Law & Tech: Tips and Trends
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Presented to the Covington Bar Association, September 20, 2013
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Law & Tech: Tips and Trends
- 2. Comment: To maintain the requisite knowledge and skill, a lawyer should keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology…. Client-Lawyer Relationship Rule 1.1 Competence A lawyer shall provide competent representation to a client. Competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.
- 5. Blackberry’s popularity in law firms is decreasing fast iPhones and Androids are taking Blackberry’s place
- 18. DICTATION
- 19. NOTE TAKING
- 20. NOTE TAKING
- 21. DEPOSITION APPS
- 22. PDF READERS
- 23. CLOUD STORAGE AND SHARING
- 24. CLOUD STORAGE AND SHARING
- 25. JURY APPS
- 26. TRIAL APPS
- 27. TRIAL APPS
- 28. TRIAL APPS
- 29. TRIAL APPS
- 32. CALENDARING
- 33. TIME KEEPING AND BILLING
- 34. RESEARCH
- 35. RESEARCH
- 36. RESEARCH
- 37. RESEARCH
- 38. RESEARCH
- 39. NEWS
- 40. TRAVEL
- 41. TRAVEL
- 42. SECURITY IN THE CLOUD
- 43. STORAGE IN THE CLOUD GOOGLE When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, crea te derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicl y perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services DROPBOX Your Stuff & Your Privacy: By using our Services you provide us with information, files, and folders that you submit to Dropbox (together, “your stuff”). You retain full ownership to your stuff. We don’t claim any ownership to any of it. These Terms do not grant us any rights to your stuff or intellectual property except for the limited rights that are needed to run the Services, as explained below.
- 44. STORAGE IN THE CLOUD
- 46. FIND IPHONE/ WHERE’S MY DROID?
- 47. PASSWORDS 1. password 2. 123456 3. 12345678 4. abc123 5. qwerty 6. monkey 7. letmein 8. dragon 9. 111111 10. baseball 11. iloveyou 12. trustno1 13. 1234567 14. sunshine 15. master 16. 123123 17. welcome 18. shadow 19. ashley 20. football 21. jesus 22. michael 23. ninja 24. mustang 25. password1
- 52. Source: Social Media Marketing
Editor's Notes
- Welcome! I’m Lauren and thank you so much for joining me for Tips and Trends. I’m packing essentially 3 classes into one here – devices and apps, security trends and issues, and the utility of social media – so we are going to move fast. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to email me anytime – my contact information is on the handout.
- So let’s talk devices. Smart phones, iPads and other fun electronic items are abundant. I’m going to focus primarily on tools for androids, iPhones and iPads. Blackberry users, I’ve got bad news
- Meet the Blackberry Z30 – this new model was unveiled this week.
- First lets talk trends in law and technology. The data on these next few slides comes from the 2012 American Lawyer Tech Survey –t hey survey hundreds of law firms all across the country and get information about the big trends that are happening. Law firm technology has long been ruled by: Microsoft Office, Blackberries for remote emails, and in-house servers for storing documents and files. However, recently, two of those trends are starting to reverse. Microsoft Office is still on top – but Blackberry use has plummeted among law firm employees in the past several years. And interestingly, although there are many more Android users in the general population, in law firms, iPhones are definitely in charge. Law firms now typically support users of many different devices – and 99% of firms have employees using iPhones.
- And here’s an update from a different survey that was recently published by the ABA, the 2013 Legal Technology Survey Report. It’s not as pretty as the Am Law information but what it shows is plummeting use of blackberrys, from 46% in 2011 to 16% in 2013, a steady increase in Android use, and a large majority – 62% in 2013, of lawyers using the iphone and Appple products.
- Back to the Am Law survey with some more fun stats – these focus on tablets like iPads. Only 2% of firms surveyed have zero tablet users – almost every firm has some number of lawyers adopting tablets for their work. The overwhelming choice of tablet in 2012 was the iPad – that gray line on the bar graph on the middle. Android tablets were a distant second. And this might bring managing partners some cheer. Unlike smart phones, which are often purchased by the firm itself, tablets are overwhelming self=supplied by lawyers. Lawyers are individually recognizing the utility of these devices and purchasing them. 92% of firms surveyed did not purchase any tablets for their attorneys – yet 98% of of firms have attorneys using tablets.I think this means two things ---(1) Tablets are so useful that we are routinely going out of pocket to get them. And (2) this makes security an even bigger issue we need to care about, because this is turning into self-supplied and unmanaged technology.
