The Connected Lawyer

I recently had to book a hotel stay. I booked the hotel through the Hilton website. When I completed the reservation, the system gave me the option to have my stay information emailed to me in iCalendar format.

I selected this option and a few minutes later I had an email with my hotel information contained within it. I accepted the meeting and I then had a calendar entry with the hotel name and city. The note attached to the calendar entry contained my confirmation number as well as the full street address and telephone number of the hotel. After syncing my Treo, I now had all of this information on my Treo.

This is a great little option offered by Hilton, that I had not seen before on other reservation sites. This gives me one more reason to book my hotel stays through Hilton’s website.
The question I have, however, is: Why doesn’t everyone do this? I imagine it is not terribly difficult to program. Plus, it is great feature for your consumers.

This is the view I had from near the top of Pike’s Peak. At the same time I had this beautiful view, I was able to take a couple of minutes, check my email, and confirm with a potential new client that the client had retained our firm to represent it in a new litigation matter.

The great thing about staying connected with a Treo is that I can spend just a couple of minutes checking my email, putting out any major fires, and addressing any major concerns. Then I can go back to my vacation without having to worry about things at the office.

Additionally, there is just something neat about being able to check my email while at the top of Pike’s Peak.

Most people have seen the story circulating about the computer tech who screwed up and not only destroyed a hard drive full of information, but also destroyed the back up as well.

I am sure that there are those who will point to these errors (I say these because the tech made several mistakes) and use that for justification for not storing information digitally. Based upon the news reports I have seen, however, that is not the lesson to be learned here. Instead, the lesson to be learned is that part of a reasonable backup strategy is making sure that your backups work.

It appears that the owner of the records had, at first glance, a good backup strategy. The original electronic records were on a hard drive. A copy of those records existed on a second hard drive. And, a copy of the records existed on a tape backup of the original drive.

This plan is good in that it contains certain redundancies. Not only is there a hard drive backup, but there is also a tape backup.  It is not clear from the story whether any of backup information was stored off site, however that is an integral part of a good backup plan as well.

If they had such a good backup plan, how did this happen? Based on the reports, I see two reasons. First the technician accidentally erased the hard drive backup. I can envision a situation where a person accidentally erases original information. How, however, does the technician who just screwed up and reformatted a hard drive with critical information turn around and delete the same information from the backup?

The final problem of course is that no one regularly checked the tape backups to ensure that they were working properly. A backup solution is not a solution if you cannot restore your original files from the backup. You should regularly test your backups to ensure that they are working properly and that you can restore from them. This is especially true with tape backups because tape is an unstable medium. It degrades over time. Because of this, you should have any tape backups on a regular replacement schedule. Most manufacturers recommend replacing your tapes at least once a year.

If you like your Treo (and I certainly do) you should be reading the Treonauts blog. The blog contains reviews of Treo accessories, helping you make the decision on which accessories may work best for you. The blog also keeps you updated with current news regarding the Treo. A recent post gives us a nice summary of things happening in the new future with Palm and the Treo.

It’s time to highlight some more blogs that I read on regular basis.

A Criminal Waste of Space is a humorous column written by Justice Bedsworth. Without a doubt, he has the funniest footnotes around.

Al Nye the Lawyer Guy. I just found this blog when Al contacted me. It did not take me long to get hooked on his blog. I really like his book reviews.

Bag and Baggage by Denise Howell was one of the first prominent legal bloggers and is credited with coining the term blawg.

Blog Maverick is written by Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Love him or hate him, Mark always has something interesting to say. He frequently asks provocative questions on the effect of technology on daily life or the law.

Blonde Justice. Although my practice does not even come close to the criminal courtroom, I am still addicted to reading this blog.

Home Office Lawyer is written by Grant Griffiths.  Despite the name of the blog, Grant provides great information that can be used by everyone who wants to leverage technology in their practice.

Inter Alia by Tom Mighell. Tom seems to find every new blog that is published. His Blog of the Day posts have introduced me to a myriad of new blogs.

I know that this really has nothing to do with technology, but I could not pass on commenting on this. Susan Cartier Liebel of Build a Solo Practice LLC posted a few days ago about a proposed North Carolina ethics opinion that (and no I am not making this up) prohibits an attorney from giving a client,a non-client, a fellow attorney or an allied professional more than one business card or one firm brochure. As quoted by Susan, the examples state:

Inquiry:

If a client, non-client, fellow attorney, or allied professional requests one or more business cards or firm brochures from the estate-planning attorney, may the estate-planning attorney oblige the request?

Opinion:

The attorney may give a third party one of his business cards or one brochure in response to a request. The attorney may not give the third party multiple cards or brochures because of the risk of in-person solicitation by the third party on the attorney’s behalf.

Inquiry:

Along with a thank-you letter from the attorney to a client for the client’s having allowed the attorney to provide services to that client, may the attorney include a business card and/or firm brochure with the suggestion that the client, if so willing, pass it along to someone who the client thinks might need similar services?

Opinion:

No, because of the risk of in-person solicitation by the third party on the attorney’s behalf.

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