Our final contributor to the Law Student Edition Five by Five is another anonymous law student, Ambivalent Imbroglio – the only two-time 5×5 contbibutor. 

1. Make classes smaller – especially in the first year. Classes of 100 or more people are an incredibly inefficient way to learn. They are an efficient way to move people through a degree program, but they are not a good way for those people to really learn anything. Law degrees should not be mechanically mass produced like automobiles. If you cut classes to a maximum of 20 students, you could cover the same amount of material twice as fast because you could approach the material much differently. Large classes allow for almost no discussion; therefore, law professors generally assign too much reading and spend all their class time trying to get one or two students to superficially summarize that reading and pull out one or two main points that the professor thinks important. Guess what? We can get the bulk of that from a commercial outline, and we don’t need to mortgage our entire future for the pleasure. Other graduate programs in the humanities and social sciences offer a better model for classroom learning. There, classes are generally “seminars” of 12-16 students. A typical class begins with the professor doing exactly what most law professors do-asking some basic questions and highlighting some main points to make sure everyone has read and understood the material. The difference is, in a class of, say, 20 or fewer students, everyone can ask questions and all of this introductory matter can still be covered in a tiny fraction of the time it would take to do the same thing in a class of 100. In these smaller classes, professors then often give a mini “lecture” on the material, offering background that wasn’t in the reading, and bringing in new material and perspectives for students to consider. Then the professor will generally begin asking more serious, in depth questions of individual students about the material, and the majority of class is discussion. This allows students to raise whatever issues or questions they’d like, and it ensures that those questions get treated seriously and that everyone can learn from both the questions and the answers. Finally, so much discussion exposes indefensible views and biases, while giving a fair airing to those for which legitimate arguments can be made. Having spent four years in such classes, I can say that they were much more difficult intellectually, and therefore much more rewarding. But more important, they’re simply a much better format than the 100-per-class model for addressing the complex moral and ethical issues at stake in every area of the law. I won’t attempt to seriously address the financial repercussions of cutting every law school class to a max of 20 students, but possible ways to cut current expenses include: cutting faculty pay by 20-40% at the top and 5-10% at the bottom (enough good people are dying to teach that this won’t damage faculty too seriously; if you’re a law professor in it for the money, you should get out, anyway); spending less money on aesthetic improvements (flatscreen monitors that are nice to look at but largely useless, lots of wood panelling, leather couches) that do very little to improve education but merely attempt to raise a law school’s U.S. News rank; locating law schools in lower rent parts of cities and towns, etc.

2. If you must have large classes, make use of teaching assistants. Since it could be a while or never before law schools get to smaller law school classes, then fergoodness sake, make better use of your top 3Ls by employing them as teaching assistants in those enormous classes. Three-five TAs per 100 students could meet for an hour a week in small sections to lead discussion of the issues that get skimmed right over in class. They could also manage web discussion boards and class blogs where students would be encouraged (and required) to participate in the conversation. The goal of all of this would be to get every student engaged and thinking critically about the material, rather than simply trying to memorize rules and cases to regurgitate on an exam. The TAs could be paid or volunteers, but the experience could be good for a couple of credits for 3Ls-especially those who think they might one day like to teach.

3. Forget about “blackletter law” for the first semester or year. The first semester should be general legal history and theories of what law is, where it comes from, the possible ends it might serve, different legal systems around the world, and a basic introduction to major schools of thought about the law (“crits,” formalists, law and econ, social justice, etc.). This new “context” curriculum for the first semester should also include serious examination of the difference between practicing law in the public interest v. practicing in the private interest-and isn’t simply that one of them pays more money. Why rearrange the first semester or first-year curriculum? Because this would teach students what it means to ask questions about what they learn and show them where to look for both the questions and different perspectives on their answers. How can you think critically about a law and econ approach to torts if you don’t know what “law and econ” means or what it stands in opposition to? You can’t. And where in the current typical first year/first semester curriculum is a law student supposed to learn this? The idea seems to be that one of the 1L profs is bound to mention what law and econ means at some point, but the random approach is no way to show students the terrain on which they’re going to live and work for their legal careers.

4. Drown professors in fines and peer opprobrium when they encourage students to become evil – even or especially when such encouragement is only implicit. From day one, my law school experience has been peppered with little jokes from professors and administrators through which they express their assumptions that their students are going to graduate and immediately begin doing anything for money, regardless of the moral or ethical consequences. These jokes come with a sort of wink in the form of, “I know none of you would ever rob six American Indian tribes blind, but the attorneys that did sure made a lot of money!” Ha. Ha. Ha. These jokes seem to come almost unconsciously from faculty, probably as a sort of cynical defensive mechanism they’ve developed to protect themselves from being paralyzed with horror by the awful things that lawyers sometimes do. However, here’s where faculty need to take a serious stand; they should be condemning such humor and behavior in the strongest terms, making an example of any faculty member who feels it is professionally acceptable to suggest to students that, while it’s officially wrong to lie, cheat, and steal, as an attorney, that’s what you’ll get paid for. The point of this reform is larger than putting an end to this form of dark humor in the classroom; the real objective is to require faculty to model good professional behavior to their students and to accept nothing less. This could be the beginning of a profession-wide renewed commitment to ethical lawyering. Faculty could join collectively in condemnation of every scandal that hits the news involving attorney misconduct, spending 5 minutes in each class pointing out what the attorney did wrong, and making sure every student understands that such behavior is a disgrace to the profession-not with a joke and a wink, but with serious and uncompromising disdain. The ABA could follow up by demanding that state bars institute serious, effective, and efficient malpractice grievance and punishment systems to help weed out the “bad apples” and begin showing the public that lawyers really aren’t the slimy subhuman species they so often appear to be. So long as the profession-at every level-tacitly endorses lawyer crime, lawyers will continue to be criminals.

5. Make clinics, internships, and externships mandatory, and/or make a J.D. a two-year degree. Breadth in education is great; however, law students pay too much damned money to waste time in a third year of law school simply for the sake of being more well rounded. The law degree could be a 1-yr. degree plus a 1-2 year apprenticeship, or it could be a 2-yr. degree with no apprenticeship, and the world would not suffer one bit. In fact, society would benefit b/c more law students could get through law school with small enough debt loads that they could actually afford to work in the public interest instead of the corporate/private interest. Seven states already offer ways to gain bar membership w/one year of law school or less; more schools should support such programs and encourage them in their own jurisdictions.

