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Register Today for the ISBA Solo and Small Firm Conference

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Today is your last day to get the early bird pricing to attend the ISBA Solo and Small Firm Conference. I have attended each of these conferences and I have always had a great time and learned something. More information can be found here and the complete conference schedule can be found here (downloads as a PDF).

I will admit that I am not an entirely neutral party here. I serve on the planning committee for this conference and I am scheduled to speak there. However, I really do think that this is a great conference and well worth attending.

In addition, one of the sessions that I am speaking at will be unique. This year the Wisconsin Solo and Small Firm Conference is occurring at the same time that our conference is. Thus, on Friday, we are trying something that I am not sure has been tried before. We are doing a joint presentation on working remotely. We are going to have two speakers at the Wisconsin conference and two speakers at our conference and we will be making the same presentation to both conferences at the same time.

Even if you don’t want to see our joint session, please join us for the conference, and sign up today to make sure you get early bird pricing.

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Time to Kill the Fax Machine

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I recently came across a article from 2009 that discusses 10 obsolete technologies to kill in 2010 (hat tip Above the Law). The article is an interesting read. However, I practically cheered when I read the entry on fax machines. The other begins with:

The fax machine was obsolete 15 years ago. When someone says “fax it to me,” I always feel like I’m being punk’d. A fax machine is nothing more than a printer, scanner and an obsolete analog modem that work together to waste time, money, paper and electricity.

Talk about hitting the nail on the head.

The author then describes the process that it typically takes to send and receive a fax:

Documents that are faxed usually start out in digital format. So, to send a digital document digitally, it must be converted into a paper format. You insert the document, and the fax machine scans it back into a digital format. It then uses an analog modem from 1993 to convert the digital image into sounds!

The modem plays the noise over the phone line. At the other end, another fax machine also has a modem, which listens to the sounds, and converts them yet again into a digital document, just before it prints it out on paper. Now the data in the document has to be converted somehow into a digital format — either scanned or typed in by hand.

He then points out:

The document almost always begins and ends in digital format. But during this epic journey, the document is digital four times, paper twice and sound once.

Finally, he debunks the argument that I have never understood.

The mass delusion that perpetuates this obscenely inefficient technology is that paper “hard copy” is somehow more legitimate. In fact, gluing a copy of someone’s stolen signature to a document, then faxing it, is the easiest way mask a forgery because of the low quality of fax output.

Obviously, I agree with the author. My favorite point is the one he made in his first paragraph, “A fax machine is nothing more than a printer, scanner and an obsolete analog modem that work together to waste time, money, paper and electricity.” Let’s cut the waste. If you do have to fax, at least use a fax service, not an actual fax machine.

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This is Why I Have a Paperless Practice

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Ocean Shores Washington

Pacific Ocean at Ocean Shores WA

This is what I am looking at right now as I am writing this post. It is the Pacific Ocean at Ocean Shores, Washington. I am here with my wife who has is attending multi-day business conference.

Because I have a paperless practice, I can work while she is attending the conference. This means that, while here, I have, among other things, prepared motions, worked on discovery, worked out issues relating to a protective order, and issued citations to discover assets.

If I did not have access to all of my documents, I would not have been able to much of what I have been able to accomplish. This is especially true when it comes to the protective order issue. Because I have access to all of the documents in all of my cases, however, this means that I was able to do anything here that I could have done in my office (except print mailing labels for the documents that I had to mail out).

In fact, the citations to discover assets were one of the cooler things that I have done. I was on Google Reader and saw in my RSS feed that a company I had a judgment against was participating in a social networking deal. I recognized this as a potential source to collect my judgment. I was able to log into the clerk’s site to obtain the forms I needed. I prepared the forms and filed them electronically. Once the citations were issued, I then emailed them to my process server for service.

Because of efiling (thank you DuPage County), I was able to take care of all of this, despite the distance between myself and the courthouse.

I know that there are attorneys who look at disdain at my use of a laptop and smartphone to stay connected when I am out of the office. I have been asked before whether these make me feel tied down and like I can’t get away. I explain that they do just the opposite. If I sat at my office desk for 60 hours a week, then I would not want to be connected when I am out of the office.

However, I much prefer to not be chained to my desk. With my laptop and smartphone, I can practice from anywhere, whether my office or a beach in Washington. This means that, instead of staying at home and forgoing a trip with my wife, I can accompany my wife and still get work done while I am gone. The way I look at it, my devices and connectivity free me to practice law the way that I want.

This does not mean, however, that I am always connected. I don’t think that this is healthy either. If I am on vacation, I minimize my work in order to enjoy my vacation. However, when I am with my wife on a business trip, I need to find something to do while she is doing her work. From my perspective, I think it’s best that I do some work and make some money.

I think I am going to go take a walk on the beach before I do some more work.

