As it becomes standard practice for attorneys to maintain client files in a digital format, data breaches and similar technology-based security threats become a far more significant concern. While much has been said about preventing data breaches, far less is said about an attorney’s (or any business owner’s) obligations following the data breach – particularly the duty to notify effected clients.

For a convenient starting point to determining what legal obligations you may have in the event of such a data breach, check out the Data Breach Notification Laws map created by CSOonline. Simply click on your state, or any state you’re curious about, for a brief summary of their current laws regarding data breach notification. If the state has applicable legislation, you can click on the summary for a link to the full text.

Many people have heard the phrase "web accessibility" before, but few fully understand what it means. To help shed a little light on the often confusing topic and what it means for the legal profession, we've put together a collection of helpful resources in our new FYI: Web Accessibility.

In this new FYI, you'll find links to prevailing standards, accessibility initiatives, assistive technology vendors, and attorney communities focused on accessibility issues. You'll also find some information on ABA resolution 108 and the ABA's recent efforts to promote accessible web sites within the legal community.

Check it out: FYI: Web Accessibility.

If you use a tabbed browser and have ever wished for a way to quickly bookmark multiple tabs for browsing later, such as when you have a number of web pages on a relevant topic open in your browser for a research project, you’re in luck.  Both Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 allow you to bookmark multiple tabs at once, save them into a folder of your liking, and later conveniently open them all at once. 

In Internet Explorer 7, you can bookmark a group of tabs by clicking on the “Add to Favorites” button (the gold star with the green plus sign at the top left of the browser window) and then selecting “Add Tab Group to Favorites,” then select a folder to add the bookmarks to or create a new folder.  To open the group of tabs all at once, click on the “Favorites” button (the gold star), move your mouse over the folder with the bookmarks you want to open, and click on the blue arrow that appears.

In Firefox 2 you can bookmark a group of tabs by selecting “Bookmark All Tabs” in the Bookmarks menu, then select an existing folder or create a new folder to put the tabs in.  To open the group of tabs all at once select the folder under the Bookmarks tab, and select the “Open All In Tabs” option that appears at the bottom of the list of all of the bookmarks in the folder.

There is a hitch in Firefox 2--under the default settings, when you choose to open a group of tabs all at once, any tabs you had already open will be closed.  To change this, enter the text “about:config” (without the quotation marks) in your browser’s location bar, find the entry “browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace,” and change the “true” setting in the “value” column to “false” by double clicking on it.  This problem is apparently remedied in Firefox 3, which is currently available only in beta version.

For more information on tabbed browsing, see the LTRC's article “Fire(fox) Up Your Browser!” 

Andrew Perlman of the Legal Ethics Forum brings news of yet another ethics opinion addressing metadata, this time from Colorado. According to his post, the Colorado opinion “…concludes that a lawyer should generally be allowed to look at metadata, unless the attorney knows or has reason to believe that the document contains privileged information.” The full text of the opinion is available here: Colorado Bar Association Ethics Opinion 119: Disclosure, Review, and Use of Metadata, Adopted May 17, 2008.

Be sure to read the entire post, which includes a very helpful breakdown (with links to the relevant opinions) of those states and bar associations that have held it is generally acceptable to look at metadata versus those who have held it’s generally unacceptable.

See also:
    ABA Site-tation: Mind Your Metadata: Don't Reveal Strategic Information Through Hidden Comments, Tracked Changes, and Document Properties
    LTRC Presentation: Metadata (and other things that go bump in the night)

In Microsoft Outlook 2007 you can use a new feature called overlay mode to stay on top of appointments and obligations across various calendars, such as your main calendar and any calendars you share with coworkers.

With Outlook 2003, users with access to several calendars can only view them one-by-one or side-by-side in order to compare appointments on different calendars.  Viewing calendars side-by-side can be somewhat useful for comparing calendars day by day in day view, but what if you want to compare calendars a week at a time or a month at a time?  Comparing calendars side-by-side in week or month view can be very difficult as the text on the calendar entries gets cut off due to the size requirements of displaying a whole week or month for each calendar selected. 