The third spot in our Law Student Five by Five is held down by Jeremy Blachman, author of the eponymous Jeremy’s Blog.  Jeremy is a 3L at Harvard who is not going to work for a law firm.  Here are his five answers to our question, “What five things would you change about legal education?”

1. Okay, I’m going to start off bold. I think law schools ought to exert some collective energy to get the law firms off the campus until the third year of law school.  

In a way, I feel like legal education is caught between two paradigms, and hasn’t figured out how to reconcile them. On the one hand, in a lot of ways, law school provides a very liberal arts-like education, with a lot of talk about legal theories and ways to think about the law, and very little comparative emphasis on the actual practice of law. On the other hand, from the moment you get to law school, you find yourself showered with information about law firms and how to get a job at one, and pulled toward this vocational emphasis. I think this creates a real inconsistency in trying to make sense of what the heck the point of law school is. Is the point to get a legal education, or is the point to get a law firm job? I think they’re pretending it’s the former, but really it’s just a cover for the latter. 

At least here at Harvard, from the moment we arrive on campus 1L year, we’re invited to law firm receptions, information sessions, resume workshops, interview training, dress code seminars, job fairs, and handed printouts of 50-slide PowerPoint presentations on the process. We learn more about how to get hired by a law firm than what lawyers at law firms actually do. We learn more about the difference between cotton fiber resume paper and white linen resume paper than about the difference between corporate practice, litigation, and whatever the heck lawyers do if they don’t work at firms. We learn more about what to wear to an interview than why we should be thinking about going. So a few people get law firm jobs 1L summer, and the rest cry about how they didn’t. And then before school even starts 2L year, we’ve got resume deadlines and lists of firms to select and interviews to start preparing for.

2L fall meant half-filled classes while people flew out to visit law firms, and much more talk about the Vault rankings than about the merits of whatever we were supposed to be learning in class. By Thanksgiving of 2L year – less than halfway through law school – pretty much everyone has a law firm job lined up for the following summer, and since the firms can’t risk getting a bad reputation on campus by deciding not to give some of their summers full-time offers, everyone knows they’re set with a full-time job after law school, if that’s what they’re looking for. And the next year-and-eight-months is spent with one foot out the door.

As soon as the recruiting process was over, the collective energy of my law school class collapsed. Law school doesn’t matter anymore. Our grades don’t matter, our attendance doesn’t matter, the reading doesn’t matter, and learning doesn’t matter. Part of the problem is that classes just aren’t that engaging (see #3), but part of the problem is that if the point was to get a job, you’re done. Having your post-graduation outcome set for you less than halfway through school is stupid. It undercuts the whole point of being here for three years.

The presence of law firm recruiting on campus largely changes law school from an educational experience to a job mill. But I don’t know what the answer is. Obviously, there are lots of students who are here expressly to get a law firm job, or at least that’s one of the reasons they’re here. And that’s completely fair. So I don’t think we can or should necessarily forbid students to seek out firm jobs, or law firms to seek out students. But there ought to be some way to postpone the process a bit. In the broader sense, law schools need to decide their mission: are they trying to train lawyers for firm jobs, or is the purpose more high-minded than that? If they’re just training people to work for law firms, the education we get matches up poorly (see #2). But if the goal is something more, the presence of law firm recruiting and the emphasis given to it from the very start of 1L year is desperately hurting.

2. And now, the flip side of #1. If law schools are trying to train their students to be practicing attorneys, no one has told the people writing the curriculum.

It seems like the energies here are largely spent on this theoretical education, reading old English cases, figuring out where the law comes from, trying to understand the reasoning behind different legal regimes. All interesting and valuable stuff, for sure. But then the practical aspects of what lawyers actually do are shoved off, at least here, into a pass/fail “legal writing” class taught by “instructors” and given no respect at all.

Law school hasn’t provided a particularly good sense of what lawyers do on the job, or how to actually practice law. We learn how to think about the law, but I took contracts and don’t know how to write one. I took civil procedure and don’t know how to file a lawsuit. I didn’t take evidence, and no one’s making me. Even after spending a summer at a law firm, I’m still not entirely sure what lawyers do. And lawyers who don’t work at law firms? Are there any? What do they do?

I think law school does a relatively poor job of introducing us to the range of careers that lawyers have, and what the day-to-day practice of law in a variety of settings is like. I have heard the excuse given that you can only learn these things on the job, and law school’s role is just to provide a foundation. That’s fine, but a little more emphasis on the practical side of things – especially if we’re going to have to decide our career paths before we’re even halfway through – would be nice, and not just as part of a pass/fail class designed not to be taken seriously.

3. These problems are all interrelated to some degree. The timing of the recruiting process making more than half of law school feel irrelevant wouldn’t be such a big deal if classes were engaging for their own sake.

I expected the quality of teaching at law school to be a great deal better than it has been. I can’t help but think that for a good number of professors, the teaching is secondary – as far as why they got hired, and as far as what they spend their time on once they’re on the faculty – to publishing papers. It’s great to be taught by top-notch scholars; it would be even better if they could actually teach. I have had some absolutely brilliant professors; having them has made me see how good a law school class could be, and has made me disappointed with the rest of my professors, who haven’t even come close. Part of it is that they don’t seem like they’ve prepared for class, they haven’t read the materials, they haven’t thought about what they’re going to say before they start talking, or they just aren’t particularly engaging and dynamic speakers able to convey knowledge in a compelling way.

I would change the tenure process. I would include a real teaching evaluation, and not just rubber-stamp candidates based on their research and publications. I would incorporate salary incentives for excellent teaching (I realize measurement is difficult, although, really, can’t you tell within five minutes of sitting in a classroom whether this is a professor who is truly competent or not?). I would demand excellence. I don’t think excellence in the classroom is currently demanded. I wish that would change.

4. Of course, good teaching would be easier if the materials professors were working with were stronger. Casebooks are awfully boring. 

I have no problem with the case method as a foundation, although I haven’t really thought through the alternatives. I have no problem with the Socratic method. I think the Socratic method done well is really quite excellent. The Socratic method done badly is dreadful.  But so is a terrible lecture.

The problem, I think, is that we don’t see enough materials in law school about how the law relates to the broader society, and to people’s lives. Some of the most interesting readings I’ve been assigned have been newspaper and magazine articles, television news program transcripts, and books written for ‘normal’ people. I think the cases we read can be supplemented with outside materials. The law is important in everyone’s life. If we practice law, we will be dealing with how the law plays a role in people’s everyday lives. Law school, especially in the reading materials we get assigned, pays relatively little attention to this. I think that’s a mistake.

