Ernie The Attorney

Are newspapers really going to die?

Many people are wondering about the fate of newspapers.  How will they survive?  This is an important question, and many people want to find a way to save the newspapers. Clay Shirky has poignant observations about why newspapers are in trouble, and why they simply can't survive.  

Clay Shirky, in case you don't know him, is wicked smart and relentlessly observant.  So if you want to maintain a glimmer of hope that newspapers will somehow make it, please don't read his essay. On the other hand, if you have strong powers of denial then go right ahead.

Speaking today at Loyola Law School

Today I'll be attending the Loyola Law School Symposium: On the Brink: The Judiciary's Tug of War with Technology.  Famed appellate blawger Howard Bashman and I will be on a joint panel that starts at 4 pm. The event is open to the public.  The address is 526 Pine St., room 405.  

Here's a short blurb about the conference:

In recent years the amount of information available from the Supreme Court has transformed the landscape of technology in the courtroom. Although the Court still operates mostly behind closed chambers, technology has enabled a wide-eyed view into the courtroom through a variety of tools, like the availability of oral arguments online via Oyez.org, the speed of Court coverage, and immediate blog responses. In this way technology has changed not only the ways we learn about the high Court and other courts, but it has also changed the way we learn about the law. 

Professors and scholars can analyze an oral arguments' effects on the decision, students are also able to analyze the argument and gain more insight into a case, oral advocates are able to perfect the advocacy and bloggers have the ability to raise new ideas and create new legal theories across vast distances.

However, the Supreme Court has not always been cooperative, and remains reluctant to increase technology in their courtroom. At the yearly budget hearings the Justices ask Congress for more money due to an ever increasing docket and Congress explains that the minute the justices allow cameras in the courtroom to increase transparency for their constituents, they will be granted the budget increase in full. Thus, the tug of war between the judiciary and technology.

Stop by if you're in town and can make it there.  It promises to be a provocative discussion.

An observation

To gain greater awareness one must acknowledge the possibility that their current awareness is incomplete.  People who believe they have complete awareness are consigned to live inside a pathetic tautology. These people are interesting to watch. Sadly, all you can do is watch; there is no way to help.

How strange to realize that self-doubt can actually be beneficial. Maybe that's why this sign has been cropping up around New Orleans. Reading it is easy, but understanding it is another thing altogether.

AVVO launches in Louisiana

The lawyer rating service Avvo has launched in Louisiana.  Also joining the Avvo rollout are: Indiana, Kansas, Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada, Maine and Wyoming. The directory for these states is still in “beta” form for now.   All of the directory features are there, but you won't necessarily be able to find every lawyer right now.  Eventually the directory will be complete and fully searchable.

For now, if you are in one of the newly added states you'll want to claim your profile and start adding your important professional information.

The end of lawyers?

Richard Susskind has, for many years, been assessing technology's effect on the practice of law.  The titles of his prior books are: The Future of Law, and Transforming the Law.  His latest book is called The End of Lawyers?  On the first page he explains that he writes “not to bury lawyers, but to investigate their future.”  His believes that, in the future, conventional legal advisors will be less significant than today, as a result of two forces: (1) commoditization, and (2) information technology.

I am just starting this book, but already I can tell it's a sober examination of forces that many lawyers seem oblivious to (similar to other professions that have wound up roiled by new social forces). I highly recommend Susskind to anyone who really wants a glimpse of the future of the legal profession.  And for those lawyers who dismiss the future Susskind describes as "a long way off," I offer the words of science fiction author William Gibson: “the future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed.”  

Incidentally, Mr. Susskind will be the keynote speaker at the upcoming ABA TechShow in Chicago, which takes place from April 2 – 4.  Which is another good reason to sign up for TechShow.

The new Kindle rocks!

"The Kindle no longer appears to have been put together for a junior-high science class presentation after a parent’s frantic late-night run to OfficeMax for some white posterboard and gluesticks," opines Andy Ihnatko.  Yes, I agree.  But it's more than that.  The new Kindle is svelte in appearance, more intuitive to navigate, better at displaying photographs and images, and much snappier.  The new Kindle is a worthy upgrade!!!

You should attend the ABA TechShow!

If you're a lawyer, and interested in making better use of technology in your practice, then you should attend the ABA TechShow in Chicago.  This multi-day event attracts top-notch speakers, and features every imaginable type of program from using Word and Excel better to picking out the right practice management software.

Most of what I know know about law and technology I learned as a result of having gone to TechShow. I can't stress enough how useful this program is (other lawyers I respect completely agree).  Go at least once, although if you do you'll surely go back. The early-bird discount ends on February 28th, and the show is only six weeks away.  So hurry up and make your plans to attend.

