One thing that became obvious at ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago this year was that lawyers are embracing tablet devices like the iPad in great numbers. Some people claimed that iPads even outnumbered laptops at the event. I’m not sure if that claim would have stood up to a head count but it was certainly plausible. The little tablets were everywhere.

So, fine, if you’re thinking about bringing a tablet device into your practice I have some advice for you.

Connectivity

There’s no getting around it – most tablet devices are barely useful without some kind of Internet connectivity. You can’t check your e-mail, can’t log into your cloud-based billing system, can’t research that case law. You know that nifty dictation assistant app you have? The one that tells you what the weather is and helps you navigate to the client’s office? You might as well be speaking Klingon if you don’t have connectivity – all of the popular mobile speech recognition apps require Internet connectivity to translate your words.

Wi-Fi is great, but you can’t always rely upon having good public Wi-Fi. As attendees at ABA TECHSHOW discover year after year even when wireless is provided it can be rather hit or miss. That’s why if your tablet is really a business machine you need to get down to business and get one that supports 3G (or now LTE for the newest models). When you have Wi-Fi access – great, use it. When you don’t (or when it isn’t secure) you’ll hopefully have a 3G or 4G data connection to fall back on.

Virtualization

Tablet devices annoy, irritate and even frighten IT people. Why? Well because users come in every other day with whatever gadget they bought at Best Buy last night and insist the IT guys integrate it into their line of business systems. IT ends up having to support 50 different devices with 6 different operating systems and users aren’t always very understanding when IT tries to explain that the glorified picture frame the user bought won’t run the firms’ entire practice management system. Add to that the consequences when a user leaves a tablet loaded with confidential firm (or worse, client) data in a cab or a bar…there are a lot of really bad things that can result.

So what’s the solution? Inevitably the solution is going to be virtualization. A return, of sorts, to the glass house where all of the data (and most of the processing power) actually lives in a data center much like the old mainframe days. Joe User, on his tablet device, won’t actually be firing up an app to check his e-mail or edit a document – he’ll just fire up his virtual desktop app which (after asking for his username and passphrase) will reach out through that network connection we talked about and connect to one of the servers back in the data center. That server will then provide Joe User with a virtualized version of his desktop – just like on his real computer.

From there he can launch apps, compose documents, handle e-mail, enter his time…almost anything he can do from his desktop machine. Except he’ll be doing it on a 9” screen and may or may not have anything resembling a real keyboard.

Since no data lives on the tablet it’s far more secure. The tablet is essentially just a portal to the virtualized desktop living on the server. Since the remote access apps are either browser-based or at least largely cross-platform there are fewer support headaches for IT (Until somebody comes in with a RIM Playbook or other oddball device).

Better Windows 8 Than Never

Don’t have a tablet yet? You may want to wait just a bit…in the next several months you should start to see Microsoft Windows 8 tablets hit the market. It’s hard to know yet how good they’ll be but if you’ve seen a Windows 7.5 Phone on a decent piece of hardware (like a Nokia Lumia 900 or HTC Titan II) you have to be intrigued by the possibilities. True, they may never have as many apps as an iPad does and if your primary use for the tablet device is to play Angry Birds, well, maybe an iPad is the toy for you. But for actual business users the Windows 8 tablets will almost certainly be worth a look.

You may still end up opting for an Android or iPad device after checking out the Windows 8 tablet, but if you can wait until they arrive to make that call at least you won’t have to look longingly at them and wonder when your colleagues show up with them.

Conclusion

The tablet platform appears to be here to stay. Make sure if the tablet is a tool for you that you get the right tool for the job and that you use it securely. Oh, and give your IT guy a break. It’s hard to already be an expert on a device that didn’t even exist last week.

One thing has become clear in the last few months: Hollywood has declared war on the Internet. Rupert Murdoch and his colleagues, not content with grossing billions of dollars on their blockbuster movies have decided to spent some of those billions to lobby congress to try and get legislation passed that would give them the ability to more quickly (and with minimal due process) shut down file sharing sites that they think are hosting pirated content. Of course, Mr. Murdoch has demonstrated that he has a fairly fuzzy understanding of how links and such work so if it’s up to him not only would file sharing sites be shut down but also sites that link to potentially pirated content such as…well…Google would be shut down as well.

Fortunately Mr. Murdoch’s misunderstandings are not likely to be the basis of any actual legislation but the fact is that all of the anti-piracy activity has gotten the attention of the file sharing and storage sites.

And if SOPA/PIPA didn’t get their attention…then the sudden shutdown of popular file sharing site Megaupload, and arrest of its staff, certainly have. In the wake of the Megaupload raid a couple of other online file storage sites voluntarily closed their doors and several others have scrambled to revise their policies and procedures.

So why does any of this matter to you? Other than that old VHS copy of “The Little Mermaid” you recorded off ABC Family back in 1997 you don’t have any pirated material! But that really doesn’t matter.

A lot of the people who were storing their files on Megaupload didn’t have any pirated material either, but their files are just as gone. Last June the FBI raided the Virginia offices of Digital One and made off with a rack of servers. They were targeting a single individual but when they pulled the servers down came Pinboard, Curbed and a bunch of other websites that had nothing to do with it.

That’s the risk you face when you store files or applications in a multi-tenant environment. Law enforcement (and especially the MPAA and RIAA) tend to deal with such issues by seizing or shutting the entire site – throwing the baby out with the bath water you might say.