5. Finally, I don’t think legal education does a very good job of fitting all of the pieces together. 

I have a fine understanding of the isolated areas of law I’ve taken in classes in – I know some contract law, some constitutional law, etc. I have no idea how they all come together in one big legal system. I have no idea if there’s any relationship between our torts regime and our criminal law regime; between our tax law and our constitutional law. Maybe these links don’t exist. Or maybe if I sat down and thought about it for a while, I could come up with something. But I don’t know where I would even look to find a discussion of these macro-issues, what class I would take, or whether they’re even important. We have a legal system, but what we learn are fragments of it, and I don’t know that we ever see how it all fits together to create a rule of law. This seems like a gap in the education. I might be wrong.

I haven’t touched on other areas where legal education could improve –its use of technology, lack of focus (at least in the U.S.) on issues of international and transnational law, the unchanged-for-generations 1L curriculum, the high cost of education leading people to take the law firm route in greater numbers than might otherwise, the student-run legal journals, and more issues I’m sure I’m not even thinking of. But, for me, I think my five are the areas where I’d most like to see change, and feel like change would have the most impact on legal education overall.

Our first panelist in the law student edition of this Five by Five is not a law student at all, but was when he started his blog, Sugar, Mr. Poon?, so I asked him anyway.  Though I know his secret identity, I am sworn to secrecy (go to the FAQ’s 1 and 2 to see if you can figure it out yourself).  So, here you go Mr. Poon.

Five Things I’d Change About Legal Education:

Note:  I just noticed that my distinguished co-panelists are still law students.  I’m  a recent graduate now working at a big firm in NYC.

1.  Teach Us to be Lawyers Better:  My first-year Legal Writing professor told us that his pass/fail writing class would be the most important in our 3 years of law school.  I don’t think that’s quite right — but I do think it’s right with respect to many students who don’t take advantage of clinical opportunities in law school.  Evidence and Corporations and Tax and “Law and Jackson Pollock’s Motorhome”-esque classes provide a good basis of information, but when you’re practicing you’re gonna need to look up that issue of Delaware law to avoid malpractice, whether you got an A+ on your Corps exam or not.

I was fortunate to have been involved in several practice-oriented classes, and I’ve found that it was THOSE experiences that prepared me to be a lawyer — or at least a first-year associate at a big firm.  (Although friends who are working in much different jobs — either at law firms or in other sectors or what not — agree with me on this point.)

Or, put another way, being able to debate the Supreme Court’s revitalization of the sovereign immunity doctrine is great, but it doesn’t give you a clue about what makes a good Statement of the Case.

(And don’t get me wrong — your ConLaw class has a good deal of value.  I really enjoyed law school on an intellectual level because of classes like ConLaw and Torts and so on.  But in terms of the “traditional” practice of law — be it at a big firm or as a solo practitioner — knowing how to draft a motion or defend a deposition are more important skills than knowing Potter Stewart’s shoe size.)

On that note…

2.  Make the Third Year More Clinical:  Maybe this is Part 1(b).  I would be surprised if one of my distinguished co-panelist-type-people doesn’t offer the suggestion that law school be shortened to 2 years. I hear this a lot.  I don’t think it’s the most terrible idea, especially given the cost of law school these days.

I have a better idea:  integrate clinical/practical classes into the third-year curriculum and make one or two mandatory each semester.  My school had a mandatory public service requirement, which was a very good thing.  But it didn’t mean you’d get any practical experience. Integrating those experiences into the third year would keep that year alive and fill the practical experience void at the same time.  (See also #5 for a discussion of judicial internships/clerkships in the third year.)

And one of those classes should be on Lawyerly Advice.  Law students need to hear things like “Always hand in work that is good enough to be filed” and “Stay away from that Whitewater thing”.

(A more stark version of this model is used in a majority of American medical schools, where the education is (roughly speaking) 2 years of book learnin’ and 2 years of <strike>touching peoples’ privates</strike> <strike>poking and prodding strangers</strike> <strike>taking someone’s temperature… and not orally</strike> hands-on learnin’.  Works well.)

3.  More cookies:  Seriously.  Sometimes my professors gave out cookies or other sweets.  And sure, I got a little jumpy from the sugar high and probably blogged more than usual during that class, but I recall paying attention more too.  And besides, you know, like, cookies are yummy, and stuff.

4.  Depress the Cost of Bar/Bi:  Look.  You can go to law school and not practice law.  Fine by me.  May be joining you sooner or later.  You da mon.

Statistically speaking, however, most of us law grads at least take the Bar Exam and try out this lawyerin’ thing in one capacity or another.  And the Bar Exam in each state in the Union now uses the Multistate Bar Examination — a horrid little 200-question test that I hate with a passion because it is evil and should be burned.  (No, I’m not bitter – I passed the NY Bar. . . but I’m angry at that stupid f-ing test anyway.  I hate you so much, MBE.)

The MBE deals in majority and minority rules and is generally designed to confuse you with poorly-worded sentences and trick you into not using your common sense.  I think law schools should have a class on this stuff, just to get you ready.  Could be an elective.  Just a thought.

5.  Push More Students Toward Judicial Clerkships and Internships:  I think that a lot of law schools don’t push clerkships and internships enough.  Yes, the clerkship market, especially in the federal courts, is very competitive.  But internships are generally much easy to come by, and can be done while in school.

In fact, as part of “Mr. Poon’s Happy Fun Time Third-Year Clinical Bonanza” detailed in #2 above, I would reach out to judges in the area to set up semester-ly internships that get students into chambers and into court.  Being in a courtroom for the trial process is great experience, both in law and in life.*  Law schools should use their position in the  community and prestige to create those opportunities for their students which will make them better prepared to be lawyers and/or good at Grand Theft Auto.

*May or may not be true — I got it from a fortune cookie.

PS - After re-reading the above, it may seem to some like I’m complaining that law schools aren’t enough like trade schools and/or lawyer factories.  That’s not what I’m saying.  I’m saying that for all the wonderful things I learned in law school – and I learned a lot – the things I learned in my clinics and internships were the most valuable to what I am doing now (and what most of my friends are doing, including those not at a job similar to mine).  And they need to be a greater component of American legal education — or at least mandatory, for Newdow’s sake.

PPS - It also may seem like I’m complaining that law schools aren’t giving out enough cookies.  I am.  They aren’t.  No, seriously.

