Among his many other activities – including practising law – Robert Ambrogi has been writing a blog on legal technology issues, LawSites, since 2002. His posts are always interesting and often very informative. His posting at the end of last year, entitled The 10 Most Important Legal Technology Developments of 2014, particularly caught my attention.

Several developments, such as those relating to legal research, legal hacking, encryption, and searching court dockets, are outside my particular area of interest, knowledge management. Three, however, were of particular interest to me:

• Businesses and technology are changing the nature of law practice

The Web browser has become a fundamental law practice tool. It’s what you use to get to Google’s web search, and perhaps your Web-based e-mail system, or your cloud-based practice management tool. As you travel across the Internet, you leave a trail behind you. Sometimes that’s on purpose but if you aren’t aware, you may find that the linkages marketers are making with that trail will surprise you. Use Web browser extensions to show, and block, this trail. Extensions can help you to browse and do online research with less clutter.

In Cognito Isn’t In Visible

The first thing to . . . [more]

What is it about social media that make them such a hot topic these days, even for lawyers, as this new book demonstrates? I suggest it’s all the people. Other areas of technology can be dry or technical or mystifying, other areas of law can be the realm of big corporations or telecoms or governments. Social media combine cutting-edge technology with real human beings just doing what we do – spouting ideas, going places, making pictures, telling stories. The topic is more about us than most of the others in law or technology.

Social media do not have all their . . . [more]

One of our neighbours was born in India. When he was young, his father would buy one pencil every few months for him to share with his brother. They did this by cutting the pencil in half. Contrast this with the over-abundance of pencils in our household with just one 9 year old.

Similiarly, there is now an amazing abundance of apps that can used by lawyers. That was not the case when I compiled the first Australasian Legal Software Directory in 1986. I had to scrounge to find tools for lawyers. Like pencils, apps don’t come with pre-packaged drawing . . . [more]

Lawyers tend to cringe when they hear the word “encryption.” To most lawyers, encryption is a dark art, full of mathematical jargon and incomprehensible to the average human being.

When South Carolina suffered a major data breach of taxpayer data, what did Governor Nikki Halley say? “A lot of banks don’t encrypt. It’s very complicated. It’s very cumbersome. There’s a lot of numbers involved with it.”

Leaving aside the laughable notion that a lot of banks don’t encrypt data, the rest of her quote is in keeping with what we hear from lawyers. What we hear always translates into the . . . [more]

In my previous post, I identified a number of themes that weaved their way through the sessions I attended at the annual conference of the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) in August. I did note, however, that one session, entitled Do Robot Lawyers Dream of Billable Seconds?, was particularly provocative. I therefore opted to devote a full post, namely this one, to that one session.

The panelists were (in alphabetical order) Stuart Barr of High Q, Joshua Lenon of Clio, Michael Mills of Neota Logic, and Noah Waisberg of Diligence Engine. The panel was . . . [more]

E-mail is dead. Social media and instant messaging (IM) are replacing e-mail. Those are the messages of emerging communications driven by so-called enterprise technology. These tools, designed for companies that fire more employees than legal professionals comprise the entire Ontario bar, can enhance internal firm interaction. But e-mail remains the bread-and-butter tool for solo and small firm lawyers and a primary method for communicating with clients and others.

So why are we not experts at using it?

To be honest, I rarely think about how I use e-mail. My habits run in well-worn ruts. But I was jolted out of . . . [more]

I recently visited Nth Wales the land my grandfather left 105+ years ago. Many of the original 3,000 workers in the Penrhyn Slate Quarry where he worked also left due to industrial disputes that dragged on and off for years. Such disregard for customers by the quarry owners meant customers found other suppliers in France and elsewhere, or simply alternative products, such as cheap mass-produced tiles.

My grandfather was not alone in abandoning the slate mining industry. Better conditions elsewhere, World War I, and lost skills resulted in a shortage of the skilled labour needed to extract the slate in . . . [more]

The first technology column I wrote for Slaw was called Robot Law. In those days, the main uses of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) – aka drones – were military, either for reconnaissance or for attack. Since then, civilian uses have expanded, and the technology has evolved to serve them. Individuals can readily buy drones the size of insects or the size of a microwave oven or larger. Commercial versions can be the size of small aircraft.

Among the many peaceful uses of drones are surveying, especially of hard-to-access or remote lands and installations like . . . [more]

The annual International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) conference was held in Nashville last month. (See Kate Simpson’s posting last year her take on last year’s conference in Las Vegas: http://www.tangledom.com/ilta-2013-in-fabulous-vegas/.) I find the ILTA conference to be very fulfilling. Not only are there a plethora of good, substantive sessions (50 or more every day, for four days), but the conference also provides an opportunity for me to have good, in-depth conversations with my counterparts in large US and Australian firms.

For those who are members of ILTA, audio recordings of five of the six knowledge management (KM) sessions have . . . [more]

Finally, a tablet that can replace a laptop. Much as lawyers love their iPads – and they are great for surfing, e-mailing and presenting evidence in court – they are not true laptop replacements when it comes to business productivity. This is the next true war – consumer tablets have reached a saturation point and consumers are not replacing them as fast as manufacturers had hoped.

Always in search of profits, the major manufacturers have finally come to recognize that the enterprise table market is hot hot hot for any company that can get the technology and the security right. . . . [more]

My previous column gave a number of examples of how governments, regulators and even spies focus on intermediaries to achieve what they want. The intermediaries used may or may not be online themselves, though most of the examples involved Internet Service Providers and web hosting services.

This column reviews the policy questions, though without attempting any definitive answers. Feel free to propose your own answers in the Comments, or raise further questions, or improve my analysis.

Approaches to liability

Three major approaches are taken to the role of intermediaries, as we saw in the previous column (without so classifying them): . . . [more]