2020 - What was the Big Tech advancement that helped attorneys this past decade?

Happy New Year!

Lately, I have been reading many blogs and articles about what was the most significant technological advancement in the past decade. It got me thinking about what has been the best tech advancement for attorneys these past ten years? The advancement of technology has been a constant exponential boom since the transistor and Alan Turing's Machine and clearly has had an impact on the way we practice law.

These devices led us to home personal computers, then smartphones, and now we can have information everywhere, at any time, and on almost any electronic device. Computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones allow attorneys to be more flexible in how they work, when they work, and where they work. No longer do we have to carry massive files of documents to court, depositions, or even home (when we have to work from home - like that ever happens! 😉). This thinking brings me to what I believe to be the most essential technological advancement was for attorneys this past decade - cloud sync/storage.

The ability to work anywhere can only happen if we have our files with us. Regardless of the number of records we have, they are essential and likely necessary when we work on a client's case. Missing that one crucial document can defeat your plans to work - imagine what happens if you forget it for your client's trial, deposition, or meeting - Malpractice Alert!

Dropbox and Box are two leading cloud sync/storage popular with attorneys. Cloud sync/storage is something that has helped me, many of my friends and colleagues, and possibly you.

Need some tech help, shoot me an e-mail, I may be able to assist!

Podcast #1 (Part 3 of 3): Judge Herbert B. Dixon, Jr. (Ret.) - His observations from the Bench.

Judge Herbert B. Dixon, Jr. (Ret.) served two consecutive 15-year terms as a Judge for the Superior Court for the District of Columbia.  Judge Dixon is a columnist for The Judges’ Journal ABA magazine, chair of Superior Court’s Electronic Filing Pilot Project and a senior judicial adviser to the Center for Legal and Court Technology (formerly the Courtroom 21 Project), an initiative of the Marshall-Wythe Law School at the College of William & Mary and the National Center for State Courts.  Our discussion was so informative that I split the interview into three parts!  In Episode #1 (Part 3 of 3), Judge Dixon and I continue our discussion of what he believes are the potential technological pitfalls in the legal arena we may experience in the not so distant future!

The Honorable Herbert B. Dixon, Jr. (Ret.)

Judge Dixon’s Twitter handle is @Jhbdixon

My discussion of ABA Rules regarding a lawyers need for competence when dealing with technology.

Judge Dixon’s ABA Article “Deepfakes: More Frightening Than Photoshop on Steroids” in “The Judge’s Journal’”

ABA Annual "Tech Show" scheduled for February 26 - 29, 2020, in Chicago, IL.

ABA The Judges’ Journal magazine.

Podcast #1 (Part 2 of 3): Judge Herbert B. Dixon, Jr. (Ret.) - His observations from the Bench.

Judge Herbert B. Dixon, Jr. (Ret.) served two consecutive 15-year terms as a Judge for the Superior Court for the District of Columbia.  Judge Dixon is a columnist for The Judges’ Journal ABA magazine, chair of Superior Court’s Electronic Filing Pilot Project and a senior judicial adviser to the Center for Legal and Court Technology (formerly the Courtroom 21 Project), an initiative of the Marshall-Wythe Law School at the College of William & Mary and the National Center for State Courts.  Our discussion was so informative that I split the interview into three parts!  In Episode #1 (Part 2 of 3), Judge Dixon and I continue our discussion about how he has seen how attorneys' use of technology in the courtroom change over the years, effective use of slides and animations in the courtroom and what he sees as attorneys' technological proficiency today and in the future.

The Honorable Herbert B. Dixon, Jr. (Ret.)

Judge Dixon’s Twitter handle is @Jhbdixon

My discussion of ABA Rules regarding a lawyers need for competence when dealing with technology.

DC Bar's Annual "Practice 360°" scheduled for May 15, 2020, in Washington, DC.

ABA Annual "Tech Show" scheduled for February 26 - 29, 2020, in Chicago, IL.

ABA The Judges’ Journal magazine.

Podcast #2: Making Document Discovery Production Simpler

In this episode, I talk with Dan Culhane, the owner of Discovery Genie.  Dan and I discuss how his computer product helps attorneys of any firm size save time and money with discovery production for small- and mid-size cases.  I think the listener will enjoy learning how to advance and simplify discovery production and case preparation while saving time and money.  Both are recouped from having to manually create pdfs of files, notes, e-mails (and their attachments) and having to indexing their contents without the need for the larger and more expensive document production software. Enjoy!

Dan can be found at Dan@DiscoveryGenie.com, or 303-872-2410 and followed on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/discoverygenie/

www.DiscoveryGenie.com

(Note to the listener:  My apologies for not dropping this on Tuesday.  I got bogged down with some deadlines before the Holiday.  Hopefully you can enjoy this episode as your recover from your family Thanksgiving dinner perhaps on the drive/flight home!

Your Hard Drive is not Infallible...

Photo by Manuel Geissinger from Pexels

I consider our computer hard drives to be the filing cabinet of our electronic law office. My dad used to tell me stories of looking for similar past pleadings through the rows of filing cabinets in my grandfather's small law office to use as templates. Now we can keep a copy of almost our entire "paper" file in a piece of plastic slightly bigger than a deck of cards. This, in addition to the copy on our laptop or desktop computer. (Don't forget to make multiple backups! See my post on April 1, 2019: Help Prevent Your Law Office's Data Loss!

However, the reliability of these little pieces of plastics with multiple times more moving parts than an old, steel four-drawer filing cabinet has to be better scrutinized. We used to worry only about property insurance and making sure the filing cabinets were fire-resistant. Now we also have to worry about dropping hard disks or the computers they are housed in as they are frequently in motion. The good news is our hard drives appear to get better and better over time.

I came across this report from Backblaze (note I use Backblaze for "a" cloud back up of my office drive). Backblaze has a "farm" of hard drives for their clients. Their farm consists of hard drives from three leading providers, HGST (owned by Western Digital), Seagate, and Toshiba. The storage sizes of their drives range from 4 to 14 TB.

To ensure their clients don't lose data, they have multiple copies of their clients' files distributed throughout their data farm. This requires Backblaze to have over 100,000 disk drives (of various sizes). This provides Backblaze with a large data pool to obtain results. See the image below.

View fullsize

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-q2-2019/

HGST and Toshiba has the lowest Annual Failure Rate ("AFR") of less than 1%. While Seagate drives, appear to have an average of over 1% (with a range reaching as high as 2.67% and a low (only one type) reaching below 1%.

This is by no means a scientific test. But, it does give you some thought about what brand to buy the next time you need a hard drive. Meanwhile, be careful of those "cheaper" brands, as you may find yourself getting what you paid for - something that turns out cheap…