The knowledgable (and very charming) Adriana Linares has launched the IHeartTech blog featuring "Technology Tips and Advice for a Lawyer’s Life and Business." I must be slipping. She started it in December and I just found out. Among other things, she is a whiz on law firm training issues.

I think her blog is going to be a bit more personal than some. Here’s Exhibit #1 from her post on Relationship Rules: "Want to date me? You better follow some rules…here are some starters: 1. Bring gifts (preferably from CompUsa)…." OK, settle down guys. Actually the post is about setting rules in Outlook. A belated welcome to the blogosphere, Adriana.

Since my last presentation at Legal Tech New York (more on that later) ended at 3:00 p.m. yesterday, I got home pretty late last night after enduring too much flying time. Perhaps it was getting too little sleep after a hectic three days that made me take special note of the idyllic beach scene and words "Slow Down" on the cover of Law Practice that awaited me on my desk upon my return. Many of the articles in this issue of magazine are published online. So I invite you to take a deep breath and go to the Law Practice magazine’s home page to read Carl Honore’s "in Praise of Slowness." Accompanying the article are some comments on slowing down from LPM Section actives. There are other great features in the online version of the magazine, including a feature on upcoming ABA TECHSHOW 2006. Gotta run now. My son has a basketball game at 6. 🙂

I am still surprised at how many lawyers seem to be unaware of the existence of metadata.

Metadata is, simply put, data about data. To look at some of the metadata in one of your documents, simple click File, then Properties. So when you look at the revision history of a document or check the word count of an article you are writing for publication, you are looking at metadata. So metadata is a useful thing when you are working on your own document, but it can present a problem when you e-mail that document to opposing counsel or other third parties. Deleted comments and prior drafts can be viewed by the recipient, to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the tools that are used. Dan Pinnington’s superb article on metadata lists many types of metadata.

One Florida lawyer was quite upset when he learned his firm had been hoodwinked into e-mailing a document to opposing counsel instead of faxing it so that the metadata could be mined by opposing counsel. Apparently some client comments that were attached to the document and then deleted were recovered by opposing counsel. Well, this lawyer was on the Florida Bar’s Board of Governors and that body expressed its opinion that metadata mining is unethical and referred the matter to committee to determine what rules should be enacted on the subject.

Needless to say the idea that lawyers should be prohibited from reviewing metadata shocked Dennis Kennedy and generated lots of commentary in the blogosphere like this post with the accompanying comments, this one and even this one from Toby Brown at the Utah State Bar. I share their concerns in that it appeared from the article these bar officials were acting to ban a practice that some of them had just learned of a few minutes before. I withheld comment, but was struck by the fact that I had been involved in preparing the Oklahoma Electronic Discovery Summit last fall where, among other things, lawyers were taught how to analyze metadata. OK, it is unethical in Florida and we’re teaching it in Oklahoma.

Actually Florida wasn’t the first to offer an opinion on this topic. In 2001 the New York State Bar published Ethics Opinion 749 which stated "A lawyer may not make use of computer software applications to surreptitiously ‘get behind’ visible documents or to trace e-mail." This was so obviously overbroad that I had lumped it in with all of those early ethics opinions that it was unethical for lawyers to use e-mail, which were later modified or withdrawn. I thought that the NYSBA did a better job with Ethics Opinion 782 in 2004 that "Lawyers have a duty under DR 4-101 to use reasonable care when transmitting documents by e-mail to prevent the disclosure of metadata containing client confidences or secrets." They didn’t retreat from 749 in that one. But at least the statement was made that it is your responsibility to your clients not to pass out damaging metadata.

Tracing e-mail sounds like something FBI agents or spies would do, right? (Well, I guess not if they are lawyers licensed by the NYSBA.) The Winter 2006 edition of Family Advocate (from the ABA Family Law Section) contains a feature by Sharon D. Nelson and John W. Simek discussing a divorce case where a mother lost child custody in part because of a disturbing series of e-mails she sent to the father. But she vigorously denied doing any such thing. A court-ordered forensic examination of the father’s computer revealed that he had set up a system to "spoof" e-mails so that the incriminating e-mails which appeared to be coming from her had actually been written by him. The custody order was quickly reversed. Was the mother’s lawyer, or the judge who ordered the exam, doing anything unethical?

