Law Office Technology by Roland Schorr & Tower

Link: http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-onenote/archive/2010/06/21/whats-steve-ballmer-most-enthusiastic-about.aspx

The best-kept secret in desktop productivity is out.  Starting with Microsoft Office 2010 Microsoft's OneNote product will be in every box.  This is a fantastic note-taking, research and information gathering/sharing tool but it's one that most attorneys have never heard of or used.

Why?  Because in the past you mostly had to buy it separately.  Unless you bought a tablet PC or had the Home & Student (or Ultimate) editions of Office you didn't have OneNote...and even if you had it you might not have known what it does.

Give it a look, I think most attorneys will find it a powerful and valuable addition to their technology toolkit.

Here are two sites with some useful information about OneNote:

• Office For Lawyers - OneNote
• OneNote-Tips

Lawyers tend to be packrats.  Sometimes it seems like firms file every piece of paper or e-mail, no matter how trivial,  "just in case".  As a result our files, both electronic and physical, tend to overflow with documents and structure.

One thing we need to watch out for though is imposing too much structure.

In e-mail I often see attorneys who go to one of two extremes:

1. No folders at all. They have 17,000 messages in their Inbox and they have a hard time finding anything.  Outlook 2007 (and 2010) have great searching capabilities that help, but even so the sheer volume of messages often makes it difficult to locate what we need or even identify what we have.

2. Way too many folders.  They have a clients subfolder and subfolders of that for each client and subfolders of those for each matter and subfolders of those for each type of document and subfolders of that broken down by month and....  Pretty quickly their messages to folders ratio gets awfully close to 1.  Imagine if your file cabinets were full of folders and each folder had just one piece of paper in it.  What a waste!

The trick is to find a happy balance.  You need to have enough folders so that you can find things and keep track of them in an orderly fashion.  But not so many folders that it's unwieldy.

As a general rule if you can see all of the messages relating to a particular client on a single screen...you shouldn't need any subfolders.  So what if they have four different matters, if there are only 17 e-mails related to that client then there's no need to subdivide them into multiple sub-folders.

Give a little thought to you own filing system, both physical and virtual.  Does it really make sense to you or did you inherit/implement a system from somebody else.  How quickly can you file an e-mail or document you want to save? How hard is it to find that piece of information later?

Remember that your systems exist only to make you more effective and productive.  A little review from time to time to make sure they're serving you well can help you be more effective and enjoy your practice more.

Link: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/033110-e-mail-accounts-of-foreign-journalists.html

Some people think I'm overreacting when I caution against allowing your Cloud computing provider to host your data overseas or outsource your data to a 3rd party that is hosting overseas.

Suppose for a minute that you're hosting your confidential data - case notes, documents, etc. - with a SaaS vendor that has outsourced their data storage or the storage of their backups to a 3rd party whose servers are in China...and you're involved in a matter where you're opposing a Chinese company.

How comfortable are you with that considering events of the last year or so that seem to show that companies adverse to Chinese interests (Google being a notable example) are subject to cyber attack.  Are you confident that the Chinese government or other parties there wouldn't take steps to try and compromise your data?

Now certainly they can attack your data even if it's hosted in the U.S., but it's a lot easier if they have physical access to the servers.

Just something to think about.

You can reach Ben M. Schorr at (808) 782-6306 or via e-mail at bens@rolandschorr.com

Link: http://www.legaline.com/2010/03/legal-project-management-in-cloud.html

In Robert Ambrogi's blog today (and if you don't read his blog, you should) he introduces us to Onit, a new project management cloud-based service.  He closes his post by asking why you wouldn't try Onit.  Those of you who know me, know what's about to happen...

Yep, I'm going to ask a bunch of questions.

O.K., to start with nowhere in Robert's blog entry and nowhere in the greeting screens or features list of Onit is the word "security".  No mention of encryption, either in transit or in storage.  But there is an invitation to upload documents from your practice, some of which might be confidential.  So, what's the security model?  I'm not uploading sensitive data or documents to a 3rd party service without at least an inkling of how they intend to protect my data.  Luckily they do address this (to some extent) in their Terms of Service.

So we really should read their Terms of Service.  Did I?  Of course I did.  Here's a few things that caught my eye:

 

The Services are for the personal use of Members and, where appropriate, Visitors only and may not be used in connection with any commercial endeavors except those that are specifically endorsed or approved by Onit.

