♫ It’s just my job five days a week
A rocket man, a rocket man….♫
Lyrics by Bernie Taupin, music and recorded by Reginald Kenneth Dwight, aka Sir Elton Hercules John CBE.
Simon Fodden, writing in Slaw.ca discussed the new Novatel MiFi – which is a cellular modem that does not need to be pushed into, slotted, USB’d or otherwise wired to your laptop to link you to a cellular-hosted internet service. What is the MiFi? It is a router and modem all combined, which allows you to create a portable WiFi cloud that can be shared by up to 5 people. There is *only* one problem with the MiFi – and that is, alike many other technological developments, it is not (yet) available in Canada. It operates in the USA on the Verizon network. The touted benefits of the MiFi is that it is always with you – there is no need to have internet service at home etc…
So what is a Canadian lawyer to do? Seek a typical Canadian compromise – a Roger’s Mobile Hi-Speed Rocket Internet Stick. This little device will allow you to connect to the internet wherever you can find a cellular signal. It connects quickly and easily, the initial configuration is not difficult, it works for PCs as well as Macs and there are corporate data plans that are a bit easier on the pocket compared to the consumer plans (call Rogers and ask to speak to their corporate sales department).
OK, this is a compromise – so you have to connect the Rocket modem to your USB port for it to work (unlike the MiFi which can be inside your computer bag all the time). You can’t automatically share the Rocket Stick’s internet (unless you can master the intracies of sharing an internet connection in Windows or OS X) as you can with the MiFi.
But similar to the MiFi – you can connect and work from virtually anywhere (well, not the Yukon since Rogers doesn’t have any coverage there…or indeed from anywhere else where Rogers doesn’t have service). I have a Rocket Stick and absolutely love it – as I can grab my MacBook and work from almost anywhere and not have to worry about finding a Wi-Fi cloud. Talk about convenient! And I find that the benefit of being able to work here and there when I need to far offsets the $35-40/month that I find the Rocket Stick is costing me in terms of data use, fees and taxes. But I am not sure about this type of service replacing my home internet service – after all, on the Rocket Stick I still have to watch the amount of data being downloaded in order to keep the charges reasonable.
Since I think its going to be a long long time before we get around to finding the MiFi in Canada, the Rocket Stick is about as close as we are likely to get in Canada to carrying the internet around with you.
♫ Be not selfish in your doings:
Pass it on. (Pass it on, children)
Help your brothers (help them) in their needs:
Pass it on…♫
Lyrics and Music by Bunny Livingston (aka Bunny Wailer), recorded by The Wailers.
As a lawyer, I enjoy the study of law. As we all know, laws come in many forms. When studying laws, we are accustomed to dealing with a set of formal laws – being those duly considered and passed by a parliament, legislature, congress or other legislative body. In addition to these formal laws and associated regulations, at least in the common-law system, there is also precedent or judge-made law. However, experience tells us that outside these formal laws exists a parallel universe of unwritten laws. A good example of an unwritten law is the Pereto Principle: namely that in any business entity, 80% of the revenues arise from only 20% of the clients – or as it is usually restated, 80% of your time is occupied by 20% of your client base.
Read the rest of the post on Slaw.ca here.
♫ Thunder and Lightning
I tell you it’s frightening
It’s thunder and lightning
And you’re in control… ♫
Lyrics and music by Chi Coltrane, “Thunder and Lightning”
A funny thing happened on the way to ABA TECHSHOW – perhaps it was the effect of the downswing in the economy – but a real emphasis at this year’s show was how technology can produce real returns for real lawyers.
One of the great themes was the power of Web 2.0 and how it can be levered to reach out to clients, to build dealrooms and reach out to clients in new ways. Another theme was how social networking can be used to produce a great ROI for your marketing spend. Richard Susskind, in his keynote, noted how the web is a disruptive technology. The web can be equally viewed as a threat or it can be embraced as a way for lawyers to craft their own future. He challenged lawyers to exercise leadership and figure out how to break your legal service into discrete parts and send these parts out to contract suppliers to reduce the cost of the overall legal service.
One of the other important trends at the show was the extensive use of Twitter (www.twitter.com) and the continual posting of tweets by attendees.
