In preparing for an American Bar Association online webinar on social media, I stopped by LexTweet. LexTweet is a service of LexBlog that aggregates and ranks lawyers and others associated with the legal profession who use Twitter. I was impressed by how the number of lawyers who tweet and the number of their followers has exploded since the last time I visited. In particular, I was really impressed that TheJusticeDept holds the number one spot with sports figure or celebrity type of numbers at 341,974 followers. (I'm sure that will increase after this post. J )

There were 79 people listed with 10,000 or more followers. Now, not all of these were lawyers or had their followers based on the law. There were pundits, political activists and a Congressman included. But if you have a Twitter account, it might be interesting for you to go review the list on LexTweet and see if there are some there who you would like to be following.

As I noted I hadn't visited the site in a while and I have to publicly note that in the early days I used to have a decent ranking there, but my 772 followers on Twitter have me clear down on page 58 ranked at number 1372.  So, while I'm not usually overly competitive, I did decide to change this blog post headline. (Sorry, Kevin.) You can view my Twitter page at www.twitter.com/jimcalloway without even signing up for Twitter if you have never tried Twitter. Meanwhile, I'm aiming to move up to ranking number 1350 this month with a little help from my friends!

I've decided to create a new category today called Cool Tools. These tools will primarily be very useful and practical tools that can be used in a law practice, but I reserve the right to post about some tools just because they are cool. Even though I never do guest posts here, I'm going to kick off this new category with a guest post/reprint. (Note to PR Flacks: No, I don't want to hear from you or your CEO about another guest post.)

I have to note that Dropbox is one cool tool I have started using this year and now I keep asking myself why I took so long to try it out. The balance of this post is from Tom Mighell and is reprinted (with permission) from his publication, The Mighell Marker: A Legal Technology Weekly. It is from the August 1, 2010 edition and you can subscribe to The Mighell Marker at Tom's blog Inter-alia. I recommend it. Now on to Tom's comments on Dropbox:

"This week I want to talk about DropBox, which is quickly becoming my
favorite currently-used application. DropBox is a file synchronization tool
that allows you to access your most important files from any computer you
use. Here's how it works.

"To get started, you'll need to install DropBox on all the computers you
own/use. DropBox essentially places a new folder in your Documents or My
Documents folder – you may also find the DropBox icon in your system tray.
This folder is actually a portal to an online folder, which resides on
DropBox's computers. Then take the files you want to use on other computers
and drag them into this folder – DropBox will automatically sync all of your
other folders with the newly added files. Just open your DropBox folder on
another computer, and there are your files, ready to work on!

"I use DropBox to hold files that I work on regularly, whether I'm at home,
at work, or on the road – I can always access these files and they are up to
date. I also use DropBox instead of email – instead of mailing a file to my
work email address, I'll just drag the file to DropBox, and pick it up on
the other computer.

"You can also use DropBox to share files securely with other people. In
fact, I just did this yesterday – I created a folder within DropBox and
added the files I wanted to share. I then went to DropBox online and
entered the email addresses of the people with whom I wanted to share the
files. They got an email from DropBox with a link to a site with the files
– they could only see those files and none of my other DropBox items, and
they were able to download the files without me clogging up their email, or
making extra copies of the files.

"I don't use the iPhone app very much, but when I have it's very useful – I
can actually view the documents I've stored in DropBox from my iPhone – or
Android phone, or iPad, if I had those. So DropBox is also great from
mobile devices.

"And DropBox is secure, too – all transmission of file data occurs on an
encrypted channel, and the files are also encrypted while they are stored on
the DropBox servers.
And when you've started using DropBox, check out these Cleverest Ways to Use
DropBox that You're Not Using – interesting ways to use this great service!"

http://bit.ly/d0sHNM

http://www.dropbox.com 

P.S. from Jim — And Dropbox says they will give both you and me some extra free space if you sign up using this link. https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTk2NDQ2NTc5

Here's a scary story about technology. A recent New York Times story Web Photos That Reveal Secrets, Like Where You Live begins like this:

"When Adam Savage, host of the popular science program 'MythBusters,' posted a picture on Twitter of his automobile parked in front of his house, he let his fans know much more than that he drove a Toyota Land Cruiser."

