Dave Glynn's Blog

The Sandwich

Thu, 19 Jan 2006 14:16:00 -0500

I'm not talking about a nice, meaty, deli sandwich, sub sandwich or Italian beef, I'm talking about the sandwich between teenagers and aging parents. Yep. Caught in the middle all right. I'm not spending enough time or effort to keep either faction happy, not to mention my spouse. It's lose-lose-lose.
So what do we do? Suicide? Skip town? Nope. Stay and weather the storm.
According to a recent article in the Washington Times, the X generation is fighting with the Y generation. I believe it's more like the X, Y, Z and the Me's in a cagematch. And no one's behaving, except me of course, because otherwise I get into trouble and everything truly starts to fall apart.
Run a Google search on "supporting multiple generations" and you won't find anything relating to people - only technology. I think we're missing the boat. So I'm going to hang on for dear life and try not to go off the deep end. If anyone has any advice though, please chime in.

Posted January 19, 2006

The Blurred Lines of New Devices and Content

Wed, 7 Nov 2005 13:03:00 -0500

Watching a movie on your phone, purchasing movie tickets with your Tivo, toasting your bread with your dishwasher - OK, maybe not. The lines are now blurred when it comes to devices and content. "All In One" is the most frequent Christmas bark you'll hear this year. What is "all in one"? Isn't that the Musketeer's cheer? Oh no, that's "All for one! And one for All!" Ok, so "One for All" is the new deal with our electronic toys. Now I'm in a huge dilemma, do I get a phone with a TV or an MP3 player? I'll probably go for the phone with the MP3 player as I can read, walk and listen to music at the same time, not all at once though. I'll get hit by a cab if I do that. Yes city folks, more chances to get hit by a cab, because you'll be distracted with your phone/TV/MP3/PDA all the more often.
Content is also blurred. You remember the news bit, but you don't remember how you received it. It could have been on the Internet, from your phone news, from your phone TV, from your real TV, from your Tivo, from your refrigerator, from your plumber. You don't know do you? How can you confirm your sources? And if it was from the Internet, was it a legitimate news story or some gossip tip that will be disputed later in the day.
And what does this have to do with legal technology? Well all of these gadgets seemed to find their way into the courtroom and/or litigation. For instance, the personal injury case that is filed by the individual answering or reading the device against the cab company that hit them; the eDiscovery process that recovers the TV/Phone/Internet records of the corporate executive accused of insider trading; the digital rights management and/or copyright protections of the content being downloaded and passed from device to device.
The challenge will be for the laws to keep up with the technology. This topic will be covered on Saturday, April 22, from 8:30 to 9:30 at the ABA TechShow at the Sheraton Chicago. The presentation will be entitled �Law and Technology: The Year in Review & the Year Ahead� Session Description: The law often struggles to catch up with technology and the past year was no exception. Notable cases include Grokster (legality of P2P software), Councilman (interception of e-mail), B.J.s Wholesale Club (liability for insecure network), Arthur Anderson (destruction of records) and more. There's also the PATRIOT Act and responses to large scale data breaches. Learn what happened in technology law during the past year and what the next year may bring. Notable Pittsburgh technology lawyer David Reis and I will be the presenters. Don�t miss it. Visit the ABA TechShow Website for more information about these and other programs.