- Another ugly graph from the ABA 2013 survey shows that tablet use is steadily increasing; more than 49% of attorneys in the survey are now using tablets to work away from their office.
- Another big focus in lay and tech today: The could.In layman's terms, cloud computing simply means storing and accessing data and programs on the Web, instead of on your machine's hard driveThe ABA;s 2013 survey found 40 percent of solo lawyers use the cloud, while 36 percent of lawyers at firms of 2-9 members do, 30 percent of lawyers at firms of 10-49 attorneys and 19 percent at firms of 100 or more attorneys.
- “The most often mentioned product brand names for downloaded legal specific smartphone apps are Fastcase, Westlaw, Westlaw Next, Lexis, ABA Journal, Law Stack, American Bar Association, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, PLI, and Lexis Advance”
- The most often mentioned product brand names for downloaded general business shartphone apps are Dropbox, Evernote, LinedIn, Dragon Dictation, Docs to Go, Wall Street Journal, PDF readers, Quickoffice, banking, Adobe and Good Reader.
- Why move to the cloud? It is easy to fill up server space. But the 2013 ABA survey found:The most common benefit they cited was the cloud’s easy access from anywhere via a web browser (74 percent). Other benefits they mentioned include 24×7 availability (63 percent), low cost of entry and predictable monthly expense (56 percent), robust data back-up and recovery (49 percent), quick to get up and running (44 percent), and eliminates IT and software management requirements (41 percent).Among lawyers who use cloud computing, their biggest concern is confidentiality and security, with 72 percent saying that is a worry of theirs. Lawyers are also concerned about losing control of their data and about the possibility of the vendor disappearing.
- It’s great fun to talk about apps but always keep in mind, these are tools, not magic wands. You will not instantly be rich or surrounded by new clients through this technology. I love this tweet in particular – I think it nicely sums up the need to embrace useful technology but not get carried away by it.
- Here is the cheat sheet. If you remember nothing else today, remember this slide. iPhone JD and the Droid Lawyer. Depending on your device, these sites have in-depth reviews of pretty much everything you will need to practice. And if you are looking for non-practice related apps – appadvice.com is an excellent resource.
- For some specific app recommendations – let’s get started with dictation. There are a variety of dictation apps but this is the grandmaster of them all. I use Dragon all the time, particularly in my car because that’s when I tend to have my brilliant insights, especially around the corner of Poydras and St. Charles for some reason. This way they aren’t forgotten by the time I get home.Dragon is free and available for iPhone, iPad and Androids. You just push the red button, talk all you want, and send yourself your brilliant thoughts via email, text message, etc. It understand almost everything I say and adapts so that the more you use it, the better it gets. No one should be without this one. Did I mention that it is free?
- Notetaking – this is where the tablets start to shine. I now use tablets at meetings, in teleconferences, in court, everywhere you automatically drag your yellow legal pad. There are some great, cheap apps out there and here are just a few of the well reviewed ones. Noteshelf – separate notebooks for each client or issue. $5.99 for iPad. One of the best ranked handwritten note taking apps for iPad. Can annotate pdfs, send your notes to Dropbox or Evernote, lots of colors and fun features, and you store all your separate books on a visual bookshelf – good for each client.
- Noteability - $1.99. AMAZING. Can record and type and will synch your notes with the audio. Can write with stylus or type. Can send things to Dropbox and other external storage. Can insert photos, text boxes – there’s a bit of a learning curve to get this to function but it is great for the record feature alone. Can also write on pdfs so if you get sent a doc, can annotate it with comments and send back. Love.For Androids – the best reviewed note taking app is Quill. Costs a dollar. If you prefer typing your notes, there are free Android apps like AK Notepad and Notepad that are also well reviewed.
