Ernie The Attorney

Paperless chase - how to deal with receipts

I started the quest to become completely paperless in 2000, and by 2005 I achieved my goal. Being paperless is as natural to me as swimming in water is to a fish. I'm a strong believer in the benefits of becoming paperless. We're all becoming paperless; some embrace it, while others have it foist upon them.

Paper is inefficient, but, since we're used to dealing with it, we either don't notice the inefficiency, or we consciously refuse to accept it. Eventually we'll reach a point where everyone realizes how inefficient paper is. At that point we'll all be paperless. I'm not saying we won't have paper around. Rather that we won't rely on paper as a storage medium for information that we need to retrieve later.

One annoying kind of paper that most of us need to retrieve later is the paper receipt. I applaud companies like Apple, who offer paperless receipts delivered by email. Sadly, most places still provide customers with paper receipts. Even more sad: this is not likely to change soon.

I'm really good at scanning my documents so I don't have a problem keeping track of receipts. I don't have a special organization system for my receipts, other than that I scan them all to a folder called 'Receipts' and I name them with the date and a short description (e.g. '2010_08_25 parking receipt'). My system isn't really optimal for two reasons: (1) I'm not really segregating business receipts into their own folder, and (2) when I travel I have to make sure to keep track of awkward little pieces of paper to ensure that I have them when I return (at which point I have to spend time scanning them).

Whenever I travel through large airport hubs I always notice the kiosk that advertises the 'Neat Receipts Scanner.' If I didn't know as much as I did about scanning I'd probably buy one of those devices. But I know that that last thing I need is a special scanner just for receipts. For $400 I can get a Fujitsu ScanSnap (1500 for PC, and 1500M for Mac), which is the best scanner for most of what I'm scanning. It does a fine job all my paper, including receipts.

Having said that, I believe I've now found something that's better and easier than my ScanSnap--at least when it comes to receipts. Let me describe my new system and then I'll tell you about the underlying technology.

Here's a picture of a parking receipt that I got the other day when I parked outside work. When I get this kind of paper I first put it on my dashboard (to ward off the meter maids), and then later I crumple it up and toss it because I hate having stray paper in my car. 

 

 

It's for a dollar. And it's a small piece of paper, too small and too much trouble to keep track of.  I hate paper so much that I'd rather get rid of it as quickly as possible. 

But, I have a camera that can take pictures (an iPhone, but it could be any kind of camera phone). So now I take a picture of the receipt. I could email it back to myself and then save it in my folder of 'general receipts.' It would be better if I put this receipt into a system that kept track of my business expenses. After trying a service called Shoeboxed that is now what I do.

You can try Shoeboxed for free (5 receipts) and see how it works. Here's what I discovered. It's an amazing service for anyone who wants to keep track of business receipts. If you have business expenses you need to keep track of, but don't have a scanner (or don't feel like using it for receipts) then this is something you need to check out.

When you sign up you get a couple of email addresses at Shoeboxed.  One for receipts, and one for business cards.  I don't care about business cards, so I'm not going to talk about that, but if you do then you'll like this service even more than I do. Whenever you get a receipt, you take a picture of it with your camera phone and email it to the special address (which you've saved in your contacts to make it easy to get to). A few minutes later you get a confirming email to let you know the email was received and is being processed.

 

 

Eventually, the image is processed and the information is extracted. Shoeboxed uses human beings (remember them?) to verify the information displayed in the receipt. This is important because you don't want to have to be checking Shoeboxed's work, right? If the system doesn't make your life easier then it's worthless. So, it's critical that Shoeboxed always gets the right amount, date, and payee. I guess it's possible they make mistakes sometimes, but they've never made a mistake on any of the receipts I've sent them (which is more than I can say for the OCR software of certain products that are for sale in airport kiosks).

So far so good, but that's not the best part. Shoeboxed analyzes the payee and, based on the name, guesses what category the payment belongs in. Then it tags it with a category based on typical business expenses (e.g. travel, food, auto/fuel, etc.). The webpage will show you all of your receipts, starting with the last five expenses.

 

 

At the end of the year (or for whatever time frame you choose) you can download all of your business expenses in whatever form you want: Excel, Quicken, Quickbooks, or PDF.

I tested the PDF export, and was surprised at how organized it is. The lead pages contain a summary of all of your expenses with fields for Amount, Payee, Date, and also a Notes field (where you put in additional information such as who you had lunch with, for example). Each expense has a hot link, which if clicked will take you to the page in the PDF where the image of the receipt is.

