Test Your Legal Technology IQ
By Jim Calloway, Director, OBA Management Assistance Program

Every day it becomes a little more difficult to be a competent lawyer without an underlying understanding of certain types of technology.

It is difficult to see how one could serve as a corporate general counsel or advisor to business clients without an understanding of the way electronic discovery and such things as litigation freezes and digital document retention policies operate. You cannot even file documents in federal district court without knowing how to e-file.

Likewise, while many of us are annoyed and frustrated by our e-mail (and the spam that seems to come along with it), it is hard to imagine practicing law without using e-mail at the current postal rates.

So, just for fun, let’s have a short quiz about technology impacting the practice of law in Oklahoma. See how many you can get without peeking.

1. What is Fastcase?

1. New Oklahoma court system docketing program.
2. Provider of OBA member free legal research member benefit.
3. Automatic citation generator package.
4. Something you really should try if you haven’t tried it already.

2. What is metadata?

1. Hot new reality dating show on the Fox network.
2. Proposed name for newly discovered planet in our solar system.
3. Information associated with a document, e-mail or other computer file that is not readily apparent from looking at the original document but could contain embarrassing or valuable information about the creation and management of the document.
4. A rap group that recently won the Grammy award.

3. What is kayak.com?

1. Contains the most comprehensive set of paddling instructions available online anywhere.
2. Excellent travel meta search engine.
3. Hot new software product for law office management.
4. Web 2.0 word processing package.

4. Which site, product or service has nothing to do with digital photography?

1. Flickr
2. Picasa
3. JPEG
4. Excel

5. What is OCR used for in the law office?

1. Online Court Reporting is used when there is no available court reporter and there is an urgent need.
2. Optical Character Recognition is the process where a software package processes a scanned image of a document to convert it into editable text.
3. Optimal Computer Registration is another new registration requirement from Microsoft to prevent software piracy.
4. Online Client Review allows you to check the creditworthiness of the potential client in advance for a nominal fee.

6. What does ESI stand for?

1. Electric Shorthand Insertion
2. Ethernet Setup Instructions
3. Electronic Standards of Investigation
4. Electronically Stored Information

7. Pick the popular Internet discount shopping site from the following:

1. Woot
2. Quark
3. Jabba
4. Klaatu

8. What is meant by the phrase Web 2.0?

1. It is twice as fast as the old Web.
2. It is the codename for a plot by computer manufacturers to force you to upgrade your hardware sooner than you would otherwise need to.
3. Totally meaningless phrase thrown around by computer geeks at cocktail parties to annoy normal people.
4. It means several things, but primarily refers to the fact that innovations like blogs, social networking sites, electronic message boards, online calendars and other applications have resulted in much more content on the Web contributed by ordinary users and more individualized use of the Web by many.

9. What is Dragon Dictate?

1. New Internet-based court reporting service.
2. Powerful dragon control spell from World of Warcraft online role-playing game.
3. Speech recognition software that is gaining acceptance for those who are poor typists or those who can no longer type for physical reasons.
4. First-time fantasy novel by a well-known Oklahoma lawyer/author.

10. Identify Darik’s Boot and Nuke:

1. Black market military surplus chain featuring a wide range of items.
2. Powerful digital file deletion and scrubbing software.
3. Hard drive cleaning package.
4. Social networking site catering to those involved with the legal profession and conflict resolution.

11. Which member of the OBA-NET online community has dispensed so much sage advice there that he has been given the online nickname “Plato?”

1. John Brewer
2. Trace Baldwin
3. Mead Hedglon
4. Jim Slayton

12. Skype is to VoIP as

1. Ham is to eggs.
2. Microsoft Word is to PowerPoint.
3. WordPerfect is to word processors.
4. Bluetooth is to TimeMatters.

13. A fellow lawyer tells you he has a new blog. Your best response is:

1. Telling him that you are sure good medical treatment can take care of that.
2. Nod, pretending you know what he is talking about, and then quickly change the subject.
3. Lie and tell him you have a blog too, hoping he will change the subject.
4. Ask him what legal areas his blog covers and what the URL is.

14. You have a file that has grown to 25 MB in size and you need to get it to co-counsel immediately but neither of you can handle an e-mail attachment that large. What’s the best way to deal with this situation?

1. Burn the file to a CD and Federal Express it overnight.
2. Print it out, fax it to them and they can darned well retype it if they need to.
3. Use YouSendIt.com or one of the other free online large file transfer services.
4. Blame co-counsel for not being able to receive a large file and call it a day.

15. Your friends all tell you that you need a smart phone. You don’t really understand what they mean, but it is time to get a new phone and you figure you don’t need a dumb phone. You can discretely approach this topic by

1. Enrolling your new phone in phone college.
2. Posting a query to OBA-NET asking what smart phones the NETTERs like these days.
3. Buying the cheapest phone you can. They are probably all smart phones these days anyway.
4. Calling the OBA Management Assistance Program, figuring that since it is privileged under Oklahoma Rules of Professional Conduct 8.3, no one will ever know.

Scoring

15 Perfect Score. You are the office Alpha Geek, but you knew that already. Computers have been known to spontaneously repair themselves just because you walked into the room.

14-13 Not perfect, but still a techno-wizard. Non-Microsoft applications obey your every command.

12-10 Passing. You know your stuff. You just got a little behind in your reading.

9-8 Needs improvement. You are sustained by knowing the number of people you know who would have scored worse.

7-6 Now, OK, really who needs to know more about computers than how to use e-mail anyway?

5-3 About the most positive spin on this is that you probably met your expectations.

2-1 There’s a good part of a billable hour wasted that you’ll never get back again.

0 Considering the number of 50-50 questions on this quiz, it is hard to know which is more impressive – your lack of knowledge or your incredible bad luck. I’d get someone to back up your hard drive for you quickly.

Answers: 1. either B or D; 2. C; 3. B; 4. D; 5. B; 6. D; 7. A; 8. D; 9. C; 10. either B or C; 11. C; 12. C; 13. D; 14. C; 15. either B or D.

Originally published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal November 3, 2007 - Vol. 78; No.30.