It's the trade-offs, stupid

Technology always involves tradeoffs. Every tool created by humans has situational strengths and situational weaknesses. The trick is to figure out how to balance the risks with the rewards. Then you can make intelligent decisions about how to use technology.

Consider, for example, the question of computer security. Is it safe to use a computer that’s connected to the internet? Depends. If you don’t know how to avoid scams, and you leave the computer open to hackers, then it’s not safe. The hackers are getting smarter, and the scams are getting more clever. But most users are plodding along with the same mindset, generally they’re lax about security. More to the point: they don't understand how to properly assess risk and reward in the digital world.

Why would so many people use passwords like “password” or “123456”? It's because they just want their lives to be easy and believe that picking a simple password is the easy way to remember it. In other words, they’ve traded off easy-to-achieve security for lazy simplicity.

I have a very successful friend who’s made loads of money investing in hundreds of large-scale international businesses. I don’t know anyone better able to weigh the complex risks and rewards inherent in deciding whether to invest in a large company. However, when it comes to assessing simple trade-offs involved in using his trusty laptop computer, he’s completely naive and vulnerable.

For example, my friend can’t make a basic decision about his email. His IT guy set him up with a shared account on an Exchange server. And the IT guy charges him a too much money (according to my friend) to just manage his email. My friend says his Mac-based Outlook program runs slow and constantly spins a beach ball. So, sensing that I know something about technology, he asks me what he should do.

I ask him a few questions about what he wants from an email program. He says his number one priority is to be able to search his 10 years of old emails (which his IT guy reports is 7 GBs of data). He says his old emails are like his filing cabinet of key information from all the business deals he's done. He says it's vital that he be able to quickly search his old emails.

I know what I’d recommend to him, but I tell him to talk to my friend Paul, a smart guy who does tech consulting but doesn't charge too much money. 

Paul tells him that he should migrate his old emails to Google Apps and pay $50/year instead of the many hundreds of dollars he’s now paying. The effect would be (1) save money, and (2) be able to search old emails with the power of Google. This is what my friend said he wanted. After listening to Paul explain the rough method by which the migration would take place I tell him I agree with Paul.

And it seems like my friend is now on the path to a better "email finding system." My friend tell his IT guy what he plans to do, and that he wants him to work with Paul to get it done.

At first, The IT guy says fine.

A few days later, however, he sends an email to everyone (copying me as well) explaining the negatives of “having a cloud based email system,” and of “not having complete control over it.” The IT guy tells him that with Google’s cloud-based email he won’t be able to work on emails while he’s flying. My friend can’t reconcile the negative tradeoffs he’s hearing about from his IT guy with the recommendations he’s getting from Paul. He becomes exasperated and annoyed with everyone for not being able to give him what he wants. He demands that action be taken immediately to end his spinning beach balls.

I read the flurry of emails going back and forth and wince, glad that I am not an IT guy who has to work with people who rely technology, but don't want to do anything to understand it—folks who just want to issue orders, and expect results.

My friend's problem is a common one among tech-unsavvy folk: he wants incompatible things. He wants a result that is the product of no tradeoffs. He doesn’t understand how cloud-based email works, even if it's explained to him several times. My friend (even with access to top-notch advisors) isn’t competent to make basic decisions about his technology, not even the simple stuff that most 15 year olds figure out for themselves. 

Awhile back, my wife set my friend up with a password management program. She explained to him the importance of using tool that would allow him to have strong passwords, and the simplicity of working off of one master password. She set it up for him and then trained him to use it. He tried it for awhile but complained constantly that the program wasn't working properly.

He quickly gave up on the program because he found it too difficult. I’m not sure how he manages his passwords now, but I hope he’s picked something more secure than a phrase that's in every hacker’s “dictionary attack file.” I hope that, but I really don’t expect it. My friend doesn’t understand how to parse tradeoffs that apply to computer technology.

In short, he's the guy at the poker table wondering who the sucker is. Except the poker table is connected to the Internet, and has millions of players. And that's a really dangerous place to be if you don't know how to make sound technology decisions.

New Orleans Lawyer Meetup Group - Off to a good start

Last Wednesday  we had the inaugural gathering of the New Orleans Lawyer Meetup Group, which is going to be an informal gathering of lawyers who are new to the profession or new to the city. We welcome others who can help those new lawyers get started. So, obviously, we had some more experienced lawyers who can serve as mentors, providing useful advice or just plain old encouragement. And we had some folks who aren't lawyers, such as accountants, web-designers, tech-savvy folks etc. 

