My friend Bruce Dorner forwarded this link to me: 10 things your IT guy wants you to know.  Some wrongly assume that I have an IT background when nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I am publishing this as sort of an opportunity to let IT guys (and gals) have their side of the story. I agree with some of the points, (particularly # 3) but could publish a point-by-point counterpoint and rebuttal on others. So I'll just settle with rebutting number 9, at least with reference to law firm IT departments.

Here's number 9: "Yes, I seem blunt and rude. It’s not that I mean to, I just don’t have the time to sugar coat things for you. I assume we are both adults and can handle the reality of a problem. If you did something wrong, I will tell you. I don’t care that it was a mistake, because it really makes no difference to me. Don’t take it personal, I just don’t want it to happen again."

OK, there's really no such thing as "seeming" blunt and rude, there's just being blunt and rude. And if you work at a law firm, "I'm too busy to be nice" simply doesn't cut it. In case you haven't noticed, everyone there (with the exception perhaps of a pampered summer intern/recruit) is usually way too busy. Now I'm from Oklahoma, where we make it a habit to be nice no matter what. But I can tell you from comparing notes with many others across the country that the word "condescending" comes up way too frequently when law firm staff are asked to discuss the IT department. If you're really busy, then perhaps you need to think about helping staff out on the training and tips end. None of us like to make mistakes. So help the staff avoid them. Don't hoard your expertise. Help them work smarter. If you see someone using pull down menus and a three step process when there's a keyboard shortcut, show them. They will really appreciate it. "Seeming" to be rude erodes your support within the team and, if you ever make a mistake yourself sometime, you might need someone to have your back.

And a personal note to Liz Groom, Director of Information Systems of Oklahoma City law firm McAfee & Taft, who has been a great source of help and information to me, you know I'm not talking about you!

I'm passing this along as one of those "every lawyer's worst nightmare" stories. Hopefully a judge has discretion to let this mistake be repaired. A motion is now pending. But imagine a partner learning that a law firm associate and law clerk managed to obligate a client to purchase millions of dollars in assets the client didn't want when they were just trying to print part of an Excel spreadsheet to a PDF file so that it could be filed with the bankruptcy. This was a purchase of assets in the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy case. There's plenty of blame to go around. The client didn't get the law firm the list of assets until four hours before the deadline for filing. The law clerk was just trying to make the PDF file more readable. But no one noticed that the new version was 179 rows longer than the original until days after the transaction had been completed.

The lesson here as we all know, dating back to the pre-computer era, is to proofread important documents one last time before filing with the court. This time it is a PDF formatting error. Next time it will be that the printer ran out of paper and didn't print the last four pages of the attachment. Read the story as told by Computerworld here. I have no independent verification. But if the story is true, I hope the judge is charitable.

Law Technology News web columnist Bob Ambrogi recently featured ten "essential" podcasts for lawyers in Law Technology News. The online version of his article is available here. You should be able to find something that will interest you in this collection espeically since Bob slyly snuck in a few more than ten. You will be able to listen to all of these on your computer even if you don't have an MP3 player.

My favorite paragraph was this one: "The ABA's Web site is also home to The Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology, a monthly podcast from two well-regarded practice-management professionals, Sharon Nelson, president of Sensei Enterprises, a Virginia computer forensics and legal technology company, and Jim Calloway, author of Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog, and director of the Oklahoma Bar Association's Management Assistance Program. The podcast is produced as part of the Law Technology Today e-zine of the ABA's Law Practice Management Section."

I do have breaking news that occured since Bob wrote his article, however. Law Technology Today e-zine has been merged into its sister e-zine, Law Practice Today, and our podcast is moving there as well. I actually advocated for this change as these two e-zines from the same publisher had potentially overlapping content. More on that a bit later this week. But if you haven't subscribed to Law Practice Today, do so. it is easy and free and once a month, you get an e-mail with links to the articles in the new e-zine.

I sometimes wonder how productive we all would be if we all got really good training on the technology we use. I sometimes cringe when I see someone trying to "lasso" a word to select it instead of just double clicking on it or someone grabbing the mouse to click on the menu bar for something instead of just using a keybaord shortcut. Then there are those who forward a false e-mail to hundreds of colleagues because they didn’t know to "Snopes-cize" it first.

Check out David Pogue’s latest column, Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User. I’ll bet you find something there that "everyone knows," but you didn’t. Years ago many of these were fodder for "Tips" sessions at legal technology conferences like ABA TECHSHOW. But a surprising number of people still do things the slow way every day. Forward the link to this column to some (or all) of your co-workers.