Posted December 7, 2005

Government's Challenge to Keep Pace with Technology

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 08:14:07 -0500

The recent work of Congress to pass the recent �Personal Data Privacy and Security Act� is a reactive measure to the recent identity data losses by ChoicePoint, Lexis-Nexis (Accurint), Bank of America and others. Government is challenged with keeping up with technology that�s moving fairly quickly. Similar to the call by some lawyers to have a special �technology specific� branch of the US District Court to handle intellectual property issues, there is also a need for congressmen and other politicians to have techno savvy advisors on their staffs: people who can explain what�s happening in technology and how laws can be effected or put into effect to prevent misuse. Recent rulings by courts against Grokster and phisher/spammer/scammers are quickly setting precedent in unexplored areas. Even Sony�s in trouble now over their anti-piracy software on its CD�s that�s alleged to invite pirates/hackers to visit your PC (if the Sony software is installed).
Legislators are elected and paid to make laws, what a perfect opportunity for them to create laws to handle the Wide World of Sports of technology, before everyone and their PC�s are dead meat.
For those of you in the Cambridge, Mass area, the Berkman School of Internet Law & Technology at Harvard Law School will be hosting
The Future of Software with Microsoft's General Counsel On Monday, November 28, Berkman will host a public talk and discussion with Brad Smith, General Counsel of Microsoft. The topic will be "The Future of Software, the Internet, and Innovation." In his position as General Counsel, Smith has faced each of the key legal questions before software companies today, including issues of intellectual property, spam and virus protection, and privacy and security. Smith was also the lead negotiator in resolving the antitrust appeal against Microsoft in 2002, and spearheads work on strengthening Microsoft's legal compliance programs.The event will be held on 11/28 at 5pm in Ames Courtroom, located in Austin Hall on the Harvard Law School campus, and is cosponsored by the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology (JOLT). 11/21/2005 8:39 AM
Hopefully they'll Webcast this presentation at a later date.

Posted November 22, 2005

Young Lawyers Can Learn Trial Techniques from Televised Trials

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 08:14:07 -0500

The opportunity to learn new techniques will be ever more prevalent if Congress gets its wishes granted. The House has just passed a bill to allow cameras in the Federal Courts and the Senate is following close behind with their own bill. The bills are part of a much needed courthouse security bill, a result of the recent rash of courthouse violence. Despite the debates that may occur as a result of having cameras in the courtroom, this will give lawyers a greater opportunity to watch their peers in action. Too often a young lawyer must seek the avenue of state's attorney or public counsel in order to get trial experience. The young lawyer for the private law firm gets little experience as even the second chair position is held to a lawyer with more experience. What better way to learn techniques than watching federal court trials. It looks like we'll now have Court TV1, Court TV2 and Court TV Classic like ESPN. Get the Tivo and the snack tray ready because you'll be up all night learning from the masters.

Posted November 11, 2005

Efiling Limitations for State Courts

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 08:14:07 -0500

Getting a project/product started is usually the toughest part. Trimming requirements down to get a first phase completed is one of the greatest challenges faced by companies. That's why it's no wonder that the courts are also taking the same line in regard to electronic filing applications. Many state courts do not have the funding for state of the art case management systems or more importantly the conversion costs associated with switching to a new system. The vendor approach now is to allow the courts to use their existing case management system with a third party EFiling application. The downside is that interoperatability (the most difficult word for me to pronounce) is near impossible with these systems. However, it's pretty easy for the lawyers and their staff to file. Managing on their side of the fence also has its challenges, but for the most part they can file and serve easily through the EFiling application. Bottom line though, is you have to get started somewhere and if a court is facing to have to replace their case management system, accounting system and several other connecting pieces its highly unlikely that EFiling will ever happen in that court.

Posted November 10, 2005

Knowledge Management, The Dilemma of Sharing Work Product

Wed, 02 Nov 2005 09:14:07 -0500

Knowledge management, the act of electronically sharing work product creates a dilemma for lawyers in a law office. Lawyers don't typically like to share their work product or their client relationships with their fellow lawyers. Can a mindset so deeply engrained be overturned? Even if they spend the big bucks to index everything in the firm's document management system, case management, records management and time and billing system, are they happy about sharing all of that information among the firm's collective? In theory, the senior partner is now giving the fresh associate access to some serious work product that would take the associate years to learn about provided they keep them locked in the closet. Can a law firm's culture support such open ended thinking, abundance mentality and mentoring? Competition may answer that question. If you have the same knowledge buried within your firm that can be found and marketed across the street you better get busy and uncover it. If you lose a deal or a case for a large client to some other firm because they had enough sense to know they had the talent, then you're a big loser. Funny how we always have to use scare tactics to motivate us to do the right thing 'eh. So get your databases, your indexes and your checkbook ready to create a nice Borg environment in your firm. Join the collective or else!