The real world analog would be if the office two floors down from yours was occupied by a criminal and the government decided to deal with that by bombing the whole building. You, the accountants across the hall and the dentist upstairs had nothing to do with it, but you’re just as punished. Fortunately in the real world law enforcement (usually) has a more granular solution. They can kick down the door of the criminal without also destroying the dental office. They can arrest the culprits with a minimum of collateral damage – usually.

In the digital world that’s often not the case. If your documents are on the same server with a terrorist’s files or somebody who is sharing pirated copies of “Mission Impossible” (which is apparently just as bad in Mr. Murdoch’s view) it’s entirely possible that your documents are going to get seized too. Just ask any of the innocent users of Megaupload.

Lots of folks are using Dropbox…want to bet that there might be a pirated song, eBook or episode of “Friends” uploaded there too? I’m not saying Dropbox is in imminent danger of takedown – I’m simply pointing out that when you share servers with thousands of anonymous other folks there is a chance that one or more of those other folks is being naughty and we’ve already seen that the government is willing and able to swoop in and clean out those folks (and anybody else in the vicinity).

“So I Shouldn’t Use The Cloud?!”

Well no, that would be a bit of an overreaction. My advice to you is two-fold:

1. Be thoughtful about what cloud services you use to store files. New file sharing/storage services are cropping up all the time. It seems like every week I get lawyers asking me about (or worse, boasting about) using some new cloud storage service nobody had ever heard of a week ago. Be reluctant to store your files on SuperUltraShareBox until it’s had some time to prove that it’s legit and maybe not likely to go anywhere. It’s not that Dropbox or Box.net are too big to go down (Megaupload was, well, pretty mega) but the more established services are more likely to make reasonable efforts to control piracy and thus are less likely to provoke the “nuclear” response from law enforcement.
2. Always keep a local copy of anything you store in the Cloud. One of the strengths of a service like Dropbox or Live Mesh is that it doesn’t leave you totally dependent upon somebody else’s server. If Dropbox vanishes, you still have the Dropbox folder on your device(s) with all of your documents and files in it. Keep your own local backup of any files you host in the Cloud and you’re protected against the sudden loss of that service – for whatever reason.

The battle is far from over. It’s clear that Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Dodd and the various media industry associations are still anxious to shut down any and all ways for people to share media. They’ve spent far too much money to just walk away from it just because SOPA and PIPA got put down. I’m sure there WILL be more casualties of this war on sharing. Follow the above advice and hopefully you won’t be one of them. But just to be safe you might want to hide that bootleg Little Mermaid tape.

Let's take the opportunity to make a few Law Tech resolutions.

Resolution #1 – I will test my backups!

Backups are crucial and you don't want to find out whether they worked or not when you really really need them. So in addition to checking periodically to make sure your backups are actually running (You *DO* check don't you?) you should actually test your backups from time to time.

How? Create a dummy file – just a Word document will do – and put it in your file system. Call it "Backup Test" or something like that. Let your backup process back it up with the rest of your files. Once in a while – couple of times a year maybe – delete your Backup Test file then try to restore it from your backup. If you can successfully restore it then you know your backups are working AND that you know how to restore a file if you need to.

If it doesn't work, or if you can't figure it out, it's better to find that out now before you have an emergency.

While you're testing them you might want to confirm that everything you need backed up is actually getting backed up. I can't tell you how many times we've spoken with firms who discovered (often the hard way) that their accounting system or their e-mail archives or other important files were actually NOT included in their backups.

Resolution #2 – Double Up on the Cloud

As firms are increasingly reliant upon the Internet it's remarkable how many of them are depending upon a single cable from a single provider. If your firm depends upon the Internet look into getting redundant Internet connections.

How? There are two things you'll need:

1. A second Internet connection
2. A firewall that supports dual WAN (Wide Area Network) connections.

The second Internet connection isn't too hard. It doesn't have to be an expensive business-class connection (though that would be nice). Even a basic cable modem or DSL connection can work. What's important is that you get it from a different provider than your primary connection – it doesn't do you any good to have two connections from the same provider if that provider goes down.

An increasing number of firewalls on the market today support dual WAN connections with load balancing and failover. Let's talk about those terms for a moment…

Load Balancing means that the firewall will examine your outbound traffic and automatically send it out on the connection that has the most available bandwidth. Effectively it combines your two Internet connections so you get better performance.

Failover takes that concept to the extreme – while the firewall is monitoring the two connections it can also detect when one connection fails entirely. When that happens it'll direct ALL of your traffic over the remaining connection – keeping you up and running even if one of your Internet connections is down. When that connection comes back up the firewall will recognize that and will resume using that connection for traffic.

If the Internet is important to your practice, invest in redundant connections.

Resolution #3 – Be a Power Person

Electricity is critical to running our modern information systems. Make sure your critical systems have the stable power they need by investing in Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS). Servers, switches, firewalls, routers, storage devices, backup drives… all of those should be plugged into UPSs.

You might also consider plugging key workstations into a small UPS to keep those running through brief power interruptions.

What you SHOULDN'T plug into a UPS? Printers. They consume a lot of energy when they start up a print cycle (which can shorten the amount of run time the UPS can supply) and printing is rarely one of those time-critical operations that has to happen during a power outage.

Resolution #4 – Make Friends with the Event Logs

When's the last time you checked the event log on your servers, firewalls, storage systems…? The event logs can clue you in to little quiet problems that can raise their heads as big ugly problems later. Want your systems to perform at their best? Check the event viewers on a regular basis so you can get ahead of those issues.