Our adversary system of litigation is cast as a search for the truth. Metadata speaks the truth. Sure, it could be fabricated just like any document could be forged. But one can understand those who have concerns about a rule that hides the truth, especially a rule about ignoring metadata that would not apply to the police, the insurance companies, the private investigators and, generally everyone in society– except lawyers.

Noted ethics scholar David Hricik notes his preliminary agreement with the Florida rule. But he interprets the rule to apply only to metadata in documents drafted by opposing counsel. He notes that a lawyer may well have the duty to examine the metadata in documents produced pursuant to discovery, depending on the circumstances. With that limitation, the rule is more understandable. It’s hard to defend the lawyer who used the metadata analysis tools on another lawyer’s brief. Essentially such a search would only be for attorney-client communications, internal law firm communications or insight into opposing counsel’s thought processes. But the law practice management point is not to release potentially problematic metadata in the first place.

Microsoft has released a downloadable metadata removal tool add-in that works with Office 2003 and 2002 versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Corel’s WordPerfect never carried quite as much metadata as Word and has had the publish to PDF feature built in. But, as noted here, the latest release has a built-in metadata removal tool.

Tom Mighell has linked to some articles on dealing with metadata. Conversion to PDF is generally a good way to remove metadata, although the PDF will still contain some metadata. Purists say too much still remains behind after that. My inclination is that the most, if not all, potentially embarrassing metadata will be removed by this practice. (Of course, after I finished this post Tom Mighell tells me he has a PDF with deleted comments imbedded in it.) Last month the National Security Agency released a step-by-step outline titled "Redacting with Confidence: How to Safely Publish Sanitized Reports Converted From Word to PDF."  The NSA says the steps outlined above are completely sufficient. You would want to follow these steps for redaction of documents.

One lawyer told me that he simply prints out his documents and scans the paper to PDF. That would work, but it is time-consuming. Faxing the document instead of e-mailing it likewise provides security. There’s always the old standby of copying all of the text and pasting it into a blank document. Sometimes the result is not perfect if the document was heavily formatted. Payne Consulting’s Metadata Assistant for Word/Excel/Powerpoint is a highly regarded commerical product that has been around for some time. The free version will allow you to see, but not erase, the metadata.

I simply stress that we focus on not sending out metadata rather than enacting new ethical rules about who can look at what when you do.

Noted science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke propounded Clarke’s Laws, the third of which holds: "Any sufficently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Certainly we’ve all noted new technologies that appear magical the first time we’ve seen them. Having a bar regulator decree an ethical rule concerning a technology they have just heard of or know little about is problematic. At that stage, it looks like magic and smacks of unfair advantage. Whether a new technology like e-mail or metadata analysis tools should be classified as black magic or white magic is an important decision with far reaching implications. My position has always been that a tool is a tool. Whether a tool is used for good or evil is the responsibility of the one who uses the tool.

Update: A couple of other blogs noted this post. Thanks. Dan Hull reminded me of one resource I intended to include but omitted,  Mining the Value from Metadata by Dennis Kennedy, Tom Mighell and Evan Schaeffer, (who had another recent post on the topic.) I also would like to update with references to two recently published articles on law.com: Craig Ball’s article, Make Friends with Metadata, and Metadata: Uncertain and Unseen by Tom Nunn, with references to the recent proposed changes in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that touch on metadata.

Use of the Internet is just about a business requirement these days. But the Internet isn’t easy these days. From spammers to scammers, it just seems like there’s always some new online threat or annoyance. I get very angry when I think about all of the people and businesses whose "work" is to try to intall things on my computer without my approval or permission. This week’s Website of the Week is StopBadware.org. It has just recently been created as a joint project of several groups and companies. There’s not much there yet, but visit it and add it to your Favorites. Feel free to contribute information. Hopefully this will become a great resource to visit before downloading or installing any new software to see if it is "badware."

The Winter 2006 Issue of the Family Advocate is now in the hands of ABA Family Law Section members. This was a theme issue about technology, focusing on electronic evidence, with some articles on technology-related tools for the family lawyers and blogs relating to family law as well. Tulsa attorney Sharon Corbitt and I served as co-editors. You can find the table of contents and some other information online here. (Scroll down a bit on the page.) The section also published the full text of my article on family law blogs online, which can be located at the above link. I understand that soon you will be able to purchase this single issue if you wish, but the ABA online store has not yet finished that process. Sharon and I were both happy with the result, but I’m not signing up for any more magazine editorial duties any time soon.