There was a specific Twitter feed (#TECHSHOW) that allowed any twitterer to post and have their tweet seen by anyone who subscribed to the hash feed. This resulted in a metric of sorts: You could judge the most exciting presentations by the volume of tweets that referred to that session!
Furthermore, the bloggers were busy – aside from looking at attending the social event such as Beer for Bloggers sponsored by Kevin O’Keefe of Lexblog and the ABA Journal – they posted to their blogs during the show. Examples were:
- Sharon Nelson: Ride the Lightning Blog post on MonetaMail.
- Kevin O’Keefe: LexBlog (Real Lawyers have Blogs) interviewed a number of people at ABA TECHSHOW and posted the interviews as podcasts.
- Rex Gradeless: Social Media Law Student blog on All things ABA TECHSHOW – with his overview of the events at ABA TECHSHOW.
- Rick Borstein: Rick’s slides from ABA TECHSHOW are posted on ACROBAT FOR LEGAL PROFESSIONALS blog.
- ABA TECHSHOW: Techshow ran its own blog with great tips and ideas leading up to the show.
- Jim Calloway: Jim’s Law Practice Tips Blog featured the highlights of Richard Susskind’s keynote address.
and many many others.
It highlighted that if you add real content to your blog that provides value to your audience, they will keep coming back! Furthermore, as a lawyer you can promote your value and expertise by blogging and indicating your interest in and awareness of current events and their implications for your clients. After all, aren’t you trying to attract clients by demonstrating your insight into those changes that affect your clients? A blog is an excellent way of doing so. So as a lawyer – if you attend a CLE event – blog about it and the implications of the new developments for your clients. You will show to your clients that you, too, are riding the lightning!
By the way, this blog post was written right at ABA TECHSHOW during the 60 Tips in 60 Minutes presentation by Dan Pinnington, Reid Trautz, Nancy Duhon and Ben Schoor. Great Stuff!~
♫ You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one…♫
Music and lyrics by John Lennon.
In the Supreme Court of the United States decision in Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum, decided Feb 25, 2008, Justice Samuel Alito Jr. quoted John Lennon’s lyrics from Imagine (in full in a footnote) and referred to them in the text of his opinion. He asked:
” What, for example, is “the message” of the Greco-Romanmosaic of the word “Imagine” that was donated to New York City’s Central Park in memory of John Lennon? See NYC Brief 18; App. to id., at A5. Some observers may “imagine” the musical contributions that John Lennon would have made if he had not been killed. Others may think of the lyrics of the Lennon song that obviously inspired the mosaic and may “imagine” a world without religion, countries, possessions, greed, or hunger.”
Litigators and those seeking to persuade juridical bodies or indeed, people in general, have come to realize the strong message and imagery that song lyrics create in our minds and in our imaginations. They evoke not only an intellectual component, they also reach into the emotional and the sensory sides of a person’s mind. If a picture is worth a thousand words, is a song worth a thousand pictures? We are moving up the scale in terms of being able to connect with as many different components of a person’s personality and thinking processes as we can when we bring in musical, lyrical and emotional components to our work.
In a world filled with digital information at our fingertips, just imagine where all this can take us! You may say I am a dreamer, but it looks like, courtesy of Judge Alito, I am not the only one…
♬ My kind of town, chicago is
My kind of town, chicago is
My kind of razzmatazz
And it has, all that jazz…♬
Lyrics by Sammy Cahn, Music by Jimmy Van Heusen, recorded by Frank Sinatra.
On April 2-4 in Chicago a once-in-a-year, not-to-be-missed event will take place. This year – of all years – should be the year lawyers, administrators, legal technologists, researchers and anyone involved in the delivery of legal services makes a bee-line to TECHSHOW in Chicago. Why? Simply because this recession is the best opportunity to upgrade your systems and technology to be able to take advantage of the upswing (that is coming, notwithstanding the financial news). It is difficult to either introduce new technology or get people to change when they are going gangbusters…hence the Stephen Covey 7th habit: “Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw: Principles of Balanced Self-Renewal”.