Nobody likes to check the event logs but it's a lot better than getting blindsided by a problem you could have headed off weeks earlier.

Resolution #5 – Document Everything

Take an opportunity to review your systems documentation. Do you know where all of your licenses and CDs are? Do you have a current inventory of all of your computers, server, switches, printers… Do you have a good and current network map? That kind of documentation can save you time and money if you need to have upgrades or major repairs done to your systems.

Start 2012 off right with a few technology resolutions and you'll have a very happy new year.

Recently Apple released their iPhone 4S and regardless of how excited you might be about the new camera or the new processor the reality is that the feature everybody is talking about (and to) is “Siri” the voice-enabled “personal assistant”.

You can ask Siri to find the nearest coffee shop, to wake you up at a particular time, to tell you what the weather is expected to be, to call or send a message to a contact in your address book…even to look up random facts for you.

One of the most intriguing things about Siri is that you can tell it to “Remind me of X the next time I’m here.” Siri knows where “here” is based upon your GPS coordinates and the next time you’re there…she’ll cheerfully remind you of “X”

Siri is a pretty remarkable step forward in making our “Personal Digital Assistants” truly personal (and truly assistive) though she still has some limitations.

First of all, like all voice-recognition software, how good it is depends a bit upon how good the speaker is. James Earl Jones would probably do very well with Siri. Bob Dylan? Not so much. For those of us in between Siri may occasionally struggle.

It also depends upon the environment you’re in when you want to use it. Sitting at your desk at home – should work fairly well unless you have small children doing enthusiastic laps around your desk at the time or a dog who wants to ask Siri his own question. In the car…hit or miss. But turn the radio off (or at least way down) if you want more hits than misses. One tech pundit said he tried to use Siri on the streets of New York one day but just gave up because there was just too much ambient noise for it to be useful.

Also keep in mind that Siri is not very monogamous. It may recognize you by name, but it’s not above accepting instructions from others. This is actually the basis of a recently-discovered security flaw – if somebody else gets ahold of your iPhone 4S, even if you have the screen locked (and you should) they can still activate Siri and get her to do things like read your e-mail or send texts as you.

The next issue you’ll have to consider with Siri is just how much of your life you want to share with those around you. Do you really want to ask Siri to add your proctologist appointment to your calendar while you’re having lunch in a crowded restaurant? Are you likely to respond to a sensitive e-mail from a client while surrounded with a hundred other passengers at an airport gate? There are definitely times when discretion is the better part of valor – or at least the better part of courtesy. I’m not sure I’d WANT to be on an airplane where 300 other people are all chattering incessantly to their devices.

One thing Siri has already done, however, that I think is absolutely positive is that it has pushed the competition to make this kind of technology to the next level. Already the Android community has responded with “Iris” (read that backwards). Iris is, to be fair, quite a ways behind Siri in terms of capabilities but it’s no secret that Iris is basically a prototype. There are now teams of smart folks working hard on both Siri and Iris (and undoubtedly competitors as yet unrecognized) and I think the next 18 months will bring some really remarkable progress in the field.

Everybody wants something for free. It’s human nature. And it’s rarely more prevalent than when it comes to technology. “It’s all just bits and bytes, why should it cost anything?” says one. “Information wants to be free” suggests another. 

Today’s generations have grown up in the age of Napster and Google and surveys indicate that there is almost an expectation that digital content, including music and movies, is free. Much to the chagrin of the entertainment industry who has been battling since the invention of the tape recorder and VCR to figure out how to keep making money off a product that is so easy to copy and trade.

Unfortunately while “bits and bytes” could be free, rent and food rarely are. So those people and companies that produce the content and services usually want to get paid. They have to eat too. That’s the digital battleground when it comes to monetizing products and services.

Attorneys and business-folk occupy plenty of ground in this landscape – with Google Docs and other “free” services all trying to entice us to their product. I think it’s important, however, when considering these services, to understand what their business model is. Because make no mistake, all of them ARE businesses and like all businesses they want to make money.

There are a few distinct business models online and some companies employ a hybrid approach that blends two or more of them. Let’s take a moment to talk about a couple of them.

Ad-Driven

One of the oldest business models is the advertising-driven business model. Since the first time a magazine or newspaper sold an ad most of our media and many of our Internet services have been driven by advertising. We’re used to the idea – though we sometimes forget it – that our television and radio programs, and to a large extent newspapers and magazines, are provided almost entirely by advertisers. 

That great new TV show? It was developed to get as many people as possible to watch. Not out of some egomaniacal desire to be “#1” (though certainly there is some of that) but rather because it allows the TV stations and networks to go to big companies and say “Look, 10 million people watch our show. Give us $200,000 and we’ll let those 10 million people watch your ad for 30 seconds.”

Radio is almost entirely the same situation and on the Internet a majority of the presented content exists to gain page views and clicks – all of which are carefully measured and packaged to entice advertising dollars.

Make no mistake – Facebook is not a social media company. They’re an advertising company. We users with our witty status updates, photos of the family BBQ and impressive FarmVille stats…we’re NOT their customers. The advertisers are their customers. As an insightful fellow recently posited “If you didn’t pay for the product, then you ARE the product.” We’re Facebook’s product and they package us up in nifty little profiles, get us to do most of the work, and then sell us to their advertisers. Brilliant.

