if you have 3 meetings per month requiring travel and 3 people traveling to each meeting, your travel cost savings per year could be as much as $76,000 per year with additional productivity savings of $50,000 by opting for web conferencing.  The calculator allows you to input your own figures so the savings calculated are customized to your organization's size and resources.

Web conferencing also helps minimize the impact that business travel has on the environment.  Web conferencing company Webex’s carbon calculator suggests that businesses can reduce carbon emissions by meeting online. For instance, according to their calculator:

• A team of 12 participants flying from Dallas to San Francisco saves 22,377 pounds of carbon dioxide by moving their training online.
• One business person saves 2,690 pounds of carbon dioxide by moving her sales presentation online.
• 2 people traveling from Chicago to San Francisco = 4,696 lbs of carbon emissions.

While web meetings aren't new, the increased presence of high speed Internet access in the work place make web meetings more of a possibility than ever.  However, a web meeting isn't a substitute for every kind of meeting, so it won't eliminate your travel budget. In an article from Microsoft's small-business center, an experienced Web conferencing user opines; "It's a good way to maintain a relationship," says Addison Schonland, chief executive of Innovation Analysis Group in La Jolla, California. Business travel is often necessary, but before booking that flight, consider the costs and take another look at web meetings.

Resources:

FYI: Web and Videoconferencing

Web Conferencing, Enhancing Client Communications - ABA General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Division 

Bright Ideas for Webinars - Law Technology News

Holding a Web meeting? 5 pitfalls to avoid - Microsoft's small-business center

Time to Upgrade Ya - Tools for the 21st century business - BlackEnterprise.com business technology

Books

The Web Conferencing Book: Understanding the Technology, Choose the Right Vendors, Software, and Equipment, Start Saving Time and Money Today

]]> Fri, 07 Sep 2007 13:58:38 0000

Laptop computers and law school classes have not always combined happily in the eyes of some law professors and students. Many students apparently surf the web, check e-mail, instant message friends and play Minesweeper on their laptops in class to the distraction of other students and to the dismay of professors. 

One professor has decided to integrate laptop usage into her law classes by making an “interactive, electronic casebook.”  The casebook is hosted online and consists of hyperlinked multimedia teaching materials that students can access anywhere with a computer and an internet connection.  The professor uses the electronic casebook in class, allegedly capturing students’ attention by taking advantage of their taste for multimedia interactivity—she states that the students follow along on their laptops, with less time to surf the web and check their e-mail.

]]> Wed, 05 Sep 2007 15:04:21 0000 AltLaw is a project dedicated to making federal case law available and searchable at no charge online. The site currently features US Supreme Court and Federal Appeals cases, generally from the last 10 to 15 years. A joint-project between the Columbia Law School’s Program on Law and Technology and the University of Colorado Law School's Silicon Flatirons Program, the project is in “Beta” stage, a work in progress. The site aspires to provide advanced search features such as “proximity searching, Boolean, concentration, wildcards, etc” and to increase their coverage of federal case law in the future. The site carries important disclaimers such as “[w]e cannot guarantee that we have every case in the periods listed” and “we recommend that before relying on our site, you double-check your results with another legal research resource.” Some of the features are currently rough around the edges, such as proximity searching, but AltLaw is intriguing nevertheless. Visit http://altlaw.org to try it out and for more information.

]]> Tue, 04 Sep 2007 16:43:43 0000 The International Legal Technology Association ("ILTA") wrapped up its 30th Annual Educational Conference on August 23rd in Orlando, Florida. The four-day conference featured twenty-five educational tracks on topics ranging from Business Strategy to Knowledge Management to Voice and Data Communications. Here's a roundup of news, notes, and reactions from some prominent lawyers and legal technology experts who attended the conference:

• Lawyer and legal technology expert Dennis Kennedy recaps ILTA 2007.
  


• Knowledge management attorney Doug Cornelius has a number of posts on his KM Space blog from the ILTA 2007 conference, including "liveblog" posts on sessions such as "Innovative Use of Technology in the Legal Department" and "InterAction Attorney Boot Camp."
  


• Monica Bay, editor-in-chief of Law Technology News, has several posts up including a report from Claire Duffett on Litigation Readiness at ILTA at her blog The Common Scold.
  


• David Hobbie, author of the Caselines blog and Litigation Knowledge Manager at Goodwin Proctor, has numerous posts from ILTA on topics ranging from Interwoven to Enterprise Searching.
  


