Please answer this one question!

Hint: If you think you need to ask IT, the answer is no.

A few weeks ago, I got into a bit of a tiff with another writer about whether lawyers should be encrypting their email with clients to meet their ethical obligations. The writer works for Zix Corporation, an encryption service company, and his article was published by Attorney at Work, which often publishes articles about new technologies provided by vendors. But this article wasn’t clearly pitching Zix’s services; it was cautionary tale about the security requirements lawyers should be using to meet ethical requirements. A colleague even called the article to my attention because she was concerned that she wasn’t encrypting her email – she missed the author’s bio at the end.

While the Zix article posits that lawyers risk ethical violations by sending unencrypted email, my reading of the few related ethics opinions doesn’t go so far. In fact, while two states, California and North Carolina, bring up that encryption might be something lawyers should consider using, they fall very short of stating that unencrypted email is dangerously insecure and that lawyers must encrypt. In fact, the ABA hasn’t changed its opinion from 1999, which is that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in unencrypted email, if used properly.

On the other hand, ILTSO, the International Legal Technical Standards Organization, has definite opinions on technical security and they not only say that encryption is required for client data being communicated through the public Internet, but they recommend encryption bit thresholds, verification by unexpired third party certificates, and making sure that encryption is truly end-to-end.

Then I went to a recent CLE program put on by a prominent Denver law firm entitled “Privilege and Preservation in the Corporate Setting; Practical Tips for Avoiding Communication Pitfalls in the Digital Age.” Fantastic, I thought. I’ll find out what the latest law really is on this subject. When it became clear that the speaker wasn’t going to address encryption in her talk, I asked the question: “Should email be encrypted to preserve the attorney-client privilege?” I didn’t mean to throw the speaker, but I did. She said she didn’t know of any court using it to declare whether a communication was privileged but didn’t believe a court would invalidate the privilege because a lawyer failed to encrypt an email (and I would trust Zix to point out those cases if there were any). Then I asked whether she knew if many lawyers encrypted their email and she didn’t.

But, I would still like to know! I invite you to comment. Please answer the following questions:

1. Do you regularly send or receive encrypted email in your client communications?
2. If you do not, have you considered it, and why did you decide not to?

Promise: If you say no, I will not send your contact data to any ethical committees or encryption providers.

Cindy Wolf is a Colorado lawyer with more than 25 years’ experience representing large and small domestic and multinational companies. Her expertise is in commercial contracting, with an emphasis on technology licensing and the Internet.

You may have heard of Siri, Apple’s intelligent “personal assistant” that allows you to use your voice with your iPhone 4S to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more. However, not all of us have access to Siri (or even want to). Did you know that Google has a free app for both iPhones and iPads and Android devices that uses voice recognition, allowing you simply speak your search?

Typing in Google searches on your smart phone can be very difficult. The keyboard and screen are small, making it frustrating and time-consuming. That’s where the Google Search app comes in.

Install it for free on your mobile device, and use it to Google anything. For instance, you might be out running errands and decide to stop by a Home Depot. Pull out your phone, open Google Search, click on the microphone icon and say, “Address for Home Depot in Lone Tree, Colorado.” The app will use voice recognition software to run your search through Google, and you’ll get a list of results just as you would if you had typed in the same search in Google.

In addition, Google Goggles lets you conduct a search using an image. Simply take a picture of a landmark, a book cover, or even a wine label, and perform a search on the image.

Click here for information on Google Mobile Apps for both Apple and Android. The page has a link to download from Google Play for Androids or iTunes for Apple, plus there is a link to short videos demonstrating how to conduct voice-activated and image searches.

You can see this tip and others, on topics ranging from Outlook and Word help to App reviews and online tools, all here.

Longtime readers of the Colorado Bar Association’s C-Brief, its weekly eNewsletter, know each week there is a tip from Law Practice Management Director Reba Nance. Those tips are moving beyond the newsletter and now have a permanent home within the Practice Management section of CBA’s website. We’ll share some of the best tips each week here as Solo Tip Tuesday.