Update: The blog version of his column allows comments from readers. It is online at this location. Since noon today, the moderator has approved 238 comments from others submitting their favorite tech tips.

I forgot to mention earlier that the August edition of our podcast, the Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology, is an interview with Ben Schorr, author of The Lawyer’s Guide to Microsoft® Outlook 2007. I’ve known Ben for several years now and Sharon Nelson and I had fun interviewing him. Listen to the podcast to get a few Outlook tips without buying the book. But, you will probably decide to buy the book if and when you get Outlook 2007. I have to admit Outlook 2007 has been one of my favorite upgrades of the year.

All My Favs is a web page that graphically displays many of the most popular web pages and web services. If you wish, you can add this to your favorites in your browser and then delete about 20 other favorites because you can get to them more quickly from here. A really slick interface! After you’ve scrolled down to see the main collection, don’t forget to use the top tabs to "scroll across" as well. There are also weekly featured "Favs." If they’ve left off a great site, e-mail them so they can add it.

It has been a wild month so far in the financial markets and it doesn’t appear that the roller coaster has come to a complete stop yet. So as possible bank failures loom, some of us are hearing from lawyers concerned about the safety of their client’s funds in their trust accounts and their own ethical and legal responsibilities.

According to James M. McCauley, Ethics Counsel of the Virginia State Bar and some other experts I’ve contacted, your client’s money will be insured in a bank trust account up to the FDIC $100,000 limit as long as your account is clearly designated as a fiduciary account and the record-keeping shows what money belongs to what client. But be warned about the hidden danger of a client having deposits in  the same bank. If a client has $75,000 in your trust account and $75,000 in a CD or personal account at the same bank, then the FDIC may well take the position that not all funds are insured. So it makes sense in the initial engagement to let the client know where your trust account is located and determine if the client banks there. If you haven’t been doing that, you may want to review your position today and contact at least the clients who have the largest deposits. Note that even a smaller trust account amount could be at risk as many consumers have learned to spread their jumbo CD’s across various banks so that they are all insured. If you have a need to have more than $100,000 of a client’s funds held in trust, maybe you should adopt the same strategy and have more than one trust account at more than one institution. I recognize that this is sometime not practical if a large real estate closing looms. But that just means those lawyers have to actively monitor their bank’s health.

James M. McCauley has written a nice article on this topic, Bank Failures: If your bank goes under, are your clients’ trust account deposits fully insured? Take a few minutes to read it now and perhaps pass it along to firm management. We really appreciate Minnesota Lawyers Mutual Insurance Company making this article available to everyone and not just their insureds. MLM even has a blog, which tipped me to this article in the first place.

How would you like to build your own custom search engine? (I can hear people thinking now, "I’m a lawyer, not a programmer.")

But think of the possibilities. You could have a search engine geared to search only your 15 favorite research sites, or favorite news or political commentary sites or even sites related to your city or state. It really could be a useful idea, whether it is tax law research or fantasy football team "research."

Courtney Kennaday and I (Jim Calloway) show you a couple of ways to easily do this in our Sites for Sore Eyes column "Build Your Own Search Engine" in the September, 2008 Technology eReport of the ABA General Practice Solo and Small Firm Division. Trust us. This is so simple that every lawyer can do it.

Lawyers deal with lots of emotional people. Let’s face it. If it is not worth getting excited about, it is probably not worth hiring a lawyer to handle. It can be particularly emotional when it is the client’s first time to deal with the legal system. We all know that family law cases can go off the top of the emotional scale. I know that having a box of tissues on my desk within reach of the client chairs was standard practice in my office.

Recently there was a discussion of dealing with the client’s emotions on the ABA list Solosez. It was republished as one of the Popular Threads on Solosez. The various participants had lots of ideas and I think you will find the discussion a brief and worthwhile read. 

The third Annual National Solo and Small Firm Conference sponsored by the ABA GPSOLO Division will be held October 3rd and 4th, 2008 in Santa Fe, N.M. and the hotel deadline has been extended to September 3, 2008 5:00 p.m. CST. So it is time to decide now that you will attend.

You can find the complete program schedule here, along with a lot more information. (Click here for hotel info.) There are many great speakers scheduled including Nerino Petro, Ross Kodner, David Bilinsky, Jeff Allen and David Masters. It should be a memorable event in a beautiful setting. Even though I was named honorary co-chair of this event, my schedule got too tight to allow me to attend. So all of you will just have to have fun without me.