The image of the receipt is the key to this whole system. Why? Well, let's say you're reaction to this whole explanation is this: gee, that's nice but I have a simpler system; I just save all my credit card statements. That's what a friend of mine told me when I mentioned how cool I thought Shoeboxed was.

The problem with using credit card statements is that they don't contain information about individual items that were purchased at the point of sale. Sure, a hotel bill on your credit card statement will probably work (at least it might according to this IRS information page). But it's clear that the IRS might challenge a credit card statement showing several purchases from, say, a Target store. After all, Target sells a lot of stuff that might not be considered a business expense.  Or at least that's what the IRS agent will likely tell you when they disallow your deduction.

Shoeboxed says that its system is compatible with IRS regulations, and it appears to me that it is. The IRS allows you to keep your supporting documentation in electronic form, but there are certain standards that digital information has to meet. That's what Shoebox says it's doing, and if they're not meeting that standard then I'm pretty sure no one is.

The other benefit to a service like this is that they handle the headache of assuring that proper backup is performed. I'm not worried about my backup system; that is, I don't need Shoeboxed to make sure my receipts are backed up. Most attorneys, and business people, however, are not as adept at backup as they should be. 

For me, the main benefit is the ease of getting receipts into their system quickly and reliably, so that I can quickly get rid of the paper.

The value of this was apparent recently when I took my daughter to college in Athens, and had to stay in a hotel there.  I had the usual receipts that one has in that situation: shuttle service to airport, hotel, plane fare, breakfast meals. If this had been a business trip I could have easily processed my receipts with my phone. In fact, I was testing Shoeboxed when I was on that trip and that's when I discovered how convenient their service is, especially if you have an iPhone as I do.

Shoeboxed's free iPhone application makes the whole process of taking a picture of the receipt and uploading it ridiculously easy. And from within the application you can quickly select several receipts (once they've been processed, which takes about 20 minutes in my experience) and then email them off to whomever you need to present receipts to. I work for myself so I don't need this feature, but I can imagine many road warriors who have to submit expense reports (and probably agonize about it) would love this feature.

In short, I think Shoeboxed is something that many attorneys would appreciate. Certainly it's worth checking out, especially if you have an iPhone 3GS or the more recent iPhone 4 (because the camera works well with close up pictures). The service costs $9.99/month, or $99/year if you pay for a year up front. There are more expensive packages, but the basic package allows you upload 50 receipts per month, and also gives you an initial 250 upload limit for receipts you have hanging around right now.

There are other ways to get receipts into Shoeboxed, such as mailing them in using a postage free envelope that they provide. And that's fine for some people, I suppose. For me, the real power comes from getting rid of paper as quickly as possible. And I know that, if it weren't for Shoeboxed, I wouldn't be keeping track of certain small receipts like the ones I get when I park my car. And I love that it knows what category to put that expense in!

Disclosure: I think that Shoeboxed is so useful to many attorneys that I decided to sign up for the affiliate program, which means that if you click on my Shoebox links and then decide to sign up for the service I'll get a small commission. I don't generally sign up for affiliate programs, but I like Shoeboxed a lot. But, you might have a different take, since not everything I like is something that other people appreciate.

Everything is impossible, unless you look at it the right way.

When I was five years old my parents separated and announced they were getting a divorce. I was displeased, to say the least. None of my schoolmates had divorced parents. None of them had manic-depressive mothers either, as far as I could tell.

My mom got custody of my younger brother and me, and she tried to keep her mania under control during the ensuing custody battle. She was a good mom 90% of the time, but when she was depressed it was like being on the set of a movie like Poltergeist or The Exorcist. When her demons escaped they became everyone's demons.

Not surprisingly, I didn't do very well in school. I didn't do any of my homework assignments, and wasn't very good at keeping up with what was happening in class. I was very good at staring out of the window and daydreaming. Teachers thought my problem was that I didn't care. They were right.

Somehow I believed that I was not capable of keeping up, and I was afraid to even try. I felt particularly deficient in math, because there was no hiding my ineptitude. If you got the wrong answer that was the end of it; there was no reward for effort.

I spent several summers doing remedial work, and math was always part of my summer schedule. Every once in awhile I'd get a teacher who wanted to help me out, but eventually they gave up. They'd tell me that I was capable of doing the work, but in my mind I was just too far behind. Getting up to speed in math was impossible. 

