TechnoLawyer: TL Editorial

This week's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire will cover three new iPod accessories for you to consider when holiday shopping. Why iPod? We think it will once again reign supreme as the leading technology gift this year. Below I've placed a pick of my own.

FM transmitters enable you to play your iPod through an unused FM radio frequency. However, in large cities, finding an unused frequency may prove difficult so what you need is a transmitter with the power to jam a weak radio station.

I can't say that my Kensington Digital FM Transmitter/Auto Charger is the best one out there, but I can give you a real-life field test in a tough environment — Manhattan. Set to 88.1 FM, my iPod's signal comes through loud and clear with no static (except when I'm near the Empire State Building for some reason). You can store three frequencies, but I've needed just this one.

I also like the connection through the iPod's dock connector, which provides better quality sound than the headphone port, and enables me to control the volume with my car stereo. As an added bonus, the charger eliminates concerns about battery drain. The Kensington Digital FM Transmitter/Auto Charger costs about $80 and comes in white or black. Take a look at some photos.

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

In which practice areas do TechnoLawyer subscribers work? Well, virtually all of them, but some are more popular than others.

Below you will find the top ten practice areas reflected by the 12,101 subscribers who have taken the TechnoLawyer Survey (we always have about 1,500 new subscribers at any given time who have not yet taken the Survey).

Litigation is the clear winner — not only does it occupy the top spot, but some of the other practice areas involve specialized litigation (e.g., personal injury).

44.0% Litigation
33.6% Business/Commercial
27.6% Real Estate
23.2% Trusts/Estates
21.4% Personal Injury
20.3% Intellectual Property
18.9% Employment/Labor
16.7% Corporate/Securities
16.5% Family
15.3% Insurance

What is the least popular practice area? Military with just 1.4% (170 subscribers).

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

Leap Legal, an Australian software company that sells LEAP (an integrated accounting and case management suite), recently released a video on YouTube about a lawyer who cannot find a file while an client impatiently waits on hold. The video is well acted — the guy playing the lawyer truly looks frazzled. Strangely, however, the video does not mention the product at all. Take a look (click here if you don't see the video below).

Perhaps the company felt that not mentioning the product would enhance the video's chances of becoming viral. But what good would that do? In my experience, mentioning a product has nothing to do with an online video's popularity. What does matter is creativity and talent. Advertising can entertain and sell at the same time. Case in point — Smirnoff's "Tea Partay" video, which despite mentioning the product several times during the video has nonetheless garnered more than 1.7 million views. Check it out (click here if you don't see the video below).

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

Given that it's Thanksgiving, I thought I'd create a top ten list of legal technology innovations for which law firms are thankful. I've listed these in no particular order as they're all important. Please let me know if you agree or disagree.

10. Mobile Communication: The ability to communicate via e-mail or telephone from practically anywhere using a relatively small device.

9. Scanners + PDF + Hard Drives: The ability to stop using expensive office space to store paper files. Law firms can now put that space to better use or lease less office space.

8. Online Legal Research: The same as #8 regarding space formerly used for a library.

7. Document Management: The ability to find all the files you now store electronically — not to mention the files that you create on your computer.

6. E-mail: It's probably impossible to practice law nowadays without e-mail. As an aside, kudos to FedEx for reinventing itself. Lesser companies would have shriveled with the loss of so much business to the double whammy of fax and e-mail.

5. Case Management: Your entire practice accessible in one place, including e-mail. Nothing more need be said.

4. Legal Accounting Software: Thanks to retainers, hourly billing, etc., even the smallest law firm has more complex accounting needs than larger businesses in other fields.

3. Live Spell Checking: Remember the days of having to run a spell checker every time you made a change to a document? Yes, it makes me shudder too.

2. Litigation Support Tools: Another bad memory — all the dusty bankers boxes of discovery documents I used to have in my office. For large cases, these boxes took up entire conference rooms — talk about a waste of space! The ability to store all this information electronically, quickly pull and print documents for depositions, etc., and then discard those documents knowing that you can print them again anytime has made life as a young associate so much better! The same goes for transcripts, case analysis outlines, trial presentations, and much more. (Can you tell that I really dislike paper?)

1. VoIP: Probably the most controversial entry on this list, I include it not because it has become widely adopted, but because it should. There's no good reason to pay traditional telephone rates anymore.

