Sadly Genie Tyburski has announced she is shutting down the legal research website, The Virtual Chase. Can it really be that she has been maintaining this website and giving us all great free information for 12 years? My colleague, Pete Roberts of the Washington Bar, notes that it is a good time to visit the site a last time or two to see if you want to save to PDF (or otherwise) copies of the articles there you might want to use again.

Great job, Genie, and thanks. It is hard to believe you have kept this up for so long with such good content. You deserve one more turn as my Website of the Week.

Andy Adkins is a a great guy. He is a well-known legal technology consultant, speaker and author. As he says it:

  • "I’m not a lawyer. I’m actually an electronics engineer by education and practice. I am also a self-educated legal technology consultant, independent, and have personally consulted with more than 350 law firms, law departments, law schools, courts, and legal vertical companies in my 15 years in this industry….I’ve made more than 220 presentations to attendees all over the country and written more than 100 articles during these years. I’ve had the honor and privilege to be the chair of the ABA TECHSHOW (2000 and 2001) and the co-chair of the LegalTech Conferences (2000 – 2007)."

Andy recently decided to put his thoughts down about the changes he has seen in legal technology over the last 20 years and the current trends in law office technology. The result is Techo Retro: What I’ve Learned in the Last 20 Years, a 14 page essay in PDF format that you can download and read for free. Thanks, Andy, for your thoughts and your service to the legal industry.

Nuance released Dragon Dictate Naturally Speaking Preferred Ver. 10 earlier this summer. I just placed my order and will receive my upgrade next week. Nuance is offering a half price for upgrade until the end of September, 2008. That’s $99 for Preferred Edition, instead of $199.

So I can’t review the program just yet. So, I’m going to call on a guest columnist (unknown to him of course), David Pogue, the personal technology columnist for The New York Times. The executive summary is that he likes it. You can read his review: Speak Up, a Computer Is Listening. It looks like there have been some nice improvements made.

For a more visual demonstration, view his online video review of DNS P10. It features, yes, you guessed it, David Pogue with his hands tied behind his back. That’s probably as convincing a case for the Dragon as anyone can make.

Speech recognition is not for everyone, particularly fast and accurate typists. But for many of us, Dragon Dictate Naturally Speaking Preferred long ago crossed the line from novelty product to useful (and used) office tool. I did locate a 10% off promotion code with a search if that helps anyone. Get the code here.

Logging onto the Internet from (Almost) Anywhere is my most recent article in the Oklahoma Bar Journal. "I can now log onto the Internet using my laptop from almost anywhere — roadside, lakeside or poolside." It is great. I cover the details of using the highspeed Internet services provided by the mobile phone network carriers. But, even though this is not a budget-priced service, if you find yourself paying very often for hotel or airport Internet access, you may want to consider this alternative. Trial lawyers need to consider this as well. It is like wiring the courtrooms for your Internet access during trials.

I purchased my Sprint EVDO service from Dave Block of Block Business Solutions in Tulsa. How did a Tulsa vendor make a sale in Oklahoma City you might ask? It was the same way most lawyers get their clients. He was recommended by a mutual acquaintance and patiently dealt with all reasonable requests for information and accommodations, along with a few unreasonable ones.

Note: Due to airport delays and many writing deadlines, I’ve been a bit lax on blog posts. But I’ve got a lot of material to pas along. So I’m going to try to do a blog post every day for a while. Friends are welcome to start a betting pool to see how long it losts. (Weekdays only!)

Our podcast, The Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology recently covered "The ABC’s of SEO." SEO, as you probably know stands for Search Engine Optimization, or in layman’s terms, "How can I get the search engines to notice my Website?"

Sharon Nelson and I tried to have some fun with what admittedly can be a dry topic. So before you pay an SEO firm thousands of dollars, give us a listen and see if we answer your questions. Due to technical reasons beyond our control, we missed a month or two of podcast production. We’re sorry about that, but we think we have everything ironed out to give you a new podcast every month in the future. Next month will feature an interview with a noted expert who has tips on using Microsoft Outlook.

Well, in my ever-challenging quest to keep you, my readers, on the cutting edge of technology advances, I am compelled to pass along to you 25 Gotta Have Travel Gadgets from that old media giant, Time magazine.