- And then for after the deposition, there are transcript reviewers. Some of these are amazing. For instance, TranscriptPad $49.00. Can review, highlight by topic or make designations, can create a report of just your designations.TranscriptPad– you can upload those text files you get from the court reporter or a pdf of the transcript, or use a variety of different file formats that it recognizes – and you can send out your annotations or your designations in different formats.
- Simpler and cheaper – GoodReader, $4.99 – not technically designed just for Transcripts, but can highlight, annotate, draw on, etc. GoodReader is something every tablet user should have anyway – it is a pdf reader. Any pdf you get, you can review, highlight, edit by hand, insert typewritten text, add little “post it notes” if you like, etc. It is consistently on every top 5 list of what attorneys need on their tablets – especially attorneys that read and review a lot of contracts, settlements, pleadings – essentially, all of us. There are other similar apps out there as well – iAnnotate is another well-reviewed example.
- In a nutshell, file-syncing services enable you to access the most recent copy of all your files without emailing them to yourself or sticking them on a USB drive and carrying it around with you. SugarSync and similar services synchronize your files as you work on them on which ever computers and mobile devices you choose. A Web account serves as a backup method for getting at your files when you're using a shared or borrowed device, like a computer at an Internet café.The mobile professional has myriad devices on which files live, which makes having a dependable syncing program a must. Dropbox (Free, 4 stars) fills that role nicely with an iPad app that complements its desktop and mobile phone products. Like those other versions of the free file synchronization application, Dropbox for iPad features a simple interface, easy uploading, and swift syncing across all accounts. Overall, it's an excellent, affordably priced too (you can use it for free if you need 2GB of storage or less) for the business-minded person on the go.If you're looking for an infinitely simple way to keep files in order between your iPad, desktop, and phone, Dropbox for iPad is a must. It's simple to use, free, and offers offline file access. "Favorites" is the folder where one can find files that have been favorited by tapping the star icon in the upper right portion of the screen. Doing so isn't just a way of highlighting a file's importance, as it lets you access it when the iPad isn't connected to 3G or Wi-Fi—a very handy addition for frequent fliers or commuters who want to fetch vital documents. I had no problem designating files as favorites and then viewing them without an Internet connection.
- File synchronization service SugarSync (4.5 stars, Editors' Choice) offers 5GB cloud storage space with a free account, but the real selling point is it's the most intuitive of all the products I've tried. It also supports all major operating systems: Windows, Mac, Linux (in beta), Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Symbian, and Windows Phone. When you install the software on a computer, it adds a right-click function that allows you to quickly mark any file or folder to back up, which I've found immensely useful. Downside: You might run into some quirks and hiccups when deploying SugarSync across multiple desktops, but it's really good if you have one primary computer.
- iJury($14.99) and iJuror($9.99) – Two very similar apps toassist you in selecting a jury foryour case. Use them to quickly takenotes on jurors and store them inorder to add notes later as the caseprogresses.JuryDuty($29.99) – A step-upfrom iJury and iJuror in both priceand features, JuryDuty lets youtrack each potential juror with theuse of customized seating chartsthat easily tie each juror to theirseat locations by name, specificnotes and your thoughts abouteach juror. Once you’ve closed thejuror’s profile, the color changesfrom white to blue, allowing youto quickly track which jurors you’vealready questioned.
- TrialPad, $89TrialPad lets you mark photos or transcripts with colored highlighters, call out and highlight block sections of transcripts or documents, and compare and contrast documents side by side. You can save your annotations for jury review by pressing the fire/hot docs button. You can also make and save video clips with just a few steps. There’s a multicolored laser pointer to guide viewers through your presentation and a whiteboard for hand-drawn diagrams.
- Some fun things you can do with TrialPad.