Why are most of Google’s services free? Because they’re parsing your data for keywords so they can serve you targeted advertisements. Log into your Gmail account, open an e-mail message and cast an eye to the right side of the screen and you’ll see a convenient list of who is paying for your free e-mail.

It goes a lot deeper than American Idol and Facebook though…in the words of a prominent NASCAR driver “People think we’re a racing company. We’re not. We’re an ad agency that drives fast.”

One thing that is important to remember when dealing with ad-driven services is that they need access to you and your data. Google can command a premium for their ads because they can target their ads. They KNOW you’re interested in face cream or a new iPad because they’re (well, their computers are) reading your e-mail and looking for clues to who you are and what you want.

CBS would LOVE to know who your friends are and whether you own or rent. The move to online content is not entirely for your convenience – the interactivity of the medium makes it possible for them to gather more data about their viewers than they ever could with a simple TV broadcast.

Facebook needs you to tell them that you got engaged and that you like “Glee” so they can target ads to you. So they can go to their advertisers and boast that they have 2 million users who all enjoy bowling. If you think they’re not watching you, you’re wrong. They are watching you very intently for the next clue to what they can sell to a potential advertiser. That’s what they do. That’s why Zuckerberg and the Google guys are billionaires.

Freemium

Another model that has some traction in the Internet space is the “Freemium” model. In that model the service gives you some limited access for free, then tries to entice you to purchase the more robust version. Dropbox is an example of this model. You get 2GB for free, but if you want more you have to break out the credit card.

The Freemium model tends to be a bit more private – unless they also have an advertising component there isn’t much incentive for them to carefully scan your data or extract personal details from you. But it’s also a model that is always trying to get you to the next level. It does Dropbox no good if 100% of their users only use the free service. They need to entice you to upgrade and towards that end you need to keep a weather eye on the direction the service is taking. What was free yesterday could become pay tomorrow if they decide they need to realign their service plans and reduce what they give for free.

How’s That Free Lunch Tasting?

Before you entrust your data to a free service make sure you understand what data you’re giving them and what their business model is. If the data is your son’s soccer schedule or plans for the upcoming family reunion then it probably doesn’t matter that much whether somebody is parsing it for advertising revenue. If the data is a client’s draft patent application, financial or medical records then it’s a lot more important to understand who has eyes on that data and why.

Sometimes the safest course, even though it’s not as popular with the accounting department, is to just pay for a commercial service whose interests are more aligned with your own.

You get what you pay for.

We IT consultants are sort of a mystical bunch. People don’t seem to really understand what we do or how and in many cases we get called when people are desperate because all else has failed. Not many people call me when everything is working great. I want to take this opportunity to clear up three misconceptions people have about working with consultants:

1. We usually don’t need your passwords…and just as often don’t want them.

It amazes me how often I’ll show up at a site and the client will just hand me a sheet listing everybody’s account name and password. Or the moment I sit down at their keyboard they volunteer their password. Usually…we don’t need them.

If I’m working on a machine that is on a domain (which for companies that have a Windows server is most of them) then I can just reset the password at the server to something like “Service Password” and use that for the little while that I need to work on that machine. When I’m done the user can simply reset their password back to what it was before – or select a new one of their own.

Also, if I’m working on your machine there’s a good chance I need to use the Administrator account…which hopefully isn’t yours. So please…don’t throw your passwords at me. A password shared is a password compromised. And a password compromised needs to be changed, right now.

So many people reuse passwords that the password for their computer is often the same one they use for their bank or their home security system. Frankly, I don’t WANT those passwords. I don’t want that level of access to your life. And you shouldn’t have to worry about it.

By the way, those of you with in-house system administrators…they usually don’t need your password(s) either and for the very same reasons. They can usually reset them to something else and use that temporarily reset password to access what they need to access. The days when your system admin needed to have a sheet with everybody’s passwords printed on them in his desk drawer is long since over.

The next time an IT guy asks you for your password…ask him why he needs it. It MAY be that he really needs it, but pretty often he doesn’t. If the answer is “company policy” then you should have a chat with the person who sets policy.

2. We don’t need to own your domain name.

This one is vaguely similar to the first and it has to do with control. When you register a domain name like “mycompany.com” the name has to be registered to somebody. Very often people have their consultants or web designers register the name for them but then they never check to see in whose name that domain got registered. Too often the web designer or consultant ends up registering it in their OWN name. They think they need to do that so that they can be authorized to make changes to the domain, or they don’t realize they can register it in your name…or they want to keep control of it so that they have leverage against you in future negotiations.

Here’s what you need to know about domain registrations : there are TWO contact names listed on the domain - the “Administrative Contact” and the “Technical Contact”. The administrative contact should ALWAYS be the owner of the domain; the person who pays the bill. Usually, that’s you. Your consultant can be the “Technical Contact”. That gives them the ability to easily make changes if you request it, log in and monitor the settings and so forth. But it doesn’t take the domain away from you.

Recently I heard a horror story from a client who had used an IT guy (not us) to create/register their domain. The IT guy registered the domain in his own name…then he passed away. She never got the notice that her domain name was going to expire because unbeknownst to her it was registered in the IT guy’s name and the warning e-mails went to him. Her domain name expired, her website and e-mail mailboxes all disappeared.

Then she had to spend some money to file a claim to reacquire her domain name…made more complicated by the fact that according to the domain registrar it had never been hers to begin with. After days of no e-mail or website, and more than a few dollars, she finally reclaimed her domain name. And had to re-create her e-mail mailbox and her website – both of which were wiped out.

