After nearly two years since publishing its first proposal on the topic, the North Carolina State Bar has adopted its Formal Ethics Opinion on cloud computing (thanks to Steph Kimbro for the heads up). The opinion, titled 2011 Formal Ethics Opinion 6: Subscribing to Software as a Service While Fulfilling the Duties of Confidentiality and Preservation of Client Property, concludes that:

a law firm may contract with a vendor of software as a service provided the lawyer uses reasonable care to safeguard confidential client information

Like the Law Society of British Columbia’s Report on Cloud Computing, the . . . [more]

We are deep in Pilot rollout of Windows 7 and Office 2010 at Field Law. It is fun, interesting, frustrating, and intense.

Fun – I love learning new things, especially technology things. I especially like being in Pilot groups where I can see that my feedback is shaping the way we offer these tools to the rest of the firm.

Interesting – It is interesting to see how ribbons and menus were contemplated by the developers who are likely not the same folks who created Windows originally. New technologies are often, for me, a glimpse of how the current generation . . . [more]

On January 27th the Law Society of British Columbia issued a final version of its Report of the Cloud Computing Working Group. The changes made from the previous draft of July 15, 2011 are discussed in a memo to the Benchers available on page 67 of the Bencher’s Agenda from its January 27th meeting.

The purpose of the report is to:

identify the risks associated with lawyers using electronic data storage and processing, accessed remotely over a network (like the Internet), particularly circumstances where those services are provided by a third party vendor, and to suggest how lawyers can

The LegalTech 2012 Conference last week was a bit overwhelming for me as a first-time attendee.

As a knowledge management (KM) lawyer / law librarian, my continuing legal education opportunities tend to focus more on conferences related to KM or law libraries, such as the upcoming annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries / L’Association canadienne des bibliothèques de droit held in Toronto in May.

However, I think it was worthwhile attending LegalTech, although I might not need to attend every year. The main difference for me was the large number of technology vendors exhibiting or presenting their . . . [more]

Two weeks ago federal prosecutors in the US shut down MegaUpload, one of the most popular file-sharing sites on the Internet. The site was a widely-used “digital locker” that stored files for millions of users world-wide. Some of those users, however, used the side for illegitimate purposes, turning the site into a hub of what the US prosecutors characterized as “massive worldwide online piracy.”

While there’s no question large quantities of illegal, pirated material was successfully removed with the MegaUpload takedown, thousands of innocent users have lost access to their files as a result of the takedown. The legality . . . [more]

Who are these guys and why are they so happy? You’re looking at Clio co-founders Rian Gauvreau on the left and Jack Newton (Slaw blogger) on the right; and they’ll be smiling right now because they’ve just announced at Legal Tech that Clio has raised six million dollars in its Series B round of financing. From the Clio press release:

Clio will use this new funding to extend its product leadership position, aggressively developing new functionalities and supporting its growing customer base. In addition, the company aims to expand its footprint beyond the U.S. (which currently represents 95% of

Apple may have done it yet again.

The iBooks system launched today puts a powerful but easy-to-use authoring system into the hands of anyone who wants it, presaging the publication of dynamic ebooks by the millions—texts that will, of course, range in quality from the wretched to the superb—and, I should add, from the free to the expensive. Apple, being Apple, has tied this software in pretty tightly to its own iPad: books made by iBooks Author are made to be viewed on an iPad and may only be sold on Apple’s iTunes Store. (There is also an ability to . . . [more]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) offers a terrific suggestion for a New Year’s resolution that you might actually have a decent chance of keeping: enabling full disk encryption on all of your computers.

Full disk encryption means that if your computer’s hard drive falls into the wrong hands – because of theft, loss, or other causes – it remains unreadable until the correct “passphrase” is entered. If, for example, you lose your laptop full of sensitive client data while traveling, you can rest easy knowing that the data on your laptop is protected from prying eyes thanks to the . . . [more]

The 2011 Apple in Law Offices Survey saw over 750 respondents provide insight on how Apple devices, ranging from the iPhone to the MacBook, are impacting the way they practice law.

iPad

Unsurprisingly, the iPad saw a huge jump in usage. In the 2010 survey, 26% of respondents used an iPad in their law office; in the 2011 survey, that figure jumped to 56%. The remaining 44% of lawyers without an iPad apparently don’t plan on going without one for long: 71% of respondents were considering purchasing iPads for their law office in the next year:

Mobile

On the mobile . . . [more]

For all the talk about cloud computing and the security and ethics implications thereof, for many the concept remains a nebulous one. Earlier this month Bessemer Venture Partners, a leading venture capital firm, helped make the concept of cloud computing much more concrete by creating and publishing the Bessemer Cloudscape, a “visual to track the leading companies in this revolution.”

Bessemer has invested heavily in cloud computing, and is in an excellent position to map the cloudscape. The firm sees cloud computing not only as one of the most important technology transitions to have ever occurred, but also as . . . [more]

Love them or hate them, Apple devices such as the iPhone, iPad and MacBook are rapidly changing the way lawyers practice law. In just a few short years the technology lawyers use has shifted homogeny of PCs and BlackBerries to a diverse mix of PCs, Macs, iPads and iPhones. RIM, meanwhile, is imploding.

To try to keep a pulse on the rapidly shifting IT landscape, Clio, in cooperation with MILOfest, is holding the second annual Apple in Law Offices Survey – please take the survey. There’s a chance to win an iPad 2 to boot!

As I did last . . . [more]