Legal technology must-haves for today, tomorrow

Sharon Nelson and John Simek are a wife-husband team who—along with Michael Maschke—collaborated in writing The 2008 Solo and Small Firm Legal Technology Guide, a book that helps solos and small firm lawyers find the best technology for their dollar.

YourABA asked Nelson and Simek about the latest and greatest in software, hardware and in legal technology trends. Nelson and Simek live in Fairfax, Va., and head up Sensei Enterprises, Inc., a computer forensics and legal technology firm.

What are some of the hot trends in technology must-haves for lawyers?

John: Well, you have “hot trends,” and then you have “must-haves.” Sometimes they meet, but not always.

One of the things that is an absolute must-have is Adobe Acrobat. All the federal courts are doing electronic filing now, and Acrobat is the software to create submissions in PDF. Acrobat can also help you with your electronic discovery and production.

Case management is another must-have, though we say this year after year. It just amazes us the number of small firms that don’t have this in place, even though it's really a fantastic tool for practitioners.

Convergent devices—such as smart phones that have telephone, texting, scheduling and e-mail all on one device—are another must-have.

And then I would say encryption, for security reasons.

Sharon: As John just said, encryption is really important, especially for devices that are being used on the road. We're starting to see clients demand it more.

If you happen to be a personal injury lawyer, you may want to invest in a self-authenticating digital camera so that the evidence will be admissible in court. When a photo is taken, a hash value is created and therefore, you're not going to have any authenticity issues in admitting that photograph in court.

And whereas I wouldn’t call this a must-have yet, but I would call it a coming must-have, and that’s being able to receive voicemail on your cell phone. It’s called unified messaging, and it basically is a voicemail converted to a digital sound file. It is sent to you and you can play it on your cell phone. Many large firms operate that way, and it’s working its way down the food chain to smaller firms. The convenience of that is monumental.

Security issues are, of course, paramount to lawyers. How can lawyers—especially if they do not have IT people with whom to consult—ensure that they are adequately protecting their electronic documents and in so doing, protecting their clients?

John: Encryption is the easiest thing for most solos and small firms to implement and it’s not overly expensive. I suggest using whole disk encryption rather than creating what are called encrypted volumes. You can do whole disk encryption using a commercial product like PGP, or you can use a free open-source product called TrueCrypt, which will encrypt the entire drive as well as ensure that the data is in fact secure if you leave it at the airport or if it is stolen.

But in addition to your computer, make sure your thumb drive, flash drive and other medium you store data on is encrypted as well.

Another area of concern is Internet connectivity. How can you protect yourself when using a hot spot? A hot spot is a public transmission—you’re actually transmitting data in the clear to that hot spot. Even if you’re using a virtual private network, there’s a frame of time when someone can capture some of your log-in information.

Sounds like lawyers should avoid these wireless hot spots…

John: Rather than using a hot spot, a lot of lawyers are using what are generically called air cards. Those are the wireless cards that go into laptops—some laptops actually have them built in now—where you're using the data network of a Sprint, Verizon or other provider to connect to the Internet without having to go to a Starbucks to use a hot spot. The advantage is that this is “your” data connection.

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Any other security tips?

John: Hardware is another option for security. For example, my ThinkPad is encrypted every time I power up and I use my biometrics to “unlock” it. You can take the disk out of the laptop and the second it's removed, you can't read a thing on it.

These are important things to consider, especially when a solo or small practitioner buys a laptop.

Sharon: Just one more word of warning: laptops are the number one thing stolen from airports, and they’re high on the list from hotels as well. Many lawyers are beginning to invest in something called LoJack for Laptops. Once a laptop is powered up and there’s an attempt to connect to the Internet, the computer “phones home,” kind of like E.T., and then law enforcement knows the location of the device. Laptops with this kind of technology are recovered 75 percent of the time.

Are there any technologies that are over-hyped—something that lawyers should avoid spending money and time on?

Sharon: Stay away from the snake oil salesmen, and there are many of them—in particular, some of those in Web site design and search engine optimization. Search engine optimization doesn't happen overnight. There is no quick fix. It takes a long time to build a good Web site that will get to the top of the ratings, and stay there, which is not what a lot of solos and small firms are told.

One of the other things I see is Google keywords. People throw a lot of money down a hole on them.

John: The one exception I’d make on that—keywords may be used more successfully in niche markets where a practice is narrowly targeted or focused.