Our final contributor is Stephen M. Nipper, a registered patent attorney working in Boise, Idaho with the firm Dykas, Shaver & Nipper, LLP and author of the Invent Blog.  His contributions:

What five things would you change about IP law and/or practice?

[What started as "five things" has quickly digressed into a rant to my fellow practitioners about how they need to change THEIR IP practice.  Hope you all don't mind.]

1.  Embrace the future.  Lets face it, the Internet is changing the practice of intellectual property law. Many of the businesses we used to rely on for patent copies, copies of file wrappers, etc., have had to evolve or die as more and more of the USPTO’s data and knowledge is made available on the Internet for free.  Do you really think that is the end of it?  Do you think that it is not going to affect IP attorneys too?  I’m afraid that you’ve got a big surprise coming.  It is time to start thinking outside the box about how we provide our services, how we bill for them and how clients find us.

2. Due to the Internet, people now have unfettered access a litany of information about the practice of intellectual property law.  Because of that, they are expecting more and more from us.  Gone are the days when “the only thing my client needs to know about the law is my phone number.”  Instead, attorneys need to realize that that your new client likely knows more about IP law than the average general practitioner does.  You should treat them with respect.  Work with them on projects instead of for them, make yourself more available to them, visit their office/factory/shop.  Quit biting the hand that feeds you.

3. You are your brother’s keeper.  One of the things IP practitioners tend to do is ignore our responsibility to spend time educating non-IP attorneys as to the basics of IP law.  Lets face it, our colleagues (understandably) aren’t typically very good at issue spotting when it comes to IP issues.  The result is countless pain and suffering (and much gnashing of teeth).  Solution?  Go teach a CLE to general practitioners, blog, write articles for your local bar journal, start writing a newsletter, etc.  You will be rewarded.

4.  The Princess Principle.  At my house we joke about “The Princess,” often referring to my daughter being demanding (or when said jokingly to my wife, often followed by me sleeping on the couch…but I digress).  Too often I see IP attorneys (especially the patent attorneys) strutting around like they are somehow better than other attorneys.like they are the Princess and everyone should worship them. I can especially see the Princess Principle when I look at how non-IP attorneys treat my staff (usually with respect) vs. how IP attorneys treat my staff (rudely, impatiently, etc.).  Just because our IP attorney ancestors narrowly defined who could practice IP law doesn’t make any of us The Princess.  Get over it, you were a geek who happened to go to law school and has benefited from the “System.” Realistically, we’re all more like court jesters than princesses.

5.  Billing.  What would a post on Matt’s blog be without talking about billing?  Intellectual property practitioners need to work harder at providing alternative billing methods to their clients and need to be more responsive to billing issues in general.  Why? Because the Internet is dramatically changing both the quantity and quality of competitors who are now only a few clicks away from your clients.  Clients are becoming less and less inclined to merely get annoyed when they have issues with one of your invoices or your prices, and more inclined to start looking for your replacement.  One thing you should remember about that replacement.it is just as likely to be a firm in a distant, smaller metropolitan area as it is to be a firm down the street.  The Internet has really opened up the practice of IP law, making firms in smaller towns (with less overhead) able to provide competitive services to clients all across the nation.  If you don’t take care of your clients.they (we) will.

Now that I have totally annoyed all of my competitors. I’m out.

The next edition of this Five by Five comes from Martin Schwimmer, lawyer and author of The Trademark Blog and one of the founding members of The Blawg Channel.  Martin’s response:

What are some of the most important issues and developments in trademark law today?

In terms of jurisprudence, I think two of the most important areas are the development of the concept of initial interest confusion, and the development of contributory and vicarious infringement in the Internet context.  With respect to initial interest confusion, a tremendous amount of what trademark owners hate about Internet activity consists of third parties using their marks to divert traffic to unauthorized sites.  We saw this concept in cyber squatting litigation, and now see it in the use of keywords.  Related to this is the development of the concepts of contributory and vicarious infringement.  It’s hard to get one’s hands around fly-by-night operators, so trademark owners go after the Internet service provider or registry or search engine.  I think these are the key areas in which we are going to see development in U.S. jurisprudence.

I also think that the development of the UDRP is an astounding success in that it represents a model of dispute resolution.  There are times that a trademark owner has to walk away from the misuse of a mark in a domain because litigation will cost $50,000, but a UDRP can cost under $3000.  The UDRP is not a perfect solution, but it has absolutely achieved what it set out to do.  I still do a lot of them, probably one a week.  I think the UDRP may pave the way to other forms of alternate dispute resolution for IP problems.

In addition, technological systems are developing to take some of the drudgery out of trademark practice.  For example, xml, which stands for “eXtensible markup language” allows structured information, such as the information required in most trademark applications around the world, to pass from one system to another.  So, for example, the information in a client’s database in the United States could be coded using XML to label the relevant information, such as the mark, the description of goods, and
applicant’s address, and transmitted into corresponding ‘buckets’ used by whatever software application is used by the foreign associate or foreign trademark office.

If you are wondering when I’ll have another of those great 5×5′s, wonder no more.  Beginning Monday, the series restarts with five intellectual property bloggers answering the question:  What five ways would you change IP law? 

For you non-IP people (like me), the topic seems a bit dry, but I’ve read most of the responses already and they are great!  See you then!

Here are two ideas on security and three on marketing, in no particular order:

1. Anti-Spyware Software. Most lawyers have not yet figured out that if “malware” proponents can do something like change the home page in your browser, they can also do much worse. It’s not that hard for would-be snoops to things like install keystroke loggers that send everything you type to a snoop by e-mail. Even worse, snoops might surrpetitiously install a “remote access trojan” that lets an intruder do anything on your computer that you could do, a sort of malevolent version of legitimate software like PC Anywhere. Keeping such software off your computer involves a multi-layer defense of firewalls (preferably both hardware and software), frequently updated anti-virus software, frequent patches and common sense (like avoiding opening dubious attachments, clicking on dubious URLs or visiting dubious web sites) and, probably, avoiding MS Internet Explorer. Even if you do all this, your defenses may break down. A new category of software, anti-spyware programs, will help you find out if you have suffered a breakdown and correct it if so. No single anti-spyware program catches everything. Two current favorites are Spybot Search and Destroy and Spy Sweeper.