Because he took the photo with his iPhone that, unknown to him, had the geotagging feature enabled, included in the metadata of the photo was a geotag, which contained the exact longitude and latitude of his home. He has since turned off the feature and moved, but this brings up an important concept for lawyers, and really anyone concerned about their privacy. We usually think of metadata in relation to hidden information contained in word processing documents or other computer files we produce at work. (See my prior post/article on metadata.) But photo geotags are a far-reaching idea. With the huge number of places that people can upload photos, either to share through social media or anonymously, this will not be the last time we hear of this.

Imagine the reaction of a DEA agent upon learning that the grower of an illegal crop has posted a few tagged pictures of his plants online or when someone with an outstanding arrest warrant posts some recent picture.  Can we see the day ahead where a "harboring a fugitive" charge is based largely on a photo geotag? It doesn't take too much imagination to think of different types of situations were the precise location where a photo was taken might be relevant and important evidence.

Conspiracy theorists will be suspicious to learn that the website with instructions on how to disable geotagging on different phones cited in the Times article is now offline. Maybe Big Brother doesn't want us to have this information. (It is more likely that so many people using the link in the Times caused the bandwdith limits of the site to be exceeded.)

There's nothing wrong with geotagging. One individual who toured Turkey recently noted that the tags made the posted photos of his trip much more useful. Geotagging, in many forms, is a fun hobby for many. But since this is a hidden feature, everyone should figure out if this feature is enabled in their phones and how to turn it off and on. And no doubt some lawyer somewhere will be using this information somehow soon.

But for now when websites or other services ask me if I want to "share my location," my default answer is No. And, in the unlikely event I get to tour some foreign country for weeks in the future, I'll do more research into geotags.

For those who are interested in learning more about metadata, the Oklahoma Bar Association will feature yours truly doing a live online webcast Legal Ethics and Metadata at noon CST on August 24, 2010. Our CLE Director Donita Douglas would want me to note that any lawyer can register for this program, not just Oklahoma lawyers. You can register and find more information here.

 

Yesterday, I posted a link to an interview I did with University of Oklahoma professor Darin K. Fox. The interview was done a few months ago, but there were delays in posting it online. Professor Fox has informed me that there is a new, improved rule in The Bluebook. Here's the update from Professor Fox, which I think is good news for lawyers.

"After we spoke about legal citations, a new edition of The Bluebook was released in May, 2010. The Pace Law Library prepared a helpful chart indicating the changes from the 18th to the 19th Editions of The Bluebook which can be found here: http://pacelawlibrary.blogspot.com/2010/06/changes-in-19th-edition-of-bluebook.html One of the key changes relates to Rule 18.2 on Internet Sources, which we discussed in the interview. The new Rule 18.2 addresses some of the issues I highlighted back in February. It is now acceptable for attorneys to cite to an Internet source as if it was the original print source in certain cases.

"Here’s the rule: 'When an authenticated, official, or exact copy of a source is available online, citation can be made as if to the original print source (without any URL information appended).'   

"An 'exact copy' refers to a PDF file (or scanned page image) that preserves pagination and other attributes of the printed work. So, this permits citing to PDF files of cases on Westlaw and scanned version of journals on HeinOnline. As I mentioned in the previous interview, there is a need for states to make online versions of their statutes 'official.' Along these lines, The Bluebook now says 'Many states have begun to discontinue printed official legal sources, instead relying on online versions as the official resource for administrative or legislative documents.' Where a state government or the federal government designates an online version of the statutes or regulations as official, those may now be cited as if they were the print."

