The Connected Lawyer

Recently I spent some time the Pacific Northwest. We spent time in Portland and Astoria Oregon as well as Ocean Shores, Washington. I love this area and always enjoy visiting. While in Portland, I found the best doughnuts that I have ever eaten at  VooDoo Doughnut. The doughnut shop is a little hole in the wall shop next to an adult theater. However, the doughnuts are absolutely to die for.

I had a Triple Chocolate Penetration, which was a chocolate cake doughnut (picture the taste and texture of a cake, not a typical cake doughnut). The doughnut was topped with a delicous chocolate frosting and then covered in Cocoa Puffs. I also had a dirt doughnut, which was a raised doughnut covered in vanilla glaze and covered in Oreo cookies.

If you ever visit Portland, I cannot suggest highly enough that you stop at VooDoo Doughnut to pick up some doughnuts. We were there at about 9 am on a Sunday morning and the line was out the door.

The best meal that we had in Portland was at the Multnomah Falls Lodge. I particularly enjoyed the French Onion Soup (topped with swiss cheese). My wife loved the Salmon Salad Croissant. The bonus is that this restaurant not only has great food, but that it also has beautiful views. The falls here is absolutely beautiful. Plus, there are great views of the Columbia River. Further, if you are so inclined, you can hike to the top of the falls for a view from 600 feet up.

Also in Portland, we tried the Brazil Grill. I wasn’t crazy about the Brazilian steakhouse mehtod of serving. I think I prefer choosing my meat and how it is cooked. However, they had the best roasted cinnamon  pineapple. It had just the right amount of cinnamon and was roasted perfectly. I will definately have to try this dish at home.

Another great dining experience that we had was in Astoria, at the Bridgewater Bistro. My wife had the dungeness crab savory cheesecake, which she swore was delicous. I had a fantastic prime rib. If you ever happen to find yourself in Astoria (a Goonies convention, perhaps), I recommend that you try the Bridgewater Bistro. I recommend that you make reservation, however. We were there on a Monday night, and were lucky to get a table.

I have written before about TripIt. TripIt is a travel organization website that allows you to forward your reservation confirmations to the website and it automatically builds a travel itinerary for you. When I wrote about TripIt before, I had not yet tried it.

I am currently traveling in the Pacific Northwest right now and have used TripIt to organize my trips. After trying it out, I admit that I love it.

Adding reservations is a piece of cake. You simply forward them to plans@tripit.com. You assign them to a trip on the website and your trip is automatically populated with the reservation information as well as information such as weather, maps, and directions.

Also, they have great customer service. I made reservations with a regional hotel chain as well as a single hotel. TripIt could not automatically interpret the reservation information. This means that I had to enter the information manually (not really an onerous task). Given that I might stay with either hotel in the future, however, I submitted a request to TripIt for them to add these reservations to their programming.

I received a personal response from someone at TripIt who asked me to resubmit the reservation email and copy her on it. After doing so, I received a second email from her telling me that TripIt has parsed the information from my emails and added them to my trip.

Additionally, I can easily access TripIt via the web browser on my telephone. Plus, I can send an email to TripIt and the service will email my trip to me. This is very convienant while traveling.

In sum, this is a great service, that is easy to use, and is staffed by friendly, helpful people. What is not to like? I will be using TripIt for any future trips.

The fact that agents can search your computer when you cross international borders presents special problems for attorneys, given that our computers likely contain information we are ethically bound to keep confidential. If you are considering international travel with your laptop, I recommend that you check out Bruce Schneier’s column on crossing boarders with your laptop.

Bruce’s advice for your best defense:

So your best defence is to clean up your laptop. A customs agent can’t read what you don’t have. You don’t need five years’ worth of email and client data. You don’t need your old love letters and those photos (you know the ones I’m talking about). Delete everything you don’t absolutely need. And use a secure file erasure program to do it. While you’re at it, delete your browser’s cookies, cache and browsing history. It’s nobody’s business what websites you’ve visited. And turn your computer off - don’t just put it to sleep - before you go through customs; that deletes other things. Think of all this as the last thing to do before you stow your electronic devices for landing. Some companies now give their employees forensically clean laptops for travel, and have them download any sensitive data over a virtual private network once they’ve entered the country. They send any work back the same way, and delete everything again before crossing the border to go home. This is a good idea if you can do it.

I urge you to check out his entire post. Also remember that they can search your phone/PDA in the same way that they can search your laptop.