This economic downswing is the perfect opportunity to take a step back, examine not only what you are doing from a business perspective but also how you are doing it. What principles of workflow and efficiency can you apply to your practice? How do you determine what are the best strategies for you and your firm? What have other firms done and how well is it working for them? Lastly but certainly not least, what can you do for yourself to improve your own personal productivity and effectiveness?
I have found TECHSHOW to simply be the best resource in this regard. The collection of minds that assemble and speak, discuss, go out for dinner and mingle are the ones that will stimulate you, raise issues and ask questions at a depth equalled nowhere else.
The keynote speaker is non other than: Richard Susskind, OBE, who has 25 years of legal technology experience, and serves as Chair of the Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information and has been IT Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England. In an interview in The Times Online, Richard states:
Sir Richard will no doubt be addressing similar themes in his keynote, based on his latest book: The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services. But Richard is but one voice to be heard at TECHSHOW. There are 60 other notable presenters (including many Canadians: Nils Jensen, Steve Matthews, Joel Alleyne, Jean-François DeRico, Dominic Jaar, Peg Duncan, Donna Neff, Dan Pinnington and yours truly).
Tracks range from “A Day in the (techno) Life” to Solo and Small Firm, Trial Skills, e-Discovery Update, Tech for Financial Management and others. Sessions range from Records Management Policies and Systems: Back to the Drawing Board? to Getting to Paperless: A Lawyer’s Step by Step Guide, Got Apple Envy? Macs in a PC World and my two personal perennial favourites: 60 Sites in 60 Minutes and 60 Tips in 60 Minutes. There is also the full exhibit hall to visit with its incredible array of legal technology offerings.
By registering as an early-bird by Feb. 28th, combined with a program promoter discount, you can save $150 off the full registration cost. The Law Society of British Columbia’s program promoter code is: # EP929 and the Canadian Bar Associations’ is: EP927. A full list of program promoters may be found here.
Chicago has all that jazz (and blues!) and it also has my kind of Conference…TECHSHOW is…I hope to see you there.
♬ I’ve got the demons within
I’ve got to brush them all away
I feel the demon’s rage
I must clean them all away
Yeah, yeah…♬
Lyrics and Music by Josh Homme, recorded by Tool.
These days frugal is the defining criteria. Accordingly, it is great when you come across something that is both wonderful, works quickly and well, is easy to use and is, of course, *free*. Accordingly CCleaner was a great find. To quote their website:
“CCleaner is a freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. It removes unused files from your system – allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Additionally it contains a fully featured registry cleaner. But the best part is that it’s fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware! 
”
I have been using CCleaner (originally called CrapCleaner, but they have, ahem, modified the name somewhat) for a couple of years now and totally love it. It does just what it says it does, quickly and easily. My only regret is that it isn’t available for a Mac (it runs under Windows 98/NT4/ME/2000/XP/2003/Vista including the 64-bit versions of XP and Vista). The purists will probably tell me you don’t need the equvalent software on a Mac, but I digress..
There are options if you wish to clean more than just the defaults – there is the “Advanced” tab to investigate. It cleans Internet Explorer, FireFox, Chrome, Opera and Safari. It cleans your registry and Windows. It also cleans up temp files and such from third party applications.
Piriform, the creator of CCleaner, also has Defraggler (a defragmentation tool) and Recuva (a file recovery tool). I haven’t tried those yet, but if they work as well as CCleaner, this could be a hat trick.
Good to know that there are (free) tools out there for the times that you feel you need to clean out all the demons within…
♬ With arms wide open
Under the sunlight
Welcome to this place
I’ll show you everything
With arms wide open ♬
Words and Music by: Scott Stapp/Mark Tremonti, recorded by Creed.
Recently I was given a book written in WordPerfect to review. As you all know, Microsoft Word does not open WordPerfect documents, even on the Mac. Furthermore, there is no current version of WordPerfect available for a Mac. What to do? Mark Robertson, a fellow Mac lawyer in Oklahoma (and co-author of “Winning Alternatives to the Billable Hour” published by the ABA) who happened to be on my left-elbow at the time, said: “Try NeoOffice”. So I did.
