Essential Technology Skills for Lawyers
By Jim Calloway, Director, OBA Management Assistance Program
A well-known lawyer stopped me at an OBA reception the other day. He was bemoaning his lack of law office technology knowledge and skills. He indicated that he often felt behind the times. The problem, he said, was that he had so much work to do, he did not have any time for learning these skills. Even if he had the time, he didn't know where to begin. His main point was that he wished he knew everything I knew about computers and software. My unspoken response was that I, too, wished I knew everything he thought I knew about law office technology. I share that lawyer's frustration. I would love to be able to invest an entire week in learning more about Adobe Acrobat or TimeMatters or any of a number of other legal tech subjects.
Whether it is history, zoology or law office technology, the simple fact is that the more expertise you acquire in a subject, the more you appreciate how much there is on the topic that you haven't mastered. A lawyer recently posted on OBA-NET that he felt like his word processing software was a Ferrari capable of 200 mph that he drove at 25 to 35 mph. Knowing this lawyer's capabilities, that may put the rest of us puttering along at 15 mph. It's a good thing we can hire staff who can get closer to the speed limit.
This is one area where the large firm lawyer and the small firm lawyer may differ quite a bit. In the larger firm, the IT department handles the technology matters, freeing the lawyer to devote more time to law practice and less to management and technology matters. In the smaller to medium size firms without full-time IT staff, there is often a staff member or lawyer who appoints themselves as office "teckie" and is in charge of this knowledge with an outside consultant retained for installation and trouble shooting. The solo or small firm lawyer often needs to know a great deal about software and other technology, both as an end user and as "chair" of the technology committee.
There's a lot to learn technology-wise. At ABA TECHSHOWTM 2004, there was a program with the same title of this article. At the OBA Solo and Small Firm Conference this summer, we asked Reid Trautz and Bruce Dorner to do a program with the same title. Their presentation was very organized and well received. Taking a cue from these presentations and the conversation at the reception, this month we will attempt to outline the basic technology skills that we think all lawyers should have, regardless of firm size. This is not intended to be comprehensive. We hope that many lawyers will find that they already know how to do most of these things, and for those who do not, they now have a list to follow when they have time to enhance their skills.
WORD PROCESSING
The minimum: You should be able to state what word processing software your office uses, even if you do not have the version number committed to memory.1 You should know how to open your word processor and open a document previously saved on your network or workstation. You should be able to perform minor editing functions, print and save the document. You should know how to select (highlight) text, copy it to your clipboard and paste it into a different document.
The next level: You should have a basic familiarity with the most common word processing functions. You should understand what most of the icons on the toolbar do. You should know how to use the word processor's help files for instructions on doing things you have not committed to memory. You should know how to save documents in RTF format when you are sharing them with others who do not use the same word processing software. You should know how to save a file on a disk to take home or to another location.
Where to go for help: Ask your secretary or assistant for a brief tutorial on basic word processing.
E-MAIL
The minimum: You should be able to give your e-mail address to someone from memory. You should be able to open the e-mail application on your computer workstation. You should be able to compose and send an e-mail. You should be able to attach a file to an e-mail before you send it. You should be able to open e-mails in your inbox, and you should know how to save attachments you receive to your computer's hard drive both by opening them and by saving them without opening them. You should check your e-mail at least once a day. You should know not to click on attachments you receive via e-mail unless you are certain that they do not contain something that will damage your computer.2
The next level: You should have an address book with the e-mail addresses of those you regularly correspond with and know how to add addresses to the book and delete them. You should be able to set your out-of-office responder to let people know when you will not be responding to e-mails for a few days.3 You should have discovered that e-mail works better than the phone for short messages when opposing counsel actually uses his or her e-mail. You should either know how to access your office e-mail from home (and other remote locations) or have set up a Web-based e-mail account that you can use.4 You should include your e-mail address on your stationery and business cards. You should be able to set up customized folders to manage your e-mail and set rules, so that certain items, like electronic mailing list messages, go directly to the folder instead of your inbox.
Where to go for help: Ask your secretary, assistant or another co-worker for a brief tutorial on basic e-mail.
COMPUTER SECURITY
The minimum: You should be able to log into your network and access all functions on the network without help from anyone. You should have your important passwords committed to memory or written down in such a way that someone who locates the paper could not access your services. You should read my prior article, "Who is Reading your Hard Drive Tonight? Security with High Speed Internet Access and a Few Words about Passwords," 71 OBJ 1712, July 8, 2000. You should make certain you are clear about your personal rules for not opening e-mail attachments.