On your mark, get set … WHAT you’re not going to venture onward with the rest of us?  It’s not like Colorado lawyers are at the forefront of the social media adoption wave, because we’re not.  Other states and state bars are way ahead of us – like Florida lawyers, and the Florida and Texas  bars (which regulate attorneys’ websites).

I recently took a poll on the Colorado Bar Association’s Solo and Small Firm listserv. I asked three simple questions:

1. Are you on Facebook?

• Six who responded were not (well, one  “no” was imputed and a couple of these responses could be characterized as “hell nos.”).

2. If yes, do you have a business page?

• Eight who were on Facebook did not have a business page, and some commented that they only use Facebook for personal use.
• Twelve are on Facebook and have a business page, but a couple people shared experience that their biz page was neglected or under-performing.
• A couple Facebook users  did share Twitter info – one uses it and another “has” it.

3. If you’re not on Facebook, would you be interested in it for business purposes?

• No one responded yes to this one!

As you can see, of the 26 persons who responded, six were “no” to Facebook and 20 were “yes.”  Several people offered comments and one person gave a phone interview (thanks, Cathy!).

What I’d like to do is address some of the concerns that came up.  This is timely because a couple respondents referred to the Consumer Reports articles on Facebook in the June issue.  Here’s a list that is an amalgamation of Consumer Reports (8 pages long and quite thorough) and a couple other sources:

1. Many people use poor judgment about what to post and who may see it is rampant.  Facebook posts are used as evidence by most divorce lawyers now, and insurers, college admissions officers, potential employers, bar examiners in Florida, and a boatload of other folks use Facebook for “intelligence gathering.”
2. If you don’t want to share, you don’t have to. You don’t have to join, and if you do join you can restrict your account and take other precautionary steps. The fact is that the vast majority of people fail to do this.
3. Consumer Reports featured the plight of Kevin Jolly, a California attorney whose bogus Facebook “page” was created by someone with a gripe against him. It featured pornographic language and was distributed to Jolly’s friends, family, and business colleagues. According to the article, it took several emails (he wasn’t able to speak with anyone at Facebook) and nearly a month to get the abusive page taken down.
4. Facebook doesn’t invite your friends; you do. Social media are not going to replace websites because they serve different purposes. Websites have evolved from static to hybrid (see this video with me and Matt Willson). Websites and social media have completely different purposes and applications, but that is not to imply I have any idea about how they will evolve in the future.
5. In order to have a business page on Facebook, you must first have a personal profile, and in Facebook-land, “friend” and “like” are verbs that have their own unique contextual meaning.  As those of you who use another social medium known as LinkedIn already know, the terminology for how you know or “know of” someone is frequently evolving.  “Like” on Facebook is not an endorsement! It is a “thumbs up.”
6. Set your Facebook passwords and privacy controls to your liking! This includes any other online concern you have going.  (Remember President Skroob’s password in the 1987 spoof classic Spaceballs?  Turns out it was the same “12345” as some foreign government officials and probably more than a few Americans using Facebook!)
7. Social media – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. – are all intended and designed as a complement to and not a replacement for actual human contact (unless, perhaps, you are a teenager).
8. Keep track of your online presence – Google yourself from time to time, or if you want to go “filterless” (and I don’t mean a Gauloise) go to Duck Duck Go and see what comes up.

Social media are not going away. In a recent post by Patrick Lamb under the ABA Journal’s “New Normal,” Lamb declares “A Trusted Adviser in the New Normal Must Be Like a Symphony Conductor.” Hmm …  I may have heard something like this before – oh, yes – a chapter from Dan Pink’s “A Whole New Mind” is “symphony” and is about seeing relationships, improvising, and making new metaphors, but is essentially about “big picture” thinking.

Bottom line from Lamb’s post is that a good grounding in substantive legal knowledge is a good start, but you have to grow into the business acumen, efficiency, and predictability, and consistent delivery stages in order to blossom as a “trusted adviser.”  In another “new normal” blog post – this one by Steve Bell on his blog The New Legal Normal, Bell urges lawyers to “get real” about the fact that social media have been with us for more than a decade (LinkedIn and MySpace launched in 2003, Facebook in 2004). His urgings sound like some familiar themes – remember the Future Foretold post about TECHSHOW 2012?