2. Encryption Software. The ABA ethics advisory opinion that using unencrypted e-mail does not amount to a waiver of the attorney client privilege put the e-mail security issue on the back burner for many lawyers. However, the issue has definitely not gone away. Attorney client privilege is an evidentiary doctrine, governing what evidence can be admitted in court. Most e-mail snoops want information that would damage you or your clients outside any courtroom. The ABA’s opinion on attorney client privilege is irrelevant to them. Most attorneys will not need to encrypt most of their messages, but it is foolish to send highly sensitive information by e-mail without encrypting it. More information about this is available in some essays on e-mail security at Netlawtools.com.

3. Blogs. As I’ve explained in detail over the past 18 months in articles, including the Ernie the Attorney piece, the Blogs As A Disruptive Technology article and threads at Netlawblog and eLawyering.org, well-executed blogs can provide enormous benefits to certain lawyers.

4. RSS Feeds on Frequently-updated Conventional Web Sites. This makes so much sense as a way of getting your message through the clutter. It’s a new form of “push” that works, and will work even more effectively as even more people begin to use news readers.

5. RSS Feeds to Supplement/Replace E-Mail Newsletters. Though I’ve been a proponent of e-mail newsletters for lawyer marketing from the earliest days of commercial use of the Internet, the spam deluge has lessened their usefulness. RSS feeds offer a new, more effective way of getting out your message, generating new business and earning client loyalty.

There is a certain sense of resignation in the question that, as the eternal technology optimist, I’m unwilling to accept. On the other hand, lawyers are notoriously late adopters of technology. I put together my first document assembly application for drafting wills in 1990 and document assembly is still treated as a new development by many lawyers.

Technology implementation should be considered in terms of portfolio management, just as you would do with your financial investments. Diversification should be your bedrock principle, mixing together low, medium and high risks and low, medium and high returns across your “technology portfolio.” Lawyers, conservative by nature, tend to stick solely to the low risk, low return approach, which will be as devastating over the long run as will a solely low risk, low return investment policy be as it gets hammered by cycles of inflation.

“Safe” and “prudent” approaches require that you direct some of your investment, in technology or otherwise, in higher risk, innovative approaches that may pay off extraordinarily well or may cost you your shirt, but make sense in terms of a diversified portfolio. The one approach that I believe all lawyers and law firms should incorporate into their practices, but probably won’t, is the application of modern portfolio theory to technology.

I’ve provided two sets of answers, a detailed set for individual lawyers and a quick list for law firms, because many times the interests of firms and lawyers are quite different. What the two should have in common today, however, is that technology should be implemented on an “lawyers first” priority, meaning that the needs of the lawyers in their practices should be given the highest consideration, rather than the traditional “secretaries and staff first” approach or today’s common “IT Department first” approach. My opinion on this point has proven to be more controversial than I ever expected.

Five For Individual Lawyers

I have a simple three-step approach for technology decision-making for individual lawyers. First, honestly and courageously identify your existing system that will be affected by the technology you are considering and clearly spell it out in writing – no matter how wacky it may be (e.g., “certain pieces of paper are stacked on my desk, others are on a chair, others are on a credenza and others are on the floor, but I (or my secretary) usually know where everything is”). Second, ask yourself whether the technology you are considering either (1) replaces the existing system with something better or (2) improves or enhances the existing system. If the answer is “no” in both cases, either forget about the technology or admit to yourself that you will buy it only because you “want” it. Finally, if your answer is “yes,” make your decision about how the costs and benefits balance out for you.

1. Technology to Help You Manage Your Time and Priorities. How many balls do you have in the air? There is nothing that would help any lawyer more, yet gets considered less, than something that will truly help manage time and priorities. The big problem is that every one is different, so there is no single answer. In a firm setting, you will get a one-size-fits-all-that-actually-works-well-for-nobody approach. The fact is that many lawyers have their own “DayTimer” or other system. They then create (or are forced to create) a parallel system on their computer. The result: the worst of all possible worlds – multiple calendars and to do lists and ensuing chaos.

You must find a technological solution that takes the place of the paper system to have any chance of success. There are solutions that may work well for you – The MasterList, Outlook with David Allen’s Getting Things Done add-in, case management programs, mind mapping programs. This is so important that, in a firm setting, you should be willing to spend your own money to get a solution that works for you. That’s how important this issue is.

2. Technology to Help You Find Things That You Need When You Need Them. Lawyers spend a stunning proportion of their time trying to find things that are hidden in piles, files and even in the ceiling tiles. The reasons relate to the problems I mentioned in category #1, the steady stream of interruptions and crises in the average lawyer’s day, and to their own failings at personal organization. “A place for everything and everything in its place” makes perfect sense, but the notion gets blown away when people drop off files, your mail arrives and you get fifty emails all while you are on a telephone call with a crisis that has interrupted what you were in the middle of working on.

Computers where supposed to help with this, but papers and voicemail still don’t make it into our digital systems and our computer world consists of separate and unconnected “silos” of information – documents, email, bookmarks, RSS feeds, and the list goes on and on. Our document management system does not do the trick. It doesn’t cover everything and we never bothered to fill in the field that would have helped us.

Interestingly, solos and small firm lawyers may be in the best position in this area. They can use a simpler document management program like Worldox, which includes a great local search capability, or get great results from a general case management tool. Both local search engine tools and the “enterprise search” category of tools also show some promise.

3. Technology to Help You “Remember” What You Already Know When You Need to Know It. This category is different from category #2. It’s what you can focus on only after you get a handle on the “finding things” problem. Because of your experience, there are many things that you “know.” There are also many things you (or someone in your firm) have researched, found an answer for, done before, found the appropriate resource person or created something that can be reused. It might be a document. It might be a note about a client’s birthday, a recommended expert, a recent case, a good article, an important URL or some handwritten notes. Unfortunately, there’s no personal search engine for your brain yet.

We need to capture, store, be able to retrieve, and, ideally, to incorporate into our existing forms and processes all of this knowledge and know-how. The phrase to remember is “personal knowledge management.” Unfortunately, the key word is “personal.” Again, this something we all do differently and there’s no single solution.

However, we need to work on finding a tool or set of tool. I advocate a “do-it-yourself knowledge management” approach. Start finding all of the tools you already have that you can use. You can use more features of some of the tools I mention in category #2 as a start. If you have document assembly applications, you can begin to incorporate experience, expertise and knowledge into your forms on a routine basis. In the litigation context, CaseMap is a perfect tool for getting results in this area. Another example Outlook 2003 users might consider is the suite of tools included in the “Business Contact Manager” component of Outlook.