Of course, once you decide something is impossible then it is.

When I started my senior year of high school I was living in Panama (my mom moved back to her home country when I was starting ninth grade).  My brother and I attended, for want of a better description, a "school for kids of diplomats." The kids  in that school were expected to fluently speak English, Spanish and French. All the classes were mandatory; there were no electives.

Senior year was going to be a bit dicey for me, in that we were required to take Analytic Geometry, Calculus and Physics. And the Physics class assumed knowledge of Analytic Geometry and all the other math I was supposed to have learned in prior years. The first day of class the Physics teacher (who was also a college professor, and was teaching our class because the regular teacher had left) made the students go to the blackboard to solve problems; I did poorly, as expected. The professor gruffly dismissed me, and told me that he had no problem flunking seniors who didn't keep up. A few weeks later he developed a serious medical condition and had to be replaced.

He designated one of his top students at the University of Panama to take his place. So one day a tall dark-haired fellow named Ernesto Regales showed up to teach us Physics. We worked some equations at the board while the young professor quietly watched. When I told him I couldn't work the problems, he smiled in a strange way.  He encouraged me to look at the easy problems in the beginning of the textbook chapter that we were on. I nodded appreciatively as if I was going to follow his suggestion.

Of course, that wasn't going to happen.

Then it was time for our first exam. It involved solving a bunch of problems like this one: 'Boat A is traveling North at 15 miles per hour and Boat B is traveling West at 7 miles per hour; at what speed are the two boats moving away from each other?' These problems were exactly like the ones we had been working at the blackboard, i.e. the ones I wasn't able to solve.

I wasn't able to solve them because I didn't understand the Pythagorean theorem. I knew there was some kind of formula for solving these problems, but I didn't know the formula or how it worked. So, when I took a look at the problems on the test I knew it would be impossible for me to solve any of them. I spent about 20 minutes with the test (daydreaming, mostly) and then went to turn it in.  I waited until one of the genius students turned in her test, to minimize the chance that the professor would look at my test and see it was completely blank.

I handed in the test and quickly turned away.  Just as I got to my desk he asked me to return. He was looking at me with that same weird gaze, and the placid eyes. He was obviously a religious nut.  I knew this as soon as he announced we'd all pray before our exam. His prayers weren't rotely delivered either. He'd close his eyes tightly, then enter a solemn rapture as he spoke softly to God, beseeching him to give us strength and grace. I felt like he actually expected God to help us if he prayed hard enough.

So there he was with that rapturous look, encouraging me to spend all the time I had to solve the physics problems on the exam. His expectations were well-intentioned, but completely unrealistic. The last thing I wanted to do was lie to him, so I confessed that I had not learned the formula and had no idea how to use it even if it were given to me. He was unmoved by my confession.  "Well maybe there's a way if you just sit and think about it," he said.  He was so confident, even after my blunt confession, I figured he was going to give me the formula out of pity. "No," he said, "but if you find a way that's valid I'll give you credit for figuring out how to approach the problem."

That was a decent shock! Getting credit for something other than a correct answer on a math test? I'd never heard of that before.

I plopped down in my desk, and tried to figure out what was going on. What exactly was this odd teacher expecting me to do? Surely, he didn't believe I was going to derive the formula on my own, right? Every time I looked over at him he'd smile beatifically. I was convinced there was some obvious trick that I was somehow overlooking. 

I got out a blank sheet of paper and started diagramming two boats moving away from each other. I examined the triangular relationship, wondering if I could use a ruler to measure it. I got up and asked him if I could use my ruler.  He said I could use anything that was in my desk, except for the textbook.

By now, you've probably guessed that, using the ruler, I discovered (in a very crude way) the relationship expressed in the Pythagorean theorem. I created my own problems where all of the numbers worked out to a whole number.  That is, I considered a boat going North at 4 miles per hour and a boat going West at 3 miles per hour, and concluded that they were moving away from each other at 5 miles per hour. I did this by drawing a line 4 inches long going up, and 3 inches long going left, and then measuring the distance between the ends of those lines. That line was exactly 5 inches (which is what the Pythagorean formula would yield).

Of course, Professor Regales' problems would not have answers with whole numbers. But once I discovered the relationship using the ruler I knew I had at least something I could put down in the answer section. As soon as the test was over I opened my textbook and looked at the Pythagorean formula; I was ecstatic to see that my ruler theory was valid. I assumed I'd still flunk the test, but figuring out the underlying approach was satisfying in a way that's hard to describe. Sort of like hitting a game winning field goal, except even better.