Am I saying that Facebook and other social media can help you maintain relationships? Why yes, indeed I am.  How? Well I’ll save that for another post.  Patience, grasshopper! (Oops, I’m showing my age again.)  Call me old fashioned, but I think lawyers ought to be able to distinguish between “fear” and “caution.”  We see accidents on the roadways but that doesn’t stop us from driving, right?  What do we have to be afraid of?  Well, ourselves mostly – and I think one of the best articles about what to watch out for is still “Seduced: For Lawyers, the Appeal of Social Media is Obvious. It’s Also Dangerous.”  Don’t worry, in my next post  – covering the “tests, allies, and enemies” portion of the Hero’s Journey, I’ll discuss some of the particular applications of ethics rules to social media applications.

Read more about Barb’s Facebook Chronicles here.

Whether you’re new to legal practice or long established, you shouldn’t be afraid to get paid, says Aurora-based small firm attorney Jeff Joseph.

Communication, clear expectations, write-offs, and payment plans are just a few ways to ensure you’re paid for your legal services. Watch the video with Jeff below.

Want to see more? Click here for more info about this CLE program.

You may have heard of WebEx and Go to Meeting, or even participated in a session using these tools. When connected to the Internet, both allow you to see someone else’s screen and are used for document review and collaboration, demonstrations of anything that can be displayed on a computer screen, software training, remote tech support, and more. Perhaps you never checked these out because you assumed you couldn’t afford them.

Now there’s a free service that is amazingly full-featured. Check out join.me. Click on “Take a Tour” and watch a short video outlining the features of the free version. There is a paid version as well, but I’d suggest starting with the free version—it may be all you need.

The free version of join.me features:

• Internet calling
• Screen sharing
• 250 viewers
• Share control
• Multi-monitor
• Chat
• Send files
• Viewer: iPad/iPhone or Android

The paid version (join.me pro) includes everything in the free version plus:

• Unified audio
• Presenter swap
• Pro desktop app
• Personal link & background
• Meeting scheduler
• Meeting lock
• User management
• International conference lines

You can see this tip and others, on topics ranging from Outlook and Word help to App reviews and online tools, all here.

Longtime readers of the Colorado Bar Association’s C-Brief, its weekly eNewsletter, know each week there is a tip from Law Practice Management Director Reba Nance. Those tips are moving beyond the newsletter and now have a permanent home within the Practice Management section of CBA’s website. We’ll share some of the best tips each week here as Solo Tip Tuesday.

Come on Barb – Supernatural Aid ? I know, I’ll go to any lengths to get people’s attention!  I was thinking that, once my biz page got the requisite 30 “likes,” meaning I achieved my “EdgeRank” minimum (see the definition here), and I have access to “insights about my activity,” well, I thought it sounded rather mystical, even supernatural.  There, that’s it.

Now for the mentor part.

First, a confession – I do love reading Net Smart!  A brief recap of the first chapter: mindfulness online can help us shift from TIME management to ATTENTION management; Howard Rheingold suggests writing a one sentence goal for the day before you turn on your computer and start clicking and, instead of multitasking all day, try doing a single task for 15-20 minutes instead.

OK, on to the second chapter “Crap Detection 101.”  Important to remember here is the paradigm shift of publishing in the information age: for books it was filter, then publish; for the Internet it is publish, then filter.  The first step here for enabling your “crap detector” is setting it up: How do you decide if something is “true?”  Here he looks at the the “whois” feature to “look behind the curtain” so to speak, and see who is the owner of a website (this embedded feature I find this particularly helpful to moderate  comments on my website’s blog).  He also questions search engines’ authoritativeness (hint: “cream” doesn’t always rise to the top there); explains page rank (see p. 83); and gives tips about how to weed out the folks who are raising “spam blogs” on the “content farm.” I found his analogy that search engine optimization is to the Internet what public relations is to public opinion rather insightful (it’s about manipulation).   Rheingold devotes several pages to an explanation of how to “see” search engine results more clearly.