4. Technology to Help Your Clients in Ways They Will Appreciate. One of my pet topics is “client-driven technology.” Lawyers and law firms are notorious for not using (and, in some cases, refusing to use) software that is compatible with what their clients use. I’ve talked with many people who have complained vocally about their lawyers sending them documents in WordPerfect or in a format they can’t use. In one case that I remember especially well, the complaint ended with this: “They are working for us and they should give us the documents in the format we use.” It’s hard to argue with that point.

Other stories abound about lawyers unable to use email, create PDF files or pronounce the word “Pentium” correctly. To make the situation worse, your business clients already assume that you have state of the art technology. When they say that they think you can create their agreements with a push of the button, they really mean that. I’ve seen lawyers who will say “yes, we can do that” to clients on legal issues they have never heard of tell clients that there is “no way” they can adopt a technology that would help the client. I’ve seen that even when the client has offered to pay for the new technology.

This category is the easiest category to make positive changes and see positive benefits. The first step is preposterously easy. Ask your clients about what they use and their preferred ways of working with you. Legal tech consultant Adriana Linares has a simple technology survey that can be made part of the engagement letter or the client intake process. The second step is to evaluate your current technology and any contemplated changes in light of its “friendliness” to clients. The third step is to do a little research into all of the “low hanging fruit” projects you can do right now. Take the lead on providing your clients with metadata scrubbing guidelines and tools or ways to address security issues. Use extranets, deal rooms and electronic workspaces where you can clearly save your clients money. How many clients today tell their friends, “My lawyer just came up with a great new way for me to save money”? Consider electronic billing, electronic closing binders in PDF, and the new ReportBooks in CaseMap 5. It’s all part of showing clients that you care about their businesses and not just yours.

5. Technology to Help You Practice Law in the Way You’ve Always Envisioned. If you talked the best students at the best law schools who want to work for the best litigation firms, you probably would not find a single one whose vision of the practice of law includes finding themselves in a rodent-infested warehouse full of cardboard boxes of old files stamping numbers on pieces of paper for twelve hours a day for months at a time. Yet, that’s where they might find themselves. I think the vision would be more that they are using sophisticated search and visualization tools on a laptop computer to locate the fact no one else could have found that wins the case and instant partnership for them.

That’s one thing. What’s worse, though, is seeing the lawyers who have reached the holy grail of partnership only to find that they work harder and longer hours, have more pressures, and find that they have little, if any, enjoyment about what they do. Tom Davenport, a knowledge management expert, has written that we may now spend 40% of our work day fighting against the tools that were implemented to help us be more productive. In any law firm, there will be a lot of hardware, software and systems that are far more burden than benefit. Almost everyone learns to live with that, to their detriment.

A far better approach is to focus your technological change on ways to reduce your pain and increase both your ability and your time to do the work you love. There are endless ways to do this. For me, the answer might be a blog that allows me to talk about a subject I like and attract others interested in the same thing. For you, it might be a way to automate a time-consuming and tedious process so that you can spend more time talking with your clients and helping them do what they want rather than trying to talk them into taking approaches that better fit your existing forms. For someone else, it might be to get the Tablet PC that you know would really help you out. For others, it might be finding a way to automate the routine work you are doing for a great client and free up the time to do much higher-level work.

There’s never been a time where we have had more tools and capabilities available to us that could enable us to spend more time doing the things that brought us to the practice of law and the things we love the most. I don’t want to be one of those people who said I could have done that, but I didn’t. As the quote goes, “some ask why, but I ask why not?” I’m one the “why not” people.

A Quick Five for Law Firms.

1. Client-retaining Technologies. Compatible software and systems; extranets; electronic billing; document assembly applications; online education; creative file management; allowing clients to track their projects.

2. Client-pleasing Technologies. Technology that reduces cost or streamlines process and allows you to try alternative billing methods; telling clients about solutions that have worked for you that might work for them; collaborative projects where you adapt to their technologies; automated delivery of relevant news and developments; automating processes requiring them to pay for the same number of hours over and over again; coming to clients with HIPAA, Sarbanes Oxley and other solutions rather than waiting for clients to ask for them.

3. Client-focused Technologies. Technologies that make it easy for clients to work with you; extranets or other applications designed with clients in mind; facilitating access to your IT staff to resolve problems; fixing technology and communications issues; taking the initiative in technology projects with clients; handling document filing and management issue or tracking cases; IP filings or other matters; getting bills to clients in a way that fits their accounting systems.

4. Client-producing Technologies. Websites, blogs and feeds; creative uses of extranets for training and other purposes; business intelligence and customer relationship management tools; innovative billing arrangements enabled by technology; winning a high-profile case using state-of-the-art presentation and other litigation technologies; not sending your lawyers out to clients with aging technology.

5. Keeping Your Best People Technologies. Willingness to take individual approaches; generous replacement and acquisition policies for new technology; willingness to allow test projects; listening to young lawyers; rewarding creativity and results more than raw numbers of hours; helping people learn to use software better; resisting the urge to say “no” to every request for new technology; getting technology into the hands of the people who are most likely to use it best; give your people the tools they need, the respect they need and a little room so that they can fly.

The Product List.

I got to thinking that Matt might have meant products. Here are five that should be on every lawyer’s list in today’s legal world.

1. CaseMap 5 (if you are a litigator).
2. Microsoft Office 2003.
3. Adobe Acrobat 6.
4. Tablet PC (or notebook) with WiFi and OneNote.
5. FeedDemon or news aggregator of choice.

 When you get me started on a topic like this, I can’t just stop at five, since there is much more available that lawyers should investigate for their clients’ needs as well as their own:

1.  Using RSS Readers (News Aggregators)

On a daily or weekly basis, how would you like to stay up to date on a hundred or more different web sites and blogs in under an hour, all without having to surf individual sites until your mouse pad wears out?

I’m not exaggerating. Many mainstream news sites and blogs offer RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary). Much has been said about this topic, so I won’t go into the technical details. Suffice it to say, it allows people to read more content in less time and with less effort than manually visiting each site on their daily or weekly mental list. It’s a convenience and time management approach to keeping abreast of online content, both internally within an organization as well as on the Internet. Many RSS Readers have a search feature so you can search for specific topics across your selected sites.

Adding RSS feeds to you own site gives you additional reach to many more people who would not otherwise have given your site the time of day. This translates into more visitors, increased hits on your site, and potentially more business and referrals. And if more web site and blog operators end up linking to your site, you may just get higher Google rankings too.

With all due respect to legal publishers, if you’ve ever watched the movie, “Men in Black”, I consider blawgs (legal blogs) to be the “Hot Sheets” of the legal world. To adapt Tommy Lee Jones’ line: “Best damn legal practice commentary on the planet. But hey, go ahead, read the New York Times if you want. They get lucky sometimes.” RSS readers enable us to increase our overall awareness in a more efficient manner.