The next level: You should have some understanding of what a firewall is and make certain that your office network has one in place. You should understand what spyware and adware are, how to avoid these plagues and how to recover from them. Your staff should understand what constitutes acceptable Internet and e-mail use and what is not appropriate. You should ensure that all computers attached to the network require a password for access. You should have a secure location where passwords are recorded in case an employee is absent at a bad time. (Note: Those lawyers with IT staff can skip that one.)
Where to go for help: Your IT staff, administrator or consultant will be quite pleased that you have expressed an interest in security and password safety and will likely be happy to answer your questions. If you have no such staff, you likely should join OBA-NET or visit computer security Web sites like grc.com.
DIGITAL FILE MANAGEMENT/NETWORK
The minimum: You should understand your office's file naming conventions for documents. You should understand where documents are supposed to be saved on your network so that you can locate them later. In particular, you should know where your client's documents are saved. If your office does not have a rule for consistent file names and locations, you should set up a meeting to establish rules. You should know how to open Windows Explorer5 and what all of the drive letters you see there mean. You should understand which of those drives are regularly backed up and which ones are not, leaving the documents saved on those drives susceptible to loss. If you have more than one computer in the office, they should be networked.
The next level: You should know how to set up a new folder on your workstation or the other network drives.6 You should have several folders set up to organize non-client matters and either use case management software or a number of folders to organize your digital client files. You should know how to use Windows Explorer to search for misplaced documents on the network, both by file name and contents. You should know how to select groups of files and move them from one folder or drive to another by dragging and dropping. You should have a good working knowledge of what file name extensions are used for what types of your most commonly used files.7
Where to go for help: Convene a meeting and draft an office file naming/storage convention if one does not exist. Read the endnotes to this section.
LEGAL RESEARCH
The minimum: You should be able to log into your commercial legal information provider (if you have one) without help from anyone. You should have a clear idea of what each level of these services costs your client or firm. You should be able to use the free services available on Oklahoma State Courts Network (www.oscn.net) and, if applicable to your counties of practice, be able to access the online dockets there. If your counties of practice have dockets online at www.odcr.com, you should be able to access the dockets there. If you practice in federal court, you should have a PACER account and know how to use it and what it costs.8
The next level: You should be proficient at formulating good search queries for your electronic legal searches.9 You should have a very clear idea when to use the free Internet legal research services and when to use the commercial services. You should be able to save results from free online research as easily as from the commercial services, i.e., don't pay for a commercial service just because it is easier to save the results.
Where to go for help: Visit the legal research links at www.okbar.org/links. Add this site and other useful sites you find there to your bookmarks or favorites. Practice. Go to a local county law library where you can do free research and practice there. Explore inexpensive programs like Surfsaver to facilitate saving Web pages and Web search results to your workstation.
INTERNET RESEARCH
While many lawyers are using Internet-based legal research services, there is a great deal of factual information available online that is very useful for the practicing lawyer.
The minimum: You should have an idea how and where to find factual information online. You should be familiar with the search engine Google. You should have a lengthy set of bookmarks or favorites saved in your browser for sites you frequently visit for factual information. You should understand the difference between search engines and Internet directories. You should have learned to use many words for search queries instead of a single word.
The next level: You should have set up customized folders within your favorites to organize the many favorites you have collected. You should be familiar with the advanced search features of Google and the other search engines you use. You should be familiar with various sources of information that cannot be located via the search engines and have an idea how to locate that information. You should have access to either substantive or technical information that comes from people online through online communities like OBA-NET or electronic mailing lists.
Where to go for help: Visit the Internet research links at www.okbar.org/links. The OBA recently produced a pair of seminars (taught by yours truly) on basic and advanced Internet research. These will be available online soon and will also be presented again via videotape replay near the end of the year. You may also consider purchasing the book the "Lawyer's Guide to Fact Finding on the Internet" by Carole A. Levitt and Mark E. Rosch, published in 2004. It served as the written materials for the OBA CLE program and may be purchased from the OBA Management Assistance Program for the discounted price of $58 ($63 if you wish it shipped to you). Join OBA-NET if you haven't already, and log in if you haven't done so recently.10 Visit Web sites that focus on Internet research for lawyers.11
MOBILE COMPUTING/REMOTE ACCESS
Most lawyers are well versed at taking work home. But life doesn't always go according to plan. You should not be trapped without the ability to perform work when you are unexpectedly absent from the office. In most firms, one may be able to phone in to staff during business hours to have documents, calls to return or other work either e-mailed or communicated to you. But the need for client services doesn't always occur during business hours and taking staff away from their other duties to provide for you reduces their productivity.