Once you’ve got your crap detector calibrated for the environment, it’s time to get it tuned … I thought his statement “promote the notion that more info literacy is a practical answer to the growing info pollution. Be the change you want to see” is a good candidate for an axiom.  He suggests “tuning” the detector by recognizing that the Internet essentially undermines authority (particular for those of us who are “digital immigrants,” and have a history of consulting encyclopedias) and that the wealth of information creates, by consequence, a poverty of attention.  This is where Rheingold directs his attention to “infotention,” which is attention to information.  This point really drives home the reason I’m writing these posts I suppose – to get my colleagues to think a bit more about Facebook and other social media instead of just “reacting” to their information overload.  Rheingold astutely points out in this regard “not drowning is not the same as swimming.”

So, are you an IDDer (my moniker for those of us with Infotention Deficit Disorder, and no – I don’t think it’s in the DSM-V) who is ready to take the plunge?  Remember, information overload panics HAVE occurred before in human history, so it’s not the end of the world! Tips to manage your infotention successfully:

1. The answer to almost any question is available, if you know how to search;
2. Search to discover, not just to find;
3. Look beyond the first page of your page results to see what else is “out there;”
4. Use detective skills to find the author of information and check sources for assertions in websites, triangulate your sources if you can and it’s helpful;
5. If you’re finding too much information you anticipate or agree with, take a look at your filter bubble;
6. Use mindfulness techniques to establish new habits to keep yourself on track; and
7. Train your attention along with your judgment or the technical leverage of all this access to information is useless!

So back to the question of what you will do with your time … do you suspect social media involves wasting too much of your time?  Take a look at Adrian Dayton’s article “Are Social Media Worth Your Time?”   I found a nifty slide show by WestLegalEd Center “Developing Your Social Media Strategy,” which recommends first off, don’t make social media your goal – rather focus on visibility as the goal with content tying together your visibility on the Internet in both search engine and social media contexts.  I should mention that the link is to a slide show, which has some very cool graphic illustrations – including one showing the one-to-one and one-to-many types of communications at which social media perform well  (networking and broadcasting).  I liked their six steps of social media “how to”:

1. Consider the opportunity (people relying on a variety of alternative online sources)
2. Target properly – use the correct media, aimed at the right folks
3. Package it up by putting together information for others to use (links, sites, articles, etc.)
4. Pitch it – contact targets and share the stuff you’ve put together
5. Push it (Salt-N-Pepa optional), which is identified as key – share it and get others to pass it around
6. Circle back by making contact with the original outlet and letting them know you promoted their work (so they’ll want to work with you again)

That’s all for now; as always – we’d love to hear your comments.

Read more about Barb’s Facebook Chronicles here.

Take your practice beyond the local community.

I recently found an area of law that I never knew existed: local counsel.  Before moving to Denver, everything for me was local.  I grew up in Chicago, went to school in Chicago, and worked in Chicago.  My blood pumps celery salt, mustard, and sport peppers.  But then something changed.  I met a girl, got married and we moved to Colorado.  The legal community is different.  Smaller.  The hot dogs are different.  Smaller.

However, my practice got larger.  I became the Colorado contact for many, many Chicago attorneys.  These attorneys no longer had to farm their Colorado cases out to unknown lawyers and no longer had to pass on any cases west of Midway Airport.  They just called me.  At first, I had no idea this could be a business and I, naively, offered my services pro bono.  But then things changed.

In my experience, there are two methods of serving as local counsel:  (1) A mail drop and filing center; and (2) co-counsel.

The first one is simple.  Out-of-state counsel wants complete control of the case.  Therefore, he or she will pay you your hourly rate to file an appearance, coordinate a pro hac vice admission, file pleadings, and monitor deadlines.  You, as local counsel, have no actual knowledge or control over the case.

The second option is more difficult, but more fun.  You become part of a national trial team.  The out-of-state counsel leans on you heavily for matters concerning local rules, local juries, and advice on judges and opposing counsels.  You often draft the “meat” of the pleadings and motions for the out-of-state counsel to review, edit, and approve.