What do you think of my list?

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

We categorize all TechnoLawyer content into 32 "master topics." But which topics are the most popular? Below you will find the top ten topics of interest as chosen by you and the 12,039 other TechnoLawyer subscribers who have taken the TechnoLawyer Survey:

60.7% Document Management
54.2% Case Management/Docketing
53.7% Law Office Management
53.3% Handhelds/Laptops/PDAs
50.2% Legal Research
48.0% Automation/Document Assembly/Macros
47.8% TechnoLawyer
45.0% Litigation Support
44.9% Business Productivity/Word Processing
43.6% Accounting/Time-Billing

What is the least popular topic? Entertainment/Hobbies/Recreation with just a 10% level of interest. Wow, what a serious group!

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

Janine D. Geraigery, an enterprising young (25 years old) intellectual property lawyer with a solo practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts, recently produced a cute promotional video and uploaded it to YouTube (it may have also aired on local TV). Take a look (click here if you don't see the video below).

Meanwhile, down in North Carolina, Lee Rosen and his colleagues at the Rosen Law Firm have embraced online video in a big way. The firm is also a leading advocate of virtual visitation rights using online videoconferencing. We managed to dig up a report by video production company Network News Crews that discusses its work for the Rosen Law Firm. Read and download it for discussion at your firm.

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

Sometimes we come across products or services that we cannot cover in TechnoLawyer NewsWire for various reasons — not enough features for a 250 word article, stuck in perpetual beta, not legal-specific enough, etc. Nonetheless, you may find some of these products of interest so here is a list:

Futurephone: Free international calls. My grandmother uses it to call the old country (Italy).

Optimus Keyboard: A keyboard with display screens on each key, enabling you to customize the keys. Insanely great! Unfortunately, we've had this product in our queue for more than a year. It's vaporware.

BackFence: Small town news and gossip (currently in California, Illinois, Maryland, and Virginia). Bo Peabody tried to serve small towns with StreetMail during Web 1.0. It didn't work then and I don't think it'll work now — and I know a thing or two about online communities (now called social networks). Besides, Craigslist will eventually serve every town in the country. Game over.

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

Every year we put together a "media kit," which discusses the marketing opportunities we sell. We will release our new 2007 media kit on November 29th. An important component of the media kit is the section that lays out our demographics.

While I doubt you have much interest in our marketing opportunities, I suspect you do have an interest in TechnoLawyer's demographics. Therefore, over the next few weeks, I'll share these statistics with you in TechnoGuide and here on our blog.

First up is a snapshot of TechnoLawyer members:

• 92.8% Work in the Legal Industry.

• 86.6% Work in the United States; 5.5% Work in Canada; 3.7% Work in Other Commonwealth Countries; 4.2% Work Elsewhere.

• 82% Work in Law Firms or Legal Departments.

• 83.9% Recommend, Make, or Approve Purchases for Their Firm.

• 62% Serve on Their Firm's Technology Committee.

How do these statistics square with your particular circumstances?

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

Is your local courthouse dark and depressing? In this video, Steven Holl of Steven Holl Architects walks you through his design for the 335,000 square foot Denver Justice Center Courthouse, a $99 million project that will also include a post office, detention center, and jail. I especially like all the natural light, which most courtrooms lack in my experience. Take a look (click here if you don't see the video below).

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

We've been remiss in discussing the Net Neutrality issue here in TechnoLawyer. Better late than never. Simply put, cable and telephone companies would like to charge search engines, publishers, and other online information providers different rates for different types of online data (e.g., video, voice, etc.) and different levels of service (what network engineers refer to as "QoS"). Those who oppose this development liken it to a tax or toll and have coined the clever phrase "net neutrality" to emphasize their argument that all data online merits equal treatment.

While I support net neutrality, I would also like to see our access speeds move beyond the stone ages. A T-1 line just doesn't seem all that fast anymore nor does a 6Mbps cable connection (not that it ever attains 6Mbps anyway). I don't have any suggestions, not being an expert in this area. So let me turn the podium over to those who have spent more time researching this subject. Where do you stand?

Bill Moyers & Scott Fogdall, Against An Imperial Internet

Senator Brownback on Net Neutrality

A Guide to Net Neutrality for Google Users

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.