• Ron Friedmann, President of Prism Legal Consulting, Inc., has a post on his his firm's blog about New IT Strategy Decisions for BigLaw as discussed at ILTA.
  


• Sean Doherty of Law.com offers an overview of the conference at Law.com's Legal Technology: "ILTA 2007: No Dog and Pony Show."
  


• Tom Baldwin, Chief Knowledge Officer at Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, posted about OpenText's big SharePoint announcement at his blog Knowledgeline.
  


• Don Downey, a licensed accountant and Executive Director of the MiniSoft Group, posts his reflections on ILTA 2007 and law firm collection policies.
  

See a news article or blog post we missed? Let us know!

]]> Thu, 30 Aug 2007 13:18:33 0000

The FTC has slipped up and inadvertently disclosed trade secrets and confidential and proprietary information about Whole Foods’ business strategies and operations to the public, through data that FTC lawyers had attempted to redact but which remained electronically accessible in a publicly available electronically-filed court document.

The FTC attorneys had tried to redact textual information from the electronic document by placing black coloring over the text to be redacted--however, the text could still be copied and pasted to a new document, rendering it legible to any enterprising eyes. (See the pdf “Redaction of Confidential Information in Electronic Documents,” linked to below and published by Adobe, which warns of this exact type of problem in redaction attempts.) This represents another example of the dangers of hidden data, including metadata, which can lurk in electronic documents. Electronic document redaction and metadata issues will become increasingly important as the electronic filing of court documents becomes more common in the legal profession.

For more information, see the following resources:

FTC's Whole Foods Case Revealed

Error by FTC Reveals Whole Foods' Trade Secrets (free registration required)

Metadata Refresher

New features for legal professionals in Acrobat 8 Professional (including metadata removal and redaction)

Redaction of Confidential Information in

Electronic Documents (Discusses redacting information in versions of Adobe Acrobat earlier than 8.0)

What’s hidden in your Word documents? (includes information on removal of metadata from Microsoft Word documents)

Doh! FTC Gaffe Spills Beans on Whole Foods

Snafu Unlikely to Affect Whole Foods Case

]]> Fri, 17 Aug 2007 09:10:18 0000 A PC World article revealed that almost half of the 100 IRS laptop computers that were tested by the IRS' regulatory agency had unencrypted sensitive data, relating to both IRS employees and taxpayers. This same agency reports that nearly 500 IRS laptops went missing in a three year period between 2003 and 2006. Are you concerned?

PC thefts have been making front page news for more than a year now. To avoid this type of media attention, take a look at the FYI: Playing it Safe - Using Encryption. When your clients ask you how you are keeping their sensitive data safe from prying eyes, you'll be able to tell them.

]]> Fri, 17 Aug 2007 09:09:43 0000 Once an executive perk, mobile phones have evolved from being a wireless means of making and receiving phone calls to becoming "smartphones," extensions of the modern office. A smartphone with Internet connectivity, email send and receive capabilities and the functionality of a complete personal organizer is becoming the de facto standard for an increasing number of attorneys.

However, mobile phones have unique security challenges that must be understood and addressed. The Legal Technology Resource Center has prepared a new FYI: Security on the Go. Check it out for some helpful tips and links for your mobile phone.

]]> Fri, 17 Aug 2007 09:13:23 0000 Over the last few years, a functioning web site has gone from a technological luxury to a business necessity. And yet the process of building a web site remains frightening to many lawyers for a variety of reasons ranging from bad past experiences to the fear of wasting money to a simple unfamiliarity with the web.

To help guide law firms and legal organizations of all types through the process of launching their web site (or rebuilding an existing site), the LTRC has assembled a new guide: FYI: Starting a Web Site. Whether you’re planning on building your site in-house or contracting it out, this guide will provide you with a broad overview of the process and the steps you need to take to build a web site that works for your organization.

]]> Fri, 17 Aug 2007 10:28:23 0000

There are 42 states with formal rules, regulations and requirements for Mandatory Continuing Legal Education.  A number of states have self-study options to fulfill these hours.  Podcasting is a powerful yet painless option to satisfy this requirement.

A podcast is a digital media file that is distributed over the Internet for playback on portable media players and personal computers. While Online CLE lets you meet your MCLE requirement without leaving home or the office, the portability of a podcast potentially makes the world your classroom.

