The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) which many law firms belong to jointly produced a white paper in October 2012 entitled The New Librarian. 

According to Steven Lastres via the On Firmer Ground blog:

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) recently released a joint white paper that acknowledges the strategic alliance that has developed between law librarians and technologists in driving efficient and effective legal information management.

Kate Hagan, Executive Director of AALL says, “As legal professionals retool and reskill through innovation and new business

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Clio's third annual Apple in Law Offices Survey is a wrap with over 1,200 respondents. The survey's results show Apple products, ranging from the iPad to MacBooks, are rapidly increasing in popularity among lawyers.

iPad

The iPad continues to be a game-changing device for lawyers: over 57% of respondents indicated they currently use an iPad in their law office. Of those that don't, nearly 60% planned on purchasing an iPad in the next year:

Enthusiasm for the recently-announced iPad mini was also high: 23% of respondents indicated they plan to purchase an iPad mini in the next twelve months.

Mobile . . . [more]

Sharing a WiFi access point among too many devices can shut down access for everyone. At some point, the high congestion levels overload the WiFi router, making it in effectively useless. This isn't a common problem for home networks, but it does occur (frequently?) for events such as legal conferences or when you stay at a hotel.

An interesting software solution from NC State Engineers looks to be on the horizon. It's called WiFox and based on tests of 45 concurrent connecting devices, reported a 700% speed improvement, and a 30-40% reduction in network latency. The performance increase comes from . . . [more]

The use of Apple devices in law offices is clearly on the rise. Rising from virtual obscurity just five years ago, Apple devices such as iPads, iPhones and MacBooks have become integral parts of many law practices. An ever-increasing number of Apple logos glow at me at the CLE seminars I deliver across the country.

Clio has launched its third annual Apple in Law Offices Survey in an attempt to take a more quantitative pulse of what's happening with Apple, PCs and the cloud in law offices. Take the survey, and you'll have a chance of winning one of . . . [more]

SlawTips offered tips this week on setting up virtual meetings that focused mainly on how great it is to use Skype, seeing as how it’s free as well as functional.

Question: is it secure enough for lawyers? I know that the Ontario government does not allow me (or others) to download the software (or any other software….) to make it work. But I have heard as well from private sector lawyers that their IT departments don’t think Skype is secure enough to use professionally.

Is that your view, or experience?

What is the issue:

• that Skype wants to set itself up

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Today's Wall Street Journal has an intriguing story on legal fees and the changes that a client-driven marketplace has had on the way that firms bill not merely for their professional fees, but also for disbursements.

For example, the article comments on ways in which technology has transformed processes which would previously have resulted in charges to clients:

To be sure, technology has swept some items off law firm bills entirely. Before the advent of email, law firms spent small fortunes on couriers to hustle documents across town or out to the airport. Lawyers now upload digital briefs and memos

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This morning, by 6 to 1, the SCC dealt with pornography on a work-issued computer and whether an employee had any reasonable expectation of privacy. The majority of the court set asise the Ontario Court of Appeal's order in R. v. Cole, to exclude the evidence on the basis that it was obatined in breach of ss. 8 and 24(2) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Abella J. would have continued the exclusion. A new trial will be held in any event.

Here is the headnote: . . . [more]

We've learned of a new Practice Direction on Filing Electronic Versions of Documents in Civil Appeals and Judicial Review Applications in the Divisional Court which will be implemented next month – it establishes a regularized process to satisfy the requirement to file electronic versions of factums and transcripts – a requirement that is already in place under Rules 61.09 and 61.12 of the Rules of Civil Procedure. The Practice Direction also encourages parties to file all electronic documents with the Divisional Court in certain proceedings. The Practice Direction does not relieve the requirement to file documents in paper format as . . . [more]

Nicole Perlroth of the New York Times suggests this week that the era of the BlackBerry may be over. In fact, having a BlackBerry today may even carry a stigma:

BlackBerrys may still linger in Washington, Wall Street and the legal profession, but in Silicon Valley they are as rare as a necktie.

 But even in these establishments, change is happening:

Goldman Sachs recently gave its employees the option to use an iPhone. Covington & Burling, a major law firm, did the same at the urging of associates. Even the White House, which used the BlackBerry for security reasons, recently started

. . . [more]

According to Michael Geist today on his blog, the Ontario Public School Board Association is advising school boards in Ontario to prepare to stop using Access Copyright for copyright licensing next year. They are following a legal opinion obtained by the Counsel of Ministers of Education, Copyright, that advises any material copied in Canadian K-12 schools either already has the correct permissions or would fall under fair dealing.

This follows from five Supreme Court of Canada decisions on copyright that came down this summer which gave guidance on determining fair dealing (see Martin Kratz' coverage in his Ensuring the Balance . . . [more]

The release of the iPhone 5 has seen hundreds of reviews flood the web. The consensus? The iPhone 5 is amazing. It is both thinner and lighter than the iPhone 4S, all while delivering a larger, more vivid screen coupled with an even better 8MP camera. The bad? Apple Maps is the most half-baked piece of software Apple has released since MobileMe.

For lawyers on the go, the iPhone 5 offers a compelling new feature that most reviews mention only in passing: LTE support. LTE (Long Term Evolution) is a new wireless data standard, and offers speeds in excess . . . [more]

♫ Wake me up before you go-go
'Cause I'm not plannin' on going solo…♫

Lyrics and Music by George Michael, recorded by Wham!

There is much talk about the cloud these days and the innovation that it offers to lawyers and law firms. Well ioSafe, the manufacturer of secure, hardened hard drives (that are used in law offices and elsewhere) have announced an innovative way to bring their latest product to market.

First this new product: It is "A fireproof waterproof NAS/RAID – like an aircraft black box for data on your network – protect pictures, videos and business . . . [more]