This problem would have been avoided if she had simply been listed as the Administrative Contact on her own domain. Want to see how your domain name is registered? Go to IPTools.com and enter your domain name in the “Domain Info” box. It’s fast and free.

3. If we can’t speak your language that’s as much our fault as yours.

It’s been said that you don’t really understand a subject if you can’t teach it to a novice. And a lot of guys in our business spend their time talking in jargon and acronyms that mean nothing to the client. Infer from that what you want.

You hire a consultant to consult. To assist you. To guide you. To advise you. Some clients don’t want to know the details, they just want the solution and that’s fine. Other clients want to know the why’s and how’s as much as the what’s and when’s. Your consultant should be able to effectively communicate with you the why’s and how’s of whatever their doing or recommending. 

If they can’t do that then that says as much about them as it does about you. Don’t accept that you’re not smart enough or that the answer is too technical for you. It may take a great deal of time and patience – depending upon how tech savvy you are – but if you really want to know they should be able to help you understand it. 

If they’re not able to do that, then you may want to consider looking for a consultant who can.

Summary

A consultant should be a trusted advisor who is looking out for your best interests and who guides you to the solutions you want and need. A good consulting relationship should make you and your firm more effective and more profitable. Select your consultants carefully and make sure the consultants you hire are dealing straight with you though and not putting you in a compromised position.

In technology today, and especially on the web, there is a constant push for the new shiny thing. Lately it seems like that new shiny thing comes in two flavors: Voice Recognition and Video. In my (not-uncontroversial) opinion those are two of the most overrated technologies in the business right now.

Video

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Undoubtedly true, but honestly…don't use a thousand words when 56 words will do. It seems like today every website is trying to video-enable itself and recently I even saw a pitch for video e-mail! That's fine when the subject is complicated and best explained in pictures or video, but ususally it's not.

 I get annoyed when I click on a headline like "Three Sectors Showing Growth In First Quarter." only to be taken to a video of some talking head news person READING the story to me. I can read, thanks. The information could have been conveyed to me in 3-4 paragraphs of text. I don't want to sit through 4 minutes of video (plus commercials) to get the same information.

It would be one thing if it were a complicated topic and the video included, in addition to the over-coiffed talking head, some useful graphics, charts, animations or other media that helped to explain the topic – but too often video adds sizzle but no steak.

 Likewise with the video e-mail – in this demonstration the presenter showed how an auto dealership can send a video e-mail to remind a customer that they're due for an oil change. Why on earth would I want to sit through a two minute video for something that can be explained in a few sentences of text? I'm a busy person, I have things to do. Give me the information as clearly and concisely as possible so I can get on with my day.

 I don't mind if a site gives me the OPTION to see a video. Give me the information in text form and a link where I can click to see a video that goes into the story in more depth; that's fine. I can choose to watch the video or not. But don't force me to watch somebody else read the story to me. That's just painful. 

 Video is sometimes useful, but it's often a shiny thing and right now it's being dramatically overused. 

Voice

Voice recognition has been a holy grail of technology for decades. We all watched “Star Trek” where Captain Kirk would just tell the computer what he wanted. In “Iron Man” we saw a utopian computing vision where Tony Stark carried on a conversation with his computer and interacted with it three-dimensionally using gestures and holograms. That’s pretty cool and not as far from reality as we might imagine (if you have the budget) (and a private bunker workshop full of robots and sports cars) but even so…it has a fairly niche market. 

It’s not that you can’t draft a will by standing in a room grabbing holographic clauses out of the air and dictating the client information. It’s that the facility needed to make that happen is increasingly rare for most knowledge workers (like lawyers). You may well dictate your next memo, but are you going to do that at a crowded airport gate? In Starbucks? In the reception area of a client’s office? The trend in technology is to make us increasingly mobile. That’s what iPads and Androids and netbooks and 4G (and to some extent “The Cloud”) are all about. Getting us out from behind our big oak desks and out into the world (or at least out into the coffee shop) And the requirement for good voice recognition is not only a good microphone but privacy.

There are so many conditions that can impede voice recognition that I really question how effective it will be for the masses in the short term. How many users really spend their workdays in a quiet, private environment where they’re not listening to music and are willing to wear a headset while they work?

Don’t get me wrong, there ARE people successfully using voice recognition today and the technology for voice recognition is steadily improving. Someday we’ll be able to talk to our computer well without the headset and our computer will have the sophisticated algorithms needed to pick out our voice among background noise and understand what we want from context so it won’t have to precisely hear every syllable. But we’ll probably never be at a place where we’re willing to dictate things out loud on an airplane (especially in coach). Besides if you had to sit next to somebody on a plane dictating a real estate purchase agreement you’d want to dump your drink over their head before the movie even started.

Voice recognition and video technology is getting better and better, but I still don’t believe it will ever be the way that most of us do most of our computing tasks. It’s not that the tech isn’t ready or won’t get better. It’s that most of the carbon-based technology (us) just doesn’t live/work in an environment that makes voice and video the best way to do all of the interaction with our systems.

Law firms deal with some of the most confidential and sensitive data in society and yet so many of them have such lax policies on information security. There are some simple things you can do to dramatically improve your information security and they don’t require you to purchase expensive gear.

Keep Your Passwords Your Own

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at a firm and heard an attorney come out of their office and say “Patty, I’m going to Phoenix for a couple of days to meet with Acme Co. Check my e-mail while I’m away; my password is….” I just want to grab that attorney and shake them!