Posted Wednesday, November 2, 2005

White Sox - Walk Softly and Carry a Big Bat

Wed, 5 Oct 2005 15:07:00 -0500

Chicago is a land of superstition when it comes to sports teams. The goat curse of the Cubs, the Black Sox scandal, the Bears quarterback rotation (or rotator cuff during the McMahon reign ala Charles Martin) all add up to trouble and soap operas. Can the White Sox win quietly and calmly? Just win the next 11 games in a row, no soap operas, no tantrums, no shenanigans. That's the way I'd like to see it done. So the new slogan for the Sox could be "Walk softly and carry a big bat".

Posted October 4, 2005

How Many Roads?

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 09:18:30 -0500

Bob Dylan wrote and sang the question for everyone in the early '60's that was probably the start of many questions that led us out of the tranquilizing 1950's. Once again despite the Big Business of the music business, an artistic and political message got through. The messages weren't coming in as fast then as they are now. We're overloaded right now and it's difficult to ease off. Too many distribution methods are available. But the clarity of the question is still there, "how many roads?" Too many, we're still pretty screwed up. I caught a glimpse of the Dylan special on PBS last night, hopefully I'll catch more of it over the coming weeks. No other songwriter defined the 60's culture more than Bobbie, and we've still got the words and music to keep things defined in an over-saturated world of dribble.

Troubles Close to Home

Thu, 22 Sep 2005 11:09:21 -0500

With the recent Katrina catastrophe more focus has been put on the poor. As Jesus said, "There will always be poor," but will there will always be so many of them? Well, closer to my home than New Orleans and Southern Mississippi is Hesed House, a home to five (or more) charities. It's the former city of Aurora (Illinois) incinerator plant that was converted to a soup kitchen, pantry and homeless shelter. Last Saturday was the Hike for Hesed House and I was thrilled to participate. I've helped out a few nights about a month ago with the PADS program that provides overnight shelter to families and men and women. One night I worked there, they took in 182 people - this was Summer, no rain, no cold, so come Winter I think that they'll be overloaded. They had a good turnout for the walk and we're able to raise $28,000 dollars. I'm not sure how much of that can cover operating expenses and the like, but every bit helps. If you'd like to read more about Hesed House, a tremendous program that helps transition adults from homelessness, please visit the Hesed House Website. And help out in your area, because there will always be poor and they're all around us.

Posted September 22, 2005

Inventing and Manufacturing from Your Own PC

Wed, 7 Sep 2005 15:13:49 -0500

OK, so this is one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. You can now
design a product on your desktop and email the plans to a manufacturer to
produce your product. Read the article entitled "The Dream Factory" from
Wired Magazine. The author creates a brand new guitar on his PC that's
manufactured and ready to plug in and play in a couple of days.

Posted September 1, 2005

Katrina Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Wed, 7 Sep 2005 14:58:46 -0500

Katrina is helping to expose an underclass in this country that's in terrible
shape. From many standpoints, i.e., poverty, lack of education, lack of
leadership. Sending the national guard to protect material goods while
people need rescuing is an example of how inadequate our response is to
these problems. Why go to Iraq when we have our own permanent ground
zeros at home, poor neighborhoods riddled with drugs and violence and even
poorer rural areas. According to the latest census reports the poverty level is
going up in this country. Unlike the looters that the media tends to embrace
for a good story, most of these folks are good people who need help.

Building casinos in the poorer communities is not a long term answer to boost
a local economy. Throwing welfare dollars at folks in lieu of providing
transitional programs is not an answer for a child's future. Enabling transition
to encourage work, healthy eating, and a place to live in a safe and drug free
area is the key to helping these folks contribute to society.

Don't just donate to the Red Cross, it's time for some creative action - and just
some action period. Volunteer at your local soup kitchen or homeless shelter
and see what's going on out there. Unlike the looters that the media tends to
embrace for a good story, most of these folks are good people who need help.

Posted September 2, 2005