There’s been a fair amount written about Web 2.0 recently. My article for the January, 2006, Oklahoma Bar Journal is titled The “Next Generation” of the Internet? — Web 2.0. It is a bit longer than my usual articles because this is such a big topic. I also think that that the Internet is changing in a way that is only partially related to the technical Web 2.0 applications. It is becoming less about passive downloading, viewing and reading and more about individual user contributions and participation. Blogs are but one example. The online version of my article is packed with hypertext links. It ends with an Annotated Web 2.0 Bibliography where you will find links to even more material, including a comprehensive set of Web 2.0 links by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell.

I know this will take you a little while to read, folks, but I’ve tried to cover trends that will really impact us all, even the "non-teckie" types. E-mail with feedback or if you know of other new Web 2.0 applications that Tom, Dennis and I missed.

It’s been three years since Carolyn Elefant hung "My Shingle" on the Internet. Since that time, the site has amassed a huge collection of resources for solo and small firm lawyers. Her Online Guide to Starting a Law Firm contains links to more resources on the WWW that you might have thought existed on that topic. Carolyn has very strong opinions. She rails against "biglaw" and has a much more negative opinion of bar associations than I do. (I’ve met hundreds of state bar employees over the years and find them to be dedicated professionals.) But no one can argue with her dedication to helping out other solo and small firm lawyers and her consistent posting of new content and news. Can one person change the world? Well, Carolyn has proven that one person can change the Internet, at least as far as solo and small firm lawyers go.

My Shingle is my Website of the Week.

As most of you know, I am quite a believer in ABA TECHSHOW, having served on the ABA TECHSHOW planning board for four years. I am pleased to report that there is life after TECHSHOW board, however. I’ll be quite happy to be speaking at ABA TECHSHOW 2006 with no additional adminstrative duties.

Here’s some information about ABA TECHSHOW 2006 for you to put on your calendar. It will be held April 20-22, 2006 (about a month later than usual) at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers. You can register and locate much more information at www.techshow.com, including the complete schedule of CLE presentations. But here’s an important note. The Early Bird registration ends March 10, 2006. Since registering by that deadline saves you $200, it seems to be a really good idea to calendar that date and make up your mind by that time.

On a personal note, I’d like to suggest that you make your flight reservations home on Saturday for a little later than usual. Due to some of the events relating to celebrating the twentieth anniversary of TECHSHOW, the Sixty Sites in Sixty Minutes presentation will be on Saturday, April 21, from 11:00 a.m. until 12 noon. It will be followed by the door prize drawings. I will be returning to do that program again, along with Bob Ambrogi. We will be joined by the lovely and talented Natalie Kelly (whom many of you know as Natalie Thornwell.) In this day of the dawning of Web 2.0, there are lots of new essential websites and web services of use to lawyers and we promise to provide some fun and entertainment, along with the infroamtion you need to continue as (or become) a power Internet user.

Corel has just announced their release of Corel WordPerfect Office X3. Here’s the press release.

Among the new features are a "save without metadata" function and the ability to natively import PDF documents "making it easy to reuse text and graphics stored in this format." There are several other new new and improved features, but I’ll just let you read the press release. After I’ve played around with my copy some more I may offer some other comments.

From Tom Mighell and his Internet Legal Research Weekly Newsletter comes this tip about how MS Word handles graphic images by default. He calls this feature "VERY annoying." I’d go further and say that the way Microsoft Word treats graphics when you try to place them into a document is its Most Annoying Feature (Non-security/privacy division.) I think the reason this bothers me so much is that I do the following steps. Then I forget to do the tweak when I get an upgraded version of MS Word (or I may working on another’s computer) and it always seems to come back to haunt me when I’m putting some graphics into a document under a tight deadline.

"If you have Word 2002 or later and you try to insert an image into a document, you may notice that Word wants to create a box called a "Drawing Canvas" to hold the graphic.  VERY annoying, in my opinion.  Here’s how to banish the canvas to the Word dungeon:  Select Tools, then Options, then General.  Simply uncheck the box next to Automatically Create Drawing Canvas When Inserting AutoShapes.  Then select OK.  If you really, really need the drawing canvas, you can always make it come back by checking that option, OR on a case-by-case basis by selecting the Insert menu, then Picture, then New Drawing." Thanks for the reminder, Tom.