Two recent articles caught my eye. A New York law firm has instituted a policy banning mobile phone and Blackberrys from major meetings. The University of Chicago Law School has shut down Internet access for most of its classrooms because of an "epidemic" of distracting Internet use. Dean Saul Levmore told the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, "several observers have reported that one student will visit a gossip site or shop for shoes and, within 20 minutes, an entire row is shoe shopping."

As a technology guy, you might think I am appalled at these trends, but I’m not. Now I can work up some rage at the Luddite professors who want to ban laptops from the classroom. Sorry, but that is how today’s students take notes– get over it! How great it would be for the new lawyer to have all of her law school notes preserved in searchable text files.

But snubbing a group of people you are with to attend to an electronic device is generally a very negative thing. We’ve all seen it happen. A meeting is going well and then someone gets a call or gets distracted by an IM or e-mail. Not only is the attention of that person lost, but everyone is distracted. The others make eye contact and frown. Some may reach for their own devices. If it is a decision maker who has checked out of the meeting, the entire momentum of the meeting stalls.

With a classroom setting, it may be less distracting to others, but more to the laptop web user. I’ll admit I have checked my e-mail on my laptop from the back rows of seminar presentations. But I’ll also admit that I more than once I have been lost in an e-mail and suddenly jerked back to reality by hearing the end of something that sounded interesting. But I missed it. So, as hard as it can be, we all need to work on focusing on the speaker and the subject.

I like the idea of banning the devices from major or short meetings. If you really want to have a short meeting, remove all of the chairs from the room, too.

Now this is not to say that I’ll never check e-mail from a meeting again. Sometimes I have to go to meetings where the only thing I am interested in is item #8 on the agenda. That’s when wireless Internet access is a really positive thing in my books.

Both stories were noted on ABAJournal.com, which provided links to the more detailed stories cited above.

UPDATE: Since my original post, David Bilinsky has "responded" and alerted us to that fact that more secure laptops are now in the pipeline and we should expect to be seeing them soon.

How secure is your laptop? David Bilinsky made a blog post that alerted me to his article "Electronic devices – encryption and client confidentiality issues" that was recently published in the Law Society of British Columbia Bencher’s Bulletin. The article is worth your time to read. With more and more information being carried on laptops and other portable electronic devices, we are hearing increasing reports of devices being lost or stolen containing confidential client information. Of course, USB flash drives, PDA’s and mobile phones are even easier than laptops to lose.

David believes that it is time to consider encrypting the entire hard drive of a portable computer rather than just a number of confidential folders or files. The reasoning is that selective encryption does not protect swap files, deleted files, temp files, cookies and other sources of information. In fact no less an authority than the Executive Office of the President has instructed agencies to do this. See long boring gov’t memo here. I just wonder how many lawyer aren’t encrypting any files on their laptops.

One thing that surprises me is that we haven’t seen more "secure" computers advertised for sale. While there are many ways to secure your data, it seems like purchasing your computer with the encryption package or packages already preloaded would be popular.

Recently I was making a purchase at Office Depot and noticed a container full of USB Flash Drives for under $10 each. But I have been telling lawyers that it is probably a better value to spend eight or ten times that amount to buy a secure flash drive like the Ironkey. A device that is marketed based on strong encryption gives me a feeling of security (as did seeing an expert like John Simek pull one out of his pocket a few weeks ago.) There are certainly several options in password protected or encrypted USB drives.

I won’t disagree with David’s analysis. But I will note that if you haven’t made any moves in this area, you can order a secure USB flash drive today and and start using it instead of your laptop to carry around client documents within the next few days.

This is not my normal Website of the Week. But first, a CONTENT WARNING: Due to the nature of American popular culture, it is highly likely you will find something that offends you on this week’s Website of the Week. OK, now that we have that out of the way, PopURLS® is an fascinating look at American popular culture as viewed by links to online content. In one rather busy web page, you can find links to some of the most popular online content from some of the most well-known blogs, social bookmarking services, news services, video sites, photos from Flickr, music and online communities. You may want to avoid this one if you have a project with a deadline today. Thanks to Robbin in the IT Dept for forwarding me this link.