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Adobe Acrobat X: The Final Review

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I have been using Adobe Acrobat X for several months now. Not long after I first started using it, I published a post about my initial impressions. In this post I will add some additional thoughts based upon a few months of heavy usage.

Before I go too far, I want to make clear that I like this program a lot. Much of this post will deal with suggested improvements for the program. Don’t let that mislead you into thinking that I don’t like the program.

I probably use Acrobat to do more legal work than any other program (yes, that includes Word). If I did not prefer it, I would be using a different program. However, Adobe Acrobat meets my needs as a legal professional and it is my program of choice when handling PDFs.

Adobe did a lot of good things in this version and got a lot of things right. If you are using a version that is 8 or older, I would recommend that you upgrade. The improvement of the OCR engine alone, makes the upgrade worthwhile.

Pros

  • As I noted in my earlier post, the menus are much more customizable. This is a good thing and something I really like about this edition.
  • The OCR engine has improved, again. I thought that the improvements between 8 and 9 were significant. I think that the improvement between 9 and X is almost as significant.
  • In addition to improving  how the OCR engine work, Adobe has also added a “Save as” feature that allows you to save a PDF as a Word document, Excel file, plain text, or a number of other formats. The key here is that to export the text, you do not first have to run OCR on the document. Acrobat does this automatically when you choose the save as format. This is something that should have been added versions ago. It’s nice to see it now.
  • This version seems to be more stable. With Acrobat 9 I sometimes had stability problems between Acrobat and Outlook (who knows, maybe that was Outlook’s fault). Regardless, I have had no such problems with Acrobat X. It seem extremely stable. Something not often found in complicated programs these days.
  • The Menu structure. In the past, some features were buried 4 or 5 clicks deep in the Acrobat menus. The menus have now been changed to reduce this. This does not mean the menus are perfect (see below), however, it does mean that they are better than before.
  • The typewriter function seems to work better than in previous versions. I like this feature a lot before. Now I love it.
  • As I noted in my earlier post, I think the action wizards are great and provide an effective way of ensuring that your staff handles documents in that manner that you want.

Cons

  • The menu structure. Adobe changed the menus to try to make features more accessible.  I think that this is a good thing. However, I don’t think that they have quite hit the mark yet. The features now appear both in menus across the top and in a sidebar called tools. If I am looking for something that I don’t use often, I end up having to check all of the locations just to find the feature. Yes, the features are less hidden, however, I don’t think that they are well organized. I wish that Adobe would simply switch to something like Microsoft’s ribbon. That is a much cleaner interface and I think makes the features easier to find. I have also used Nitro PDF Professional (review coming soon), which uses a ribbon. As a result, I significantly prefer their interface.
  • Although the toolbars are customizable, they are not customizable nearly enough. From my perspective, there is simply no excuse for Acrobat to not have a fully customizable toolbar. I can only add the commands to the toolbar that Adobe wants me to add. This means, for example, that I cannot add a “Save as” button, a feature I use quite often. It also means that the navigation toolbar must appear below the other toolbar. I like to control my screen space, I wish Adobe would let me do that.
  • Some of the icons that Adobe uses are inexplicable.

    Similar Icons

    By that I mean that you cannot tell from the icon, what it actually represents. For example, I use three tools regularly: Rotate page; Insert page from another file; and Extract page. Any one of the icons for these three features could easily represent any ofthe others (see picture). I know which one does what, simply because I have memorized the order I have put them in.

  • They have changed the menu structure again. As I noted above, I think that, in the larger scheme of things, the changes they have made to the menus are positive. I am a firm believer that, if your UI needs to be improved, then make the change. My concern is that Adobe has made some significant changes to the UI in the last several version of the product. For example, I do not think the location of the page navigation buttons has been the same in consecutive versions since version 6. Thus, while I think the change is a step in the right direction, my fear is that version 11 is going to look entirely different. Constant change in the UI is not a good way to keep regular users. A single massive change as a course correction is a good think. Only time will tell what this was for Acrobat.

As you can see, my complaints largely center around the UI. If Adobe would improve that, I would be immensely thrilled. As it stands, Adobe Acrobat X is an excellent program that I use daily in my practice. It is very stable and allows me to handle and manipulate PDFs in ways that no other programs do. If you are looking for a PDF program, this is a great choice. If you are considering upgrading, I would definitely suggest doing so if you are using version 8 or older.

Please note that I received a copy of this program for evaluation purposes.

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Illinois Adopt Public Domain Citation System

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The Illinois Supreme Court adopted changes to Rule 6 and 23 today. These changes adopt a public domain citation system for Illinois appellate decisions that are filed on or after July 1, 2011. According to a Chicago Daily Law Bulletin article, (which I can’t link to because it is behind a paywall), the Supreme Court’s contract with West Publishing Co. to print advance sheets and bound volumes expires on July 31, and will not be renewed.