- Exhibit A is an exhibit presentation app.Exhibit A ($9.99) has much of the basic functionality as Trialpad. Like Trialpad, you set up a case file.Documents can be imported into Exhibit A via Dropbox, Email, FTP, or iTunes sync. You then move the imported documents to the appropriate case file.You can highlight, markup, blow-up, create callouts or redact documents on the fly. You can also play iPad compatible videos. Video file capability is also supported.While not quite as intuitively designed as TrialPad, I found Exhibit A to be generally very easy to use.Now the issues– Exhibit A’s highlight feature tends to color over the text instead of making it pop out. In other words, highlighting the text made it more difficult to read.Exhibit A provides most of the functionality of TrialPad at 10% of the cost. However, its highlight feature obscures more than it emphasizes and the App does not retain annotations in call outs.
- Courtroom Objections. $2.99 The app is straightforward, so you can use it quickly when you are in court. The app has two parts, accessed by buttons at the bottom of the screen. The left button allows you to view a list of objections to admissibility. The right button allows you to view a list of objections to form. Tap an objection to see a sample of what you could say to make the objection, along with an explanation of the law that supports the objection.
- What about creating and revising Microsoft Office documents directly in Word or Excel? Bad news is that Microsoft still has not created its own app version of Word or Excel or Office for a tablet. Microsoft did recently release a version of Word for the iPhone but I read the iPhone JD review of it and decided it’s just not worth it. Plus it’s only on your phone. There are a lot of document editing apps out there but be aware that to a certain extent, these are all “work arounds” and none of them are actually Microsoft Office. For example, there are apps like Documents to Go and Quick Office Pro. Quick Office Pro lets you also track changes and redline documents, but Documents to Go lets you read and see footnotes – so each one is good and bad in different ways.But the good news is that Microsoft’s Office app is widely believed to be on the horizon – and in the meantime, Google, which acquired QuickOffice Pro, is offering deals on its apps in order to steal business away from Microsoft. So if you need editing software, now might be the time to get in on QuickOffice Pro. Currently only iPad version is supported but iPhone and Android versions are in development.
- Cloud OnThe free CloudOn program whose mobile versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint give you the Office 2007/2010 interface when working on files stored on the Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box online storage services.Other new features in the latest release let you send files as e-mail attachments and open PDFs. CloudOn's ribbon is a big departure from the Quickoffice interface, which look nothing like Office. (Of course, many people will prefer the clean, clutter-free look of Quickoffice.)When you select a file you're presented with a ribbon interface featuring familiar tabs. For example, in the word processor there are tabs for paragraph settings, styles and formatting, insert, text and symbols, page layout, references, review, and view.
- Calendaring. Here I have a big warning. Do not buy Court Days or Court Days Pro. I was lured in by the description and wasted $2.99 because the thing is completely useless. When I went back and looked at the reviews, they were all huge warnings not to buy the app, so it goes to show that you should at least take a peek at the reviews.There are some good reviews of Smart Dockets, which is free, so I’ve downloaded it and will start using it. One drawback is you have to go through the hassle of creating an account for some reason. But once you do that, the app is great. app contains court rules from a large number of jurisdictions, and because you can turn on the option to see cites to rules, it is easy to do a calculation and then check the rule itself to double-check the app's calculation. It will also generate a little report of all the dates along with the rules, so you can double check everything.
- iPhone JD has reviewed a lot of these apps and he doesn’t really rave about any of them. One he finds acceptable is Time Master (left). Another one I’ve heard of being well-reviewed is Bill Bull (spell it out), which was designed by attorneys. Both of these work on your phone and allow you to track time, assign it to different clients, and email it to yourself or your secretary. Another he likes a lot is called iTimeSheet – which sends you an excel spreadsheet of your time entries. Of course, none of these makes the process of tracking time and billing any less annoying.Frankly I just use Dragon Dictation to send myself little notes – this is probably less efficient than a time keeping app, so my new year’s resolution is to find one of these and start using it. I’ve downloaded a trial version of iTimeSheet Lite so we’ll see how that goes.
- Fastcase is fantastic. Free and easy to use anywhere – when a new case is mentioned mid-hearing, you can pull it right up and see what it says – and check on whether it is still good law. You can save searches, save cases, etc. One thing you can’t do from the mobile version is email yourself cases, which I find incredibly annoying, but again, this is like having Westlaw or Lexis for free so it is hard to complain.Both Lexis Advance and Westlaw Next have mobile versions of themselves available for tablets. These are very similar to the desktop versions and in fact you need to have an account to access them, so if you use Westlaw Next at work, for example, you can and should download the app to use it on the go and have access to any files you’ve created and saved already.