Technology plays a big part in helping lawyers practice law, so that's probably going to be a core part of the group. But, overall the goal is to make the meetings fun and informative in a casual way. We plan to meet once a month, probably on Wednesdays or Thursdays. Members of the group will automatically qualify for a 10% discount on any of the CLE seminars my PaperlessChase company does. We plan to offer our CLE programs for free to lawyers who have been admitted to Louisiana in the past year. If you are a new lawyer, or want to help new lawyers then this is a good group to join. Click here to sign up if you're interested.

Best of the 60 Tips presentation

Yesterday I had the pleasure of doing a 60 tips in 60 Minutes session with several good friends and follow law-techies. Even though I’ve done dozens of these 60 tips programs in the past few years, I always wind up learning something. Here are a few of the most interesting tips I picked up:

• Asana - An online collaborative project management tool, sort of like Basecamp, but free if you have less than 30 team members. This one was recommended by Catherine Reach Sanders (who just moved from the ABA Technology Resource Center to the Chicago Bar Association).
• Pathagoras - a document assembly tool that works with Word for Windows. It’s free to try for 90 days, and from what Jim Calloway described, it’s a powerful tool for transactional lawyers who create variations of form documents and need a tool that makes it easy to do this.
• How to create a Digital ID for using with Adobe Acrobat, which Nerino Petro says is a surefire way to have true digital signatures that actually get accepted by the recipient. I’m going to start using this for sure.
• Let Me Google That For You - I forgot about this one, but it’s a classic. If you’re adept at using Google but find that you get annoyed when people ask you for information that they could just as easily have googled themselves, you need to check it out. I won’t ruin it for you; just go do a sample search and you’ll see what this tool does.

If you want to see all the tips that we did, here’s the link to our presentation.

My podcast interview with Enrico Shaefer about my new venture

I got a call from my friend Enrico Shaefer right after I announced that I was shifting out of the practice of law to do more CLE programs for lawyers who were interested in technology. He practices law and tries to innovate wherever possible to do a better job for clients at a lower cost, so he and I have kept in touch (mostly through social media). He has a weekly podcast where he interviews folks about innovation in the law etc., and so he interviewed me. The interview lasted about 20 minutes as I recall. You can either listen to the podcast, or read the transcript.

Now the LSD reference makes sense

When I was ten years old my dad took my brother and some friends to a drive-in movie. He had a convertible and thought that it'd be a great car for watching a drive-in movie. He didn't care what the movie was; it was about an outdoor movie experience. He also wanted to show his date that he knew how to entertain young kids.

The movie was weird, and about 10 minutes in it started to seem inappropriate, but my dad wasn't going to admit to his date that he'd made the wrong choice.

The movie was called Wild in the Streets, which was about the power of young people and how they'd take over the world. The idealistic protesters seized control of the government and went crazy with reform. Eventually they passed a law that required everyone over 30 to retire. Those over 35 were sent to "re-education camps" and were loaded up on LSD. I asked my dad what LSD was. He said it was time to leave, and with wheels spinning as he hastily exited the parking lot.

So many questions persisted (which obviously my dad wasn't going to answer): Why were these young kids so eager to take over the world and push the people over 30 aside? And how could anyone over 30 be considered "too old" to manage society? Making old people take mind-altering drugs? Could anything like that happen? Was my dad afraid of these wild young hippies?

Of course the flower children and protesters didn't take control of the society, at least not in their youth. And the notion that people under 30 would somehow have skills superior to elders is obviously still crazy. Or is it?

Today, technology has crept into our lives and the early adopters are young kids. They start with video games, like my son who beat Bowser in Mario Brothers when he was five (I never got past the first few levels; I blame my law job). They learn powerpoint and have to present with it in grade school. They learn how to get around undesired restrictions put in place by adults who don't understand technology.

When my daughters were in high-school their teachers routinely asked them to help them with their computers. Some of their friends' parents asked their daughters for help with Powerpoint (the kids knew all the settings and options; the parents barely knew how to start the program).

When my daughter started her major in Business at UGA she was required to do an internship, ostensibly to learn from an experienced business person. Instead, the woman who ran an event planning business relied on Bridget to grow a core part of her company: social media. Bridget understood social media because she'd been using it since before there was even a name for the thing we today call "social media." Neither the woman nor Bridget learned much, but the woman got a free intern who added major value to her business that she couldn't figure out how to add.

Bridget is obviously under 30. And she was under 18 when she first started helping adults with their technology problems. And Bridget, by the way, has no interest in technology. At least not any more interest than the average young adult.

But the interest and knowledge that young adults (and even teenagers) have is exponentially higher than adults over 40 or 50. Maybe the "digital divide" is as much about age differential as it is about socio-economic differences. And maybe that will put young people in a position to seize certain kinds of power that will wind up surprising older adults.