I have been in Colorado for just under two years and realized something almost immediately:  virtually everyone who lives here is not from here!  This includes attorneys.  Therefore, do not limit your practice locally.  Join the bar associations in your hometown. Talk to them.  Get your contact information in their publications. It’s cheap and sometimes it’s free.

Chad Lieberman served as lead trial attorney for a commercial litigation firm located in Chicago from 2005 through late 2010. He handled lawsuits involving contract disputes, personal injury, insurance related issues, product liability matters, construction defects, and real estate.  Since moving to Colorado in 2010, he practices in state and federal courts throughout Illinois and Colorado, primarily in product liability and commercial litigation.  SOLO in COLO welcomes Chad as its new editor/promoter-in-chief, effective July 2012.  Prior to coming to SOLO in COLO, Chad authored posts under an alias at attorneyatwork.com. He can be reached at clieberman@bbs-legal.com.

By default, Outlook will notify you whenever you receive an email. This can be very distracting when you’re in the middle of doing something else and a pop-up appears in the middle of your screen. Here’s how to turn off that notification in Outlook 2007:

• Open Outlook
• Choose Mail
• Choose Tools
• Choose Options
• Choose Preferences (it should already default to this tab)
• Choose Email Options
• Choose Advanced Email Options
• Under “When new items arrive in my Inbox,” you can choose from a number of different options.

They are:

• Play a sound
• Briefly change the mouse cursor
• Show an envelope icon in the notification area
• Display a New Mail Desktop Alert (default Inbox only)—this is the option you want to uncheck

If you still want to know when you receive a message, but you don’t want the notice plastered in the middle of your screen, choose “Show an envelope icon in the notification area.” By choosing this, you’ll get a much smaller notification in the lower right-hand corner of your screen, which will stay there for a short while and then disappear. If you don’t want any pop-up at all, simply uncheck that box, too.

Now you can direct your complete attention to whatever you’re doing without an interruption from Outlook!

You can see this tip and others, on topics ranging from Outlook and Word help to App reviews and online tools, all here.

Longtime readers of the Colorado Bar Association’s C-Brief, its weekly eNewsletter, know each week there is a tip from Law Practice Management Director Reba Nance. Those tips are moving beyond the newsletter and now have a permanent home within the Practice Management section of CBA’s website. We’ll share some of the best tips each week here as Solo Tip Tuesday.

Wondering why I’m still writing these? Well, have a look at the picture … we haven’t even reached the abyss yet!

I’m still writing these posts, so I haven’t refused the call yet … wait – What is that ringing in my ears?

Back to the narrative for this hero’s journey: Net Smart.  Author Howard Rheingold has been writing about virtual communities since 1987, and cites another commentator, Manuel  Castells, who explains “networks matter now because new technical networks dramatically multiply the power of age-old human cultural tools of sociality, politics, and economics.”

Makes me want to shout “Cavemen – turn in your clubs for something a bit more sophisticated!” (There I’ve said it – but I’m not singling out men, or the guy in the TV ads.)  He goes on to point out that network knowledge derives from a variety of disciplines not previously connected – namely digital networks and human social behavior.

So, here we are at chapter one. The adventure begins with “Attention!”  He rightfully points out that a little mindfulness goes a long way.  (I did a five day silent mediation retreat last month, so I can say that a lot of mindfulness goes a long way, too.)  He looks at so many of us who envision ourselves as “super taskers.”   Scientific American Mind had an article about these folks in February, and they have an interactive test you can take online. If you are not a super tasker, fear not – there is still hope for you.  Rheingold recommends “beginning in small ways to exercise mindfulness regarding your attention online.”  He points out that “the executive control we all exercise when we maintain focus on one task becomes useful when we move from understanding attention to controlling it.”