NEVER share your password. Never. This is 2011. You can check your own e-mail from the road if you need to. Practically every gadget in your pocket can check your e-mail these days. Heck you can check your e-mail on a PlayStation if you have to. 

But perhaps you don’t want to do that. Maybe it’s a real vacation and not a client trip. There are ways to have your assistant check your e-mail WITHOUT having to totally compromise your network identity. You can share your Inbox with them; you can have copies of your mail forwarded to them; you can create a separate special folder they can access with client messages. There are a lot of ways to do it.

When you give your assistant your username and password your assistant can log into the system AS YOU. Not only can they check your e-mail they can access EVERYTHING you can access. Everything. Time and billing? Yes. Payroll? If you can, they can. Do you save your banking and other website passwords in your browser? If your assistant can log into your computer as you, they can access all of that.

Your assistant can send e-mails AS you. 

The other problem with having your assistant log into your mailbox and check your e-mail is that they can access more than just the new e-mail you receive. They can access e-mails you’ve saved from before; including that message from the Compensation Committee on staff raises for 2011. And that nostalgic e-mail from your high school girlfriend about that time….well, you remember. And now your assistant does too.

Scared yet? It gets worse. When was the last time you changed your password? How many assistants have you gone through in that time? For one of my clients the answer to that question was “7 years” and “Five. No, six!” So there are how many people walking around out there, who no longer work for you, who know your username and password? Any of those people working for opposing counsel these days?

A password compromised must be changed. Right now.

Not Passwords, Pass Phrases

As long as you’re changing your password, let’s make it a good one. The important thing to remember with passwords is that LONG is better than complex. r6IKjX  is a terrible password. Yes, it’s very random. It’s also only 6 characters long and a brute force attack (that’s when the attacker just tries every combination of characters) will break it in a matter of minutes or hours at the most. Plus it’s really hard to remember – so you’re more likely to write it on a Post-IT and stick it on your monitor. (or under your keyboard, where nobody ever looks)

The better plan is to select a phrase. Something that means something to you. 

“My 2 dogs are cute!”

That’s 20 characters, mixed case, with numbers and symbols. It would take a generation for a computer to brute force that and it’s easy for you to remember. 

Got a favorite song?

“Hey Jude, don’t make it bad”

28 characters, easy to remember, not that hard to type, really hard to break.

Long, personal, easy to remember, hard to guess. That’s the key.

And keep it to yourself. A password compromised MUST be changed. Now.

One Last Secret…

I’ll tell you something your IT guys might not want you to know…in most cases THEY don’t need to know your passphrase either. In a Windows domain, which if you have a Windows server you undoubtedly have, the IT guys can change your password when they need to access your data without your assistance. Then, when they’re done, they can tell you what the temporary password they used was, you can log in and change your password back to your own, secret, pass phrase. That doesn’t work in EVERY case, but in most cases it does.

Keep your identity your own. Don’t share your passwords, select good long pass phrases and change them if they’re compromised.

Thinking about using the free Google applications to run your practice? Have you read their Terms of Service? Wait, you’re a lawyer, of course you’ve carefully read their terms of service. Well humor me…let’s give it a look-see anyhow.

Change is in the Wind

4.2 Google is constantly innovating in order to provide the best possible experience for its users. You acknowledge and agree that the form and nature of the Services which Google provides may change from time to time without prior notice to you.

The first reaction most folks have to this is “O.K., cool, they’re going to upgrade and update the software on a regular basis and I don’t have to install any updates!” But the first reaction most IT people have to this is “Wait, so they’re going to change the product my users are running without any warning or giving us any testing period?!”

Many firms skipped upgrading to Microsoft Office 2007 because they didn’t like the new Ribbon interface, or they felt they needed additional time to prepare for the training curve that was going to introduce to their users. Any new version of key application software needs to be deployed carefully because in today’s IT world everything interconnects – your word processor integrates with your document management system. Your e-mail client integrates with your practice management software. Your time and billing software exports reports to your spreadsheet software.

But what Google is telling you here is that their free apps could change at any moment, without warning. You just log in tomorrow and suddenly you have Office 2010 and no opportunity to train your users on the changes before they get thrown into the deep end of the pool. When you’re on a deadline to get documents out the door is not the best time to have to figure out the unexpected changes in your word processor.

Where Did it Go?

4.3 As part of this continuing innovation, you acknowledge and agree that Google may stop (permanently or temporarily) providing the Services (or any features within the Services) to you or to users generally at Google’s sole discretion, without prior notice to you. You may stop using the Services at any time. You do not need to specifically inform Google when you stop using the Services.

4.4 You acknowledge and agree that if Google disables access to your account, you may be prevented from accessing the Services, your account details or any files or other content which is contained in your account.

4.5 You acknowledge and agree that while Google may not currently have set a fixed upper limit on the number of transmissions you may send or receive through the Services or on the amount of storage space used for the provision of any Service, such fixed upper limits may be set by Google at any time, at Google’s discretion.

Having your application software change unexpectedly is better than losing access to it altogether, though. In these clauses Google is reserving the right to simply turn it off, whenever they want, without warning. And notice that 4.4 specifies that if they do that…you may lose access to “any files or other content which is contained in your account.” Like that 72-page brief you’ve been working on for the last week and is due tomorrow.

4.5 says that while you may currently have unlimited usage rights, at some point in the future Google may decide to impose a limit on your usage. Reasonable of them, yes, but something you need to be aware of.

