BREATHING EASIER

All lawyers must be able to fashion a successful legal hold, argues Craig Ball in his May "Ball in Your Court" column in  Law Technology News. U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin's recent "terrifying 88-page opinion" in Pension Committee gives no quarter, he says.

"The failure to issue a written litigation hold constitutes gross negligence because that failure is likely to result in the destruction of relevant information," she writes. So what's a lawyer to do? Ball comes to the rescue with tips on creating a workable legal hold.

And there's more news: Ralph Losey, on EDD Update, notes that Scheindlin added another correction to her opinion on May 28. The fix will help folks breath a little easier, he says, as she changes language from "likely constitutes negligence" to "could" -- and "all employees" is modified to "those with any involvement."

Speaking of legal holds, in "Gone, Not Forgotten" Jones Day's Marc Fulkert reminds us that exiting employees may leave behind a trail of electronic data. He offers suggestions for policies that will protect organizations, including prohibiting personnel from using personal computers or e-mail when working -- and to be sure that those folks don't walk away with company computers!

MAY DAZE

If there's a rhythm to life, it seems that May is a time of change. I've always thought that January, in the choke hold of winter, was an odd time to start a new year. May seems more appropriate, with its often perfect, humidity-free weather, sparkling skies, and the sweet smells of emerging fruit on trees.

So perhaps it's not surprising that career shifts (and other graduations) often occur in May and June, with so much beauty and hope flowering around us. Among those who have decided to shift gears is the delightful Sherry Lalonde, CIO of Cooley.

"I am packing it in, up and out -- and will be retiring mid-June," said Lalonde in a note last week. She says it will be "a very difficult thing to step out into a world of days with no meetings, no heaps of e-mail, no half-empty cups of cold coffee, and no passionate suggestions from iPad-toting tweeting ... millennials.

She will so be missed. Congratulations on your retirement, Sherry!

Have a wonderful Memorial Day, and I hope you can carve out some quiet time for yourself!

Photo courtesy of Cooley.

HERE COMES TROUBLE

Three days of briefings with Twin Cities legal technology teams have increased my perception that compliance is looming large over our industry. I suspect, once it settles in, that it will make e-discovery look easy.

Tuesday's lead story on the Star Tribune's business page was how Piper Jaffray & Co., a 115-year old  Minneapolis-based investment bank, had just agreed to cough up a $700K fine for failing to retain e-mails required by securities laws and regulations; and for failing to inform regulators that they had discovered the problem while investigating an ex-employee, reports Dan Browning.

"You might think [the bank] would have known better," writes Browning. It already paid a $1.65 million fine in 2002 for failing to preserve e-mails.

The story prompted Minnesota consultant George Socha to check in to remind us about The Information Management Reference Model that is under development from his EDRM gang. Its mission: "to provide a common, practical, flexible framework to help organizations develop and implement effective and actionable information management programs," 

On a much lighter note, the same issue of the Strib featured a hilarious review by Jon Bream, a frequent contributor to Law Technology News, of the band Nickelback, which he says is veering very close to Spinal Tap. Bream says frontman Chad Kroeger "dropped enough F-bombs to upset your grandmother, made enough pot references to give you the munchies, and babbled on longer than the president's State of the Union."

CUE THE REVOLUTION

A few years back, "solution" was the most annoying buzzword in legal technology. For the last year, it's "revolutionary."

I would say, conservatively, that 90% of all the vendor press releases we receive at Law Technology News use "revolutionary" in their lead sentences as they describe their new product or service. 99% of the aforementioned products and services are not, by any stretch of the imagination, "revolutionary" other than in the dreams of their creators.

However ... lately, everybody (including, I confess, even moi) has been talking nonstop about how the Apple iPad just might be revolutionary for the publishing world. I freely admit that I'm utterly lusting over it, and can't wait to get my hands on one to see how LTN could blossom on the iPad. To cite the second-most abused word of the year, it could become a "game-changer."

Well, Gawker's Ryan Tate got irritated with the "revolutionary" ads about the newest tech icon, and actually got into a late-night debate with Apple's Steve Jobs.

The exchange focuses mostly on "Apple's stranglehold on the iPhone OS platform, and its decision to force developers to build applications using Apple's tools," writes Jason Kincaid on TechCrunch. Check out the discussion of "revolutions, freedom, and porn."

Soundtrack: John Lennon & the Beatles.

Caveats: The discussion is definitely inside-baseball, and freely uses language commonly heard at any NYY/Red Sox game.

Hat tip: LTN's news editor Dan Howley.

THE CAREERIST: IS IMAGE EVERYTHING?

Our colleagues at The American Lawyer have debuted a new blog: The Careerist. Senior reporter Vivia Chen is the lead writer, with posting assistance from Law.com's Audree Wong.