Let the parades begin...

This weekend marked the official beginning of Mardi Gras parades.  Becky and I went to the Barkus parade yesterday, and I took a bunch of pictures.  Check 'em out.

The difference between programmers & attorneys

Computer programmers work with flowcharts to map out how various 'if-then' scenarios might unfold. After all, a program is nothing more than a complex set of conditional instructions (e.g. algorithms).  

Law is kind of the same thing. Laws can proscribe certain kinds of behavior, or limit it based upon conditions.  But lawyers don't use flowcharts much, so that's one big difference between them and programmers.  But, even if attorneys did, they'd create much different flowcharts. And that's were you begin to see the real separation between attorneys and programmers.

Let's use a real life example.  In June of 2005 the IRS passed some regulations, including one called Circular 230.  If you've ever gotten a routine email from a lawyer with boilerplate language that seems irrelevant and unnecessary then odds are you've been exposed to the Circular 230 problem.

Here's the problem.  IRS Circular 230 says, basically, that if an attorney wants to avoid any possible liability for giving people tax advice (that they then use to create a shady tax shelter) the attorney has to put in some boilerplate language.  Attorneys obviously want to avoid having a client say 'hey, you told me that it was okay in one of your emails.'  So when is it advisable to put boilerplate into an email?

Let's map out the problem—constructing a 'written' flowchart, if you will.

Here are the conditionals:  (1) the attorney's communication has to be 'written'; (2) and it has to contain tax advice; and (3) that advice has to be used, or possibly used, by the recipient to (a) avoid IRS penalties or (b) to promote some kind of tax-minimizing or tax-avoiding scheme.

Here's how a computer programmer would create an algorithm to determine when to use boilerplate: 

1.  Does the email contain any tax advice?
2.  Is it possible the tax advice will be used by the recipient to avoid IRS penalties or to promote a tax avoiding scheme?

OUTCOME: if answer to both (1) and (2) is YES, then insert boilerplate

And here's how a typical attorney would map it out:

1.  Am I sending an email to someone else?
OUTCOME: if answer to (1) is YES, then insert boilerplate.

So if you get an email from an attorney that has no discussion of tax issues, but which nevertheless contains the boilerplate, you'll now be able understand the logic.  Now, close your eyes, bow your head, and give thanks that attorneys don't design software.

Be aware, be very aware

Reputation is important to most folks, and yet many don't seem to know how to manage their reputation. The first step, of course, is to become more aware of what people are saying about you.  But what does this mean, exactly? How can you become more aware?  

In the past few years this thing called The Internet has really gotten a lot of traction.  For some reason people are flocking to it, using it to share information quickly and across large groups.  Every day, it seems, the geeks who run The Internet add some new 'social networking' tool to make it easier for them to share a buzz. 

The iPhone has done much to expand the reach and power of The Internet.  When the iPhone 3G came out (with GPS), geeks were raving about something called 'location aware services.'  They wanted to be able to tap a button on their iPhone to find cool places around them. Places like restaurants, for example.

One of the hottest iPhone apps is this thing called 'UrbanSpoon,' which is a restaurant finder.  It works sort of like a slot machine; you 'pull the lever' and it will spin its wheels and then pick a nearby restaurant at random.  Of course, you can also just ask it to show you all the nearby restaurants. UrbanSpoon is a very popular iPhone application!

At first, UrbanSpoon didn't have a rating system, or any way for users to add their feedback on how well they liked the restaurant.  Now, they do.  In fact, iPhone users can now add pictures of the restaurant, and even take pictures of the menu. And they can use Twitter to post a 'tweet' about the restaurant (while simultaneously posting that tweet as a review on UrbanSpoon).

To use these review features you have to sign up on UrbanSpoon's webpage and create a user account. Once you do you'll be able to post reviews.  But you'll also get weekly email that tells you which restaurants in your home town are hot and which are not.  

Look at an excerpt from the UrbanSpoon email I got this morning (which is about New Orleans restaurants):

I wonder if the folks at Lilette and Rio Mar are aware of UrbanSpoon's review?  In my humble opinion, both of those restaurants are wonderful and don't deserve a bad review.  No doubt, if the owners were aware of this situation then they could do something to alter their standing in the UrbanSpoon ranking.

So this gets me back to my main point: awareness.  Are you aware of what is being said about your business on the Internet?  Maybe you need to increase your awareness.  Maybe you need to learn more about this strange land inhabited by geeks (but increasingly by non-geeks too).  

One thing that is really important to understand about the Internet (besides that it's not really a series of tubes) is that its growing popularity is not a fad.  It's a trend, and a very powerful one at that.

Trends are a good thing to be aware of too.