To solve this problem, Outlook 2007 introduces a vast improvement in comparing appointments across various calendars in any view, including week view and month view, with its new overlay mode.  With overlay mode you can select various calendars you want to compare at the same time, and rather than being displayed side-by-side, the calendars are overlaid on top of each other.  This greatly improves the readability of the appointment information and makes it much easier to compare various calendars.  With overlay mode you don’t have to look from calendar to calendar to compare appointments, but rather can see all appointments across all of the selected calendars upon one single calendar grid; each day displays all of the appointments for that day across all of the selected calendars.  

To use overlay mode, click in the checkboxes for any calendars you want to view in the “My Calendars” section of Outlook 2007.  


By default the calendars will initially be displayed in side-by-side mode.  On the top left corner of each calendar (other than your main calendar at first) you will see an arrow icon. 

Click on the arrow icon for each calendar that you want to view in overlay mode, and now the appointments on all of your selected calendars will be displayed on a single calendar grid for easy and convenient viewing.  Click on the arrows again to switch back to side-by-side mode.


To further improve the readability of the text of calendar appointments, you can minimize the Outlook Navigation Pane by clicking on the double arrow on the top right corner of the pane to devote more screen space to the calendar display.  



You can also reduce the font size of calendar appointment text by right-clicking on an empty space on the calendar grid and selecting “Other settings.” (Or while in the Calendar view, select View->Current View->Other settings.)  Then click on the “Font” button in the “Month” section, and set the font to a smaller size such as 7pt to be able to view more of the appointment text in the calendar display.

Other resources:Microsoft.comView calendars side-by-side or overlaid
Lifehacker.com Overlay Calendars in Outlook (like Google Calendar)
American Bar AssociationThe Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft® Outlook 2007
Microsoft.com Feature Comparison Between Outlook 2003, Office Outlook 2007, and Outlook Web Access 2007

The folks at Mozilla have been busy with Firefox updates.  The latest version, Firefox 3.0.3 addresses several security issues while improving usability.  This is also a good time to consider several Firefox features that can improve your browsing experience.

Session Restore - If Firefox closes unexpectedly, you don't have to go search the history to return to your webpages.  Upon restart Firefox will ask you if you'd like to restart the previous session.

Save and Quit - Have you hesistated to shut down your computer or Firefox session because you had so many great webpages open?  Now, when you shut down, Firefox asks you if you'd like to Save and Quit.  This gives you the opportunity to automatically return to the last webpage(s) you visited the next time you launch Firefox.

Spell Checking - Built into the browser so if you are on the road and replying to your e-mail via the web or submitting a blog post, a red underline will indicate a misspelled word and a right mouse click over that word will list suggested alternatives.

For more information regarding Firefox features, visit the website.

Additional Resources

Managing Online Research with Firefox and Internet Explorer 7's Multiple Tab Bookmarking Features

Fire(fox) Up Your Browser!

The next two volumes of the 2008 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report, Litigation and Courtroom Technology (Vol. 3) and Web and Communication Technology (Vol. 4), are now available for purchase.

In 2008 the findings of the ABA Legal Technology Survey Report will be published serially in six volumes, including Baseline and Budgets (May), Law Office Technology (May), Litigation and Courtroom Technology (June), Web and Communication Technology (June), Online Research (July) and Mobile Lawyers (July). Highlights of the 2008 ABA Legal Technology Survey include the following:

• The 2008 Litigation and Courtroom Technology report observed a major increase in the availability of litigation support software at respondents’ firms. Availability jumped to 58% in the 2008 survey from 32% in the 2007 survey.  Among the brand names reported were Summation (51%), LiveNote (31%) and CaseMap (29%).

• In the 2008 Litigation and Courtroom Technology report, more than a third of 2008 respondents report having had training in courtroom technologies (36%), up from 23% in the 2007 survey.  Likewise, almost three-fourths of respondents have received court documents electronically (72%, up from 60% in the 2007 survey).
  
