Category: Technology
A recent 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal allows the government to search, seize and download laptop data at border crossings despite the Fourth Amendment! Suspicion is not required. A warrant is not required. No protection is available for the individual under this ruling. Just one more liberty removed.
The panel suggested that travelers should no longer expect privacy!
Rules of professional conduct require confidentiality. ABA Model Rule 6.1 provides that "A lawyer shall not reveal information relating to the representation of a client … " Thus, a lawyer should not have any information on the laptop about clients’ matters. If that’s true, then can a lawyer travel across the border with a laptop? Arguably not!
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Charles A. James, General Counsel of Chevron, Inc., started his keynote remarks at Los Angeles’ LegalTech program by describing his employer, Chevron, as one of the Corporate 5!
I’m familiar with Corporate 100, AmLaw 100, etc. When he spoke about the top 5 companies in the world, he jarred my sensitivities. He’s right, of course, and I intellectually knew that. But, he connected with the emotional side of my understanding. He got my attention.
Of course, that’s the function of the keynote presenter – get the attention of the audience. He did that by describing his gripes against technology vendors … and challenges to law firms.
Discussing how much work Chevron “farms out” (outsources) to outside counsel, and the metric (see below) he uses to increase the size of his internal legal department, Mr. James was more candid than I recall from other GC.
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New York (ALM) is the “big one.” Chicago is home of the ABA. And now, Los Angeles is doing its part in promoting the effective use of technology. The partnership between ALM and Los Angeles County Bar Association continues to grow. Countervailing trends are at work and I’m eager to see the results with the show opening tomorrow.
Travel has become more difficult and expensive, thus localizing efforts to bring the information to the people rather than the people to the information makes sense. Of course, you do remember we’re talking about technology? There should be no reason to travel to see the benefits of technology … just do it over the web!
On the other hand, as the phone company realized years ago, “high tech, high touch” is required to be truly effective today. Thus, personal contact and demonstration and networking are essential even in a techie world. Hence, the LA show.
There has been so much consolidation in the legal services world of technology, however, that it will be interesting to see just how many vendors are left standing to show in Los Angeles.
Stay tuned for more. As I said, I’m eager to see the 2008 version of the show.
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TechnoLawyer has created a new video with their 30,000th eBook download. A fun job … Can you see our LawBiz Blog in the list of blogs? You have to look fast as the video speeds up at the end! <g> But, we’re there.
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There’s LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo Pulse, and …. other social networks.
In a recent article by Larry Bodine, he cited the following statistics: Less than 8% surveyed believe social networking is important to them; 91% said they spend less than 25% of their online time working with social networks. Still, these are rather large numbers to be devoting to a networking process that is relatively new … As with other technologies, we will have to wait and see if this takes hold.
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Walter Mossberg, “personal technology” writer for the Wall Street Journal, highlighted a very interesting trend to a small group of consultants where I was a participant. He was looking at the industry from the 50,000 foot level when he said that it is the consumer that is driving change in technology. The winners in the race will be those who can develop new techniques to make the consumer’s life easier – without being a tech wizard.
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LawBiz Tips edition for the current week has been released. Using financial benchmarks to analyze your firm’s performance has been the focus of several financial software companies. Is this of interest to you?
Also, I talk about dreaming having a poor ROI. What does this mean for the law firm? Read LawBiz Tips and learn my approach.
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Lisa Solomon is tech savvy. I learn from her everytime we’re together.
We went to dinner while in Chicago this last week and she took several photographs. Here are two of them that are listed on Facebook, one of the sprouting social networks. One should be careful what is placed on internet boards such as this … This entry is sedate and trustworthy. This is the first posting for me, excluding our Airstream trailer, of photos on this site.
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During the ABA TechShow, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Rob of LexBlog.
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At the ABA Show, one product continues to impress me … Fujitsu’s ScanSnap. Model 501 is their desktop model … it’s outstanding. See my podcast with Derek Flower of Fujitsu, talking about the features and benefits of this unit.
At the Tech Show, I got to see the new portable unit, Model #300 …. It is sooooo small, light and priced right. Consider buying this if scanning on the road can benefit your practice.
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