We have many great scholarly articles published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal. But they are all generally outside of the subject matter of this weblog. Imagine my surprise to find tucked into the Law Day theme issue of the Bar Journal, the article "What Lies Beneath: Native Format Production and Discovery of Metadata in Federal Court" by Elliot Paul Anderson. This is an easy-to-read article on the topic of when discoverable digital evidence must be produced in native format with the metadata intact and when images or other formats are permissable. If you are handling litigation and the prior sentence doesn’t mean much to you, you had better check out this article. Even the most knowledgeable litigator will want to read this article for its list of opinions from trial courts on this issue. Nice work, Mr. Anderson.

If you have a law office administrator, they are probably all over the upcoming postal rate increases. But if you are a small firm lawyer without a staff person who keeps track of such things, you simply have to read Are You Ready for the New Postal Regulations and a Whopping Increase in Costs? by Ellen Freedman. We’ve all dealt with postal increases before, but this one is different. The previous ones primarily only changed the rates, but this one deals with shapes and thicknesses. If you don’t pay attention, you could see your mailing costs go way up! You may need to trade in your #10 envelopes for 6" X 9" envelopes. But i’ll let Ellen explain why.

Nerino Petro is the practice management advisor for the Wisconsin Bar Association. Before that, he ran two businesses, a law practice and a technology support firm for the legal professional. So he has a lot of practical knowledge of how law firm information technology infrastructure should work. Luckily for all of us, even though he started his Compujurist.com blog before he took his position with WisBar, he still maintains the blog. It is filled with helpful insights and essays about technology and new devleopments in the legal workplace. I was actually sort of surprised to realize I hadn’t done this already, so Nerino Petro’s Compujurist is this week’s Website of the Week.

I just received my copy of the ABA GPSOLO’s Technology eReport. In my continuing effort to pass along e-discovery information of use to mid-sized and smaller law firms, I refer you you to Ten Tips Leading to Efficient and Effective eDiscovery for the Small Law Firm. It is brief and written by some very well-qualified authors.

With e-filing many lawyers are now "signing" pleadings without physically signing them. We’re going to see more of that in the future. So Adobe’s Rick Borstein has a nice post on how to build a transparent signature stamp in Adobe Acrobat, The signature with transparent background is much more appealing on a document than one with a white background. He also adds a reminder that you can "add simple usage restriction security to prevent copying the signature from the document."

Several blogs about solo law practice have sprung up recently. Some are very good. Some are perhaps still in the developmental stage. And, I don’t mean to sound cynical, but I know many of them will not survive long. The lawyer will get busy with "real work" or discover after a few posts that they have said most of the things they were burning to say.

An outstanding addition to the legal blogosphere is The Inspired Solo. It is brought to us by Sheryl Sisk Schelin, who is a solo practitioner living and working in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Some people think that to be a great blogger you need a lot of opinions. Well, I think that you need to be a great writer. Sheryl is.

The blog now has a new appearance – very crisp and clean. Sheryl does have an agenda with this site. She wants, as the title suggests, to inspire solo lawyers and to inspire other lawyers to consider the solo path. For entrepreneurs, inspiration is very important. (Of course, I’d have to add that realistic expectations are important as well.) I think many of you will enjoy The Inspired Solo and that is why I am naming it my Website of the Week.   (Note to Sheryl: I’ve now publicly placed my bet that this blog will be around for a while, so don’t let us down.)

I now find myself with a moral obligation to direct your attention to one of my least favorite law blogs in the entire blogosphere. The blog post I reference is the Graying Bar: let’s not forget the ethics. This blog post is a quite comprehensive academic treatment of issues relating to some senior lawyers and includes numerous links and citations to material about the aging process and our profession. I know some bar association staff follow this blog and I wouldn’t want any of you to miss out on the resources here. Even the normally distracting interspersed hiakus add flavor and texture to this topic. It won’t be enough for me to add this blog back to my newsreader. I have found it to be biased and unfair to bar associations and small firm lawyers in particular. But I do want to note good work when I find it, especially when there are limited resources on a topic.

