Practice Technology

Rosy times ahead for law grads? Another law prof weighs in

A law professor who forecast a rosy job market for law grads is getting some pushback from Indiana University law professor William Henderson. Writing at the Legal Whiteboard, Henderson says the optimistic prediction by Western New England law professor René Reich-Graefe “is naive and potentially dangerous to those who follow…

Mar 18, 2014 11:20 AM CDT

8 new apps and accessories for your mobile devices, reviewed by lawyers

Click on the name of the product to read the author’s full review. From the Droid Lawyer blog by Oklahoma City lawyer Jeffrey Taylor: I continually press the benefits of Chromecast, Google’s HDMI media dongle for your television. At $35 (or less if you shop around), this is a steal…

Mar 17, 2014 1:45 PM CDT

What can ‘gamification’ do for lawyers?

With the recent release of new gaming systems, the wild success of gaming apps (roughly 2 billion downloads of Angry Birds alone) and a generation of children raised on video games entering the workforce, we seem to be at a high point in electronic gaming. As a result, our waning…

Mar 1, 2014 9:20 AM CST

Microsoft is ending XP support in April; Windows 7 and 8 await

It’s a day PC users always knew would be coming: On April 8, all Microsoft support for the Windows XP operating system ends, leaving XP users vulnerable to new security breaches. “We are advising our clients to move away from XP,” says Peter Coons, senior vice president at D4, an…

Mar 1, 2014 8:59 AM CST

Service offers a better way to search federal court records than PACER

December marked the 25th anniversary of PACER, the federal courts’ system for electronic access to records. That milestone happened to coincide with the troubled launch of the Healthcare.gov website. In sharp contrast, the venerable Public Access to Court Electronic Records is a government site that has been remarkably stable and…

Mar 1, 2014 8:30 AM CST

Generation X’s impact on the legal industry | A blogger shares his wife’s lung cancer struggle

“There is a generational shift taking place, and very few people are talking about it, nor the impact it is having on our sales culture, nor our business culture,” Heather Morse, director of marketing for Barger & Wolen in Los Angeles, writes at The Legal Watercooler. Members of Generation X—like…

Feb 28, 2014 2:50 PM CST

Courthouse tests face-recognition system to ID individuals thought to be threats

Angry litigants and criminal defendants can pose serious or even lethal threats to lawyers and judges. So it isn’t surprising that a group of retired police officers in St. Louis thought of the downtown Carnahan Courthouse when they developed a system to identify individuals considered to be threats through facial…

Feb 24, 2014 10:54 PM CST

Law.com will be winding down its blog network

Changes afoot at Law.com include a redesigned and reorganized website and a new contributor network of 100 to 500 writers. But Law.com’s Blog Network will be shutting down later this year, according to Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites, which became part of the network soon after its 2004 launch. Law.com editor Nathalie…

Feb 20, 2014 2:39 PM CST

Investors spent $458M on legal startups in 2013; will 2014 be another big year?

As a number of traditional law firms struggle to move forward in challenging economic times, legal startups are booming. Following a remarkable 2013 in which investors poured $458 million into ventures such as Judicata, Rocket Lawyer and Shake—a stunning increase over the $66 million invested in 2012—it looks like 2014…

Feb 14, 2014 8:30 PM CST

Bloggers find inspiration at #ReInventLaw NYC—but admit some of it was nothing new

Last Friday at Cooper Union in New York City, nearly 40 lawyers gave presentations—many in a six-minute Ignite format—at ReInvent Law NYC. ReInvent Law conferences—the creation of Michigan State University College of Law professors Daniel Martin Katz and Renee Newman Knake— have been held in Dubai, Silicon Valley and London.…

Feb 14, 2014 2:55 PM CST

Computer virus locks up law firm files

The good news: No law firm or client data was taken. The bad news: Attorney Paul Goodson and his staff can’t access his Charlotte, N.C., law firm’s files after they were locked up by a computer virus, WSOC reports. Like other businesses in the city, the firm was targeted via…

Feb 10, 2014 2:50 PM CST

ReInvent Law NYC implores lawyers to embrace change and technology

Lawyers need to embrace technology, can’t be afraid to try new things, and must focus primarily on improving their clients’ experience. Those were the main takeaways from Friday’s ReInvent Law conference in New York City. More than 800 lawyers, academics, business owners, students and others in the legal industry packed…

Feb 10, 2014 3:06 AM CST

Eye-in-the-sky surveillance a new tool for US cities; is spying via camera while flying too prying?

Alerted to a burglary in progress, police in Dayton, Ohio, turned to new technology—a plane flying miles overhead with a camera mounted to its wing. It spotted a white truck. By the time the driver got home, with the swag still in the vehicle, police were waiting for him, the…

Feb 5, 2014 10:45 PM CST

Access-to-Justice Hackathon: Call for ideas

The ABA Journal and Suffolk University Law School are planning to host a “hackathon” in conjunction with the ABA Annual Meeting this Aug. 7-12 in Boston. There’s been no formal theme selected. But there’s a general consensus that the project should further access-to-justice efforts in some way. During the hackathon,…

Feb 5, 2014 10:03 PM CST

City attorney sued by watchdog group for using private account for work-related emails

An open government watchdog group has sued the city attorney for San Diego, in an effort to prevent him from using a private email account for communications related to his work. San Diegans for Open Government contends this practice by City Attorney Jan Goldsmith violates the California Public Records Act.…

Feb 3, 2014 6:45 PM CST