  
• According to the 2008 Web and Communication report there was a 15% increase in the use of videoconferencing with more than half (55%) of respondents reporting having used videoconferencing, up from 40% in the 2007 survey.
  
  
• More than four-fifths (83%) of respondents’ firms have websites in the 2008 Web and Communication report, up from 73% in the 2007 survey. Meanwhile, the percentage of large law firms reported to have blogs has doubled to 17% from 8% in the 2007 survey.

"The ABA’s annual legal technology survey provides the most thorough report on trends in legal technology. It is a reality check about whether your firm is keeping up with the Joneses when it comes to utilizing technology investments to achieve their strategic business objectives."  Dena Rafte, Rafte and Company, a legal technology consultancy for law firms.

We’re following the lead of the legal profession by going paperless - the 2008 survey reports will be published solely as PDF e-products and available for immediate download. Each of the six volumes begins with a trend report that summarizes the notable results and highlights changes from previous years, followed by detailed charts and tables.

The survey is an annual project of the ABA's Legal Technology Resource Center; a specialized unit providing lawyers, bar associations, law schools, and other legal organizations with information on technology and its use by the legal profession. We update the LTRC website frequently so visit often.

For additional information or to order the survey, visit the LTRC Survey Page.

The web has become an essential tool in most lawyer’s research arsenal, but digging through the vast expanse of the web – which Google recently estimated at more than 1 trillion pages – can be daunting. Most popular search engines have indexes that include tens of billions of pages, making even simple searches seem useless at times due to the low signal-to-noise ratio in the results.

One way to minimize your frustration and maximize your results is to create your own search engine. With tools like Google Custom Search and Rollyo, building your own search engine is as easy as picking out the websites you’d like it to search. The custom search engines are ideal for users who have a specific interest area to which they’d like to confine their searches. For example, in October of last year the LTRC built the Legal Technology Web Search tool – a search engine that looks exclusively at legal technology sites. You can try out the search engine on the LTRC home page or you can even add it to your iGoogle page.

Ready to learn more about custom search engines? Jim Calloway and Courtney Kennaday address the topic in some detail in their article for the September 2008 GP Solo Technology eReport Newsletter: Build Your Own Search Engine.

E-mail whitelisting is a topic that Jim Calloway posted about awhile back, but is still vitally important in case you missed it.  The gist is that very important e-mail messages, such as court notices of hearings, may be put into a spam box by your e-mail programs, causing you to disastrously miss important deadlines and face court sanctions and other negative outcomes.  To expand upon the post, here are some tips on how to whitelist important e-mail addresses in Microsoft Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo! Mail.


Microsoft OutlookCreating an e-mail whitelist in Microsoft Outlook involves adding the desired e-mail addresses or domains to the “Safe Senders” or “Safe Recipients” lists.  You can select to have e-mail addresses in your Contacts list be added to the Safe Senders list, and can select to have anyone you e-mail automatically be added to the Safe Senders list.

For more information, including the differences between the Safe Senders and Safe Recipients lists, see:Microsoft Office Online: 
Add names to the Junk E-mail Filter Lists
andAdd a name to your Safe Senders or Safe Recipients ListHotmail

Creating an e-mail whitelist in Hotmail involves adding the desired e-mail addresses or domains to a “Safe List.”

         See: 
         Msn.com: 
         Create a Safe List for incoming messages

GmailAccording to Google, “If you find that some senders' messages are consistently being mislabeled as spam, you can prevent this by adding their email addresses to your Contacts list. Gmail will deliver messages from members of your Contacts list to your inbox, unless they meet these criteria.”  Google lists certain criteria which if met will prevent this whitelist tactic from working, including if the “To” and “From” addresses for an e-mail message are the same.

Now, this is a big problem, because people often will send legitimate e-mails where the primary “To” field is filled in with their own e-mail address, and a list of recipients is included in the blind contact/BCC field, with the purpose of sending a message to numerous people but preventing the recipients from being able to view each other’s e-mail addresses—even if you have added the sender’s e-mail address to your contacts list, this type of e-mail message may still end up in your spam box.