I recently traveled to St. Louis and stayed in the Westin that is across the street from Busch Stadium. Apart from Seattle’s Hotel 1000, which I loved, this has to be one of my favorite hotels. It is conveniently located across from the stadium and has easy access to the highway. Plus, the amenities are great.

The shower was beautifully appointed and contained two showerheads. The bed was very comfortable and I had a great view (as you can see in from the picture).

Additionally, this a fine hotel to be able to work from. The desk was more spacious than most and provided easy access to electrical outlets. Further, although the hotel provides wired internet access for a fee, the rooms also had wireless internet access. The WiFi had very good signal strength and worked just fine without having to pay for wired access.

Self parking is available in an open lot next to the hotel. Valet service is also available. I saw on a travel site where people were complaining about the cost of self parking. The cost is $17 and is added to your hotel bill. I don’t find that amount unreasonable. It is certainly less than what I pay in Chicago and is in line with what I have paid in Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Seattle.

All in all, if you are visiting St. Louis, I would recommend the Westin as a very nice place to stay.

I agree with the Greatest American Lawyer about the Power of a Good Vacation. Taking GAL’s words to heart, the family and I are spending the week in Tennessee at the Kickback Kottage. The cabin is very nice and has several amenities, including a hot tub and, most importantly, high speed internet access. The high speed access means that I can spend 30 minutes or so in the morning while the others are rising or in the evening after they go to bed to check my email.

Being able to check my email as I go along means that I can assign tasks to my assistant to handle while I am gone, or create a task list for items to deal with when I return. One of the hallmarks of leveraging technology is being able to work where ever I am. This does not mean that I want to work all of the time. Instead, it means that I want to be able to leave the office and do so without worrying that things are falling apart.

This is just another example of how technology can free you from the office and still allow you to effectively practice law.

When I schedule trips, I often end up with reservation confirmations from airlines, hotels, and car rental companies. I then have to put all of that information together to keep track of when I am supposed to be and how I am getting there.

TripIt is a website that offers you a way to organize your travel plans. You simply forward your reservation emails to your account at TripIt and TripIt automatically organizes your travel plans. In organizing your plan, TripIt also automatically adds common maps that people use. Additionally, TripIt shows you typical weather based upon historical patterns. It also includes a cool feature to give you one button access to flight check in and flight status on your airline’s website.

As long as you don’t mind uploading your travel information to the website, TripIt looks like a useful tool for traveling.

We have all seen those commercials with Captain Kirk trying to convince us to book our hotels through Priceline.com. Because of the bidding rules that Priceline uses (you can’t make another bid the same criteria for at least 24 hours) you are never quite sure that you are getting the best price. Also, you never quite know at what hotel you are going to end up.

BiddingForTravel.com aims to end some of that mystery. At Bidding For Travel, you can see what the hotes typically are in each of Priceline’s classes for each area. You can also find reviews of those hotels, as well as user posts stating how much they bid and what hotel they booked for that price. This is a great resource that you should check out if you are thinking of using Priceline.com.

Thanks to Legally Certifiable for pointing out this website.

Reid Trautz has great travel tips in a recent post. I love his suggestion about calling a hotel directly to check on unadvertised specials. Reid also points to this article from PC world on the best hotels for business travelers. If you are traveling in the near future, these are a couple of good resources to check out.

When I travel, I have a terrible tendency to over pack. If you suffer from the same issue, you will want to check out One Bag. The One Bag theory is that you can travel “pretty much anywhere, for an indefinite length of time, with nothing more than a single (carryon-sized) bag.”

The site has some great tips on how to travel light including lists of what to pack, as well as suggestions for the bag to use, and how to pack your bag.

Check the site out and see if you next trip isn’t a little better if you travel with less stuff.

While in Seattle, I had the opportunity to visit the community of Ocean Shores, Washington. While there, we stayed in a lovely place called the Judith Ann Inn. The Judith Ann offers suites rather than simple hotel rooms. The suite we had contained a comfortable sized bedroom, an eat-in kitchen and a large living room with a comfortable couch. Also included was a balcony that provided a view of the beach and “an elevated jetted tub” with a view of the ocean. These amenities are standard in all of their suites.

Additionally, the suite offered free internet, including both a wireless and a wired connection. The suite had speakers wired in both the living room and the bedroom, thus allowing you to listen to the free digital music throughout the suite. Additionally, the satellite channel selection was excellant. The suite also include a DVD player, in case you wanted to your own movies.

I found our stay in the Judith Ann to be quite comfortable and I would not hesitate to stay there if I again visit Ocean Shores.