Many smartphones can also play media files. This means that you can meet your CLE requirements during your commute or travel time.  Several BlackBerry® and Palm® Treo™ smartphones, two of the most popular brands, include media players.  That means that if you are one of the 53% of attorney's in the 2007 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report that use a smartphone, then you may not have to purchase any additional hardware to take advantage of this convenient technology.

According to the 2007 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report, only 4% of respondents have used podcasts for CLE.  However, that number is expected to rise as more providers distribute courses in that format and attorneys become more familiar with podcasts.

Podcasts are available from ABA Publishing, ABA CLE, and the ABA Section of Litigation. ABA-CLE has an iPod nano CLE series that includes an iPod nano or iPod with Video that is preloaded with CLE programs featuring the nation's leading legal experts by practice area. There are also a number of free podcasts that allow you to try before you buy to see if this learning medium is for you.  For more information, visit the ABA CLE Catalog and search by keyword.  Specific programs and/or self-study formats may or may not be approved for MCLE credit in your state. Check with your state for approval of this format/program for MCLE use.

FYI: Tracking CLE Credits

Make Technology Part of Your CLE!

The Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology Podcast Series from

ABA Law Practice Management Section

The ABA Book Briefs Podcast

A series of audio interviews, discussions and readings from ABA Books

]]> Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:11:37 0000

The 2007 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report is now available! The ABA's Legal Technology Resource Center (LTRC) administers an annual technology survey to practicing attorneys, covering availability and usage of a wide range of general and legal-specific technologies.  The survey results are published in five volumes: Law Office Technology, Litigation and Courtroom Technology, Web and Communication Technology, Online Research and Mobile Lawyers.  Among this year’s highlights:

• There has been a major increase in the number of respondents who have made electronic discovery requests on behalf of their clients, from 31% in 2006 to 74% in 2007.  However, these requests are made selectively with only 30% of respondents making them three to 11 times per year and 26% making them two or fewer times per year.

• The upward trend of electronic court filings and the growing practice of exchanging disclosure and discovery materials in electronic format may have driven an increase in the use of the Portable Document Format (PDF).  The survey revealed that the availability of PDF software increased from 82% in 2006 to 91% in 2007. 
  
  
• Mobile phones have evolved from being a wireless means of making and receiving phone calls to being "smartphones" an extension of the modern office. A smartphone with Internet connectivity, email send and receive capabilities and the functionality of a complete personal organizer is becoming the de facto standard for an increasing number of attorneys. More than half of respondents (53%) use a PDA, BlackBerry, or other smartphone outside of the office. Use of that smartphone for checking e-mail leapt to 32% in 2007, up from 20% the previous year. 
  
  
• It is interesting to note that 49% of respondents report sending confidential or privileged communications to clients via email one or more times a day. When asked what safety precautions are used, 79% of respondents reported relying on a confidentiality statement accompanying the transmission and 17% report using encryption. 

Reid F. Trautz, Director of the AILA Practice and Professionalism Center says “The survey is, in my opinion, an extremely valuable tool for law firms of all sizes to compare and contrast themselves with the technology benchmarks in the profession. Firms should use this comprehensive tool to help in their technology planning and budgeting. Gone are the days that firms of any size can lag in their technology.”

The survey reports are available as a set, or individually. Additionally, Trend Reports (free to ABA members) and an Executive Summary are available as PDF downloads. See the survey website for ordering and download information or call the ABA's Service Center at 1-800-285-2221.

]]> Fri, 10 Aug 2007 10:20:00 0000 You can call it environmentalism, sustainability, conservation, or any number of other buzz words, but it all amounts to the same thing: green is in. Once the domain of activists and celebrities, environmentalism has found a new home in law firms around the country as lawyers discover that they can help the environment and cut their costs at the same time.

To help you make sense of the green movement and how your practice can fit into it, the Legal Technology Resource Center has prepared a new FYI: Going Green. Check it out for some helpful tips and links to a variety of green law firm resources.

]]> Tue, 07 Aug 2007 14:06:59 0000

Efficiently managing large amounts of information is a constant struggle for lawyers around the country, whether they're practicing in the largest law firm or the smallest governmental office. To address this information overflow, organizations implement records management strategies that take a variety of records -- from a paper contract to an email saved on a smartphone -- and ensure that the information in those records is accessible and accurate.