Until Google adds a dedicated whitelisting function for Gmail, be sure to check your spam box daily to see if any legitimate e-mail messages, even e-mail messages from senders whose addresses you have placed in your Contacts list, have been erroneously placed there and which might otherwise escape your notice.

See:Gmail Help Center:
Legitimate mail is marked as spam
and
Mail from contacts is marked as spamYahoo! MailUnlike Microsoft Outlook and Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail does not yet feature a dedicated whitelist/safe list for e-mail addresses.  Some writers online have suggested that creating a filter designed to route e-mail messages from specific e-mail addresses to your inbox and adding those e-mail addresses to your address book/contacts list can prevent messages from those address from being sent to your spam box/bulk mail box, but there is no official word from Yahoo on whether these methods work.  In the meantime, if you try these methods, be sure to check your spam box/bulk mail box daily to see if legitimate mail was erroneously placed there which might otherwise escape your notice.

Other resources:Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog: 
Spam Filter Traps Law Firm: You Can Avoid This Trap

Disaster planning has been a popular topic lately, and much attention has been directed at data backup. While data backup is essential in what is now frequently a paperless profession, Laura Calloway of the Alabama State Bar suggests that attorneys should look at the broader picture when developing their preparedness plans. In particular, she recommends taking “a few minutes out of your busy day to look around and determine all of your critical systems, what could possibly make each of them fail, and what you will do about it if one should.”

Read the full post at her blog - The Last Word - for a good example of one system in particular you may not have thought to backup.

More on disaster preparedness:
     ABA Site-tation: Hurricane Season Again: Do You Have a Disaster Plan?

The “paperless office” has been a popular topic in legal technology circles recently as an increasing number of law firms (and other businesses) look to cut costs and improve efficiency by cutting paper out of their workflow. While many attorneys look to journals, bar associations, and legal consultants for advice on going paperless, an article from the New York Times this weekend suggests a somewhat unexpected source of guidance: your home. According to the Times,

“…at home, where printers are slow, noisy and devour expensive ink cartridges, people are more cautious about hitting the “print” button. What little paper comes into the home – receipts, bills, innovations – can be scanned and then shredded. Filing cabinets can be emptied, the data kept, the paper gone.”

Read the whole article for some examples of how others have cut paper from their homes, and for some interesting graphics on the paperless home and on global trends in paper reduction.

Several users of Office 2007, IE 7, and Vista have complained that text looks blurrier in these programs than in previous versions.  There is in fact a difference in the way the text is displayed—these programs by default use a new Microsoft feature called “ClearType,” intended to make text easier on the eyes in certain circumstances but with an unintended “blurry-looking text” side effect for some users.  If you find that ClearType causes text to look blurry in these programs, below are instructions on how to use an online program called Microsoft ClearType Tuner, with which you can adjust ClearType display settings more to your liking, as well as instructions on how to turn ClearType off and on.  

Note that several of the new default fonts included in Vista and Office 2007 products, such as Calibri and Segoe, have apparently been designed to work best with ClearType on, and look worse than other fonts to some users when ClearType is turned off.  Thus, if you turn ClearType off, you may also want to change your default fonts to more traditional fonts such as Arial or Times New Roman.  However, note that Microsoft states on their website, “We do not recommend that you turn off ClearType fonts,” and points users to the Microsoft ClearType Tuner online program to adjust ClearType settings.Instructions on using the ClearType Tuner to adjust ClearType display settingsFollow the link above to an online “tuner” Microsoft provides with which you can adjust the way ClearType displays text in Vista, XP, and Office 2007 programs.

Instructions on turning ClearType on/off in Windows Vista (click on the “How do I get ClearType?” heading)ClearType is turned on by default in Windows Vista.  Follow the instructions linked above to turn ClearType on or off.  Turning ClearType off or on in the Vista system settings should also determine whether ClearType is used in individual Microsoft Office programs.