- To any federal court practitioners out there, this is a biggie: a relatively new app called Federal Court Records.FedCtRecords. This is an app that makes all PACER dockets accessible. You need a PACER account but if you’re already practicing in federal court, you already have one. You can check the dockets of any case, any federal district court. You can save cases to “your case” to automatically pull up their docket sheets – you can see the button at the bottom right corner of the picture offering to save this case to My Cases. You can also save attorneys in the cases directly into your contacts – see the button for that. Extremely useful and available for iPhone and iPad for $9.99.
- LawStack is a great resource – a complete legal library. A lot of the federal rules are free and pre-loaded. You can download additional codes and regulations from every state, often for free or at low individual cost. You can see Louisiana has a huge variety of available codes to download and carry around to have handy.Another source for Louisiana statutes is Matt Miller. He has a similar app with a simple interface and easy searchability for many of the Louisiana codes. For federal stuff, try out Cliff Meier Legal Apps (Available on the iPhone App Store, Various) - Lawyer Cliff Meier publishes a number of helpful legal reference apps. I've installed the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Federal Rules of Evidence, Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, and the Lanham Act to assist me in my federal litigation and trademark work.Read more: http://ecommercelaw.typepad.com/ecommerce_law/2009/10/sixteen-iphone-apps-for-attorneys.html#ixzz2fHAL6k5X
- Look for apps relevant to your practice area and you might be surprised what is either free or cheap. Patent attorneys – you can download the entire Manual of Patent Examining Procedure and it is searchable and bookmarkable. Also available for patent attorneys is Patent Portal. A free app that lets you retrieve patents and patent applications from the US Patent & Trademark Office and you can search, annotate, and email documents you find.Tax attorneys, check out TouchTax, which includes the entire tax code. TouchTax provides easy and affordable access on your Apple iPad or iPhone, Google Android Phone or Tablet (Barnes & Noble Nook planned in Fall 2012), Amazon Fire Tablet, HP/Palm TouchPad Tablet or Phone and BlackBerry Playbook to all sections of the latest edition of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the Code), the Treasury Regulations set forth in Title 26 of the Code of Federal Regulations (the Regulations) and the Internal Revenue Bulletin (starting with July 2003).
- There are also a lot of legal dictionaries out there available – for example, Black’s is available for $54.99. I’ve downloaded cheaper dictionaries like Barron’s, which is fine and only costs $9.99 but is missing a lot of Louisiana-specific terms. iPhone JD just reviewed a Louisiana law specific dictionary, available for both tablets and phones, called the Louisiana Civil Law Dictionary. It’s $9.99 and is also available on the Amazon Kindle. His review was very positive, especially for the tablet version and you can see there are a lot of citations to the Civil Code throughout.
- Just poke around your own industry – for example, I’m an oil and gas attorney – a quick search pulled up the LOGA app, which highlights local and national news of interest to my clients and to me, and has fun features like a calendar of upcoming events.Also Linked In has a great app with a news feed that is allegedly targetted to your interests – I often pull up that app when I am waiting in a line somewhere and the headlines are always very interesting to me.
- TripItThe TripIt app is free (as noted below there is also a $0.99 version) but to use it you need to sign up for an account. The TripIt website offers both a free account and a $49/year TripIt Pro account. I Once you create a TripIt account on the website, TripIt knows your email address. This is critical because whenever you make travel plans with an airline, hotel, car rental service, etc. and the vendor sends you an email with your travel details and confirmation number, you simply forward that email to plans@tripit.com. TripIt knows how to understand all of those emails and automatically puts together a travel itinerary. It also understands that when travel occurs at the same time that it should organize trips. Thus, if you forward an email with plane travel on the 1st and the 4th, a hotel during those same dates, and a car rental during those same dates, TripIt automatically puts it all together into one trip.When you launch the app it automatically downloads all of your upcoming travel itineraries (and your prior travel) into the app. And this is the real beauty of TripIt. You have a central location on your iPhone with everything that you need to know about your upcoming trips — your airline flight numbers, your hotel confirmation numbers, the address and phone number of the hotel, maps that show you where the hotel is located, etc. Having everything in one location is so much easier than having to hunt through emails to find a confirmation number.Flight Track ProI use a great $9.99 app called FlightTrack Pro that always knows all of my travel plans (because it connects to TripIt). FlightTrack Pro does a fantastic job of keeping track of flight details such as gate changes, flight delays and cancellations, etc. And it usually knows the details before they are even announced to other travelers.