The satisfaction came from knowing that I had done something that, only moments before, seemed completely and utterly impossible. All it took was for me to try, which I had never done before. I had always expected to fail, and up til that moment that expectation became the only thing I believed in.

What made Professor Regales seem so weird was that he believed in me, even when I didn't believe in myself. After that test, I decided to try to learn math. I had to go back and work problems on my own from prior year's textbooks, but whenever I had a question Regales was always eager to help me figure it out. Other students helped me too. And the strangest thing is that, once I started trying, I found that I actually liked math. I liked Physics even more, and I discovered had a knack for solving really difficult problems. Who knew?

I graduated with excellent grades in all my classes, but my best grades were in Calculus and Physics. I wound up getting accepted to Tulane, which was a miracle of truly epic proportions. Eventually I made my way to law school and did very well (e.g. law review, Moot Court team, etc.).

A few years ago someone told me that Professor Regales had passed away. He died young, the victim of some form of cancer. The thing I remember most about him was his desire to be a priest, and help people develop their spirituality. I don't know what kind of priest Professor Regales would have been, but I know he was a great teacher. He approached his job in a way that was different than most of my other teachers; he simply smiled and encouraged us to try. I remember telling him one day that I didn't believe in God, not to hurt his feelings, but so that I didn't feel hypocritical when he asked us to pray before our exams. He said he understood, and that he appreciated my sincerity. Of course, he said it with that strange smile, which made his eyes seem to glow.

Oh, and remember that test with the Pythagorean theorem? Professor Regales gave me a 91, because he said he didn't really care about exact answers as long as you understood how to look at the problem. Very few of life's problems, it turns out, have exact answers. Certainty is nothing more than a point of view, one that is often quite debilitating, unless you are confident of what is possible rather than what's supposedly impossible.

The hidden value of social media: a case study for lawyers

 In our buzzword-driven world the phrase "social media" ranks high, at least these days. Veteran attorneys want to know why the hell they should care about social media. Younger attorneys understand Facebook and Twitter, but they don't really see how social media can help them learn to practice law.

Here's how:

New lawyers need mentoring. Experienced lawyers can provide that mentoring, and social media is a good way to do it. I shall now give an example of this in action.

A young lawyer in a particular 'social media place' asked this question:

• "How do I perform a title search? It's in xxxxxx Parish. I have a vague idea from first year property in law school that I'd go on down to the registry office and demand they pull all the info on the tract for me, but I suspect that, as with most things learned in law school, the procedural aspects will turn out to be far more complex."

Experienced lawyers then quickly responded with the following:

• "Do yourself ( and  your client , and your Malpractice Insurer) a favor and hire a competent  abstractor......just my two cents."

• "Do what [guy above] suggests. A lesson learned the hard way many years ago."

• "I agree with [guy above too].  It takes a long time and you don't want the responsibility."

• "Having been an oil and gas abstracter since the late 1970s, ....my advice is you never "demand" a clerk do anything other than his or her job. Researching a title is not the clerk's job....Hire an abstracter who knows the courthouse in your area. The title search may take an hour, it may take 4 months (as some oil and gas titles took). Either way, the abstracter knows what to do and will get your information for you with less cost than you doing it yourself and charging your client for your time."

Thus, in a very short time, this newly minted attorney got four experienced lawyers to share their sage advice. And, since they all agreed on exactly how to solve the problem, it's the new attorney now has no doubt about what to do.

By the way, where do you think this 'social media exchange' happened? It wasn't on Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIn or even a weblog. Although it could have been any of those places.

No, my friends, this exchange took place on what one would call an 'email list-serve,' something that has been around since long before weblogs, Facebook, Twitter or any of those things that we think of as 'social media.' 

The fact is 'social media' is just a way to connect people who use computers and the Internet. 

Is it dangerous to use social media? Yes, if you're cavalier about what you say in public, and if you say something stupid. Is social medial valuable: yes, if you use it to gain insight from a large group of people who have more experience than you do.

Social media is just a tool, but it can be a powerful one if used in the right way. Mentoring young lawyers seems to be a great use for it. God knows, there isn't enough mentoring happening in so-called 'traditional ways.'