NeoOffice is “a full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database programs) for Mac OS X.” The good news is that it can open WordPerfect documents (and Word, OpenDocument Text, Rich Text, StarWriter and others..) with ease. Moreover, it is clean and easy to use. You can save documents in Word, OpenDocument Text, Rich Text, StarWriter and others – but alas, not native WordPerfect. But WordPerfect will open and save to OpenDocument format so perhaps the future is to adopt OpenDocument as a new standard.
Wikipedia states: “On May 21, 2008 Microsoft announced that Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will add native support for the OpenDocument Format.[24] It will offer the option to make ODF 1.1, as well as PDF, the default format, both in the installer and via options settings, while support for their own pending ISO 29500, based on the Office 2007 format, won’t be implemented until Office 14.”
The OpenDocument format is one way of getting around the pesky problem of incompatible word processing formats and is to be appaluded. Furthermore, NeoOffice is the Mac version of Sun’s OpenOffice initiative. I am now wondering if NeoOffice (and OpenOffice for the PC world) is now a viable alternative to acquiring Microsoft’s Office suite.
Certainly I was impressed when using the NeoOffice word processor. It seemed clean and simple to use and certainly less annoying than Word and Word’s tendancies to constantly reformat my document, thinking that it knows what I want to do better than I. I haven’t ventured to use the Spreadsheet or Database or Presentation components so far. But from my venturing into the Text editor – it has styles (that seem easier to use than Word’s), it has a mail merge feature, autotext and all the other bells and whistles that I look for in a full featured word processor.
Accordingly, I am placing NeoOffice (and OpenOffice for PC) in the “Cheap is Good but Free is Better!” category (since it is unbelieveably all free, being open source) as well as the “Make it Work!” category. For anyone setting up a law office today, I would certainly recommend that they try NeoOffice or OpenOffice before they shell out $$ for a proprietary word processing office suite. I would certainly welcome you to NeoOffice and the whole OpenDocument movement with arms wide open!
♫ Doin it right, doin it right,
Doin it right, doin it right ♫
Words and Music by Tom Lavin, recorded by the Powder Blues Band.
This post inaugurates a new thread for this blog – the technology-oriented “Cheap is Good but Free is Better!” thread. This thread will concentrate on how to do more with less. It is a response to today’s economic situation and is intended to be a collection of cost-effective tips for technology in a law office.
This first post is on how to create a PDF of something that is on your desktop – presumably something that is displayed in a browser. It could be an image, it could be instructions that are on the screen (but you don’t want to print the whole web page)or it could be video playing in a browser.
If you are on a PC, at the simplest, you can use “print screen” (by pressing both shift and ‘PrtScr’ on your keyboard) in Windows to capture an image of your desktop. Then go to ‘Paint’ (click on “Start” then “All Programs” then “Accessories” then “Paint”) and then paste the screen capture image into Paint (click on “Edit” then “Paste” in Paint). From there, if you only want to use a part of the image, select a portion of the image with your mouse and right click in the middle of the box to cut out that section and save it to your clipboard.
You can save the final cropped selection as a:
- monochrome bitmap (*.bmp, *.dip)
- 16 color bitmap (*.bmp, *.dip)
- 256 color bitmap (*.bmp, *.dip)
- 24 bit bitmap (*.bmp, *.dip)
- JPEG (*.jpg, *.jpeg, *.jpe, *.jfif)
- GIF (*.gif)
- TIFF (*.tiff, *.tif)
- PNG (*.png)
If you want to make it into a PDF, you can use one of the free PDF conversion sites on the web such as:
- Primo PDF (http://www.download.com/PrimoPDF/3000-10743_4-10264577.html?tag=lst-0-1). Note that there are no licence restrictions on Primo PDF, which is probably why it is #1 most popular Business & Productivity software download on CNET’s Download.com.
Of course, on my Mac – I just use “Grab” (“Finder” then “Utilities” then “Grab”), which comes with OS X. From there, you can choose between:
- Selection
- Window
- Screen
- Timed Screen
and save your image as a *.TIFF or print it as a *.PDF (which saves it as a PDF file).
Back to the Windows world for a moment, if you want to get fancier than what MS Paint will do, you will have to go to something like:
- SnagIt (http://www.techsmith.com) – thanks Diane Ebersole
- Gadwin PrintScreen (http://www.gadwin.com/
printscreen/) or IrfanView (www.irfanview.com) – thanks Nerino Petro - Camtasia (http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp) – thanks Jim Calloway
- Adobe Captivate (http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate) – thanks Catherine Sanders Reach.