I've gotten to the point where it's too hard to work with people who don't understand how to use technology intelligently. When I go to the ABA TechShow, where every lawyer there versed in technology (or at least very interested in it), life becomes easy. People who are comfortable typing on a keyboard, and who readily download and learn new software on their own, are people I can work with. Together we can get things done fast, without having to stop to define small tasks.

I have friends and acquaintances who have no idea how burdensome their ignorance is to someone who can easily navigate tech-hurdles. I'm not sure what will happen to them, but since the rate of technological change is itself changing at a growing rate the prospects aren't comforting. I feel sorry for those people, and I want to help them. But not so much that I'm willing to let them drag me down.

I hope I don't find myself fumbling through this simple online shopping operation. But, whatever happens to me, don't let them force feed me the LSD.

New Orleans lawyers: Interested in a useful CLE seminar, done really well?

If you'll be in New Orleans the week between Christmas and New Years, and if you need CLE credit, then you might want to sign up for one of the seminars I'm helping to put  on. All of the seminars are tech-related, and based on the idea that lawyers have to deal with technology so it makes sense to learn how to use it better.

Why not kill two birds with one stone? That is, you can get CLE credit for learning some tech skills that will actually help you in your day-to-day practice. Also, our seminars are put on by outstanding speakers who know how to explain technology effectively.

The first two days of the seminar are called Paperless Chase: Digital Lawyering tips & tricks. You can sign up for one day, or both days (and get a price break if you sign up for two days). These sessions will cover things like E-discovery, Working with PDF files, Email issues, Digital Case Management, Digital Note-taking, Cloud computing, and Mobile Lawyering (iPads and iPhones etc.).

The third day is a half-day intensive seminar that focuses on How to Create a Paperless Law Practice. It's perfect for anyone who is trying to become paperless, or to improve on an initial foray into paperless lawyering.

Both sessions have Early-bird pricing that will expire on Dec 1st, so if you're interested now is the time to sign up. Also, we're keeping the sessions down to a small size, which means that they'll probably sell out not long after the Dec 1st price jump. Click here for the main page, or click on the links above if you know which seminar you want to attend.

We pride ourselves on doing CLE the way it should be done. We give useful information that can help any lawyer who has a computer or a smartphone, and we do it in an interesting and entertaining way. Of course, if you've been to one of our seminars you know that already.

My end-of-the-year CLE seminar for New Orleans attorneys

As many of you may know, I am very involved with DigitalWorkflowCLE, a company that provides continuing legal education seminars to Louisiana attorneys. Our focus is on technology, and helping lawyers figure out how to use it to be more productive, and to do a better job for their clients.

The premise of DigitalWorkflowCLE is that learning technology can be interesting, useful, and even fun. The trick is to find the right approach, which obviously includes finding speakers who know technology and are good at explaining it. For the past few years, that's what our end-of-the-year seminars have provided.

People who have attended our seminars rhapsodize about them, which is not what lawyers who go to CLE seminars tend to do. That's because most CLE seminars shoot for a minimal quality standard. Sadly, that minimal standard is the norm. Of course, some lawyers don't really care about learning anything at a CLE seminar; they just want the CLE credit so that they can keep practicing law.

Our seminars are not for those lawyers. Our seminars are for lawyers who, not only want to get CLE credit, but also want to actually learn something useful. You won't see bored lawyers reading the newspapers at our seminars. Quite the opposite; they're engaged and excited and very much appreciate our different approach to lawyer education.

As always, our end-of-the-year seminar takes place between Christmas and New Years. Except that this year we're offering two full days of CLE. You can sign up for one day, or both days (with a discount if you attend both days). And for a short while, we're offering "Early Bird pricing."

Seating is limited because we prefer a more intimate setting, as opposed to a large hotel venue. We do our seminars in the large conference room on the first floor of the IP Building at 643 Magazine St. (behind the US Fifth Circuit). The room will hold about 50 people, which is perfect for us.

Dane Ciolino and I will be doing most of the sessions, but we'll be having some excellent outside speakers as well. Jeff Richardson of iPhoneJD fame will be doing a session on mobile lawyering that will cover the use of tablet devices such as iPads. And Magistrate Judge Sally Shushan from the Eastern District of Louisiana will participate in a panel discussion of common e-discovery issues.

We'll be doing an email blast in a few days, which should get a lot of attention from folks that may not have typically been to our seminars. So, if the readers of this blog want to reserve a spot they should sign up soon. For more details, and to sign up, click here. If you were there last year you'll remember we had a lot of fun with giveaways, and this year we plan to ramp up the giveaways. We're also planning lots of other things to make the experience as enjoyable as possible.