Instructions on turning ClearType on/off in Windows XP (click on the “How to Enable ClearType” heading)  ClearType is turned off by default in Windows XP.  Follow the instructions linked above to turn ClearType on or off.  Turning ClearType on or off in XP does not affect whether ClearType is used in individual Microsoft Office programs.

Instructions on turning ClearType on/off in Internet Explorer 7  ClearType is turned on by default in IE 7.  Follow the instructions linked above to turn ClearType on or off.  

Instructions on turning ClearType on/off in Office 2007 programs (click on the “Method 2: Turn off ClearType fonts” heading) ClearType is turned on by default in Office 2007 programs.  Follow the instructions linked above to turn ClearType on or off.  Turning ClearType on or off in one Office 2007 program should affect whether ClearType is on or off in all Office 2007 programs.

Instructions on how to set the default font in Word 2007The default font in Word 2007 is Calibri, a new font designed to be used with ClearType.  Some users think Calibri looks worse than other fonts once ClearType is turned off.  Follow the instructions linked to above to change Word 2007’s default font, such as to a more typical font such as Arial or Times New Roman.

Instructions on how to set the default font in Outlook 2007The default font in Outlook 2007 for messages is Calibri, a new font designed to be used with ClearType.  Some users think Calibri looks worse than other fonts once ClearType is turned off.  Follow the instructions linked to above to change Word 2007’s default font, such as to a more typical font such as Arial or Times New Roman.  However, the default font for the user interface in Outlook seems to be the font Segoe, another font apparently designed to be used with ClearType on.  There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to change the user interface font from Segoe, other than removing the Segoe font from Window’s font folder (be sure to contact your IT person first if you decide to try to change the user interface font from Segoe).

E-mail’s ease of use and relative inexpensiveness has allowed it to rapidly overtake phone and postal mail as the communication tool of choice for individuals, businesses, and of course, law firms. But this rapid rise in popularity comes at a price: e-mail is susceptible to a wide variety of technological glitches, exploitations, and misuses that simply don’t apply to more traditional communication tools. One of the most obvious failings – but also one of the most preventable – is user error. Two recent stories highlight this problem and the need for greater care on the part of users:

First, Consumerist relays the story of a Beaner’s Coffee customer that contacted the company’s customer service to inquire when and if the company would be eliminating partially hydrogenated vegetable oils – a source of much feared trans fats – from its product lines. While the response the consumer received from the company’s Vice President of Operations was harmless enough, the trail of emails the VP accidentally included with the response featured rather embarrassing advice from the Director of Training to “sidestep the question” because he felt the company would be “hopelessly mired in partially hydrogenated oils for a while.”

A far bigger and potentially costly e-mail gaffe came from an attorney at Pepper Hamilton in Philadelphia. The attorney, who was among those representing pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly in settlement negotiations with the U.S. Government over alleged advertising irregularities, accidentally mis-addressed an e-mail containing detailed information on the negotiations. Rather than sending the e-mail to a colleague at Sidley Austin (who was also representing Eli Lilly), the attorney sent the e-mail to a reporter at the New York Times who shared the same last name. Unsurprisingly, the New York Times ran an article shortly thereafter exposing the negotiations and greatly embarrassing both Eli Lilly and its legal representation.

The lessons to be learned are obvious: though e-mail is easy to use, attorneys (and others) must apply just as much scrutiny and care – if not more – to its use than they would any other communication tool. Addresses should be verified before sending, content should be checked for sensitive client or case information, and care must be taken to avoid inadvertently including files or e-mail trails that contain privileged or otherwise sensitive information. Failure to do so could be embarrassing and harmful to both your clients and your career.

UPDATE: The ABA Journal is covering the Pepper Hamilton story as well. In an update posted this afternoon, the Journal links to a follow up on the Drug and Device Law Blog which reports that, while the author of the NY Times piece did indeed receive the misdirected e-mail, he was independently aware of the settlement talks and used a different source for the details mentioned in his article.