I am pleased to note the launch of a new free e-zine, Law Technology Today, which is published by the ABA Law Practice Management Section. The inaugural issue, dated March, 2007, is now available online. Like its sister publication, Law Practice Today, it is free and I strongly suggest that you subscribe to both e-zines. (Subscribe to LTT  Subscribe to LPT ) I understand that there will be a lot of electronic evidence and discovery issues covered in this new publication.

ABA TECHSHOW 2007 is over. Congratulations to my friend TECHSHOW chair Dan Pinnington and the TECHSHOW Planning Board (and the great faculty) for another superb event. I’m far from unbiased, but TECHSHOW is my favorite annual event and this year’s edition was one of the best I’ve attended. Both the speakers and the attendees were well versed in legal technology and eager to share their knowledge.

Here are my short take observations:

  1. As usual, there was good chemistry between the speakers and the attendees. A Taste of Techshow featured pairs of speakers hosting small dinner gatherings which led to an even more collegial atmosphere. See Adriana Linares’s list of the dinners.
  2. Electronic discovery and electronic evidence management remain as the hottest of topics. Some law firms sent several lawyers to these sessions. Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, author of the Zubulake opinions, gave an impressive and engaging keynote address about ED issues. Her remarks will be available as a podcast from the TS website soon.
  3. Tips programs are hot. There were four different 60 Tips sessions and a Best of the Tips session. The last session was still packed, even at the end of a long day. These Tips programs are popular everywhere. I think it is because attendees always get a tip or two that they can put to use immediately. I think there’s a lesson for law firm trainers and IT departments here. The minimum training session need not be an hour or 50 minutes. Ten or fifteen minutes of training before or after a staff meeting may have more impact in terms of what is retained and used.
  4. Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional is hot. Several sessions on various aspects of Adobe were well attended. Adobe’s Rick Borstein spoke to a standing room only group.
  5. For fun and education, the 2007 60 Sites in 60 Minutes list is now online!

If you wait a week to comment, then you can link to lots of blog posts and articles from others.

Brett Burney did a great TECHSHOW round up for law.com. A must read!

Dan Pinnington posted post-show comments on the TS blog.

Kevin O’Keefe didn’t attend, but noted the lack of live blogging from TS and got Bob Ambrogi to agree. I’ll stay with Bob’s former position that sometimes there are more important things to do at TS than blog. I have done some live blogging from TS before, but this year I was too busy. I didn’t get to spend all the time I wanted at the vendor’s floor this year. I did note one blog post from a speaker during his time at the podium and one first post for a new blog live from TS.

This blog hosted a recapitulation of the 60 marketing tips panel I moderated. (Personally I am more impressed with analysis of and reporting on a presentation than reposting so much of the content of a program.)

Nerino Petro liked my tip about what to do with the TS materials CD. Read this carefully. It could be big for a few of you.

Matt Homann posted his Web 2.0 TS materials in a Google Doc.

Kevin Thompson only attended one day of TS, but gave an extensive review.

Among the new people I met at TS this year was Dominic Jaar, who writes the Wines and Information Management Blog. (Only one of those during working hours, please.) He reported on the presentation Laura Calloway and I gave on speech recognition software and several other presentations. He was a first time attendee and I’m confident he will be back.

Here’s one lawyer’s booth-by-booth trek through the TS Exhibit Hall.

Don’t forget that if you missed ABA TECHSHOW, you can soon purchase the TS materials CD. (Well, I assume you can.)

But ABA TECHSHOW 2008 will be bigger and better than ever, maybe the best ever. It starts with a better hotel. Mark your calendar now for March 13 -15, 2008 at the Chicago Hilton. But even more significant is that Tom Mighell has been named ABA TECHSHOW 2008 chair and so we know that it will be a great show! (No pressure, Tom.) Congratulations to Tom.