This list really illustrates so many changes, both in society generally and specifically for the business traveler. A laptop and mobile phone are the minimum business requirements for the road warrior, with the iPod or MP3 player on the personal "must have" list. How many of these items were only sci fi entertainment just a decade ago? I noted interesting GPS devices, the Kindle, a drinking water sanitizer, the HP EliteBook 6930p Laptop that can fold down and scan business cards with the built in camera, all sorts of power accessories and Apple’s Airport Express, which can serve as your light and inexpensive portable wireless hub for hotel room stays or meetings. Check them out. You may find something you can’t live without.

All law firms, including solos, need a Web page. That’s my opinion, anyway. The Oklahoma City Journal Record interviewed me yesterday about attorney Web sites. I loved the headline for the feature, Yellow Pages gather dust as legal eagles flock to the Web to lure clients. Of course, I fear that it will not endear me to any Yellow Pages salespersons.

Read the article and see if you agree or disagree with my points. (Read it quickly. It will only be online for either 7 or 30 days.)

I guess I should finish my Summer Reading List series before summer is finished!

The 2008 Solo and Small Firm Legal Technology Guide is subtitled "Critical Decisions Made Simple." The co-authors are Sharon D. Nelson, John W. Simek and Michael C. Maschke. This book was just published in March, 2008, so don’t think you should wait for next year’s version just because it is now July.

This book is an incredible resource for a new lawyer just setting up a practice or a small firm where none of the lawyers are particularly tech-savvy. The most surprising thing about this book is how easy it is to read. One would assume that it is a reference guide primarily to be used when a question occurs or a project is planned, but it is actually meant to be read and, due to its brevity, (113 pages plus a Glossary and Index) it can be read fairly quickly. The fact that this book will actually be read and not just sit on a shelf is its greatest strength. If you are someone who is frequently confronted by technology terms you do not understand, this book can be the complete solution for you.

The book is chock full of the author’s opinions, which makes it entertaining and useful. However, the book’s greatest strength is perhaps its weakness as well. Brevity requires significant trade offs. I’d probably be more of a fan if the book was 20% larger because a few of the topics left me wanting more. (There are only two pages on scanners and three on billing software to cite the two most notable examples.) But the chapter on scanners is followed up by great overviews on servers and networking hardware. Have you ever tried to find beginner level explanations of servers?

To be fair, I’m not the target audience for this book, nor is a large law firm IT professional. If you need this book, you know who you are and you can get a great education here. The purchase price is quite reasonable at $79.95, less for ABA Law Practice Management Section members or those whose state bars provide the books at a discount.

You can download the first chapter and the table of contents here. One reviewer gives us his favorite quotes from the book here.

I saw a full page ad on the back of a law-related magazine a few months back that bothered me. It was placed by a multi-state court reporting firm and offered a $25 gift card in return for the next deposition scheduled with the firm. I imagine that they got a lot of responses. But the offer bothered in several ways. Would the assistant tell the lawyers he/she is getting this premium? Should it rightfully belong to the staff person making the call, the lawyer, the law firm or maybe even arguably the client? What if this reporting service charges more than the competition? Are we really talking gift or a possibly illegal kickback?

Risk of Rewards By James DeCrescenzo on Depo.com covers these issues and many more, including what the Internal Revenue Service position might be.

Does your office have a written policy about staff members accepting gifts related to their duties? One would think that, at a minimum, disclosure to the firm would be required and an outright prohibition might be advised. I’ll let you read the article and make your own decisions. But here’s one more example of something that law firm managers have to think about that might not have been an issue in earlier times.

The Connected Lawyer is published by Bryan Sims. Those of you who follow legal technology trends probably recognize his name. Bryan is a regular contributor to Technolawyer and was named Technolawyer of the year for 2005. He also did product reviews for Law Office Computing until its premature demise.

The Connected Lawyer features a nice mix of posts with mini-reviews of new technology tools and services, useful techniques for using favorite technology products and general observations about whatever strikes Bryan’s fancy. I imagine that many of you are familiar with his blog already. But, let me encourage all of you to stop by and subscribe to The Connected Lawyer, this week’s Website of the Week.