As new trends in technology reshape the legal profession, a lawyer's formal ethical obligations can at times seem unmanageably complex. Attorneys Sharon D. Nelson and Jim Calloway help navigate the often confusing marriage of technology and ethics in this month's edition of The Digital Edge podcast: "Ethics in the Electronic Era: Staying Out of the Briar Patch."

The Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology Podcast is a regular feature of Law Technology Today. Be sure to check out their past podcasts in the Digital Edge Archive on topics including courthouse technology and electronic marketing.

Almost two years ago, Google acquired a small tech startup called JotSpot that was at the time best known for its user-friendly Wiki/online collaboration platform. In the months that followed, Google’s engineers worked to redesign JotSpot’s web applications and to integrate them with Google’s application suite. Last February, the results of those efforts were revealed when Google announced the limited release of Google Sites.

With Google Sites, individuals, companies, and organizations can quickly and easily set up websites to disseminate information or to facilitate collaboration. The websites may be limited to a company, team, or other small group, or they may be opened to the public. The pages themselves are easily edited through a user-friendly graphical interface that allows the user to change and insert text, embed video and pictures, add attachments, or directly link in documents created in other Google applications. Users may also embed a wide variety of “gadgets” into their pages, ranging from RSS feeds to calendars to games.

While Google Sites was initially a part of the Google Apps suite available only to Google Apps customers, Google announced last week that it was opening Google Sites to anyone and everyone starting immediately. You can get started with your own Site at the Google Sites web page or you can learn more on Google’s official Google Sites Blog.

ABA Journal Widget

Looking for a constant stream of fresh content for your website? The ABAJournal.com now offers a widget that lets you display the latest news from ABAJournal.com on your website. Simply embed the widget (computer code) into your website, et voila! Customization options include choosing how many headlines to display on the page. You can also add the widget to a personalized homepage, like MyYahoo! or iGoogle, and there is  a widget for Mac attorneys using Mac OS 10.4 "Tiger" or later to add the latest ABAJournal.com news to their Mac Dashboard.

Improved Blawg Directory Search

The ABAJournal.com has enhanced its search engine! Powered by legal information powerhouse Justia.com, this robust search engine lets you quickly search not only the ABAJournal news and magazine, but hundreds of legal blog postings with a single click. After running a search simply look behind the "BlawgResults" tab to see keyword matches to hundreds of blog postings from the blogs listed on the ABA Journal Blawg Directory.  The Advanced Search options let you specify whether to search the ABA Journal Daily News, the ABA Journal magazine (5 years of free online archives), the Blawg Directory, and/or the blog posts to the blogs in the directory with date ranges. Don't see your (favorite) legal blog? Just submit it to the ABAJournal (http://www.abajournal.com/blawgs/submit):

Other Resources

• Share Your Favorite Legal Research Tools
• FYI: Blogs

The (re)appearance of text messages highlights the need for organizations to examine and include all messaging systems, not just email messaging systems in their document and record retention systems and policies.

The Detroit Free Press reports that City of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick declared under oath that he did not have an affair with his chief of staff nor did he fire two police officers in a retaliatory manner. However, text messages between the mayor and his chief of staff on their city issued pagers bring his testimony into question.  Since 2004 the city of Detroit had fought to keep the text messages from being provided to the legal team representing the police officers.  The City eventually settled with the former police officers but the Detroit Free Press filed suit to learn more about the settlement.

According to an article by Free Press columnist Mike Wendland, “Text messaging is what the wireless companies call SMS, for short message service. It has become almost as popular as cell phone voice communications, with as many as 20 billion text messages being sent each month in the United States alone. Most text messages are deleted within 72 hours, but in the mayor's case, his messages were saved because of the specialized service the city has with SkyTel for wireless communications between city officials.”

The article goes on to say, “Most major carriers don’t store text messages on any server for more than 72 hours.  Had the mayor and his top aide used regular cell phones and text messaging services from Verizon or Sprint, there would be no record.” This raises the issue of records retention and policy. 