- Gate GuruAlso has flight and trip information but I like Gate Guru because it has airport information. Amenities, restaurants, shops, and what I’ve discovered lately is a lot of airports have somewhat secret playgrounds for kids.
- Let’s talk security.Harkening back to the Am Law Tech Survey, of the firms surveyed who did not utilize cloud services, 91% of them stated that security concerns were the reason for refusing to do so.
- One important issue is storing information in the cloud. For example, it is extremely easy to store your documents and notes in Google Drive (which is the new name for what used to be Google Docs) However, I hesitate to use Google Drive for “secure” work because its broad end-user license virtually grants Google an ownership interest in your materials. I think with this broad license, you’re probably violating Rule 1.15 to store confidential information in the Google Drive cloudPay attention to terms of service for storage services. According to its terms, Google does not own user-uploaded files to Google Drive, but the company can do whatever it likes with them. Forever.When I discussed document and spreadsheet editing apps moments ago, I skipped over the fact that you can use Google Drive for free to edit and revise documents – there are a few tricks to it and you can look it up online if you are interested – but I skipped right over that because I don’t think we should be giving Google access to the contents of our client documents. I do keep things like my Christmas card list on Google Drive, and my resume. But I keep work related stuff off of it.
- SpiderOak tries to address data privacy concerns head-on. The service has a strong privacy policy, and it backs it up with client-side encryption. But does the beefed-up security model that will let IT managers sleep at night come at the expense of user-friendliness?The chief difference between SpiderOak and its competitors for the security and privacy-conscious is in how the services treat user data. Dropbox employees can still get file-level access to your data when they deem it necessary (for example, when complying with a request from law enforcement or a DMCA takedown request).SpiderOak, on the other hand, tells users up front that it never knows a user’s password or encryption keys, preventing anyone at the company from accessing your data for any reason. Both Dropbox and SpiderOak encrypt user data on their servers using 256-bit AES encryption, but SpiderOak takes the extra step of encrypting the decryption key itself. This key can itself only be decrypted with the user’s password, which SpiderOak never knows (the full authentication process is laid out here).The downside of this scheme is that your data is unrecoverable if you forget your password. But the upside is that you’re absolutely guaranteed security and privacy, a must for individuals and businesses that deal with sensitive data. However, SpiderOak is less user-friendly and less intuitive and requires a few more steps than something like DropBox – so there’s a decision you have to make about trading extra security vs. ease of use. (other options include Mozy)
- Sometimes the simplest things to protect your phone are the most overlooked. Passwords, remote lock down and erasing apps can all limit who can get to your phone.
- If you use an iPhone or tablet, you absolutely need to have Find iPhone. This will show you the location of all of your devices and allow you to erase the phone remotely or at least lock it down while it is out of your possession temporarily if you’ve left it behind somewhere. There’s a very similar program for Androids called Where’s My Droid?
- Password protect everything. If you haven’t added a password protection to your phone, do so right now. Go to settings, and do not leave this room without setting that up. Password protect your iPads and tablets – password protect your thumb drives and laptops. Otherwise, you are leaving a room full of client documents unlocked, the door open, lights on, welcome mat rolled out. This is simple but think about it for a moment – many attorneys do not bother setting passwords on their phones – and those phones have their emails.Also, do not use hackable passwords. I am a self-professed techno idiot and I have managed to use networks I didn’t have the password to just by guessing a few passwords, starting with the name of the network. Don’t do that. This list was compiled at the end of 2012 by a company called SplashData that analyzed files containing millions of stolen passwords posted online by hackers.Also, for all devices, set an automatic logoff after a defined time.