I’ve Got My Eye On You

8.3 Google reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all Content from any Service. For some of the Services, Google may provide tools to filter out explicit sexual content. These tools include the SafeSearch preference settings (see http://www.google.com/help/customize.html#safe). In addition, there are commercially available services and software to limit access to material that you may find objectionable.

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

And now we get to the meat of the matter. These clauses give Google the right to “review”, “modify” or “remove” any content from the service. And 11.1…well… ”By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”

Nuff said?

One of the most common mistakes that law firms make when they upgrade technology is that they don’t do their homework or pay the smartest kid in class to do it for them. We saw in one of my previous columns that it’s critical to understand the problem you’re solving, and it’s just as critical to make sure you understand how the technology you’re moving to is going to solve that problem.

The Map is Not the Territory

Part of the problem firms have in evaluating how well a particular bit of technology is going to solve their problem is that they too often have to rely upon brochures and marketing pieces for information about the software. If you’re lucky the product’s sales guy will show you a demo of the software. But the demo is a best case scenario and may not apply directly to your situation. The demo is often a carefully scripted and controlled environment and the business of law can be anything but scripted or controlled.

Ask the salesman what other firms in your area are using the product to solve the same or similar problem that you’re looking to solve, then follow up on that information and contact those firms. See if you can take the contacts at those other firms to lunch and talk with them about the product. Ask what their favorite parts of the product are and ask what their least favorite bits are.

Ask how the vendor has been to work with and what the biggest surprises they had (positive and negative) in the experience.

If the vendor has support forums online browse those forums and see what other users are reporting. Forums can be a very revealing look at a prospective solution because the people who come to forums tend to come to talk about problems they’re having with the product – if the forums are full of people complaining that the feature you’re most interested in doesn’t work right, you’d like to know that up front.

Perform a basic Google search on the product and the vendor’s name. See what people online have been saying about them.

When you do get a demonstration of how the prospective solution works make sure and invite key personnel to participate. Don’t limit it just to the management committee at the firm, include key members of staff as well. If this is a product they’re going to have to use on a daily basis to do their jobs don’t just surprise them with it on the day you roll it out. Give them a chance to see it ahead of time and solicit their feedback on how well they think it will solve the problems you’re trying to address.

Working with Consultants

You may decide that you don’t have the time to do all that research on your own. In that case it’s worth bringing in an outside consultant to help you. Try to select a consultant with experience working with law firms and an understanding of the different issues law firms tend to experience.

If you’re going to work with a consultant it may pay to select a consultant who is NOT going to be selling you any part of the solution. By getting an advisor who doesn’t have a dog in the fight you’re more likely to get an objective opinion.

When you establish a relationship with a consultant you should have a service agreement with that consultant and you should make sure that your agreement clearly lays out, in writing, exactly what is expected from the relationship. You should know precisely what they’re going to do and what they expect you to do. Naturally you also want it to clearly explain what you’re going to be paying for this service.

The service agreement should also specify a clear deliverable or point at which the project is concluded and that conclusion should include some sort of meeting (either in person or via phone) where a “sign-off” on the project (preferably written) can happen.

Finally, make sure you select a consultant you can understand. One of the primary jobs of the consultant is to inform and advise you on the elements of the project for which they have expertise. If they can’t clearly communicate that advice and information to you then the relationship just isn’t going to work. Let your consultant know how much (or how little) information you want and don’t be afraid to give them feedback as you go. Some of my clients want to know how a watch works and others just want to know what time it is. 

Before you set off to change the technology your firm runs on, make sure you have a clear understanding of where you’re going and how you’ll get there. If you’re not already familiar with the territory there’s no shame in hiring an experienced guide to get you there. You don’t want to be halfway thru it and trying to find a gas station to ask directions.

Most law firms use Microsoft Outlook and most people only think of it as an e-mail client that happens to have a calendar stuck on it. In reality though, Outlook, especially Outlook 2007 or newer, is quite a bit more than that.

Outlook 2007 introduced the “To Do Bar” – a panel on the right side of the screen when you’re looking at the Inbox – that shows you the next couple of appointments on your calendar as well as any tasks or flagged e-mails that you may have. It’s the ability to flag e-mails for follow-up that I want to focus on in this article.

Will You? Won’t You? Could You?

In my own practice, as a consultant, more than three quarters of the tasks that clients give me are given to me via e-mail these days. I get a dozen messages a day asking me to send a certain report, address a particular problem, call the client next week when he gets back in town, schedule some training, etc. Keeping on top of all those tasks in my busy practice can be a big challenge and Outlook 2010 gives me some great tools to help manage it.

If you look at the e-mail list in Outlook 2007 or 2010 you’ll see, on the right end of each message, a translucent flag icon. Right-click that icon and you’ll see a context menu that offers you a number of different date options to flag this message for follow-up. If you select one of those options Outlook will color the flag a shade of red (darker shades mean it’s due more immediately) and place it in the appropriate place on your To Do Bar. The options are:

• Today. Fairly self-explanatory. You want to follow-up with on this message sometime today.
• Tomorrow. Same as today…but later.
• his Week. Outlook is going to set this item to be due on the last day of your working week. By default, and for most of us, this is Friday. If you go into Outlook’s calendar options you can change that to any day you like, however.
• Next Week. Same as This Week…but a week later. Next Friday by default.
• No Date. This is for items that are “someday/maybe” items that don’t have a specific due date. I strongly advise that you DON’T use “No Date” for your items for two reasons:
1. First off when you flag items as “No Date” they get placed at the TOP of your To Do list which then crowds your Today items (clearly more important) off the screen. There isn’t, currently, any way to sort the “No Date” items to the bottom of the list where they belong, so I don’t recommend using “No Date”.
2. Secondly, from a basic productivity standpoint, tasks that don’t have a due date tend to not get done at all.
• So what’s the solution for those “Someday/Maybe” items? Use the final date item on the list, Custom, and assign them a date way out in the future. Give them a due date 3 months from now. It will sort to the bottom of the list, out of the way, but it will gradually work its way back up to the top of the list, which means it has a hope of someday actually getting done.
• Custom. This option lets you assign ANY due date you like to the item. I use this option so often I’ve created a keyboard shortcut for it. In the date fields you can use all of the Outlook date tricks. Such as:
• “Tue” or “Wed” for Tuesday or Wednesday. Short abbreviations for the days of the week will insert the appropriate date.
• “Next Tue” will insert the date for the following Tuesday.
• If you want to give it a particular date of the month, like the 25^th of the current month, just type “25” and it will insert the 25^th of the current month.
• If you want to use a date in the current year just type “12/30” or “Dec 30” (for example) to assign the date of December 30^th in the current year.
• If you want to schedule the message to be due 10 days from now just type “10d” and Outlook will insert a date 10 days from now.
• If you want it due 3 weeks from now type “3w” and Outlook will insert a date 3 weeks from today.

Setting any of these options will place the message on your To Do Bar under the appropriate date and Outlook will keep the message on the To Do Bar even if you move the flagged message to a subfolder. No more worrying about forgetting about that message a week from now. Flag it, file it. You won’t forget it.

If the task is especially important, one of the options on the follow-up context menu allows you to set an Outlook reminder for the task. You can have it pop a dialog box, and play a sound, at any date/time you specify to remind you to follow up on this message.

If you double-click a message on the To Do Bar Outlook will open the message for you so you can read it, and respond to it, even if the message has been filed away in a subfolder.

When you’ve done working with the message just left-click the flag on the message (or on the To Do Bar) and Outlook will mark the message as complete. It will remove it from the To Do Bar but keep the message in whatever folder you’ve put it in, now with a check mark replacing the flag, to indicate that it’s done.

Summary

E-mail has become the most common way for us to communicate with clients and colleagues. Often those e-mail messages contain action items. Outlook 2007 and 2010 make it easy for us to schedule and track those action items with follow-up flags and the To Do Bar. Now I can go check off the “Write my SLAW Column” item.

As Windows 7 and Office 2010 sweep across the land, along with a plethora of interesting new hardware devices like iPads and netbooks, the urge to upgrade is striking a great many attorneys. I can hardly walk into a room without somebody sidling up to me and asking "So….should I upgrade?"

The answer is always the same: "Maybe."

"Maybe?" they respond, with that unsatisfied look in their eyes. They're surprised. I'm a technologist. I'm supposed to always be pushing them to the bleeding edge, chuckling softly that they only have 4GB of RAM, suggesting that they could get a 3rd monitor on their desk if they just moved their stapler. And sometimes I do. But not capriciously.

Usually a follow-up question is warranted. "What problem are you trying to solve?" I ask. At this point they usually blink. Repeatedly. They're not quite sure how to answer. And that should tell them what they need to know about their original question. But it usually doesn't. So I continue.

"If you asked me for directions I would need to know two key pieces of information: 1) Where you are now. 2) Where you want to go. " 

Now they start to nod slowly.

There are two reasons to upgrade your technology.

1. To get you out of a bad piece of technology.
2. To get you into a good piece of technology.

What makes a piece of technology good or bad? Quite simply it's how that piece of technology helps you to be more effective at what you do. It's a toolkit, nothing more and nothing less.

Yesterday I upgraded one of my monitors. Did I need a larger monitor? No. But my old monitor had stopped displaying an image and that's a rather significant shortcoming for a monitor. So a new one was in order, and as luck would have it the most suitable monitor, in my price range, happened to be a little larger than my old one.

We recently helped a client implement ProLaw. They'd never had an integrated case management system before and they saw the opportunity to move their firm forward by getting one. It's making them more efficient, giving them actionable information and they think it will improve their overall effectiveness and profitability. It's a useful tool for them and thus a good piece of technology.

Before you can answer the question of whether it's right for you to upgrade you need to figure out what problem it is you're trying to solve. Want to upgrade to Windows 7? O.K., why? What does Windows 7 do for you that will make you more effective? There are a lot of good reasons to upgrade to Windows 7, but do any of them apply to you?

Want to buy an iPad? O.K. What are you going to use it for? Specifically how will it make your practice better?

Here are a few questions you should ask before undertaking any upgrade process.

• What problem are we trying to solve?
• How, specifically, will this product solve that problem for us?
• What are the potential negative impacts? Learning curve for staff? Incompatibility with existing hardware or software?
• Do we have a support structure for this upgrade? Can our in-house IT people support it? Can our outside consultants support it? Can we get training for this product?
• What will this upgrade cost us? Not just in real dollars, but in lost time, support costs, cost of ownership over the long term? Do we also have to invest in new hardware or software to support this upgrade?
• Does this product solve a problem that justifies that cost?

Until you can answer those questions you're driving down the road with no destination. And if you don't know where you're going then you might as well pull over and stop, because you're there.