According to ARMA International,  a not-for-profit professional association for managing records and information; “the goal of an information retention and disposition program is to ensure that a record is identified, appraised, and maintained for an appropriate period of time in such a way that is accessible and retrievable. It is disposed of – either destroyed or transferred for permanent preservation – at the end of the total retention period.” In light of this goal, were the text messages at issue in the Detroit mayor’s case appropriately retained and archived?

A 2005 Law Practice Today article, The Strongest Links: Instant Messaging Resources, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell referred to text messaging, the impact of instant messaging (IM) on the practice of law, and learning about IM for purposes of discovery.  More recently in his blog, Dennis Kennedy posted a reference to a Gartner report that forecasts 2.3 trillion messages will be sent across major markets worldwide in 2008, a 19.6 percent increase from the 2007 total of 1.9 trillion messages.  The increasing popularity of this medium, coupled with its potential liability to all kinds of organizations, highlights the importance of an electronic message records management policy that addresses the life cycle from message creation to final destruction or disposition.  Following are resources to help with creating or updating your records management policy.

Resources

FYI: Records Management/Document RetentionAn LTRC resource to help make sense of records management systems and policies.

Developing a Records Retention ProgramResources from ARMA International to help organizations develop compliant records management programs.

Records Management - The Objectives of a Comprehensive Records Management ProgramResources provided by the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) Project to address the lack of standards and guidelines in the electronic discovery market.

Cutting Out Privacy in the OfficeA law.com article discusses a recent New York case using office messaging systems.

Last week we wrote about Front-running, the process whereby cyber-squatters sneak in and register a domain name between the time you check for availability and the time you actually register it. This week, “drop-catching” – or snatching up expired domains the instant they become available – is in the news with a study from the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) finding that 100% of expired domains in their study were instantly re-registered after being released. The vast majority of these domains – 87% of the dot-com addresses – were turned into pay-per-click sites that earn their owners money by drawing in visitors to click (often unintentionally) on advertisements.

How can you protect yourself from drop-catching? Simple: don’t let your domain expire. Know your expiration date and make sure you renew well before that date. Consider using auto-renewal – a feature most domain registrars offer – to ensure that your domain is automatically re-registered in your name each year. And if you really want to protect your domain, go long term on your registration: some domain registrars will allow you to register your domain for ten or more years at once, and they often offer significant discounts to those who do so.

And while you're thinking about domain protection, also give some thought to registering other reasonable permutations of your domain name. For example, if you owned genericlawfirm.com, you might want to register genericlawfirm.net, genericlaw.com, and so forth. Pre-emptively registering these domains prevents squatters from purchasing them and co-opting your hard earned brand capital.

Tired of digging through endless pages of Google search results to find the tidbit of information you need? If so, you’re not alone: a study recently commissioned by Autobytel Inc. found that “a whopping 72 percent of online searchers are experiencing ‘Search Engine Fatigue,’ meaning that they become inpatient or frustrated when they are unable to quickly find the information they need.” Indeed, many users leave the computer without ever finding what they were looking for.

In hopes of easing your frustration – at least when it comes to legal technology searches – the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center has put together a new tool: the LTRC Legal Technology Web Search. This search engine, built using Google’s Custom Search feature, will focus your query on some of our favorite legal technology websites, including Law Tech News, Law.com’s Legal Technology, TechnoLawyer, and more. You’ll get the information you need without the dozens of pages of useless results.

Ready to give it a try? Look for the custom search box at the bottom of our home page or add the LTRC Legal Technology Web Search gadget to your iGoogle page.

There’s no shortage of horror stories around the web about someone’s online persona coming back to haunt them in the real world, particularly in the context of a job search. A simple Google search of a person’s name may turn up any questionable photographs, off-color jokes, or other content that person posted to a blog or social network wrongly assuming the only audience was a few friends or family members.

It’s always gratifying, therefore, to read about an online persona that’s helped rather than harmed a young attorney. Carla DeVelder of the Career & Professional Development Blog shares the story of a law student who parlayed her participation in a Facebook alumni group into a job offer at a fellow alum’s law firm. Carla’s post also includes a number of helpful tips for managing your online persona.

See also:
   ABA Site-tation: Online reputation management