Practice Technology

Law Job Stagnation May Have Started Before the Recession—And It May Be a Sign of Lasting Change

The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift—one that will leave it dramatically transformed in the coming years.

Jul 1, 2011 9:40 AM CDT

Women’s Work? Some Find Web 2.0 Plays to Female Attorneys’ Strengths

Carla Varriale says she couldn’t have built a national presence in the male-dominated specialty of sports law without social media. “I’ve got appearances on TV and clients I might not have been otherwise exposed to,” says the partner at Havkins Rosenfeld Ritzert & Varriale in New York City. “It opens…

Jul 1, 2011 7:20 AM CDT

PSL or Passé? Job in UK May Be Technology in US

Depending on where you’re looking from, there may be a different brand of lawyer appearing on U.S. shores. Ian Nelson, a former attorney who is now vice president of business development and marketing for Practical Law Co. in New York City, sees anecdotal evidence of increasing use of PSLs—professional support…

Jul 1, 2011 7:10 AM CDT

Ear! Ear! Podcast Gains Are in the Listening, Not Creating

Podcasts have become a great way to get free, informative audio programs on a seemingly limitless number of topics, including legal topics. However, most lawyers are not taking full advantage of the potential of podcasts. That might be because most articles about lawyers and podcasting focus on lawyers creating their…

Jul 1, 2011 6:39 AM CDT

Want to Enhance Your Web Persona? Get Real, Tell Others Who You Are, Be Helpful, Experts Suggest

Lawyers can make a name for themselves on the Internet that will help their careers. But to do so they should use their real moniker, not a made-up legal handle, and display their real personality, Kevin O’Keefe wrote at Real Lawyers Have Blogs. Trade names for lawyers are becoming a…

Jun 24, 2011 6:07 PM CDT

Hackers Breached 90% of US Companies Surveyed in Past 12 Months

Electronic data breaches have become ubiquitous among U.S. companies, according to a recent poll. Ponemon Research reports that 90 percent of 583 U.S. companies surveyed said their companies’ computers were breached at least once by hackers within the past year, PC World reported. Private sector and government entities that ranged…

Jun 24, 2011 5:29 PM CDT

A Professional Renewal: Why Great Lawyers of the New Age May Be ‘System Designers’

Can we preserve the best values of the legal profession in the face of the commercial and technological change that constitutes the “New Normal”? As our world grows more interconnected and complex, and as law grows more pervasive, law is evolving from an activity that is an occasional part of…

Jun 8, 2011 7:43 PM CDT

Report: BigLaw Attorney in Insider-Trade Case Didn’t Open Firm Docs, Allegedly Just Used Title Info

An attorney who allegedly obtained confidential information over a 17-year period while working at three major law firms before being charged earlier this year in an insider-trading case that allegedly involved over $30 million in illegal profits, has given chief information officers in the legal industry much to ponder. Wilson…

Jun 2, 2011 5:34 PM CDT

NYT Learns of Goldman Trader’s Legal Defense from Discarded Laptop

The New York Times has learned about the legal defenses for a Goldman Sachs trader from a discarded laptop discovered in a garbage area of a New York apartment building. An artist and filmmaker gave legal materials from the laptop to the newspaper, saying a friend had discovered the computer…

Jun 1, 2011 5:44 PM CDT

QR Codes Catch on as Useful Links in Marketing and Recruiting Campaigns

They’re showing up everywhere: at bus stops, on posters, in the pages of magazines. And now those little black-and-white matrix bar codes, better known as QR codes, are creeping into law firms. The Montreal-based firm Lavery, de Billy recently started using QR, or “quick response,” codes in several of its…

Jun 1, 2011 7:40 AM CDT

Moving in the Cloud: ABA Conference Displays How Technology Changes Practice

Techshow photos by Wayne Slezak Celebrating its silver anniversary, the 2011 ABA Techshow was a high-flying thing as mobile technology and cloud computing became the buzzwords of the three-day conference. Depictions of how technology is changing all corners of law practice—from jurisdictional restrictions to confidentiality concerns—dominated the kickoff event, Ignite…

Jun 1, 2011 6:30 AM CDT

Law of Code: Regulation Needs New Direction, Lessig Says

Mixing old slides, new video and continued fervor, Harvard professor Larry Lessig expounded on the drive for regulatory change and campaign reform in his ABA Techshow keynote address. Regulators refuse to accept that the Internet has fundamentally altered the exchange of shared content, Lessig says. And that mindset is ineffective,…

Jun 1, 2011 6:20 AM CDT

A Big Play for BigLaw: Ethics 20/20 Considers Separate Conduct Rules for Large Firms

Photo of London’s Financial District by AP Photo/Leftris Pitarakis When the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 gathered in Washington, D.C., for its most recent meeting, it was already looking at a full menu of challenging issues relating to the impact of technology and globalization on professional conduct rules for lawyers.…

Jun 1, 2011 5:50 AM CDT

Tens of Thousands of Pacer Documents Could Have Failed Redactions, Study Suggests

Those black boxes used to hide redacted information in court documents filed with Pacer don’t always work, according to a study that suggests tens of thousands of the online filings may have failed redactions. Timothy Lee, a PhD candidate in computer science at Princeton, conducted the study. He found 194…

May 31, 2011 10:10 AM CDT

Obama Signs Patriot Act Extension with Autopen; OLC Opinion Found No Presentment Clause Problems

President Obama used an automatic pen to sign a four-year extension of the Patriot Act only minutes before it was set to expire at midnight Thursday. Obama ordered the autopen signature because he was in France attending an international summit, report the Los Angeles Times and the newspaper’s Top of…

May 27, 2011 4:16 PM CDT