One great resource for records management information and technologies is ARMA, an international association of records management. Their conference is coming up in October in Baltimore, Maryland. Running from October 7th-10th, the conference will highlight topics ranging from e-discovery, records retention, and compliance to a "mini" Sedona Conference.

The ABA Law Practice Management Section also has information about records management, including a book available in the ABA Web Store: The Lawyer's Guide to Records Management and Retention, by George Cunningham and John C. Montaña.

For more on Records Management, see FYI: Records Management.

]]> Wed, 01 Aug 2007 12:36:04 0000 There’s another great resource out there for anyone interested in legal technology: Law Technology Today.  Published by the ABA’s Law Practice Management Section, Law Technology Today is a monthly webzine that spotlights a wide variety of legal technology, tools, and strategies, with particular emphasis on e-discovery.  The webzine addresses a number of technology issues that aren’t covered in the Law Practice Management Section’s other webzine, Law Practice Today. Some recent articles include:

Extranets 2.0: Using Extranets to Build Client Relationships, by John C. Tredennick, Jr.

Office Open XML v. Acrobat PDF and Mars, by Douglas J. Simpson

The iBrief®: Electronic Filing 2.0, by Christine Falcicchio

Legal Technology Today, like Legal Practice Today, is a free publication that’s available both on the ABA’s website and by e-mail or RSS subscription.

]]> Wed, 01 Aug 2007 12:55:41 0000 The ABA Journal, which is read by more than half the nation’s 1.1 million lawyers every month, has radically revamped its website. It aggregates and filters breaking news from the nation’s best legal journalists and daily analysis from lawyers who are experts in their fields. It’s a place where the legal community can comment about today’s developments, and learn from each other.

The revamped site has three major components:

Law News Now: The home page features the latest legal news stories, hand selected by our lawyer-journalists. It’s updated continuously every business day with 25-50 summaries of and links to the most sophisticated legal reporting from around the web. A quick glance at the top of our home page will tell you the most important legal stories right now, whether it’s today’s Supreme Court decision, this morning’s developments in high-profile trials, yesterday’s law firm mega-merger, or Paris Hilton’s latest scrape with the law. If you only want to see the news about your practice area or state, we’ve created dozens of topic pages that take you directly to the news you need.

The Blawg Directory: We’ve indexed more than 1,000 blogs written by lawyers who are experts in their practice areas, with more being added daily. We tell you about the author, what they cover, and include excerpts from their 10 latest posts. You can sort the directory by subject, who writes the blog (partners, associates, judges, law professors, etc.), or by the state or court they blog about. We even have a list of blogs written by students and professors at more than 130 law schools. Know of a blog we haven’t included? Tell us about it

The Magazine: The award-winning Journal’s deep analysis of legal trends makes it the nation’s most-read and most-respected legal affairs magazine. We’ve posted every story from every issue back through 2005; issues from previous years will be posted soon. New issues will go online the day they are published, and they’ll be augmented with Web-only exclusives like court opinions, white papers and interview transcripts that add depth to the printed stories.

The site also has all the tools you’d expect:

-- Visitors can comment on every story.

-- You can e-mail any story to friends and colleagues.

-- Too busy to visit the site? Subscribe to have the news delivered to you with our free daily and weekly e-mail newsletters.

-- Add our news feeds to your RSS feed reader.

-- Keep up with the latest news on your Internet-capable cell phone or BlackBerry with our mobile edition.

(From ABA Journal Editor, Edward Adams)

]]> Tue, 24 Jul 2007 13:38:24 0000

With Microsoft's introduction of the Vista operating system, many computer users were placed in the position of deciding when or even if they would upgrade. Legal Technology Expert Dennis Kennedy listed "Reacting to Microsoft" as the number one Legal Technology Trend in his Seven Legal Technology Trends for 2007. Kennedy further suggested that Microsoft's release of the Vista operating system; coupled with a new Microsoft Office release would spur widespread consideration of viable alternatives to the Microsoft Windows operating system.

As the Internet extends technology's reach and relevance into daily American life, there are a greater number of alternatives to explore.  Presently there are several non-Windows options that will allow you to run the Windows based applications that most offices are using.  One alternative was announced by Apple Inc., maker of the Macintosh line of computers.  In 2005 Apple Inc. began making its computers with the same Intel processor that most Microsoft Windows computer systems use.  This development has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for computer users.  The resulting computers have been referred to as IntelMacs or MacIntel.

