Legal Technology

The best defense ...

is a good offense only works in sports where one team can maintain control over a token that enables them to score points while, at the same time, disables their opponents from scoring points. In football, rugby, and soccer it's the football. In hockey, it's the puck, and in hoops it's the basketball. In computing, "the best defense is a good offense" falls flat on its tush.

The best defense in computing goes to the vigilent. But what do the vigilent watch? and do you do it by land, sea, or air?

I could spend most of my blogging career reporting vulnerabilities and patches; but I watch the U.S. Cert Technical Alerts where I saw that Microsoft recently released updates to address vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft Windows, Office, Jet Database Engine, Windows Live OneCare, Antigen, Windows Defender, and Forefront Security, all part of their Security Bulletin for May 2008.

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P2P business practices ...

is not an oxymoron. In fact, the Distributed Computing Industry Association will advance safe and efficient business practices for P2P computing among developers, providers, and ISPs at its upcoming P2P Media Summit in Los Angeles.

Wikis put lawyers on a collaborative path

A wiki -- software that allows direct collaborative editing of content and structure -- provides an instant source for new research and collaborative document authoring. Wikis provide editorial control and focus on content rather than conversation -- surpassing the shortcomings of e-mails that often miss key contributions of lawyers who are inadvertently left off a thread or hide key insights in inboxes. Peter Buck, managing director of Baker Robbins, puts wiki collaboration in the law firm context.

The bottom line on client analysis

Software and consulting firm Redwood Analytics examined client "realization" rates -- the percentage of normal fee rates received -- for 16 law firms and saw room for improvement. Client analysis technology can improve realization, raising a firm's bottom line -- but getting the data requires overhauls not only in IT, but also in accounting and financial analysis. Perfecting client analysis means hard work, whether building a system from scratch or integrating new software with an existing system.

Cutting a winning edge in law firm blogs

While the most successful law blogs educate clients, and occasionally prospective clients, they also educate the firms that put them up in how to do a blog right -- and about the benefits and limitations of the medium. Author Alan Cohen provides answers to the questions many firms still have about blogs, and shows that when run wisely, blogs can be an effective, cost-efficient way for a firm and its lawyers to market themselves, network and strengthen relationships with clients without getting into trouble.

Technology moves inaccessible to accessible

Under the FRCP, parties may not have to search "inaccessible," or "not reasonably accessible" data to respond to discovery requests. To support the inaccessiblity of data, lawyers often rely on the fact that data resides on backup tapes solely designed to recover from natural disasters; or that the data recover is unduly costly and a potentially unfair burden to bear based on the information requested. Indeed, sequestering a haystack to look for a needle may indeed be unreasonable; unless of course you have a metal detector.

Like haystacks, needles, and metal detectors, the inaccessible argument regarding data residing on backup tapes wanes with new technology. Last year, I wrote about how easy it is to index data on tape with Index Engine's technology and make it available to discovery queries. That same technology is now coming to theatres dedicated to e-discovery, such as CommVault.

CommVault announced that it entered in to a strategic partnership with Index Engines to assist customers in their e-discovery requirements with data on tape. Migrating data from and complex legacy tape systems or even current tape library systems can be expensive and laborious. CommVault's service aims to cut the costs of migrating tape to disk and give their customers options, and confidence, in switching to more efficient storage technology. CommVault is not alone.

RenewData has announced a single-pass technology to process backup tapes to support its own clients with discovery and risk management requirements. Single-pass technology allows RenewData clients to gain visibility into tape libraries and access discreet data that may be striped across multiple tapes.

CommVault, Index Engines, and RenewData initiatives show that technology can move the "inaccessible" argument in e-discovery toward accessibility. So do not be surprised when a magistrate tells you to access backup tapes for data; move to your next argument on cost shifting and lean toward your opponent's side of the room.

Apple chips

The Deal reports that Apple Inc. confirmed an agreement to buy PA Semi, a boutique microprocessor manufacturer of sophisticated, low-priced chips. Apple has yet to officially announce the deal, but if they follow through with brining chips in house, key products like the iPhone and the iPod may go in a new direction; one that may inhibit competitors from copying the designs.

E-Mail meets Web 2.0

Vendors are starting to look at e-mail in a new light. One that is more focused on dialogue and threads than one-to-one communication. One example of this is Google Mail's feature that displays a message as a conversation that incorporates all the threads to the message -- now, comes Fyreball Inc.

Fyreball has created a method, called a Fyreball, that uses e-mail to share video, pictures, games, music, text, and other content with colleagues and friends. In effect, you can create a personal blog page and share it with others, who can comment on the content and share it with others.

At the end of the day, it's all about the dialog and the conversation; and a Fyreball puts it all together. It can even display a map that shows where, across the globe, the Fyreball has traveled.

Benefits of Mac meeting Intel

Researchers with the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation Cyberinfrastructure Center (NEESit) wrote open-source software that turns an Intel-based Apple laptop into a real-time seismograph. NEESit's iSeismograph software combines Apple's technology used to protect the hard drives in laptops from damage due to falls (tri-axis accelerometer, sudden-motion sensor) and the iSight video camera used in Intel-based Mac laptops for videoconferencing.

Converting paper to PDF

To meet the challenge of converting paper documents into a searchable or editable digital format, attorney Alan Pearlman recommends ABBYY FineReader OCR 9.0. FineReader includes Adaptive Document Retention Technology that can accurately detect and preserve native Microsoft Office formatting.