TAL editor Aric Press describes the new blog as "an adroit, focused, useful, and amusing look at lawyers and their careers." Users can access the blog here or via The Am Law Daily blog or lawjobs.com's Career Center.

Says Chen in her opening post: "No one wants to think of themselves as a careerist -- that is, somebody who will do whatever it takes to get ahead. And we're not advocating that as a lifestyle. But we know that there's a gaming aspect to making it in the legal profession. We started this blog with a simple premise: You may not be looking for a job, but you sure as hell need to be looking out for your career."

And she kicks off the discussions with a quickly controversial query: Is Stanford Law School professor Deborah Rhode correct when she asserts that our industry has a prejudice against unattractive people? Chen ponders, "Is the profession that prides itself as a meritocracy on a makeover binge?"

SECURITY SCARE

Deborah McReynolds, senior paralegal at St. Louis' Husch Blackwell Sanders, forwards a very unnerving CBS report about how copiers are being resold -- without wiping (a.k.a. "scrubbing") the hard drive.

CBS bought (for about $300 each) four machines from a warehouse and found hard drives that contained -- to put it mildly -- highly sensitive data. The first one had paper documents from the City of Buffalo's police department sex crimes division right in the copying tray, and the hard drive was loaded with detailed domestic violence reports. A second machine had a list of targets from the Buffalo PD for a drug raid.

A third machine had detailed documents about a construction project near Manhattan's ground zero, including copies of checks, building plans, and lots of Social Security numbers. The fourth machine had detailed, acutely private medical records from a health organization, including cancer diagnoses.

CBS' investigative team was able to retrieve the information on the hard drive using free forensics software available on the internet.

See also: CBS: "Copiers: Gold Mines for Identity Theft"; and CBS: "Digital Copiers Loaded with Secrets."

Update: 6/2: Consultant Steve Miller checks with this related post from his The LawBill Blog. 

MINNESOTA MARVELOUS

  On May 26th, the Minnesota legal technology community gathered for our eighth annual Twins/Yankees group game, but this time in a new venue: the fantastic new (but roof-less) Target Field.

It's a wonderful venue, but of course, all the out-of-state visitors are still pondering just what the Twins will do in April and October. But then, Minnesotans do go ice fishing in January, so I suppose they just think the lack of a roof will give them home field advantage in the spring and playoffs! Go figure, and I sure won't give away my head-to-toe down jacket!

And while I've seen turkey legs in several ballparks, I think this is the first time I've ever had the option to buy a pork-chop-on-a-stick! (Photo courtesy of Curt Meltzer!)

  It's always wonderful to spend time with the Mpls/St. Paul community, learn about what's going on at Thomson Reuters, Kroll Ontrack, Merrill, Dorsey, Avanstar, Dolan et al, and catch up with the area's thriving consultants and practitioners.

Thanks to everyone for joining us.

2010 MSP photo album here.

HERE COME THE LAWYERS

Interesting post by Anna Maria Virzi on ClickZ, "BP Oil Spill Fuels Legal Marketing Machines," about how enterprising lawyers are using web tools to market their services to businesses and individuals affected by the Gulf Coast mess. And how BP itself is using the same tactics to try to salvage its image.

Searches on Google, Yahoo, and Bing for "oil spill" this week show that law firms dominate the sponsored listings in search engine results, she notes.

BP is also using paid search for reputation management, "directing people to www.bp.com/gulfofmexicoresponse to learn about the company's response to the oil spill,"  writes Virzi, who analyzes and compares some of the web advertising that various firms are using to establish their expertise and   rustworthiness, and dodge any "carpetbagger" labels.

Hat tip: Bill Pollak.

VEGAS, BABY

With the recent Nashville floods requiring a relocation of the August meeting of the International Legal Technology Association, we regular denizens were keeping our fingers crossed that maybe, just once, we might end up in Alaska, or the North Pole, or San Francisco, or anywhere coooooooool.

No such luck, but not surprised. It wouldn't be ITLA if it we weren't going to a peak-o'-summer venue that rivaled the interior of a Weber grill. 2010 will be no exception: Peggy Wechsler has just announced the new location: Vegas -- to the Aria Resort.

Vegas can be great, if you're with the right people -- and ILTA is full of great folks, so Nevada, here we come.

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For more on ILTA's desert digs, read Craig Ball's post on the EDD Update.

DOWSING FOR GOLD

David Whelan, a longtime member of the Law Technology News Editorial Advisory Board, is manager of legal information at the Law Society of Upper Canada's Great Library.

In our May issue, Whelan was guest author of our Web Watch column, as Bob Ambrogi took the month off. In "Dowsing for Gold," Whelan takes a look at how search tools can help legal professionals divine useful information from the white noise of social media. He starts off with Twitter, and explains that there are alternatives to twitter.com/search, including Microsoft's Bing, which both highlights hot topics and then returns tweets that match your search terms. One downside: Bing only displays three results at a time.