MacIntels potentially offer a combination of the Macintosh computer's reputed ease of use, power, and lower support costs along with access to the vast number of software applications developed for Microsoft Windows.  For more MacIntel information:

FYI: MacIntel - from the Legal Technology Resource Center

More FYIs - Other useful and practical technology information provided by the Legal Technology Resource Center

]]> Thu, 19 Jul 2007 08:55:31 0000 Free e-mail accounts, hosted off-site and provided by companies such as Yahoo, Hotmail, and Google, have become popular for personal and even business use. However, what might happen if such a company were subpoenaed to turn over the e-mails belonging to you or a client? Would the company notify you or your client, and would you be prepared to take appropriate action? 

The following articles discuss such a scenario, in which an attorney had to file a motion to quash when opposing counsel subpoenaed the contents of a client’s G-mail account. Could attorney-client privileged materials in your or your clients’ free e-mail accounts be at risk? Are you prepared to face such risks when using internet services in general? 

"Electronic Discovery Of Email Messages - What To Do With Yahoo! Mail, Google's Gmail, Hotmail And More"
http://lawfuel.com/show-release.asp?ID=13475 

“Web-mail subpoenas complicate e-discovery” 
http://www.deathbyemail.com/2007/07/web-mail-subpoe.html

]]> Thu, 19 Jul 2007 12:41:44 0000

A law firm’s e-mail messaging system was being inundated with spam messages, so the firm decided to ratchet up the settings on its anti-spam filter. Unfortunately, the spam filter began to block or mark as spam e-mail from the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, including a notice of a hearing. Consequently, lawyers from the law firm missed the hearing, and the judge ordered them to pay the fees and expenses of the opposing lawyers who showed up for the hearing.

Jim Calloway suggests using e-mail “whitelists” to ensure that important e-mail gets through. Also, be sure to periodically check the messages that your spam filters mark as spam to make sure that you are not missing any important e-mails; add any important e-mail addresses to whitelists so that messages from those important addresses don’t get marked as spam in the future.

(Thanks to Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips Blog!)

]]> Thu, 19 Jul 2007 12:51:43 0000

Last month we discussed lawyers facing controversy after posting a video of their comments at a conference on the video-sharing website You Tube  (here’s a newer story about a video on You Tube used to announce settlement of a class action lawsuit to members).

In case you’ve missed the headlines this month, the prominent CEO of Whole Foods may have caused a headache for his company’s legal department by anonymously posting comments about the stock of his company and that of a rival company, Wild Oats, on a Yahoo chat room, from 1999-2006; Whole Foods announced plans to buy Wild Oats in February of 2007.  The postings are now being investigated internally by Whole Foods and informally by the SEC.

]]> Thu, 19 Jul 2007 12:53:26 0000

Remember that sinking feeling when you accidentally deleted a file and couldn't get it back? Pandora Recovery is a powerful free tool that provides its users an effective way to attempt recovery of permanently deleted files. According to the Affinity Law Office Tech Blog, this utility could possibly save not only files but irreplaceable digital photos from your camera.  Pandora recommends that you save the recovered file to a different location than the drive it was deleted from before opening it.

While PC World magazine suggests that Pandora Recovery is "most appropriate for an experienced user, ...anyone who's familiar with Windows Explorer will find it easy to learn."  Special Note: The click-through license states "... The "PANDORA" Program(s) is made available for your personal, non-commercial use only. ..."

Additional Reading:  Stand Guard Against Accidental File Erasure by Joel Shore.  Free EWeek registration required.

]]> Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:09:24 0000 With an estimated 500,000 units sold the first weekend, the iPhone may be the most successful consumer electronic launch in history.  Users are raving over the iPhone's attractive interface and ease of use.  According to New York Times reporter David Pogue, "much of the hype and some of the criticisms are justified. The iPhone is revolutionary; it’s flawed. It’s substance; it’s style. It does things no phone has ever done before; it lacks features found even on the most basic phones."

However, previous concerns about the network service were justified when the EDGE network went down two days after the iPhone's launch. Then there's the issue of battery replacement.  In June, blogger Raymond T. Hightower raised the question,” How do you replace a dead battery in a sealed device?" The answer:  mail it back to Apple for $79 plus $6.95 shipping.  