Sharon: The same is true with lawyer directories, into which many lawyers sink a lot of money with little return.

John: One of the biggest hypes of late is the iPhone. We have a lot of clients who rushed out to buy it. Right now, I think it’s “not ready for prime time” and probably shouldn’t be used in the business setting. That’s not to say that it shouldn't be given consideration in the future.

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With Microsoft’s Vista available and the growing popularity of the Macintosh OS, do you recommend either of those systems or is XP still preferable?

Sharon: We have seen an increase in the use of the Macintosh, and some lawyers are really becoming interested in it. The ABA is about to publish Mac for Lawyers by Brett Burney and I'd recommend the book to someone who is considering the Mac. There are some legal software that will not run on Macs, but some of those problems are overcome now that Mac is able to run Windows. Still, I wouldn’t move to a Mac unless you’re tech-savvy and can cope with potential trouble spots.

There have been so many problems with Vista; we’ve heard from a lot of lawyers who are going to wait for the next operating system. Much of the corporate world has announced that it will skip Vista entirely and wait for the next generation operating system.

John: The advent of the Intel-based processing system that allows you to run a Microsoft-based operating system on a Macintosh Powerbook or iMac helps. And you now have the option to boot alternately between the two operating systems.

I echo what Sharon said about the Mac, and add that if you’re in an office that's completely Mac, you should be o.k., with the understanding that you may not have all of the choices in legal software that you’ll have in a Windows world. If you don't have a homogeneous environment, it’s going to be more expensive to support that.

While there have been improvements, there’s little incentive to go to Vista. So the recommendation today is a hearty “buy XP” over Vista—until you no longer have a choice.

iPhone debuted to much fanfare. What’s the verdict on on-the-road technology? iPhone, Blackberry or some other device?

John: One of the big cost issues with the BlackBerry is the enterprise server, what’s called the BES – Blackberry Enterprise Server, which is required to go between your current e-mail server and the BlackBerry network. RIM has at least addressed that cost issue and I believe they now have what is called a solo and small business server — up to 10 licenses that they are giving away for free.

That is all well and good, but you still have to have a piece of hardware. So there’s the cost issue there.

I’m a big fan of DirectPush technology. Even though it’s a Microsoft ActiveSync-based technology, it does not require anything in addition to your e-mail service. It’s all built into Exchange. You can use any Windows-based mobile device. The e-mail goes directly to your phone without the intermediary step that the BlackBerry requires.

And even though I mentioned previously that I think the iPhone is over-hyped and certainly very expensive, it’s not necessarily something you should use today, but in the future, it may be. Apple has already licensed the ActiveSync technology – they haven't implemented it yet – so with the DirectPush technology that allows a direct push of e-mail, the iPhone may be a device that you might want to consider in the future.

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Many lawyers use external hard drives for back-up. Is that a good idea? What are your recommendations for data preservation systems?

Sharon: The external hard drives are really popular, and they’re a great idea. You can even get one-touch systems, and lawyers love one-touch systems. And they’re fast. The one thing I emphasize: make sure you continue to do your test restores to ensure that everything’s working like it should be. That’s true no matter what kind of system you’re using!

A lot of folks will recommend online back-up systems; we’re still a little leery of them.  They do come now with point-to-point encryption, but in at least one instance we've seen a client going to the system to restore after a server crash, and they couldn't restore it—they hadn't conducted those test restores.

John: I agree. External hard drives are an excellent idea—very fast, very cost-effective.; Just like the old traditional tape storage, have a minimum of two external hard drives because you want to have at least one version of your data off-site. And don't forget the encryption as the data gets backed up.

Any overarching maxim with respect to technology that you’d care to share with our readers?

Sharon: I think it’s important to stress that you don’t want to be penny-wise and pound foolish. I think that’s often the case of solos and small firm lawyers. You don't want diamonds, but you don’t want charcoal either. You want something in the middle that will serve your purposes. Buy business grade machines—remember that the lower level computers are not designed to handle the high-powered legal software or multiple programs running concurrently.

John: I can boil it down to one word: security. I’ve already talked about encryption, but it's also necessary to do things like change your defaults. When you go out to Best Buy or wherever, if you don’t change defaults, the default password and other things are going to be widely known and anyone can get access to that information.

If security is available, turn it on—make sure you put a PIN on your phone so that no one can access client information or contact information that you might have on your phone if you leave it in a cab or wherever. That would be my last word of advice.

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