Amazing dictation tools for mobile lawyers

 When I started practicing law it was common for lawyers to use dictation to create documents. One attorney I know could dictate an entire brief in pretty much one shot; obviously he had honed the art of dictation to a supreme level. Learning to dictate was hard for me, but eventually I learned how to do it. And I quickly learned to appreciate how much more efficient I could be.These days, it's not as common for lawyers to dictate. But that doesn't mean the efficiencies aren't still there.

I haven't used dictation at all in the past decade, mostly because I can type pretty well and it's more comfortable for me to create documents using a word processor. I have tried some dictation apps from time to time, but in the end it's always more of a hassle to set up the software and get my microphone positioned properly and then spend the time dictating. Dictation worked best for me when I could grab a portable recorder and just verbalize my thoughts in a stream of consciousness, and then send that recording off to have someone else transcribe for me.

Recently I discovered two tools that have re-opened the dictation path for me. But before I tell you about those tools, let me tell you what I wanted in a dictation set up.

• The ability to use a portable recorder that didn't require any special calibration
• The ability to dictate, back up and record over parts that were mistakes
• The ability to save (or upload) the resulting file to my DropBox account
• The ability to quickly transcribe the recording without much fuss

I didn't really want to buy a special recorder, but I was willing to if everything else worked smoothly.  Of course, what special recorder would allow me to save my files up to the cloud? Answer: my iPhone.

I found an application called Dictamus (free version with 30 sec limit so you can test it, or $9.99 version with complete features).  This is an awesome application!  You can back up over parts that you want to record over, and it senses silence and doesn't record those parts. In short, it's the kind of serious recording application that any professional would want to have.  But it's in your iPhone, which you have with you at all times (you do have an iPhone, right?!), so you don't have to carry another device.

But it gets even better: Dictamus has DropBox functionality built in. That means that when you finish your recording you just save to DropBox and it uploads it immediately to your DropBox folder. You can even direct the file into a sub-folder within your DropBox account. Why is this amazing? Well, it means you can get the file into your computer without having to connect the iPhone to it. And you can get it into your computer even if you're on the road. That is, you save to DropBox and the file will be in place when you get back to your computer, which is when you'll transcribe the file.

So how do you transcribe the file?

Easy. If you have a Mac (as I do) then you use a program called MacSpeech Scribe, which costs $149. You can download it immediately, but there is no trial version. I wouldn't have tried it out, but Dave Sparks (a lawyer in California that has a great podcast) recommended it so I gave it a shot. This is an amazing tool. All it takes is a 2 minute recording to train the transcription software and you can start using it right away. 

Is it perfect? No, far from it. But it works really well as a way of blasting out text, which is all I want to do if I'm dictating. In other words, it's easy for me to edit a block of text once I've cranked it out. But cranking out long passages of text is easier if I can do it without worrying about spelling, or trying to create perfect phrases. MacSpeech Scribe lets me do this, and it works with my iPhone because it will accept .Wav files, which is what the Dictamus program creates.

If you don't want to use Dictamus you can use the Voice Recorder application that comes free with the iPhone. But, that application doesn't let you record over parts, nor does it let you upload to DropBox. You have to email the file to yourself and then save it to the computer from your email, which isn't a big hassle if you only dictate once in a blue moon. If you plan to do a lot of dictating, or if you have a workflow that involves sending your recording to an assistant for her to transcribe, then the Dictamus application is invaluable.

So what if you don't have a Mac computer? Well, I can't say for sure because I don't offer advice on things I haven't actually done myself. But I would imagine you can do the same thing using some version of Dragon Naturally Speaking. I say this because MacSpeech Scribe was built on the software engine that Dragon Naturally Speaking uses (they licensed it from DNS). And recently DNS bought MacSpeech outright. The DNS software has always been more full featured than the Mac version, so I can't imagine that the ability to do transcription from a mobile recorder wouldn't work. More specifically, I have to believe that you could do it with an iPhone.

But I know that you have an iPhone and use a Mac computer, and have a DropBox account (free for 2 GBs of storage), then you can do the dictation process I have described. You don't need any new fancy equipment; just the stuff you already have laying around. And that, my friends, is truly amazing!

Top notch office service for solo lawyers

 Back in 1985, when I started practicing law, a firm could distinguish itself by using high quality word processors to create documents. The firm I worked for had a state-of-the art Wang system. The documents that lawyers created looked spectacular when they were printed out (to a special room that housed the Wang equipment, and was protected by special cooling equipment).