Attorneys looking for a mobile device shouldn't heed the iPhone hype. iPhone's inability to sync with your practice management system's calendar and contact list is a major red flag.  While the honeymoon is far from over, InfoWorld's Mario Apicella urges consumers to proceed with caution with the iPhone.  

Apple iPhone website

http://www.apple.com/iphone/

EDGE Network's iPhone website

http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/specials/iPhone.jsp

]]> Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:45:13 0000 Microsoft Office 2007 is more of a revolution than the evolution that previous Microsoft Office upgrades have been.  It remains to be seen what the impact of this change will be but reviews are mixed.  According to the Microsoft website, Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 will work with Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack (SP) 2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, or later operating systems.  While there are a number of changes both large and small, following are four new things.

1. It looks different. The new interface is called Microsoft Office Fluent. The Office Button replaces traditional file menus and the new ribbon element changes based on what the user is doing.
   
2. The default type face is different.  Many lawfirms use a standard type face and point size for all outgoing correspondence.  If that is the case for your organization you are in for a big surprise.  Times New Roman has been replaced as the default font with a font called Calibri.  A Poynter Institute Design Desk article (QuickLink: A78683) states the reason for the change being that "Bill Gates wants computer users, well, Microsoft users, to have a more enjoyable on-screen reading experience..."
   
3. New File Formats.  Open XML file formats are now the default. This means that Word .doc files are now .docx files.  PowerPoint .ppt files will be .pptx, etc. Although a free compatibility pack will allow Office 2007 users to share files with users of Office 2003 and earlier.  Open XML file formats are more secure and easier to work with on different computers.  More on this later.
   
4. Backwards compatibility.  When an Office 2003 user receives an Office 2007 file, the user will get a pop up asking them to download and install the free compatibility pack, a 27.1 MB download. Depending on how computer savvy users are and the tightness of network security, there may be more helpdesk calls.

Chris Capossela, corporate vice president of the product management group in Microsoft's Business Division, insists that companies won't have to devise "some big sophisticated training plan" to roll out Office 2007. However, 2001 TechnoLawyer of the Year Dennis Kennedy believes that "One reaction to Microsoft that will become more common in 2007 is serious consideration and possible movement to non-Windows operating systems."

Office 2007 Will Rock Corporations' Worlds
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2060263,00.asp

Office 2007 - "the riskiest bet in the history of commercial software"
http://www.dashes.com/anil/2006/06/office-2007s-ri.html)

]]> Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:03:37 0000

Following up on the previous Site-tation post, "Alabama issues formal opinion on metadata,” let’s get back to basics: what is metadata?  Metadata can include information such as author names, editor names, company names, comments, track change edits, and other information that you might not realize is stored in a document and that you might not want anyone else to have access to. 

The following ABA Legal Technology Resource Center presentation explains metadata issues, shows examples of metadata stored in Microsoft Word documents, and lists strategies for avoiding the release of metadata: "Metadata (and other things that go bump in the night)"

Here are some other relevant resources:

ABA article: “Metadata: What You Can’t See Can Hurt You”

Ed Bott's Windows Expertise:  “What’s hidden in your Word documents?”

Ed Bott's Windows Expertise: “Oops! Microsoft exposes hidden data in a Word document”

 (Thanks to Between Lawyers for the tip)

]]> Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:00:51 0000

Websites, blogs, podcasts, and other internet technologies are tools that can help bring publicity and possibly clients to a law firm.  However, there can be a downside to internet publicity; you may gain readers, listeners, and viewers you never expected, and as a result may have to be more careful about what you write/say than in other circumstances due to the wide reach of the internet.  In the following case, a video of a law firm’s presentation at a conference was released onto the internet through the video site YouTube—the content of the video has exposed the firm to perhaps unwanted controversy and publicity.  On the other hand, some people think that no publicity is bad publicity...you decide.

Legal Blog Watch: “Watch What You Say at a Conference -- It Might Wind Up on YouTube”

]]> Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:51:02 0000

Perhaps you or someone you know has used peer-to-peer file-sharing programs to download music or other files over the internet--perhaps even in your law office.  Well, if you have, you may have shared more than you expected.  

Employee records, loan applications, and other documents with social security numbers and/or credit card numbers have been inadvertently leaked by employees using peer-to-peer file-sharing programs at major US banks, the drug company Pfizer, the United States Postal Service...has this happened at law firms?  Read more about use of file-sharing programs that could potentially put confidential client information at risk.

