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Yes my friends, it's time for the ABA TechShow at the Sheraton Chicago
starting Thursday, April 20th and ending Saturday, April 22nd. The Exhibit
Hall is scheduled for Thursday and Friday only. Educational sessions run all
three days and I'll be speaking at two sessions on Saturday. I have the Hot
Topics tracks on Saturday outlined below:
Hot Topics Track
HT:01: Law and Technology: The Year in Review and the Year Ahead
Saturday, April 22, 2006 8:30 a.m.-9:30 a.m.
David Ries, Dave Glynn
The law often struggles to catch up with technology, and the past year was no
exception. Notable cases include Grokster (legality of P2P software),
Councilman (interception of e-mail), B.J.’s Wholesale Club (liability for
insecure network), Arthur Andersen (destruction of records), and more. There's
also the PATRIOT Act and responses to large scale data breaches. Learn what
happened in technology law during the past year and what the next year may
bring.
HT:02: E-Filing Comes of Age: The Feds Finish and the States Forge Ahead
Saturday, April 22, 2006 10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Dave Glynn, Judge Herbert Dixon
You just received notice that you are now required to submit all case filings to
the federal courts electronically and you’ve heard your state court is looking
into an e-filing system ... now what? Come learn from the experts everything
you need to know about e-filing – how the systems work, the technology you
need, the costs involved, how it could (or will) change the way you practice
law, and related legal and ethical issues.
My company, Law Bulletin Publishing Company, will be exhibiting in Booth
318. Make sure you drop in and say hello.
posted by Dave Glynn @ 7:47 AM
The Sandwich
I’m not talking about a nice, meaty, deli sandwich, sub sandwich or Italian
beef, I’m talking about the sandwich between teenagers and aging parents.
Yep. Caught in the middle all right. I’m not spending enough time or effort to
keep either faction happy, not to mention my spouse. It’s lose-lose-lose.
So what do we do? Suicide? Skip town? Nope. Stay and weather the storm.
According to a recent article in the Washington Times, the X generation is
fighting with the Y generation. I believe it’s more like the X, Y, Z and the Me’s
in a cagematch. And no one’s behaving, except me of course, because
otherwise I get into trouble and everything truly starts to fall apart.
Run a Google search on "supporting multiple generations" and you won’t find
anything relating to people – only technology. I think we’re missing the boat.
So I’m going to hang on for dear life and try not to go off the deep end. If
anyone has any advice though, please chime in.
Posted January 19, 2006
The Blurred Lines of New Devices and Content
Watching a movie on your phone, purchasing movie tickets with your Tivo,
toasting your bread with your dishwasher – OK, maybe not. The lines are now
blurred when it comes to devices and content. “All In One” is the most
frequent Christmas bark you’ll hear this year. What is “all in one”? Isn’t that the
Musketeer’s cheer? Oh no, that’s “All for one! And one for All!” Ok, so “One for
All” is the new deal with our electronic toys. Now I’m in a huge dilemma, do I
get a phone with a TV or an MP3 player? I’ll probably go for the phone with
the MP3 player as I can read, walk and listen to music at the same time, not
all at once though. I’ll get hit by a cab if I do that. Yes city folks, more
chances to get hit by a cab, because you’ll be distracted with your
phone/TV/MP3/PDA all the more often.
Content is also blurred. You remember the news bit, but you don’t remember
how you received it. It could have been on the Internet, from your phone news,
from your phone TV, from your real TV, from your Tivo, from your refrigerator,
from your plumber. You don’t know do you? How can you confirm your
sources? And if it was from the Internet, was it a legitimate news story or some
gossip tip that will be disputed later in the day.
And what does this have to do with legal technology? Well all of these
gadgets seemed to find their way into the courtroom and/or litigation. For
instance, the personal injury case that is filed by the individual answering or
reading the device against the cab company that hit them; the eDiscovery
process that recovers the TV/Phone/Internet records of the corporate executive
accused of insider trading; the digital rights management and/or copyright
protections of the content being downloaded and passed from device to
device.
The challenge will be for the laws to keep up with the technology. This topic
will be covered on Saturday, April 22, from 8:30 to 9:30 at the ABA TechShow
at the Sheraton Chicago. The presentation will be entitled “Law and
Technology: The Year in Review & the Year Ahead” Session Description: The
law often struggles to catch up with technology and the past year was no
exception. Notable cases include Grokster (legality of P2P software),
Councilman (interception of e-mail), B.J.s Wholesale Club (liability for
insecure network), Arthur Anderson (destruction of records) and more. There's
also the PATRIOT Act and responses to large scale data breaches. Learn what
happened in technology law during the past year and what the next year may
bring. Notable Pittsburgh technology lawyer David Reis and I will be the
presenters. Don’t miss it. Visit the ABA TechShow Website for more
information about these and other programs.