The firm also had a room staffed with people who could make copies, and bind documents with comb-binders. There were no color printers back then, but I'm sure today the firm has a state-of the art color printer in the file room. I remember being in complete awe of that file room, and all of that fancy equipment. And back then that equipment was expensive.

Back then only large firms could afford to create fancy documents. Which is why clients were willing to pay those firms top dollar to handle their legal matters. But today clients are looking for value and pressuring firms to lower their cost. And today that fancy equipment is affordable by pretty much anyone.

Let me give you a few examples from my own practice.

I don't own a color printer. I could afford one, and actually owned one for awhile, but I found that I rarely printed to it and so the extra overhead, and occasional troubleshooting, didn't make sense. My 'letterhead' is a color logo that I automatically insert in the letters that I infrequently send. Most correspondence these days is by email.  Still, I do occasionally need to send a letter.

The other day I had to send a demand letter for a client, which required me to create "impressive looking correspondence." That is, you don't want to send a demand letter that makes your adversary's attorney think 'gee, this is lawyer seems to be practicing law out of his knapsack.' But, no color printer, so how can I create that 'big firm' appearance?

As it happens there is a FedEx Office store about 8 blocks from where I work, and obviously they have color printers (and lots of other fancy and expensive equipment). It would cost me about $1.00 to print my letter. That's fine, but I really don't want to take the time to traipse over there just to print out one letter. No problem.  

Here's my solution: I 'print to PDF' from my computer (which is what I always do anyway because I keep all my outgoing correspondence in electronic form).  Then, I upload the file to FedEx's online site, and direct the print job to go to the store close to my office. I can then pick it up later on when I'm doing errands in that area. FedEx notifies me by email when the document is ready, and the few times I have used this service the documents have been ready in less than an hour.

"Okay that's fine," you say, "but what about large print jobs that need to be delivered to somewhere else?" Yes, big firms can afford courier services. Or their clients can, because those firms just pass the cost on to the client. Well, here again FedEx is the solution. It's free for anyone to get a FedEx account, and there is no monthly cost; you only pay for the shipping cost when you use the service. 

So, let's say I had to send a large document production to opposing counsel and they wouldn't want an electronic version of the documents (large firms like paper!). I could upload the documents (cause I definitely am keeping everything in PDF form), or bring a disk to FedEx, if the file was too large to upload. Then I simply direct FedEx to ship the paper to the opposing counsel. If the documents need to be bound with card stock covers, FedEx can do that.

The point is: whoever receives my documents gets the same high quality presentation that a large law firm with vast resources would create (at probably greater expense). And I can 'create' those documents simply by engaging the services of a company that is highly expert in both the preparation and delivery of documents. 

Sure I could afford to own a color printer. And I suppose I could print and bind my own documents.  But why would I want to? I'd rather have someone do it for me, as long as it doesn't cost too much or take up too much of my time. And it turns out that's totally possible.

So, solo lawyers rejoice! You don't need expensive equipment, and you don't need staff to help you prepare great looking documents. Get a FedEx account and you can do what large firms do, at a lower cost, and without any hassles. All you need is a computer and an internet connection.

Apple's magic trackpad - what I like about it

I've been using Apple's new 'magic trackpad' for about a week, and I'm liking it more and more. For those that don't know, the trackpad is 'magical' because it's basically a large touch surface that you can control with your fingers. It's like the trackpad on Apple's laptop computers, but bigger and designed for use with a desktop computer.

I have an iMac (in addition to a Mac laptop) so I got the trackpad for that computer. I had been using Apple's 'magic mouse' and liked it, but I craved a larger surface upon which to use touch gestures.

The trackpad does take some getting used to, but not as much for me because I have been using the touchpad on my laptop. I decided to use only the trackpad (i.e. no more 'magic mouse'), so that's another thing takes getting used to.

Ergonomically, the trackpad seems to be easier on my right wrist. Having to grip a mouse, even lightly as I tend to do, does engage additional muscles, which over time get fatigued. If you have a mouse then you have to have a mousepad, which is another benefit.  In other words, you avoid these problems: the mouse sometimes runs off the mousepad, or the mouse is not optimally centered on the pad. With a mouse you have to manage the positions of two separate objects on your desk. With the trackpad (assuming you ditch the mouse, and why wouldn't you?) there is only one object to keep track of. And in my book less is always more.