OK, this one isn’t about lawyering or technology. It is about all of life. One of the really great things about the Interactive Web is how other online users can direct your attention to wisdom in places that you would normally have missed. "16 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School" is a brief essay full of great observations on life. In fact I predict that you will want to forward the link to someone you know.

An absolutely critical aspect of law firm success in the 21st Century is using practice management software. But is it really easy to bog down on purchasing a product since there are so many considerations. After one installs a product, it is also easy to quickly learn the basics and then "get back to work" and never harness the full power of the software. Storm Evans gives us some pointers on how to gradually continue to build your skills with your practice management software in her article Practice Makes Management Perfect.

After hearing Marc Rotenberg, the Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, speak on the amount of our information that is available online and trends that impact our privacy even more, it is a pretty easy choice to name the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s website, EPIC.org, as my Website of the Week. In particular, you should check out EPIC’s Online Guide to Practical Privacy Tools.

Last week I highlighted Ed Bott’s Ten Favorite Windows Programs of All Time.

Well, lots of people read and responded to his story. So now he has compiled an additional set of Ten Favorite Windows Programs from his readers. And, again, there are some real jewels included here. Interestingly, while Ed orginally focused on mostly free programs, many of his readers’ suggestions carry a modest price tag. Still, to have a total of 20 of the very best Windows software programs listed and explained is a very good thing. Enjoy!

The Oklahoma Bar Association now introduces a new free online service we are calling OKNewsBar. This is a resource for our members that everyone can use, consisting of a set of Web pages to allow one to quickly access new Oklahoma and U.S. Supreme Court opinions as well as up-to-date legal news and law practice management tips. As you will be able to see, there are four sections to this feature: Court Opinions, Oklahoma Legal News, National Legal News and Law Practice Management Information. Some of you may decide to make one of these pages the home page for your browser. Anyone can access this information, so feel free to share it with others. The main web address is http://www.okbar.org/oknewsbar.htm.

Given my role with the OBA, I am particularly proud of the law practice management section that features content from six bar association (or Canadian law society) practice management experts. The site is powered by RSS newsfeeds from various credited sources. We note with pride that all of our state’s appellate court opinions are provided to the public through dedicated RSS newsfeeds from OSCN.net.

I didn’t get a chance to have a conversation with Mike McBride at ABA TECHSHOW. My loss.

But his reports on the sessions he attended at ABA TECHSHOW were very detailed, passing along some of the very useful content he heard in each session. They were short enough to be read quickly and long enough to actually teach something. It is worthwhile to read all of his TECHSHOW posts.

But that’s not the only reason why I’ve selected the blog portion of The Many Faces of Mike McBride as my Website of the Week. Mike posts lots of content online. He’s a litigation support guy, but his interests range broadly. He posts his photos to Flickr. He uses Twitter. He’s on MySpace and Facebook. If there’s a new Web 2.0 tool, Mike’s probably already using it.

This week I featured several links to newly posted great Web content in the form of numbered lists of tips or sites. I now reveal I got them all from Mike’s del.icio.us page, which was contantly being updated even as I went back to review it. He calls his del.icio.us page, My Link Blog, which is as good a way to refer to a del.icio.us page as any. If you’ve never visited a del.icio.us page, try Mike’s del.icio.us page. Just click on the link, no special software needed or training required. (I’ve often thought that del.icio.us really hurt its growth by using such a quirky name.)

I end the week thinking that I really need to set up a del.icio.us page, too. But when? Maybe I need to go reread the time management article I linked to earlier this week.

My "Tips Lists" theme week is drawing to a close, so I’m doubling up today.

30+ Useful Websites You Probably Didn’t Know About is a nice, recently-posted collection of useful links. The author says, "[w]e are talking about pure, no nonsense, get something done now, kind of sites." Take it from someone who has seen and prepared hundreds of link sets. It is a collection worth visiting.

11 Solid Ways to Improve Your Time Management Skills is a short article that is great for lawyers (or anyone else.) As most of us understand, the trick to good time management isn’t so much learning about new time management tools as having the self-discipline to use the simple techniques you already know every day. (Well, OK, let’s just shoot for most days.) You can save the money and time to read a book on time management if you just start using some of these methods.

Now why would I group this two totally different topics in one post? Well, these two were both found at a site I just discovered called Dumb Little Man, which focuses on providing tips for all aspects of life.