 

My firm is a commercial endeavor.  Isn't yours?  Has it been specifically endored or approved by Onit?  Dunno.

 

You hereby acknowledge that Onit owns all right, title, and interest in and to any and all Personally Identifiable Information inputted into the Services, whether directly or indirectly through importation of data files and databases. Personally Identifiable Information is protected from disclosure as provided under our Privacy Notice and Policy, a copy of which can be found at http://www.onit.com/privacy.

 

Well, I think that precludes me entering any information about my clients.

Luckily it is partially redeemed by:

Onit does not claim ownership rights in User Content. After inputting or submitting your User Content to or through the Services, you continue to retain ownership rights in such User Content, and you continue to have the right to use your User Content in any way you choose.

 

So at least I retain ownership rights over my own documents uploaded to their service.

 

We do have the right, in our sole discretion, to monitor or remove any User Content at any time and without notice if we believe doing so will improve the Services.

But they reserve the right to monitor the content of my materials?  I guess that precludes me uploading any sensitive or confidential documents.

They do have the usual "we reserve the right to shut you off at any time" and "We make no guarantee any of this stuff will work or that you won't lose data or that Lindsey Lohan won't sue you for claiming that when people think of you they're actually thinking of her." clauses. (No, those aren't exact quotes)  Basically the same "nothing is our fault, this is all 'as is'" type of disclaimer that pretty much all Cloud services give you.

Their terms of service also lays out some rudimentary details of their security.  To whit:

Onit uses commercially reasonable measures to protect your Personally Identifiable Information, including but not limited to, the following:

• Firewall-secured server;
• SSL technology;
• Secure messaging;
• User names and strong passwords; and
• Automatic log off.

That's fine in as far as it goes.  It doesn't say anything about encryption on the storage server though, which I would like to see them address.

One other point I want to make about their TOS: they say they're operating the services from inside the United States.  That's great.  I'm very pleased they've said that.  I also didn't see anything granting them the right to outsource their data storage to any 3rd parties (who might not be operating inside the United States) so I'm going to assume (uh-oh) that they're hosting all of the data themselves, inside the United States?

So what does all this mean?

Onit is a beta.  If you think it's an interesting idea go ahead and sign up and set up a sample project.  I wouldn't use real data for the reasons I laid out above and because it's a beta and beta software (whether it's in the cloud or locally installed) is still in the testing/development phase and really shouldn't be used for production purposes.

As is so often the case with the terms of service of cloud providers there are a few things in their TOS that make me unlikely to use them for any confidential data/projects.  That doesn't mean I wouldn't use them at all, but as always I would give thoughtful consideration as to what data I would trust to them and what data I would not trust to them.  I encourage you to look over their site (http://onit.com),  carefully read their terms of service, and decide for yourself if you're comfortable using their service and if so, for what.

I can't count the number of times I've been in a law office and heard the attorney, usually as they're on the way out the door say "Sally, I'm taking off for Houston until Thursday.  Check my e-mail while I'm gone, my password is..."

And every time I hear it I just want to grab them by the lapels and shake them!

Has anybody pointed out to them that when the secretary logs in at their computer as them...that their secretary *IS* them as far as the network is concerned? It's not just current e-mail, it's all of their saved e-mails, it's all of their sent e-mails. It's HR, it's accounting, it's time and billing...heck, it's online banking if they use the same password or have the password saved in their browser. The secretary can do a heck of a lot more than check their e-mail if they want to.  The secretary can SEND e-mail as it if came from them!

Does the attorney have an Outlook folder where they keep personnel performance reviews? How about a folder where they keep sweet little notes from his/her spouse and/or boyfriend (or both)?

Is this the first secretary this attorney has ever had? Did they give the previous secretary their password too? Did they change the password after the previous secretary left?  Does your firm have remote access?  Webmail?  Want to guess what else your secretary and/or former secretary(ies) can do if they have your password?

I see it in firms all the time and it drives me nuts when attorneys give staff their Windows passwords. Nobody needs to have your Windows password people.  No, not even IT staff.

Don't do it!  In this age of mobile devices there is no reason why your secretary should need to check your e-mail for you.  And if you just can't stand to carry a Droid or a Blackberry then talk with your IT folks about some more intelligent solutions to get the problem solved.  Something that doesn't involve handing the keys to your entire professional universe to somebody who isn't you.

You can reach Ben M. Schorr at bens@rolandschorr.com or by phone at 808-782-6306.