- Something for both the Android and iPhone users out there is Lookout. Works on tablets and phones, is free and well-reviewed, and and does several things at once: It claims to protect your phone from malware and viruses. It also has a phone tracker, which uses your GPS to track your phone's location. Again, if it's been lost or stolen, you can log in to MyLookout.com to find your phone. From its online interface, you can also set off the screaming alarm designed to annoy your phone's thief enough to abandon it, as well as remotely wipe or lock the phone.The Backup feature covers your contacts, photos, and your call log, and is encrypted for security during transfer. Restoring allows a full restoration of all backed-up data as well as granular control over which specific calls, photos, and contacts are restored.The Privacy adviser rounds up all the permissions from your apps and lets you know which apps have access to the different parts of your phone. This is an excellent, simple tool for checking out what your apps are doing, because, let's face it: when installing a new app, most people just aren't reading deep into the permissions list.There’s also a great feature called Signal Flare, which automatically records your phone’s location when your handset’s battery is low. Users will then be able to log onto Lookout’s Web site and see on a map where the phone was last, shown under the Missing Device tab.Similar programs that protect Android devices against malware and viruses include Avast.
- There are a variety of great security enhancements our there you can add. For example, Dot Lock Protection This highly versatile iPhone security app allows you to utilize either the standard keypad entry, or the dot lock, which requires that you draw a pattern using your finger to unlock your device.But even better than that, the app will file a break-in report for you, as well as take a photo of your phone’s thief, with a date, and even better, a GPS location of your phone! You can also hide your personal information with this app. Highly recommended.Cost: $0.991 password Pro is one of several password programs that will allegedly keep track of all your different passwords and keep them safe. This great app ensures that you won’t have to waste anymore time trying to find or remember your usernames, passwords, and even web addresses.1 Password will secure your important information and automatically log you into the websites you use with a single tap.Cost: $9.99Webroot Secure Web Browser:Webroot's URL filtering technology lets you know if the site is safe to enter while blocking users from entering malicious websites. Search results from Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask will be annotated accordingly with safe, unknown, or known threats reputation marks.There are also a lot of questions about safely using public Wi-fi networks and whether data transmitted over such networks is safe. That’s a little out of my depth but there was an excellent article in this month’s ABA GP/Solo Practitioner Magazine about encryption of email, websites, and using wi fi safely, called “Encryption Made Simple for Lawyers”. I brought a few copies of the article with me so if that interests you, come grab a copy afterwards.
- Moving on to social media.
- Personally, I have never gotten a client from LinkedIn. Two things I have gotten from Linked In though have been really valuable. – One, I got my job – a recruiter was looking for environmental attorneys in the area and found my profile and cold called me one day. And second, I was reading through a group called the New Orleans Connection and was made aware of the existence of the seasonally available Cajun Eggnog Daiquiri sold by New Orleans’ Original Daiquiris, which was the subject a big discussion in the group. Those two things alone have made my time on Linked In totally worthwhile, even if I never see a dime from it.
- So this is really a big topic and it has been covered over and over again throughout this program. I’m just going to focus on one or two things that I think may be of use. So in short, my message is: social media is here, we might as well use it to our advantage – and NOT get hit with sanctions or problems arising out of mis-use.#1, it is just a medium of communication – it is not the enemy. It can be this incredibly useful tool for networking, attracting clients, staying informed and on top of trending issues and new cases, and it makes maintaining relationships so much easier. Even if you aren’t interested, you need to expect that it is being used – by your associates, co-workers, and your receptionist. Anticipate too that they might want to comment publically on something of relevance to your clients – and that you need to discuss having a social media policy now, not later, so that everyone always stays on the same page in terms of protecting your client’s interests and your firm’s interests.
- And #2 – it’s a massive information source. This is my extremely artistic picture of the social media mine. And this mine includes information that you might want to use as evidence in your case.
