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

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

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

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 . . . [more]

Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos slammed Canada’s Internet Service Providers (ISPs) last week, calling the rates we’re charged “almost a human rights violation.”

Sarandos is referring to the high prices and low bandwidth caps imposed by Canada’s “big four” ISPs: Bell, Shaw, Telus and Rogers. If consumers exceed these bandwidth caps imposed by these ISPs, they are forced to pay an overage amount of several dollars per gigabyte.

The poor state of broadband internet has already prompted Netflix to lower the quality of streaming in Canada.

“The problem is [Canada has] almost Third World access to the Internet”

Dropbox has had more than its fair share of security issues over the last year, prompting many lawyers and technologists to advise against using the service, to employ additional layers of security, or to suggest alternative services such as Box. Despite all headwinds, Dropbox continues to be a widely-used service among lawyers, and is one of the fastest-growing cloud-based services anywhere.

To help address its perceived (and real) security issues, Dropbox has introduced two-factor authentication, a security update that it describes as “optional but highly recommended.”

I recently wrote about the benefits of two-factor authentication, and, . . . [more]

Last week news broke of the epic hacking of Gizmodo’s Mat Honan. By exploiting security flaws in both Amazon’s and Apple’s account verification and reset procedures, a hacker was able to obtain access to a wide variety of Honan’s accounts, including his iCloud account. Once they’d gained control of Honan’s iCloud account, the hackers were able to remotely wipe his iPhone, iPad, and his Macbook, destroying his personal data, including irreplaceable pictures of his one-year-old daughter:

In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed. First my Google account was taken over, then deleted. Next my

My friend Mike Seto came a across an interesting survey that lists the main functional technology products that the 200 largest UK firms are using. Many familiar names there – but some news one too.

I am not aware of a survey that specifically lists the technologies used by the the largest North American firms, but (thanks to Catherine Reach), can mention these two surveys that provide global technology use and trend information for North American firms: the ILTA survey (free content) and the Am Law Tech Survey (free and paid content). . . . [more]