As for the touch gestures, I was familiar with some of them from using my laptop.  Two finger scrolling, for example, is much appreciated. But other than that (and steering the cursor with my finger) I had not really delved into all of the available touch gestures. The trackpad accepts gestures based on one finger, two fingers, three fingers, or four. The box in which the magic trackpad is sold has 12 sample gestures described on the back. I kept the box out for reference and found that it reminded me to try those other gestures. I now regularly use 9 of those gestures, and find that I can do things much more quickly.

Can it completely replace the mouse? Yes, it can.  

But you will find that in certain programs, where you have gotten used to using the mouse to do some weird little thing, you'll at first feel handicapped. But if you pause and figure out how to use the trackpad to accomplish your goal you'll quickly overcome the pining for your mouse. Strong habits are the hardest to break, and using a mouse is something that most of us have developed deep habits around.

If you're going to use the magic trackpad make sure you have the latest system software on your desktop computer. Apple has pushed out an upgrade that gives more choices on how to configure the trackpad, and you'll want to take advantage of those options. I suggest you enable 3 finger swipe to control the 'click and drag' function. I also encourage you to try the four finger swipes (you'll see why).

The magic trackpad costs $69, which is the same price as Apple's magic mouse. I would definitely opt for the trackpad over the mouse, at least for a desktop computer. I know some people who have magic mice for their laptops, but it seems like overkill to get a trackpad for your laptop when it already comes with one built-in.

Seminar for Louisiana lawyers: how to use technology more effectively in your law practice

On August 27th the Louisiana State Bar Association is sponsoring a seminar here in New Orleans called Your Practice in Today's Digital World. I was asked to be the Chair of this seminar, which basically means I got to pick the speakers. 

I'm really excited about the presenters. The seminar will be exceptionally useful for lawyers who want to learn how to use technology more effectively.  The topics are as follows:

• Ethics of Paperless Law Practice (Dane Ciolino) - will cover things like what kinds of "paper" do you still have to keep if you go to electronic storage?
• Email Management Tips (Al Robert) - will provide truly useful information to help lawyers manage and process their email more effectively, which is important since email is now a primary communication tool.
• High Tech Document Drafting (Chuck Rogers) - will look at ways to crank out documents quickly and easily using speech recognition, form tools, and virtual secretaries.
• Electronic Discovery and Social Media (Tom O'Connor) - will examine how cloud based social media tools affect electronic discovery methods, as well as general issues with discovering information stored online.
• Creating Digital Briefs (John Denenea) - practical advice on how to create digital briefs that are accepted by courts and are useful to them.
• Basics of Scanning (Rebecca Diamante) - important practical advice on how to streamline your scanning of paper into digital form, which will be helpful both to people who already scan documents as well as those who have never used a scanner.

For more information, including online sign up click here.  Hopefully, I'll see some of the local attorneys who read this blog at the seminar.  Oh, and I recommend that you get your seminar materials on the Flash Drive, as opposed to the paper binder.  First, it's $20 cheaper that way.  Second, you'll get the PDF version of Johnny Denenea's digital brief so you can see what a PDF brief can do (e.g. hyperlinks etc.). And, lastly, it's more environmentally friendly to not waste paper. And that's also part of being a tech-savvy lawyer, right?

Are Blackberries more immune from government surveillance?

One often hears people say Blackberry mobile devices are more secure than other devices, supposedly because of the Blackberry messaging feature. The purported reason for the extra security is that RIM, the company that makes Blackberries, manages the traffic sent across Blackberry devices itself (as opposed to letting wireless carriers such as AT&T do it).

Yes, it's true that RIM itself manages Blackberry messaging traffic on servers located in Canada. And it's also true that messages sent through its network are encrypted. However, as this article points out, that doesn't mean that governments around the world can't monitor Blackberry conversations. 

Recently Saudi Arabia banned Blackberries on the grounds of national security. What 'national security' problem do they think that Blackberries have? Well, apparently RIM won't give the Saudi government the same ability to monitor traffic that other governments get.  And that's why Saudi Arabia is going to ban the devices.

So, next time you hear someone say that Blackberries are inherently immune from government snooping, you'll know that's not exactly true.

Did market efficiency cause the sub-prime mortgage meltdown?

I just finished Michael Lewis's newest book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. Lewis explains exactly what caused the sub-prime meltdown. The real origins of the meltdown, he points out on page one, go back to early 1985. This is when Michael Lewis was working at Salomon Brothers, which was the background for his first book: Liar's Poker.