I have a confession to make. Sometimes when I write articles for the Oklahoma Bar Journal, I'll just include a TinyURL for the citation. I don't think anyone has really noticed. After all, the point of citations is to find the original source. So if a link that can be typed into any web browser gives one the entire article, that should be good, right?  Certainly better than seeing an obscure law review article cited where you have to either physically travel to a large law library or pay for someone to get the original source content for you. (I sense the collective blood pressure of librarians rising as they read this.) Well, it was just that line of thinking that led me to do An Interview with Professor Darin K. Fox.  Professor is director of the Donald E. Pray Law Library and associate professor of law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. I hope you enjoy reading the interview.

A PDF file created from a Microsoft Word document contains less metadata than the original Word document. There is less potentially embarassing metadata, like deleted comments. For a lawyer, perhaps the scariest type of metadata would be a comment made by a client on a document that was then deleted, but might be somehow viewed by a third party using a metadata viewer tool.

But the conversion to PDF does not cleanse a document of metadata– by design. That is an important point. Lawyers are busy people and they move quickly through many tasks. So some subtle distinctions may slip by like while a deleted comment may not transfer via a PDF conversion, a comment in the document can still be transferred to the PDF even if is not visible while normally viewing the PDF file.

So lawyers do need to be concerned about metadata scrubbing in PDF documents. And I direct your attention to two recent blog posts that amount to a conversation between Dave Stromfeld, Acrobat's Senior Product Manager, and blogger Sharon Nelson on the various tools included within Adobe Acrobat to view and remove metadata.

The posts are Adobe's Advice on Purging PDF Documents of Metadata and Adobe Offers More Helpful Metadata Scrubbing Tips. There are so useful ideas here for both lawyers and law firm IT departments.

A phrase that is being used a lot these days is Legal Project Management. I think we are going to hear much more about this concept in the next year or two. Examining the component parts of legal projects is not something many firms have done exhaustively, mainly because the team is focusing on getting the work done. But today, I want to start this thinking by passing along this LifeHacker post on the Five Best Personal Project Management Tools. The post notes that there are a lot of project management tools for groups, but some do not work as well for individuals. Some lawyers may include a mix or professional and personal tasks when using these tools, while others may be on top of the professional tasks, but can use some help with all of the rest of life's tasks.

For some time, it has been clear that law firms using digital client files as their primary client files (aka the "paperless" office) was becoming the industry standard and, with a few exceptions, law firms that were not on the path to make this switch needed to be.

In this month's Lawyer's USA, my column is Why You Need to Switch to Digital Client Files Now. I hope you will find it interesting and persuasive. After re-reading it, if I had "do-overs," I'd probably remove the word "stubborn" from the second sentence. Lawyers are so busy that I know this transformation is tough, particularly for smaller firms with no full-time IT staff. Cash flow is tough for many law firms as well. But this evolution really is necessary, as i hope you will agree after reading the column.

Like my friend Reid Trautz, who blogs at Reid My Blog, I'm a bit behind in both online reading and posting here.

So I'm just going to note that June 2010 issue of Law Practice Today, with the theme of Sifting Through the Ashes of Law is well worth reading and, in particular, as much as I hate to admit it, the concept that "modernization" of law firm business entities may be responsible for causing more law firm dissolutions is a new one for me to consider.

So with that teaser, I will direct you to the insightful post of Mr. Trautz on this LPT theme issue and encourage you to follow that up by reading the June 2010 issue of Law Practice Today. You may not feel up to reading of law firm dissolution in the light summer months. But failure is a great teacher and reading of the failure of others is much less personal and painful than going through it on your own.

My friend and colleague, Reba Nance of the Colorado Bar, shared a well written tip with several of us. It illustrates how to quickly type and send an e-mail without ever leaving Microsoft Word. I was going to use it as a tip here, but another colleague, David Bilinsky, appropriated it to his blog first. As much as I hate to reward David's bad behavior, (that is beating me to the post, not using the tip–which we both had permission to do) I think I'll just link to his blog post on Composing an E-Mail Without Leaving MS Word.

All kidding aside, this is a simple and great tip for when you are working on documents in Word and need to send someone a quick e-mail without opening Outlook and running the risk of being distracted by your Inbox.