Wall Street Journal: “Your Secrets in 'Digital Wind'”

Computer World: “Pfizer Breach Illustrates Risks of Sharing Files”

Sun Sentinel: “File-sharing goes beyond MP3s”

Herald Review: “17 Postal Service employee Social Security numbers end up on Internet”

]]> Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:09:56 0000

On paper, Avvo sounds like it could become a Zillow for the legal field—find out how you and your fellow lawyers rate!  Unlike Martindale Hubble, Avvo assigns a numerical rating (1-10) to lawyers, based on information from state bar associations, court records, lawyer websites, and other sources, filtered through Avvo’s proprietary lawyer-ranking algorithms.  However, not everyone is happy with the ratings system, claiming that it is arbitrary and can hurt their reputation (among other anomalies, according to CNET, some convicted felons have received “higher numeric scores than law school deans”)— a lawyer in Seattle has filed a class-action lawsuit against the company.  Read more below—how do YOU rank in the Avvo rating system?

CNET News.com: “Avvo lawyer-rating site slapped with class action”

Law.com/National Law Journal: “Avvo Sued Over Its Lawyer Rankings”

CNET “Lawyer ratings site not without objections”

Avvo: Avvo.com

]]> Thu, 21 Jun 2007 16:30:02 0000 The Alabama State Bar Office of the General Counsel has issued a formal opinion (2007-02) on the propriety of mining metadata. In short, in response to the question: "Is it unethical for an attorney to mine metadata from an electronic document he or she receives from another party?"  comes the answer: "Absent express authorization from a court, it is ethically impermissible for an attorney to mine metadata from an electronic document he or she inadvertently or improperly receives from another party." However, the comments to the opinion note a caveat in regard to mining metadata when involved in electronic discovery.  

This opinion mirrors the attitude taken by opinions set out by New York and Florida. For more information on metadata, including cites for the opinions from New York, Florida, Maryland, and the American Bar Association, as well as other issues regarding technology and ethics, see "Metadata and Other Things That Go Bump In the Night" and  "Ethics and Technology: In Perfect Harmony" and follow the links in purple text for more information.

]]> Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:38:12 0000

Sarah Palmer, a frequent contributor to Site-tation, has moved over to ABA Publishing and is now the Library Relations contact for the ABA Package Plan.  Sarah will be working to keep law school and law firm librarians up to date on ABA publications. A Librarian Relations e-newsletter is in the works and anyone interested in learning more about the ABA Package Plan (look for link in page footer) or receiving information about new ABA publications can contact Sarah at packageplan@abanet.org.

Sarah will be attending the AALL Conference in July as well as speaking at Internet Librarian in October.  She will also be using all of her LTRC experience as she assists her mother in purchasing a new computer. 

LTRC welcomes our new research specialist, Stephen Stine. Stephen joins the LTRC from the University of Michigan, where he recently earned graduate degrees in law and information science.  Stephen gained experience working in the university’s law library and Student Legal Services office, as well as through working on school information technology projects, which will inform his assistance of ABA members with legal technology issues.  Stephen has a list of interests which includes law librarianship, legal technology, intellectual property law, and economics. 

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With the proliferation of news websites, blogs, and other sources of online information, you may find yourself wondering, “how can I keep track of all of this information?”  You could try bookmarking websites on your computer, or try online bookmarking via del.icio.us or some other site, along with using an RSS feed reader to keep track of updates and changes to your favorite blogs and websites.  But what about creating your own customizable start page?

While Yahoo and Google offer customizable start pages, Netvibes and Pageflakes specialize in providing free customizable start pages that offer even more features.  Customizable start pages typically allow users to select “modules,” small customizable windows that a user can add to his or her start page.  Modules can be easily added, deleted, and dragged around the start page, and can be set-up to display updates from various RSS feeds, to display incoming e-mail messages, to show local weather, to allow access to online bookmarks, and even to act as mini-browser windows, displaying text from various websites, among other uses.  Start pages function as “virtual dashboards,” giving users easy access to all of their favorite online information sources and tools, all in one convenient location. 

