Last night I lectured to the Barbieri Inn of Court – a specialty group of lawyers in the Philadelphia area who primarily handle workers’ compensation cases – about the requirement that lawyers be technologically competent. I discussed everything from cellphone security to ransomware.
But today I realized that for some lawyers the bar for technological competence is much, much lower, perhaps below ground level.… Read the rest
The NSA has released a cybersecurity report on how to better secure Voice and Video Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) systems. These systems allows you to make calls using an Internet connection rather than a regular phone line and combine voice, video, and instant messaging.
The report is helpful and provides easy-to-understand guidance on how to protect these communications from vulnerabilities and hackers and limit the risk to data confidentiality.… Read the rest
Microsoft released its April update for Windows 10, and it fixes a lot of bugs, 113 of them to be exact – some of which are important. For more information, click here to visit the ZDNet story about the update.
Although we have been unable to confirm this with Microsoft, our office has experienced problems with the update – one in particular: our Microsoft Word normal.dot… Read the rest
It is incompetent for a lawyer to believe, let alone say or write that “It is illegal [for a lawyer] to text or email anything of substance.” The statement is also completely wrong, legally and ethically.
Yet one lawyer, an ethics “maven” no loss, who writes a column for a major local legal newspaper, actually wrote those completely inaccurate words as part of his lament that – because of COVID-19 – he can no longer work in the same type of law office common in 1973, when he received his law license, you know, when Richard Nixon was President.… Read the rest
A study by the Red Bee Group found that lawyers working remotely were somewhat or very satisfied with the systems in place to allow them to work remotely. That’s not what we are hearing at Integrated Technology Services, LLC, where we hear that many solo and small firm attorneys weren’t ready for the dramatic upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and its forced closure of firms.… Read the rest
In our office, we use four software tools more than any others: Microsoft Outlook, Legal Files case management software, Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat DC. In addition, at Integrated Technology Services, LLC, Pam Myers and Dan Siegel sell, support and train users of these and numerous other software products, including the entire Microsoft Office 365 suite of products. These products are even more essential now that we, like everyone else, must work remotely for an indefinite period of time.… Read the rest
Not the pandemic itself, of course.
None of us is prepared for a pandemic.
But our clients at Integrated Technology Services, LLC all knew that to prepare for a catastrophe, they needed to transform their offices into a paperless environment. And we tell clients of our law firm, the Law Offices of Daniel J. Siegel, LLC, that we have cutting edge technology, which will allow us to operate remotely even when the Governor has ordered us to close our physical office.… Read the rest
PDF users beware: If you don’t know how to redact, or how redaction and PDF editing work, you may have problems. Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer has an article that highlights how easy it to “edit” PDFs. The article spotlights how documents containing Pennsylvania State Senate expense records appear to have “changed” over time. For those who don’t understand PDFs, it may be confounding.… Read the rest
Software trainers may know about the products they support, but they may not know what you do. Legal software is the perfect example. Trainers often know their products, but couldn’t explain the difference between a pleading, discovery, or a contract, let alone the nuances that are so critical to successful lawyering. We do, we are practicing lawyers and practicing paralegals, who not only speak the language of law, we use it every day.… Read the rest