Either way you can be doing it right for little or no cost!
♫ Pick up the Pieces…♫
Words, Music and Recorded by Average White Band, Roger Ball, Hamish Stuart.
Microsoft is launching a new ad campaign that will stress the savings (i.e. increased productivity) from investing in new technology, according to IT World (“New Microsoft ads stress savings derived from software” by Jeremy Kirk.)
Proving the ROI of technological investments is not trivial; I suspect that these ads will be high on qualitative reflection rather than quantitative statistics (although I would be happy to be proven wrong). Microsoft has, in my respectful opinion, concentrated on the consumer side of the operating system for too long, to the detriment of the business user – particularly the smaller business user.
Most smaller law firms are essentially held hostage by their IT support personnel, since setting up, running and fixing even a small business network requires a great deal of technical ‘know-how’. I have also heard stories from lawyers that ‘their system can’t do X’ when I know that there are scores of similar firms that are doing “X” on a daily basis.
Their IT technicians, I suspect, have set up their system in a matter that does not fully meet the business needs of the law firm and the staff and lawyers working there. This is not necessarily by malicious intent – IT people don’t practice law and don’t see the world through the same lens as lawyers. The IT person’s job is to keep the systems running with a minimum of trouble – that may mean that they do not implement features or applications that may create more work for themselves. But this also means that the firm is not receiving the full ROI of their technological investment, due to the complications of working with and maintaining the technology.
Vista, to be blunt, has been responsible for a large part of this – it has caused headaches for many (but not all). I know that the upswing in interest in Macs in law firms has been driven by lawyers and staff who are looking for a ‘less intrusive’ way of working – they simply don’t want to have to be dealing with the all the bothersome IT details.
It was instructive that at the Board of Trustees Meeting of the College of Law Practice Management in Chicago this past weekend that all but three of the laptops on the table were Macs. There were two Dells and an HP – the rest were Macs, ranging from a G4 (that is still plugging away) all the way up to the latest black and white, aluminum-cased MacBook. I looked around and asked myself, if the leaders in management in the legal profession are adopting Macs, can the rest of the profession be far behind?
I am hopeful that Microsoft’s ads will really bring out how computing technology has and will continue to make us all more productive. I also hope that this also signals a real sea-change at Microsoft to focus on productivity from the ground-up; by paying more attention to the smaller business user rather than the consumer market. Looking back at Vista, I truly hope that this indicates a deep-rooted change at Microsoft to pick up the pieces and get back to the business market.
♬Gonna keep on tryin
Till I reach the highest ground..♬
Words, music and recorded by Stevie Wonder.
I was delighted to learn on New Year’s Eve that Thoughtful Legal Management has received a 2008 CLawBie (tied with Jordan Furlong’s Law21 blog) in the Practice Management Award category. Jordan’s excellent blog has also taken top Canadian blog award, for which he should be justly proud!
I am humbled by the quality and skill of all the other winners and nominees – and I wish to extend my congratulations to all winners and nominees alike. Please check out all the blogs that Steve Matthews has listed on www.clawbies.ca. and add them to your RSS feeder!
I would also like to thank those who put forward thoughtfullaw.com for nomination. My thanks goes out to all the readers, for which, truly, this blog would not otherwise exist.
The Canadian blog community is being recognized not just nationally but internationally for its high standards, its collegiality and great work. For example, www.slaw.ca has been selected as one of the Top 100 Legal Blogs by the ABA Journal. I know that this ensures that everyone is working to world class standards!
I also wanted to say thanks to Steve Matthews – for creating these awards, for keeping them going and knowing that he is ineligible for any of them since he administers them! His blogs and his work on the web ranks shoulder to shoulder with the best of them – indeed I would say he stands in a class all his own – and these awards are another example of his contribution to this community. I can only hope that I can follow his lead and, in turn, ‘pay it forward’ in some small fashion.
Of course this all provides further motivation to keep trying to meet everyone’s expectations in 2009 – gonna keep on trying until I reach the highest ground! Thanks again all!