The comments to Rule 6 explain (this is a link to a PDF),

The system of case citation that has historically prevailed in the United States relies upon the elements of printed case reporters, that is, volume number, case name, beginning and pinpoint page numbers, and year of filing. In Illinois, citations have been made to our state’s official reporters (Illinois Reports and Illinois Appellate Reports), with parallel citations to the appropriate West regional reporter (North East Reporter and/or Illinois Decisions) also allowed. But reliance upon printed reports for access to the courts’ opinions has diminished with the rise of electronic databases, such as those found on the Court’s own Internet website, Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis, and various CD-ROMs. In this state, the Illinois Supreme and Appellate Courts’ opinions have been made available on the judiciary’s website since 1996. However, the requirement that case citations be made to printed reporters has prevented direct
citation of those opinions, even though they are now widely available on various electronic databases.

To remedy this situation, the Illinois Supreme Court has amended Supreme Court Rule 23, and has entered an administrative order in relation to Rule 23, to direct Illinois reviewing courts to assign, at the time of filing, public-domain case designator numbers (e.g., “2011 IL 102345”) , as well as internal paragraph numbers, to all opinions and Rule 23 orders filed after July 1, 2011.

I think that this is a great thing. I have nothing against West or Lexis (in fact, I have a WestlawNext subscription and I really like it). However, I do have a problem with our public law being held by a private company. To the extent that we can separate that, the better off we are.

Congrats to the Supreme Court for a great step forward. Next, I hope the address the fact that our public jury instructions can only be found in west publications. Those too should be freely and publicly available on the Court’s website.

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Bing Product Placement

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I saw a recent article that said that for every $3 that Microsoft is spending in advertising costs to promote Bing, it is making only about $1. That is burning money at an ridiculous rate, even if you have as much money as Microsoft. That same article indicates that if Microsoft continues to spend Bing money at the same rate it will lose $3 billion.

I found the article fascinating. I also understand that, if Microsoft wants to challenge Google, it has to spend a lot of money to do it. A lot of money right now, may lead to increased revenues later. However, I am not sure that Microsoft can really spend Google into the ground.

A recent post by Dan Savage on Slog, however, recently put this into perspective for me. Savage said:

Did you see Source Code? There’s a moment in the movie where Jake Gyllenhaal’s character—about to be burn to death in a fiery explosion for the seventh or eight time that morning—does a quick web search on someone’s smart phone. The search engine he uses? Bing. The audience at the screening I attended erupted in laughter. This was a screening in Seattle. We were willing totally willing to suspend our disbelief when it came to time travel and alternate realities and that comedian’s jokes. But the idea that someone would use Bing to look something up instead of Google? That was laughable.

I think that says it all.

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Do They Do This Just to Punish Attorneys?

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The ABA recently reported that some federal courthouses ban smartphones because of fears that they could be used as weapons by terrorists. The story reports:

A memo issued last week by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts outlines the dangers, Wired’s Threat Level blog reports. “These common devices present security issues because some can be and have been converted for use as weapons, including explosives,” the report says.

The report explains other dangers: Smartphones can be used to secretly record or transmit videos of court proceedings, and they can be used by jurors to research case details on the Internet.

Further information can be found at in this story from Wired’s Threat Level as well as this report from the Administrative Office of the Courts.

I admit that smartphones and cell phones can be used as weapons by terrorists. So what? There are lots of items that can be used as weapons by terrorists. No location can ever be terrorists proof. Further, you can never have perfect security.

A courthouse that bans cell phones may seek to ensure that a cell phone is not used in a terrorist attack in the building. However, the policy does not prevent any other kind of terrorist attack.

Just a cell phone can be used as a weapon, does not mean it should be banned. If we were to follow this argument logically, we should also ban all writing instruments from use, heavy books from the library, and plastic ware from the cafeterias.

Attorneys carry smartphones to courthouses because they use them as tools in their practice. For some attorneys, their smartphones are one of the most useful tools in their practice. They use it for email, calendaring, and making telephone calls. Similarly jurors, who are giving up their time to serve the justice system use their phones to monitor their businesses or children when they are away.

Security is a legitimate concern. However, banning cell phones and smart phones from courthouses does not make us safer, it makes us more inconvenienced. It makes our jobs harder to do. It makes it more difficult to find good jurors. It makes it difficult for litigants to be involved in their cases. Quite simply, banning cell phones allows court officials to pay lip service to improving security without actually improving security.

The articles do not mention which courthouses currently ban cell phones. I would be curious if anyone is aware of the courthouses that do.

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ISBA and the US Supreme Court

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I just saw on the ISBA’s Illinois Lawyer Now Blog that the ISBA has five spots left for its trip for members to be admitted to the United States Supreme Court.

I went on one of these trips a few years ago. Based on my experience the, let me say that, if you have been considering this, sign up right now. I had an absolute blast on my trip and I cannot recommend this trip highly enough.