So here’s the condensed Nutshell (remember those from law school?) version of chapter 1:

• Social media afford distraction, but we can train our attention;
• Our hormones reward us for information seeking and social contact but also trigger fight/flight response, so we need to exercise some mindfulness regarding the attention and reactions to social media;
• Don’t forget to breathe, and ask yourself, “Where is my attention now?” These are simple but powerful steps to switch on control;
• Learning starts with paying attention to others; this means paying attention with eye contact (not staring at a smartphone screen when you ask about someone’s day);
• Multitasking has a cost in effectiveness of attention – be aware that task switching can decrease effectiveness;
• Focus is about trimming down, blocking extraneous matters, and saying “no” in a way that “yes” (what you are paying attention to) is effective;
• Mindfulness and metacognition (thinking about thinking) are tools for becoming aware of how you are using your attention, and are useful both online and in the other world; and
• To start new habits, (like mindfulness or paying attention to when your mind starts to wander) start small by finding a place in your routine to establish the new behavior and then repeat it until the “paying attention” has become habitual.

Okay, so back to my “story,” or should I say “saga.”

After talking with a colleague who told me about this intriguing website, I signed up for a “fiver gig” entitled “create my Facebook business page”( for $5)  Sound too good to be true?   It was!  But hey, it’s all part of this adventure, right?  I got an email from the guy who was supposed to design my page on late Friday afternoon, and since I was driving my youngest son to a friend’s house and then heading to the Heartlight Center’s fundraiser, I didn’t respond in time to get my order filled.

I pondered whether I might in fact grow tired of making jokes at my own expense in front of an anonymous online audience (only momentarily though).  So we could say my refusal of the call is from insecurity, but that I have this sense of obligation (usually a basis for refusal) that pulls me in the other direction – 0r perhaps I’m enabling my inner perfectionist. Remember, I’m still just trying to get this whole Facebook business page thing off the ground!  But bravery is about overcoming fear, not ignoring it.

I did find this article when I narrowed my search to “attorney facebook timeline” so I would only get the current stuff.  I even looked at a Texas attorney’s page and thought it looked pretty good; how hard can this be?

A recent JDSupra offering “Why Your Social Media Presence Needs to be Vetted by a Social Media Attorney” was thankfully  NOT about us solo/small firm types  venturing into social media but rather focused on firms who got smacked for retaliatory measures taken against employees who vent online.

You might be asking yourself, what is the nature of the call you are refusing to hear?  Avvo’s national conference, Avvocating 2012, had a panel of presenters on social media. Their slide show “Integrating Social Media Into Your Marketing Strategy” is the best thing I’ve seen so far.

Some very interesting facts from the slides: 1.47 million lawyers on LinkedIn worldwide, but “only” 80,000 law firms on Facebook. And, two-thirds of American lawyers cite Facebook as a primary source of evidence in divorce cases, according to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

I liked their five stages of social media: ignoring, listening, responding, participating, and interacting.  Is it the interacting with clients that is so scary in the social media context?  What if we just acknowledge them? Is that okay for your comfort level?

Please share; I’d like to know. I have managed to put a cover photo on my Facebook business page (an African violet in my windowsill), and I’m sure I’ll be making more progress. Stay tuned for the next installment: Meeting the Mentor (a.k.a. Supernatural Aid).

Read more about Barb’s Facebook Chronicles here.

Use DifferenceBetween.com to learn the differences between any two things.  It can range from something as simple as the difference between a motel and a hotel or a food processor and a blender, or as complicated as the difference between the iPad 2 and the iPad 3.  Enter the two terms (or items) in the search boxes in the upper right-hand corner and click on Go.  The website will return a list of articles prepared by their staff.  Scroll down a little to find what you’re looking for.  It took only a second for me to see that the iPhone 4s is the same size as the iPhone 4, so now I know I’ll be able to use the same case when I upgrade!

You can see this tip and others, on topics ranging from Outlook and Word help to App reviews and online tools, all here.

Longtime readers of the Colorado Bar Association’s C-Brief, its weekly eNewsletter, know each week there is a tip from Law Practice Management Director Reba Nance. Those tips are moving beyond the newsletter and now have a permanent home within the Practice Management section of CBA’s website. We’ll share some of the best tips each week here as Solo Tip Tuesday.