Posted December 7, 2005
Government’s Challenge to Keep Pace with Technology
The recent work of Congress to pass the recent “Personal Data Privacy and
Security Act” is a reactive measure to the recent identity data losses by
ChoicePoint, Lexis-Nexis (Accurint), Bank of America and others. Government
is challenged with keeping up with technology that’s moving fairly quickly.
Similar to the call by some lawyers to have a special “technology-specific”
branch of the US District Court to handle intellectual property issues, there is
also a need for congressmen and other politicians to have techno-savvy
advisors on their staffs: people who can explain what’s happening in
technology and how laws can be effected or put into effect to prevent misuse.
Recent rulings by courts against Grokster and phisher/spammer/scammers are
quickly setting precedent in unexplored areas. Even Sony’s in trouble now over
their anti-piracy software on its CD’s that’s alleged to invite pirates/hackers to
visit your PC (if the Sony software is installed).
Legislators are elected and paid to make laws, what a perfect opportunity for
them to create laws to handle the Wide World of Sports of technology, before
everyone and their PC’s are dead meat.
For those of you in the Cambridge, Mass. area, the Berkman School of Internet
Law & Technology at Harvard Law School will be hosting...
The Future of Software with Microsoft's General Counsel
On Monday, November 28, Berkman will host a public talk and discussion with
Brad Smith, General Counsel of Microsoft. The topic will be "The Future of
Software, the Internet, and Innovation." In his position as General Counsel,
Smith has faced each of the key legal questions before software companies
today, including issues of intellectual property, spam and virus protection, and
privacy and security. Smith was also the lead negotiator in resolving the
antitrust appeal against Microsoft in 2002, and spearheads work on
strengthening Microsoft's legal compliance programs.The event will be held
on 11/28 at 5pm in Ames Courtroom, located in Austin Hall on the Harvard
Law School campus, and is cosponsored by the Harvard Journal of Law and
Technology (JOLT). 11/21/2005 8:39 AM
Hopefully they'll Webcast this presentation at a later date.
Posted November 22, 2005
Young Lawyers Can Learn Trial Techniques from Televised Trials
The opportunity to learn new techniques will be ever more prevalent if
Congress gets its wishes granted. The House has just passed a bill to allow
cameras in the Federal Courts and the Senate is following close behind with
their own bill. The bills are part of a much needed courthouse security bill, a
result of the recent rash of courthouse violence. Despite the debates that may
occur as a result of having cameras in the courtroom, this will give lawyers a
greater opportunity to watch their peers in action. Too often a young lawyer
must seek the avenue of state's attorney or public counsel in order to get trial
experience. The young lawyer for the private law firm gets little experience as
even the second chair position is held to a lawyer with more experience. What
better way to learn techniques than watching federal court trials. It looks like
we'll now have Court TV1, Court TV2 and Court TV Classic like ESPN. Get the
Tivo and the snack tray ready because you'll be up all night learning from the
masters.
Here's a link to the AP article that covers Congress' progress.
Posted November 11, 2005
Efiling Limitations for State Courts
Getting a project/product started is usually the toughest part. Trimming
requirements down to get a first phase completed is one of the greatest
challenges faced by companies. That’s why it’s no wonder that the courts are
also taking the same line in regard to electronic filing applications. Many
state courts do not have the funding for state of the art case management
systems or more importantly the conversion costs associated with switching to a
new system. The vendor approach now is to allow the courts to use their
existing case management system with a third party EFiling application. The
downside is that interoperatability (the most difficult word for me to pronounce)
is near impossible with these systems. However, it’s pretty easy for the lawyers
and their staff to file. Managing on their side of the fence also has its
challenges, but for the most part they can file and serve easily through the
EFiling application. Bottom line though, is you have to get started somewhere
and if a court is facing to have to replace their case management system,
accounting system and several other connecting pieces its highly unlikely that
EFiling will ever happen in that court.
Posted November 10, 2005
Knowledge Management – The Dilemma of Sharing Work Product
Knowledge management – the act of electronically sharing work product
creates a dilemma for lawyers in a law office. Lawyers don’t typically like to
share their work product or their client relationships with their fellow lawyers.
Can a mindset so deeply engrained be overturned? Even if they spend the big
bucks and give the OK to index everything in the firm’s document
management system, case management, records management and time &
billing system, are they happy about sharing all of that information among the
firm’s collective? In theory, the senior partner is now giving the fresh associate
access to some serious work product that would take the associate years to
learn about provided they keep them locked in the closet. Can a law firm’s
culture support such open ended thinking, abundance mentality and
mentoring? Competition may answer that question. If you have the same
knowledge buried within your firm that can be found and marketed across the
street you better get busy and uncover it. If you lose a deal or a case for a
large client to some other firm because they had enough sense to know they
had the talent, then you’re a big loser. Funny how we always have to use scare
tactics to motivate us to do the right thing ‘eh. So get your databases, your
indexes and your checkbook ready and create a nice Borg environment in your
firm – join the collective – or else!
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