Redaction is the removal or obscuring of certain text before releasing a document to the public. With paper documents, it is pretty simple. Just take a black Magic Marker and color over the text and then make a photocopy of it. Redacting PDF documents doesn’t work quite the same way. Recently the Pentagon released a report in PDF format about the Bagdad shooting of an Italian car spiriting a freed hostage to the airport. Many items, including soldier’s names, were redacted by placing black boxes over them. It was fairly easy for anyone to access the improperly redacted information.

I recently learned from Adobe about some real and effective PDF redaction tools from Appligent.com. The products are not cheap, but if you are redacting a PDF you are going to distribute, you want to do it right.

The word "hack" as applied to technology has many meanings. One meaning is "a clever or elegant solution to a problem." Lifehacker.com covers many solutions to our problems in life. Here’s the site’s mission statement: "Computers make us more productive. Yeah, right. Lifehacker recommends the downloads, web sites and shortcuts that actually save time. Don’t live to geek; geek to live." But there are also links to many helpful, non-tech tips as well. Recent postings have included How to Cook on a Grill, How to Stay Motivated When You Are Self-Employed, Exercise Your Creative Thinking Muscles, (Almost) 50 Fun Things to do with your iPod and How to Make a Knitting Pattern out of any Photo.

June 23-25 is the date for the annual OBA Solo and Small Firm Conference. The Early Bird registration deadline is June 1 and then the price goes up, with a possibility that the conference will fill and close registration. There’s a lot of information available on the SSF Conference site, including my story about the conference, the complete schedule in PDF, a link to online registration and printable registration forms.

Ross Kodner and David Masters will be our special guests, but there will be many great speakers from among our membership. Presentations will cover subject matter as diverse as estate planning, time management, legal issues about drug testing, common law marriages, small claims proceedings, victim’s protective orders and more. These are all focused on the needs of the small firm lawyer. We’ll have copies of David’s book, The Lawyer’s Guide to Adobe Acrobat, 2nd Edition, for sale.

We’ve been holding our conference annually since 1998. Many states are hosting them now. I’ll be speaking at the Missouri Bar’s Solo Conference in June. See their agenda. The Vermont Bar just held their first such conference a few weeks back. If your state doesn’t have one, think about becoming the person who helps bring this type of fun and important educational activity to your state.

Charlie Robinson is an attorney in Florida. You cannot really discuss the future of legal practice without mentioning Charlie, who has likely given more presentations about the future of law practice than anyone. I’ve heard him speak several times. You may not agree with everything he says, but you had better not ignore these concepts. His PowerPoint presentations from his more recent programs are online here. A slide show is not the same without the speaker, but Charlie’s slides are pretty self-explanatory. Take the time to page through one of them. The home page for his futurist site is here.

I strive to have practical tips on this blog that are immediately useful. This week I am covering a bit of future thinking and strategic planning. It is sometimes hard to spend time thinking about the future when you are battling the fires (or "alligators") of the day. But we need to think long range as well. I direct your attention to a speech that Roger McNamee gave to the Software 2005 Conference a few weeks ago. He calls it "The New Normal: Career, Family and Personal Finance."

He caught me with his opening paragraph:
"The New Normal is a time when there are four unshakable issues that each of has to deal with. First, technology is changing just about everything. Second, globalization is changing the nature of economic opportunity. Third, every individual is on his or her own. We have more power than ever before, but no safety nets. And fourth, none of us has enough time to deal with life."

A very small amount of his speech is software-industry specific. Most all of it applies to most all of us. Thanks to BizzBangBuzz Blog for the pointer.

The one constant in today’s society seems to be change. At the beginning of this year, Laura Owen, Director of WorldWide Legal Services for Cisco Systems, Inc wrote an article titled "The Tech Revolution: Change or Die." All lawyers should read this one where in-house counsel for a sophisticated client makes important points about how law firms must change how they do business in order to survive. If you follow other blawgs, you may have already read Owen’s piece. Here’s Monica Bay’s list of bloggers who have commented on her excellent observations.

Coping with change isn’t easy. Earlier this week Arnie Herz commented on his Legal Sanity blog about how difficult it is to accept changes. He noted a recent article from Fast Company this month also entitled Change or Die. Read this one. You’ll be challenged by the scientific studies of just how hard true change is.

Finally Law Tech Guru Jeff Beard comments on his view of implementing changes in business processes after attending the three day Interwoven Gear Up! conference on document and content management.

Attacks on the members of the judiciary have certainly been on the rise, whether by verbal assaults, courtroom incidents of violence or a recent tragedy of a federal judge’s family being murdered. The American Bar Association has recently posted an online "toolkit" titled "Supporting America’s Judiciary." This set of resources will be useful to those who wish to take some action in their communities to counter these trends and therefore this is our Website of the Week.

"In many ways for lawyers the initial client interview is like a first date. You do not know each other that well and hope to get better acquainted. There is often a bit of tension or wariness. There are lots of unanswered (and unasked) questions, and it may have its awkward moments. But both of you hold out the hope that this may turn into a long term, mutually beneficial relationship."

That was the beginning of an article I wrote on The Initial Client Interview some time ago. I believe this is still very worthwhile reading, particularly for young lawyers. It covers the agenda of the interview, good listening skills, the critical issue of what potential clients to avoid, attorney’s fees and managing the information. There is even a link to a few sample client intake forms donated by Oklahoma lawyers.

Many readers are familiar with the Neil Squillante’s Technolawyer community. Several days ago Technolawyer launched its Technolawyer blog. The Technolawyer community operates via a series of free e-newsletters. Details on each newsletter can be located here. The blog mainly focuses on upcoming new content from the newsletters, but some other law technology posts are included as well. With over 10,000 members and eight e-newsletters, this unique and mostly free set of resources merits your attention.

There are lots of blawgs that discuss blawging and RSS feeds and such. I decided I wouldn’t do too much of that. I will just say that I believe RSS feeds are changing the way we get our "hot" information and news and will do so much more in the future. If you are unfamiliar with RSS, the Law Dawg Blawg yesterday posted a nice little primer on RSS good for beginners with lots of superior links. I do know of some interesting RSS projects in the works. For example, check out the RSS enabled newsfeed that the Oklahoma Trial Lawyers have placed on their Website.