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Google, as usual, is not letting any moss grow. In case the news slipped by you, they are now focusing on a message of “Search, Ads and Apps”. If you need proof check out Google Apps. The offerings continue to grow, and unlike the old download model, new applications and features are rolled out almost daily.  But Google is also moving forward with search enhancements and side projects. For instance:

New Search Results

Google quietly rolled out “universal search” results on the main Google search results page. Now video results from their recent acquisition YouTube, as well as images, books, blog posts, news, and local information will appear in the main results set, as opposed to only appearing in their individual search pages. Another change is in the options for each result. In the past users could choose to see “similar pages” and “cached pages”. Now, appears the option to “Note This”. This option leads the user to the new Google Notes, a concept similar to eSnips or Furl. If you like having all your services in one Google basket you should check this out. 

The new search results are bound to change ranking status for some companies, and will cause a scramble to get to the top spot for those in the search engine optimization business.

Still Playing with Search

Google is also experimenting with a new user interface with a site called “SearchMash”. The Google brand is nowhere to be found, but most things look familiar. A dead giveaway is if you explore the privacy policy very far you will find yourself in the Google privacy policy. The new interface is very similar to some of the metasearch engines like Clusty and Vivisimo (in looks only), and shows a main results set with the option to expand subsearch sets in images, blogs, videos, and Wikipedia. The handy  Google feature “search this site” has been retooled as well. Now you can drill into a site for your original query simply by clicking on the domain in the results set – no retyping or trying to remember the syntax to search within a site. It has a lot of potential and it should be interesting to see where this will go. For now, just enjoy the BETA

Defender of the Universe?

According to some sources Google is readying to police the web, automatically identifying compromised sites that could carry malware and drive-by downloads by marking the sites in the search results as “potentially harmful”. The interesting part here is the treatment of Web 2.0 sites, and how Google will attempt to discovery malware in a site, such as a blog, that has constantly changing content. Google security specialist Niels Provos, along with four of his Google colleagues, has written a paper “The Ghost in the Browser” discussing Google’s plans to incorporate security analysis into its index.  The Google researchers reviewed 4.5 million Web sites and found that about one in 10 Web pages could successfully "drive-by download" a Trojan horse virus onto a visitor's computer.

For those who would like to be warned of potential malware on websites right now, McAfee’s SiteAdvisor offers some help, and shows site ratings for search results in MSN, Google, and Yahoo!

]]> Mon, 21 May 2007 11:03:56 0000 office keyboard and telephone harbor more germs than, well, than anyplace we'd like to think about.  Well, for all those germaphobes, eat-lunch-at- the-deskers, and people who drag their electronics with them everywhere PC Magazine has put together the "Top 10 Washable Tech Products" list. The list covers everything from washable, flexible keyboards to laptop keyboard protectors to a cell phone that is usable under 6 feet of water (for those who like to talk and swim laps??). And, don't forget vacations. Salt water spray can ruin a digital camera lense - unless you have one with a waterproof casing that allows you to wash it off.  Check out these nifty gadgets, whether you are a neat freak or just looking to save your investments. ]]> Mon, 21 May 2007 12:41:41 0000

The American Association of Law Libraries recently released a report assessing the trustworthiness of government-hosted state-level primary legal resources on the internet, entitled “State-By-State Report On Authentication Of Online Legal Resources.”  The report summarizes and analyzes a 50-state survey undertaken by the AALL in 2006-2007 to examine the extent to which, if at all, state-level primary legal resources online can be trusted as authentic and official.  The report cites problems with authentication, in that there is currently a lack of methods for users to discern whether the legal resources online have or have not been tampered with or altered in any way.  

This issue was also the focus of a “National Summit on Authentic Legal Information in the Digital Age,” held by the AALL this year in Chicago on April 20-21.  The summit was held “to explore legal and technological solutions to this issue, to develop an action plan and strategies for implementation, and to build new alliances with other organizations.”  (http://www.aallnet.org/press/ftdo_sally_holterhoff_041607.asp)  

The full authentication report is available for free in .pdf format at http://www.aallnet.org/aallwash/authenreport.html.  

The AALL plans on making materials from the 2007 National Summit available on the AALL website at some point in the future, so keep an eye on  http://www.aallnet.org.

]]> Thu, 17 May 2007 14:14:21 0000 If one of the goals around the office for 2007 was to collaborate more and share knowledge, a wiki can be a great tool to use.  A wiki is a website than can be edited by anyone given permission to access it.  For office applications, wikis are good for best practices manuals, group project collaboration and a simple knowledge base.  

For example, if another goal for the firm in 2007 is to investigate new practice areas, a page could be set up in the wiki to allow people to post ideas an