Legal Technology

Documents for the people ...

I came across a very good Web site for government documents at Governmentdocs.org. It provides access to government documents by allowing users to browse, search and review hundreds of thousands of pages acquired through FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) and other public disclosure, or “sunshine,” laws. And, if you  register as a user, you can review and comment on documents.

Mac Envy

I don't deny Mac users their love of their hardware. And I especially don't deny them their love for their software, especially since the underlying code is near and dear to my heart: BSD. And I do listen when family and friends tell me I should get a Mac. But I don't listen when they say that the Mac is safe and virus-free. Now that it's running a main-stream OS, it is subject to reported bugs and vulnerabilities. And that is also true now that the Mac is also running serious business applications. So Mac people need to be vigilant. Check out the latest round of vulnerabilities and see Apple's page on how to update your software.

Tech Trials

We all get frustrated with new technology. We also get frustrated with old technology such as tape. But when you get right down to it, whether old or new, if the input is bad the output will be bad. And in the "live-court-reporter vs. tape" debate, the "garbage in" argument lends itself well to Jerome L. Rose letter to the editor of the New Jersey Law Journal, where he states that there's nothing like a real live court reporter.

Metadata Blinders in N.Y.

Lawyers routinely transmit e-mails with attachments, such as proposed contracts and transactional documents, that contain metadata. Thelen Reid partners Richard Raysman and Peter Brown survey regional and professional ethics rules for sending and receiving "data about data" in "Taking the High Road With Metadata." There, they bring to light New York's  Disciplinary Rule  4-101.

On the one hand, using computer technology to obtain metadata can lead to disclosure of an adversary's confidences or secrets. Hence, under DR 4-101 attorneys must "use reasonable care when transmitting documents by e-mail to prevent the disclosure of metadata containing client confidences or secrets." New York State Bar Assoc. Ethics Op. 782 (2001). Okay then. What about the other hand?

The other hand holds the receiving attorneys responsibility under DR 4-101. NYSBA Ethics Opinion 749 (2001) concluded that "a lawyer may not make use of computer software applications to surreptitiously 'get behind' visible documents or to trace e-mail." This is sorta-kinda like telling the open source community that reverse engineering is unethical.

One can imagine the case of the dueling banjos: One attorney does not take reasonable care in transmitting documents via e-mail and opposing counsel mines them for metadata. No doubt, this will be offsetting penalties and the plaintiff will kick off again from the 40-yard line.

When N.Y. takes the blinders off, we'll most likely have a bright-line rule.

Law Technology News Vendor Awards Announced

The finalists for the 2007 Law Technology News Vendor Awards, and the winners of the 2007 LTN Law Firm and Law Dept. Awards have been announced! The vendor awards, voted on by LTN's readers, include several categories for EDD and litigation support products, including Electronic Data Discovery Systems Hardware/Software, Electronic Data Discovery Systems Service, Litigation Support Software and Trial Presentation Software.

Lawyer-Client E-Mail Loses Privilege Over Employer's Facilities

Kudman Trachten Aloe partner Paul Aloe reports that  Scott v. Beth Israel Medical Center serves as a "stark" warning for professionals communicating with clients over electronic communications provided by employers. Although N.Y. CPLR 4548 provides that "[n]o communication otherwise privileged under this article shall lose its privileged character for the sole reason that it is communicated by electronic means or because persons necessary for the delivery or facilitation of such electronic communication may have access to the content of the communication," Judge Ramos held that e-mails between a lawyer and client enjoyed no privilege because the employer had a policy of prohibiting personal use of its e-mail, phone and fax systems and a policy that such communication could be viewed by the employer.

Culling for Code

Are you on the hunt for some code on the Internet? There's a free tool out there from Krugle, Inc. called Krugle. Yes, that rhymes with Google. Krugle searches and indexes code from public software repositories from the likes of Apache, Debian, Mozilla and SourceForge.net.

Krugle has parsers for more than 40 languages allowing syntax-specific searches. So you can use code features like function calls, class definition, even comments in search queries. Queries support broad or exact matches and allow code tokenizing. Filters are available to hone in on specific projects and sites. And if you register, there are collaboration tools that allow you save your search to a "code space" where you can comment on a code file or project and share it with others.

Last but not least, Krugle has IDE plug-ins for Eclipse or Visual Studio and browser plug-ins for Firefox (version 1.5, 2) and IE (version 6 and 7).