Whelan also discusses Collecta.com, which provides only social media results, retrieving results from blog posts and comments, status updates, and multimedia posts on YouTube, Flickr, and other media. The column offers advice on how to find information on social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, noting that LinkedIn can help you "crack corporate identities." Business websites, he notes, "are closely controlled and may not provide information about senior management, even if the CEO and CFO are identified."

Want more of Whelan's wisdom? Check out his April article, "Rethink Open Source," to find out why large firms may be surprised to find viable open source options, but why they should not expect it to be "free." And listen to him on April's Law Technology Now podcast.

OFFICE, SHAREPOINT 2010

I turn the mic over to my colleague Sean Doherty, technology editor of Law.com:

Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 was released to business customers today.

The two products aim to "redefine" productivity, according to Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft Business Division. With more than 8 million people already using 2010, today's announcement was no surprise. And neither are many of the new features to the 2010 products, as they have been tested by firms like Clifford Chance and Katten Muchin Roseman, and reviewed by consultant John Waters.

Brian Zeve, managing director of Microsoft’s Professional Services Industry unit, penned "The Top 10 Capabilities in Microsoft Office 2010 for Law Firms." Zeve's top ten points highlight new innovative tools like MailTips that, among other things, notify users when they are about to send an e-mail to a group or an individual outside the organization.

The new Office Backstage view replaces the traditional file menu and the Ribbon now appears on all Office applications, which makes it easy for law offices to include standard templates, notes Zeve.

NOT ALL BAD NEWS

Lately, there's been a lot of buzz and angst about the departures of senior folks in important firms and organizations, particularly among IT and e-discovery. But industry analysts suggest that the future may actually be bright for our legal technology community.

The Cowen Group recently predicted that 215 new e-discovery jobs will be created over the next six months, including project managers, regional managers, and EDD attorneys. Billable hours are up at 35% of corporations, 61% of law firms, and 51% of vendors, says TCG in its "Q1 Critical Trends report" -- and 35% of corporations, 60% of law firms, and 65% of vendors plan to add staff in the next three months. TCG received responses from 78 law firms, 47 corporations, and 35 vendors.

The company does recruiting, events, and business intelligence. It is currently highlighting "hot job" positions for a Los Angeles-based EDD coordinator ($155K), a Northeast region in-house EDD manager ($150K- $175K), and a national litigation practice support manager ($225K-$250K).

Michael Potters, CEO and managing director of New Jersey's The Glenmont Group, says jobs for IT and EDD staff are exploding "through the roof," all across the country.

Reasons: 1) bounce back from arbitrary cuts made in the throes of the recession panic, where firms were matching "ratios" of attorneys to support staff; 2) a forecasted explosion in litigation, caused by a) the Wall Street meltdown, b) compliance issues (financial and health), and c) the recent Toyota and BP nightmares.

I still think we are going to see some interesting shifts, however, as firms rethink and reconstruct their IT and EDD models. Keep an eye out as some firms adopt more "repeatable processes" mind-sets, while others look toward creating IT portfolios that are aligned directly with business goals (check out Doug Caddell and Jo Haraf).

A CASE FOR BUSINESS

Are you ready to dive into business development technology?

Well, chances are, you may not need to pull out the plastic -- your existing practice management software may already have the necessary bells and whistles that you need, says Ross Kodner, in the May issue of Law Technology News.

There's an old adage that we only use about 10 percent of the power of our existing software, and Kodner suggests you may be able to better exploit PracticeMaster, Amicus Attorney, Client Profiles, and other systems.

Using your existing system will save you money versus the up-front costs for new software, training, and maintenance. But it's not pain-free: You need to commit the time to learn how to fully use your PM. It can help you track prospective clients and referral sources, maintain contact records and history about courting potential clients, manage communication, and more. 

SOCIAL MEDIA SHOWCASE

We sneak-previewed Law Technology News'  May cover story at the April 19 ALM conference in San Francisco, "Social Media: Risks & Rewards" -- but you can see the expanded version of the story on the LTN website.

Our social media showcase starts with my article about how to construct an effective social media policy that both protects and promotes your organization's brand, intellectual property, employees, products and services, and customer relationships.

Then you'll find the articles from the print edition ("Don't Fall Into Ethical Traps," by Carole Levitt and Mark Rosch; and "Tweeting for Trouble," by Jonathan Ezor) and three bonus articles -- by Theodore Banks, Larry Bodine, and Cecil Lynn -- as well as information about additional resources!

That's not all. Mark Bisard, a speaker at ALM's two recent conferences on social networking in New York and San Francisco, is my guest on May's Law Technology Now podcast, where we continue the discussion. Bisard explains how American Express set up @AskAmex on Twitter, and talks about how his company is navigating the challenging but fruitful social media terrain.