You’ll note that I’m consciously excluding blogs from my list, in the context of my not recommending that all lawyers publish blogs. Why? Because the question posed relates to all (or at least most) lawyers. While using an RSS reader to consume information is something everyone can do, even the technophobes, blogging itself is a bit different.

So although I could write volumes extolling the many benefits of blogging, I agree with fellow blawger Jerry Lawson when he stated that:

“Blogs have enormous potential, but it’s important to keep the phenomenon in perspective. I think we’re going to see another instance of the ‘80/20 Rule.’ It will probably shake out something like this: About 80% of all lawyer web logs will fail. The remaining 20% will have greater or lesser degrees of success, mostly modest. One per cent or so, maybe less, will be extremely successful. However, some of that 1% will be so successful that they will make their owners very, very glad they got into the blogging game.”

Thus I believe blogging (both in front and behind the firewall) has many benefits relating to personal KM, collaboration, best practices, marketing, and many more. But unless the people doing the blogging truly “get it” and invest the appropriate time commitment and mindset, I’m with Jerry. I believe they will be disappointed from what has been hyped on the subject.

There are also a slew of collaborative web tools available. Some lawyers will “get it” and use them with other attorneys and clients, some won’t get it at all, and probably many more will keep wishing for it, but not implement anything due to cost vs. ROI concerns.

2.  Using Smarter E-Mail Tools

E-mail used to be a great tool, wasn’t it? It beat faxing for speed without long distance charges, and you ended up with an electronic document that was actually readable and could be reprinted if you lost the hardcopy. We got to stay in touch with friends, colleagues, clients, and could access it from a variety of methods. Sounds great, right?

Then came e-mail newsletters, listservs, a flood of internal “Does anyone know where the Smith file is?” queries, and worst of all, spam.

Thus e-mail has quickly devolved into a free-for-all of information glut, requiring spam filters, e-mail filter rules, and zillions of folders to sort, spindle, and archive all those seemingly important pieces of information. There was a lack of good tools included in the major e-mail packages to actually have a way to manage and find things without spending a lot of time trying to manually create organizational tools (e.g., folders and mail filter rules) and concocting creative search strings, hoping that you recalled the exact phrasing of the e-mail just right.

Worst of all, due to spam filters, we now have to worry that our message was actually seen by the recipient, thus forcing some to have to call the recipient to make sure it made it past her spam filters.

Is e-mail broken? You bet. However, it’s still an effective tool if you can get it under control. That’s exactly what new services or programs are trying to accomplish:

Gmail is Google’s new webmail service, with 1GB of storage, but without the need for using e-mail folders due to the ability to do a Google search within your e-mail.

Bloomba is an e-mail client with very fast search speeds and a PIM (Personal Information Manager), so you can instantly search all e-mail, attachments, calendar and contacts, and schedule appointments with colleagues remotely over the web. Bloomba is smart enough to know they can’t take on Outlook directly, so they are going after the smaller business and SOHO markets.

Nelson E-mail Organizer, or NEO, is a search or indexer add-on for Outlook, which offers a slew of additional e-mail management tools, including fast searching, categorizing, saved searches, search on conversation, etc.

New technologies in this category are on the horizon, as others are exploring the concept of meta-mail, the term for the extension of e-mail into a broader set of tools that can manage processes and the user’s attention, instead of just information and content.

While there’s a lot of hype in this space, it bears watching.

3.  Spreadsheets – Financial, Trend, and Fact Analysis

Okay, so perhaps this isn’t a “new” technology, but there are numerous uses for spreadsheets that most lawyers just don’t realize. Besides number crunching, they’re great for creating charts, parsing data between different programs, spotting issues, and analyzing trends. I’ve found many attorneys tend to be “math adverse” (but ironically not “math challenged”, as they certainly dive into every detail of their yearly compensation and bonus plans). So what’s holding them back from using spreadsheets? In a nutshell, ease of use. Spreadsheets can be daunting at first glance. However, many overlook some of the wizards and pre-created templates that are included with various spreadsheet programs like Excel. Other programs exist to create spreadsheet-like “what if” comparisons, especially for tax and financial planning.

Savvy litigators are already using spreadsheets in a brand new way – analyzing facts and issues. CaseMap is a perfect example of an innovative use of a spreadsheet interface. In any case, but in particularly complex ones, mastery of the facts is a great advantage. Tie it together with a good timeline chart generator such as TimeMap, and you’ve got a powerful set of tools that doesn’t take an MIT grad to understand them.

Surprisingly, despite the above, I still see that many attorneys are not using these tools, which is why I think it’s a technology that many should incorporate into their practices, but probably won’t.

4.  Alternative Billing Practices and Processes

This isn’t a technology per se, but savvy technology implementation sure helps in a number of ways to make this happen. Used properly, things like document assembly and matter management allow one to generate repetitive work in far less time than without it. And that provides the time flexibility to consider non-hourly billing options, including value-based, task-based, and flat rate billing options.

Clients like choices, and particularly, the ability to know exactly what a legal matter is going to cost them. The billable hour alone falls short in meeting this expectation. Over the years, I’ve had a number of business people and governmental attorneys tell me that they need the ability to set a monthly or yearly budget for legal fees, and many of them have sought out attorneys and firms who were willing to provide this level of predictability combined with competent representation.

5.  Wi-Fi Access and Laptops

There’s a certain freedom and creativity that wireless connections provide. I wrote this post on my laptop at home on my Wi-Fi network while doing a number of other things that relaxed me and got the creative juices flowing: Sitting out on the deck, having a beer, later watching a movie, or listening to Internet radio stations playing exactly the kind of music I liked (with no commercials I might add), being accessible to my wife and kids, and so forth. In other words, I wasn’t chained to my desk and PC, and I had a fast Internet connection should I need to run a Google search on a whim.

But Wi-Fi isn’t just about you, even though it’s incredibly useful while traveling. It’s also a great resource to provide to visiting guests and clients, especially when tied to your office’s broadband connection. While you certainly don’t want to let them into your regular office network for security reasons, a Wi-Fi network can be crafted to allow guest Internet access in a DMZ (DeMilitarized Zone) or another area of your network that is separate from your sensitive areas. Which brings me to the next topic…

6.  Wireless Security

It’s shocking and downright negligent that the vast majority of private wireless networks are left completely insecure. Many people just take the wireless routers and access points out of the box, plug in their Internet connection and PC’s and start surfing. Newer Wi-Fi devices include much more secure technologies such as WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) encryption, TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol, which provides a method for automatically rotating the security keys of your wireless network – very cool), and AES (Advanced Encryption Standard, a much more robust type of encryption). It’s definitely an area ripe with acronyms, jargon and technical alphabet soup, but it’s careless to ignore them completely.