- Use it to your advantage in discovery:See what is publicly available on major social networking sites. Numerous jurisdiction have held that a lawyer representing a client in pending litigation may access the public pages of another party’s social networking website – such as Facebook – for the purposes of obtaining possible impeachment material for use in the litigation. This is considered public information unless the user has specifically enabled privacy settings.Save copies of what you find and maintain chain of custody.Consider authentication, hearsay, and relevance.Relevant evidence may still be excluded as highly prejudicial.Courts are mixed on what’s discoverable, but try to go after privacy-protected content anyway.Draft narrowly-tailored discovery requests.Ask a party to produce their social media pages to you directly.Protective order may cure privacy issues.Seek a motion to compel party compliance.Consider computer forensics.
- Send a preservation letter to social media service providers.Seek a release from the user and ask social media service providers for data.Only subpoena social media websites as a last resort. Without consent of user, a subpoena won’t get you much data.The Stored Communications Act prohibits third-party internet service providers from divulging the contents of electronic communications carried, stored or maintained by the service. Several jurisdictions have held that this means that “private” settings on a facebook page are not subject to a subpoena ducestecum and do not have to be divulged in litigation. So going to Facebook itself is unlikely to succeed. Moreover, Facebook charges mandatory, non-refundable processing fees, fees for declarations, and fees for just about anything relating to responding to subpoena requests. And this still does not resolve the issue of authentication. Simply because Facebook procedures it, you have not authenticated the item as a post actually made by the opposing party. However, you can instead go to the user and try to get the information that way. Remember, there could be relevant information on the site. And a refusal to produce could be grounds for sanctions. Recently federal judge Paul Grimm published an excellent and comprehensive legal article, “Authentication of Social Media Evidence,” American Journal of Trial Advocacy, 36 Am. J. Trial Advoc. 433 (2013)., which provides a thorough analysis and guidance on social media evidentiary authentication. With over 800 million Facebook users and 300 million people with Twitter accounts, evidence from social mediasites can be relevant to just about every litigation dispute and investigation matter. Social media evidence iswidely discoverable and generally not subject to privacy constraints when established to be relevant to a case,particularly when that data is held by a party to litigation or even a key witness. However recent court decisionsreflect that the main pressing concern for attorneys, eDiscovery practitioners and investigators is theauthentication of social media data for admission into evidence in court.
- We could do an entire class on juries and social media. Rest assured, jurors tweet and post on facebook about their trials and then mistrials routinely ensue. Be aware of this trend, and if it is relevant to you, insist on a strongly-worded social media instruction while keeping tabs on public information that jurors post. It is important not to fraudulently or unethically communicate with jurors – but it is equally important to ensure their public online activity is appropriate.
- And remember to keep an eye out for what parties to your case are doing on social media. And if you have a jury trial, definitely think about those jurors. I have a friend who does a whole presentation on Jurors Gone Wild where they tweet about issues in their trials and how they are going to decide. And there are examples of people trying to fraudulently get out of jury duty and then tweeting about it. I just searched for jury duty on twitter and came up with thousands of tweets from the last 30 days – here are just some of my favorite examples.
- Speaking of twitter – if you’re on it, I’m @nolagodshall
- So you may have seen this slide in the media lately, This is one of the slides that was released by Edward Snowden to the media in talking about the PRISM program. The NSA has been collecting data from a huge amount of internet service providers – even Microsoft – for some time, as it turns out.I’m not going to get into social implications but there are some interesting legal implications for this. For example, in the immediate aftermath of this discovery, there was a lot of talk about whether the lawyers’ rule about client confidentiality had just been breached for everyone. The rule of confidentiality is that there is no confidentiality between a client and his attorney if there is a third person involved in the communication. Since it doesn’t look like content of emails and phone calls was technically listened to, it appears there was no problem with the confidentiality rule. However, that is something that is being debated by legal scholars as we get more information about PRISM.Also, another interesting thing is that attorneys have already started to use the fact that this data was collected in criminal defense cases. Almost immediately a judge is Ft Lauderdale ordered the NSA to turn over any phone records it had for a certain defendant. The cell phone company didn’t keep the records, but the government, apparently, did. So there was an order that “the government must turn over the records for the telephones belonging to the defendant for the month of July, 2010.”