The minimum: Reduce to writing how you can access your information and resources when you are out of the office unexpectedly. Look at several scenarios: being homebound, traveling out of town when there is an emergency, or events outside of your control that exclude you and your staff from the office. Devote an hour or more to planning to deal with these contingencies. This may involve, for example, burning several CDs with office forms and information to be taken home or kept in an emergency "work kit."12 If you've been avoiding getting a mobile phone, consider that it may be time.
The next level: Appropriate use of the personal digital assistant, the home computer, laptop computer, mobile phone, remote access to e-mail, case management software to organize digital information on your network and the ability to remotely log in to the office computer network mean that you can effectively work anywhere, anytime.
Where to go for help: There are many resources to learn more about remote access tools. These include computer magazines, technology-related Web sites, OBA-NET, OBA Management Assistance Program and OBA Law Office Management and Technology Section.
BACKING UP OFFICE DATA
The minimum: Your data should be backed up at least daily. Several people in the office should understand all of the details of how this works. A complete copy of the data back-up should be taken off-site and safely stored at least weekly. A comprehensive list of software licenses with version numbers and other basic recovery information should be compiled and stored off-site as well. Periodically you should run a "fire drill" where a file is deleted and staff members attempt to locate and restore that file from the backup material.
Note: There is not really a next level here as every office needs to meet these minimum standards.
CONCLUSION
There are many more areas of technology that I hoped to cover, but we've run out of space for this issue. This list was not intended to infer that lawyers who cannot do these items are in any way deficient. Certainly some lawyers continue to practice without a computer on their desk. But for those of you who have asked, here's a list of some basic technology skills to master.
A common theme runs through many of these items. Many of these items are about a lawyer's ability to work without being dependent on another person for a password, a network log-on or the understanding of how a relatively simple process works. This puts the lawyer more in control whether it is an unexpected need to work on Saturday night or dealing with a trusted assistant's absence at the office.
1. Realistically, the two options here are Microsoft Word and Corel WordPerfect, so this one shouldn't take long to figure out. There may be a few pioneers out there with products like OpenOffice or Atlantis Nova, but they clearly know the name of their word processor.
2. No warranty expressed or implied here, but the safer attachments usually have a file name ending in .doc, .wpd or .pdf. Ask someone if the name ends with another extension, and be particularly leery of files names ending in .exe, .scr, .pif, .htm or .html.
3. Yes, I know some people do not believe you should use auto-responders for vacations and other periods out of the office, but I'm the one compiling these lists.
4. Joining OBA-NET and therefore getting access to a free lawoklahoma.com e-mail account is one way to do this.
5. You can access this by clicking on the Start button and then My Computer, but the quickest way is to use the keyboard shortcut Windows key (the one with the picture) and E at the same time.
6. Set up a new folder on your desktop by right clicking on a blank space on your network, then selecting new and folder. If you end up with one named "new folder" right click on it and select rename. For other locations, use Windows Explorer to go to the drive or folder, then use the above instructions.
7. For example .doc for Word files, .wpd for WordPerfect files, .xls for Excel spreadsheets, and so forth.
8. Just for the record, it is my opinion that most, if not all, Oklahoma lawyers know how to do electronic legal research quite well.
9. We recognize that some of you do quite well with legal research using books and traditional methods. That's fine. But this is an article on technology skills.
10. My tip is that when you log onto OBA-NET after a long absence, the first thing you should do it mark all unread messages read, so you don't see notices of thousands of unread messages that you will never have time to go back and read.
11. See, e.g. Inter Alia, a Internet legal research Web log, www.inter-alia.net; The Virtual Chase, www.virtualchase.com; Robert Ambrogi's LawSites, www.legaline.com/lawsites.html; Be Spacific, www.bespacific.com; Law Library Resource Xchange, www.llrx.com.
12. If confidential client information is contained on these CD-ROMs, store them carefully and consider password protecting/encrypting the CDs.
Originally published in the Oklahoma
Bar Journal October 2, 2004 - Vol. 75; No.28 |