I decided to read Liar's Poker again, since I hadn't read it since it first came out. Back in the mid-1980's I had just graduated from law school and didn't really yet grasp how "things really worked." Like many people I believed that people who worked in high finance had a certain level of ethics. Or that at least they understood the underpinnings of the financial markets that they shaped.

I was obviously naive.

Re-reading Liar's Poker is very strange, and not because I'm now reading it on a Kindle. The book is a stark portrayal in how 'mortgage bonds' quickly went from being in complete disfavor to becoming a darling of Wall Street.  Greed played a role, as you might imagine. In the 1980's the mortgage bond market was populated by some greedy folks. The numbers of greedy traders grew over the years as the mass delusion spread and people around the world somehow got the notion that American home prices would never go down, so credit could be extended to pretty much anyone who was buying a house, regardless of whether they planned to live in it. And regardless of whether they could actually afford it.

What's shocking to me is not that the 'average person' got taken advantage of in the sub-prime fiasco, but that seemingly knowledgeable financial people were also taken advantage of. Lewie Ranieri was one of two key people who created "mortgage backed securities" while at Salomon Brothers.  Here is Lewis's enlightening description of Ranieri (at Kindle location 1558):

"Lewie was not just a trader, though: he had the mentality and the will to create a market.  He was tough-minded.  He didn't mind hiding a million-dollar loss from a manager, if that's what it took."

And here is another great observation of the man who helped create what twenty years later wound up being the core of a complex financial world that not even the ratings agencies (e.g. Standard & Poors) could understand.

"Lewie was willing to take positions in things he didn't fully understand."

The key to making money in certain financial markets is not so much from understanding financial underpinnings as much as it is creating complexity that confuses people, and then taking advantage of their confusion.  In The Big Short (Kindle location: 1320), Lewis supplies a key observation:

"Financial markets are a collection of arguments.  The less transparent the market and the more complicated the securities, the more money the trading desks at big Wall Street firms can make from the argument."

The bond market was, by comparison to the stock market, less regulated and less understood. I remember being baffled, when I first read Liar's Poker, that bond trading could be so lucrative. If so, then why did more people seem to care about the stock market?

This time around I learned something even more interesting from Liar's Poker: the most important thing for a young Wall Street trader to learn (from the perspective of the firm's 'mentors') was how to take advantage of the firm's customers. You see the greatest market inefficiency turns out to be trust. Anyone who went to a large Wall Street firm like Salomon Brothers in 1985 seeking financial advice was pretty much like an African wildebeest without the ability to smell lions.

If you happen to have a copy of Liar's Poker on your Kindle I would direct you to location 2954 - 3060 (about 65% of the way through the book). This is where Lewis describes his first experience "helping" a customer. He was set up by people within Salomon Brothers to push bonds that were likely to devalue, which caused his first (and very trusting) customer to lose so much money that he was soon fired from his nice job. Why would some trader at Solomon Brothers push bonds on a customer that were likely to devalue? Because Solomon Brothers owned the bonds and needed to get rid of them before they devalued more than they had already.

Do you sense a conflict of interest? Yes, and so did Lewis (only because he was a newbie).  When Lewis found out he had been used he confronted the trader who had set him up. Instead of being sheepish, the trader responded harshly to Lewis: "'Look,' he said losing his patience,'who do you work for, this guy, or Solomon Brothers?'" In other words, internally, the traders and managers didn't even pretend that they were supposed to serving their customers.

So if you think that unregulated markets will automatically settle into an efficient market, then let's first talk about the proper definition of market efficiency. Oh, and another thing that's worth keeping in mind is this:

"The only thing that history teaches us, a wise man once said, is that history doesn't teach us anything."

Daily spam meditations

Having a long-running blog has brought me many blessings. Top of the list are the great connections I've forged with some of my readers, and their comments to my blog posts. 

I also tend to get a lot of comments from spammers. In the old days, the comments were kind of obvious so they were easy to pick out and delete, then the spammers became more clever. These days the spam comments are sometimes almost spiritual.

Here are a few that might inspire you to become a better person (these are copied exactly as they appeared in my in-box just before I deleted them):

• You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give. 

• I strictly recommend not to hold off until you earn enough amount of cash to buy different goods! You can get the loan or secured loan and feel yourself free. 

• I have been readed you blog. For me, it is so luck. Because of your excellent article remind me a lot of memories. Thank you so much.
  

• I received my first loan when I was a teenager and that helped my family a lot. However, I require the commercial loan again.