When enabled, and especially when used in conjunction with other security measures such as MAC address filtering (i.e., limiting network connections to specific network cards), these newer technologies help make wireless networks more secure. Let’s face it, if a wardriver or hacker is not targeting you or your company specifically, then an appropriately encrypted, reasonably protected Wi-Fi network is going to require them to take much more time to hack than does your neighbors’ wide-open network. Unless they’re looking for a challenge, they’re going to move on to easier pickings.

Even though many wireless routers have easy-to-use browser based configuration screens, and it’s fairly easy to conclude that most people don’t have the necessary understanding of networking and wireless security to secure them properly. Luckily, a number of wireless manufacturers’ web sites include tips for securing their network, and folks like me have written things like “Wireless Networking Best Practices”. So you don’t have to be a networking guru to harden your Wi-Fi network. However, if it’s still Greek, I’ve found that some of the wireless manufacturers’ tech support people to be quite helpful in this regard for the how-to’s. And if all fails, you’re better off hiring someone knowledgeable to do this for you. Don’t just leave it wide open for convenience.

Lastly, don’t forget about installing personal firewalls, antivirus, and anti-spyware programs for essential protection.

7.  Metadata Cleaners

More and more lawyers tend to know at least a little something about metadata. Yet only some are using metadata cleaners or using alternative measures for minimizing the risk of having embedded metadata being used against them. In this era of electronic discovery, that’s just an accident waiting to happen. Common metadata in MS Word documents show who authored it, how many minutes it’s been open in editing mode, the drive letter and directory path where it’s stored, and potentially the prior revisions and changes, among other things.

Thus I feel it’s a best practice to implement a method for removing the metadata from one’s documents, especially before sending them to the outside world, or even to another internal department. Generally, the cost per person for a good metadata cleaner is far, far, far less than the time, effort, embarrassment, and other costs and risks associated with leaving metadata unchecked in your electronic files.

8.  Flash Drives

Call them thumb drives, key drives, flash drives, USB drives, or whatever, these tiny storage devices are easy to use and therefore a hot technology. In newer versions of Windows, you just plug them in and they’re instantly mounted as a new drive letter, just like a hard drive. Some come with encryption features for added privacy, and new features and faster read/write speeds are popping up all the time.

Regardless of whether you’re a mobile or office worker, and whether or not you have a floppy drive, these devices are much smaller than floppies and are perfect for transferring files between home and work, between laptops at meetings, and so on. Prices have plummeted so much that the smaller capacities can be had for as little as $10-$20. Some manufacturers and web sites have even provided tools and drivers to make them bootable as part of one’s emergency recovery tools.

The latest trend in flash drives is to provide the mobile user with a portable replica of their office PC’s data, look, and feel when working on a completely different PC in a different location. For instance, I’ve come across two emerging products that claim to do this: M-System’s Xkey 2.0, and Powerhouse Technologies Group’s Migo. Obviously, it bears watching to see if either truly delivers on all the promises. One concern it that when working from an untrusted PC (e.g., public kiosk, hotel business center PC, etc.), these solutions need to incorporate a method for scanning and ascertaining if that PC is free from malware including keyloggers, spyware, etc., before typing in anything confidential. Otherwise, one can unwittingly provide the perpetrators with sensitive information that could lead to many kinds of problems.

9.  ActiveWords

How much time do you waste doing repetitive task in Windows? Think of repetitive typing of common information, clicking on Start, Programs, Whatever, ad nauseum. ActiveWords is an interesting type of Windows macro program that allows you to automate a variety of tasks and assign a word to it. Typing the word nearly anywhere within Windows or a running program launches the macro to do your work for you.

Much of what we do everyday is repetitive in some fashion, so when looking for personal productivity boosts, macro programs are often a nice solution if you can make them work for you. The problem with creating macros the old-fashioned way is that one needed to be proficient in a macro programming language, such as VBA (Virtual Basic for Applications). I like to look for things that are simpler, yet deliver.

10.  Tablet PCs with Microsoft OneNote or Similar Application

Tablet PCs have been available for a couple of years, but there’s two particular combinations I find compelling with an application such as Microsoft’s OneNote: The first is a “convertible” – a tablet PC which can be switched between a typical laptop screen/keyboard layout to a slate-like tablet. This way it can do double-duty between serving as a regular PC for applications requiring mousing and keyboard entry. However, for note-taking, something that attorneys do a lot, the conversion to a digital pad of paper is useful and compelling.

Programs like OneNote add some great features that allow you to take notes more in your own free form style, rather than have to conform to more rigid tools such as Word and outliners. A key feature is the ability to take your handwritten notes and convert them into actual text – this makes it a lot easier to search and pass them along in e-mail.

The other format I’d like, but have yet to see, is a “slate” (keyboardless) tablet PC that’s closer in size to a thin softbound book. It’s smaller than a normal 8 ½ x 11” pad of paper, yet larger than a paperback. Notice my reference to good ol’ paper – it’s critical because most people still work with paper and this human factor needs to be embraced for it to succeed. The idea is to have something small, thin, and lightweight to be your digital notepad of paper that never forgets. Smaller size makes it easier to carry around so you’ll actually use it more. For instance, if I took notes at a meeting 6 months ago, I want to be able to search for and pull it up in real-time at a critical meeting. Likewise, if I have a brainstorm at an odd time or in transit, I want to be able to write it down for further refinement later, without having to carry around a 20+ lb. bulging laptop bag. I consider this second category to be the ultimate genetic splicing between PDA, paper, and laptop – if it happens.

Now add Wi-Fi to these tablets, and you have an indispensable personal productivity tool to recall everything you’ve written coupled with the ability to get to the Internet and an organization’s network for accessing, saving, or disseminating additional information on the fly without having the need for anyone to type up your handwritten notes. The main thing I keep hearing from organizations is that the perceived cost premium and lack of compelling tablet applications is holding back wider adoption in the legal market. Truth be told, the price gap is narrowing. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see more attorneys interested if someone who understands their needs would just present them with the right hardware/software combination. Thus OneNote has possibilities.