But you started reading it anyway. 

We’re all so inundated with disclaimers and license agreements at every turn that we barely flinch anymore when we see the words “privileged and confidential” or worse, long paragraphs in small fonts portending doom for the unwitting recipient of a misdirected e-mail or the surfer of law firm websites. Disclaimers seem to have spread like a consensual virus – a lawyer sees another lawyer using a disclaimer, figures it must be a good idea, and includes it in his or her own materials. 

Website disclaimers are fairly inoffensive. These disclaimers generally warn visitors that the information on the website is not meant to provide legal advice about the visitor’s individual legal problem and caution the visitor not to disclose confidential information in an e-mail or contact form sent to the law firm until the firm has agreed to enter into an attorney client relationship. Lawyers are concerned, of course, that an opposing or related party to one of the firm’s existing clients might provide confidential information that would conflict the lawyer out of its already existing representation. 

There do not appear to be any reported cases that have disqualified a law firm from representing a client because the firm received unsolicited confidential information from a non-client. Recently, the Virginia State Bar Committee on Legal Ethics issued an opinion that compared websites to advertisements in the yellow pages. Just as a prospective client who obtains a lawyer’s phone number from a yellow pages ad should have no expectation of confidentiality when leaving a voicemail message for a lawyer, the Virginia Bar reasoned that there ordinarily should be no expectation of confidentiality in an e-mail message sent from a website. The opinion recommends, but does not require, that Virginia lawyers include such a disclaimer on their websites and cautions that lawyers may create a duty of confidentiality through sites that offer  a “free evaluation” of a prospective client’s case and invite web visitors to provide the lawyer with information about their situations.

Website disclaimers are designed to address the exact same situation repeatedly: Stranger v. Law Firm.  No disclosure of existing client confidential information is involved, and whether the stranger reads the disclaimer or heeds its warning is of no consequence to the law firm, which has discharged its duty to itself (protect against claims of reliance on alleged legal advice) and to its existing clients (prevent being disqualified from existing representations).

E-mail disclaimers, however, are a different and dangerous breed. (more…)

“Voicemail is dead. Please tell everyone so they’ll stop using it.”

Oh, if only it were so! Voicemails are one of the most annoying time sucks in my work day.

I hate the phone. It is always an interruption. But if I don’t answer it, then there is that blinking voicemail notification staring me in the face, reminding me that I will have to listen long, rambling messages.

I would much rather quickly scan an e-mail when I have a few free moments and mental cycles, but nobody seems to listen to the part of my message that politely requests an e-mail instead of a voicemail.

I would love to just stop using voicemail entirely, but ours is not a profession where that would fly. Instead, I am thinking about using an assistant—or maybe a service like SpinVox or PhoneTag, that converts voicemail messages to text and sends them as e-mail.

A world without voicemail. Beautiful.

I decided to give PhoneTag a try for my trip to visit mynsister in Alaska (hello from Juno!), and I am loving it.

Jott is old news, but is it also still in beta, so I don’t feel badly for only posting about it now. Jott lets you call from your cell phone, tell Jott what to do, and Jott will transcribe your voice into an e-mail you can send to yourself or someone else, a text file, your to-do list, and more.

For the keyboard-challenged, Jott is a great way to cut out the middleperson—usually a secretary printing out e-mails and transcribing dictated responses—and focus on getting things done seamlessly.

Best of all, Jott is free to join.

I sat on a panel with productivity guru Merlin Mann today. We talked about a range of issues, from information overload to paperlessness to Getting Things Done and the Franklin-Covey method, all with reference to the life of lawyers.

If you are not familiar with Merlin Mann, check out the video below, “Inbox Zero,” which changed my e-mail life.

As most readers of this blog know, I am in a constant search to find the “best” way to manage my practice. As everyone knows, there is no “best” way to manage a law practice, but there is always improvement. So here are the bits of technology and old-school hardware I am using to manage my practice.

As you may also know, I use Linux for my operating system more than half the time. But since I still use Windows at the office, all the software I use is available for both Linux and Windows. There are two exceptions: Outlook, which I don’t really use any longer, and Acrobat.

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For quite a while now, I have been using Plaxo to manage my contacts. The great advantage of Plaxo is that it syncs with a variety of software—I use it with Outlook (two different copies), Thunderbird (ditto), and Gmail. The mobile version of Plaxo is also fast enough that you can access it even from an older smartphone instead of your local contacts.

With Plaxo, you can also sync your Outlook calendar(s), tasks, and notes.

LinkedIn does much the same thing, along with the social networking aspect. Both LinkedIn and Plaxo will automatically update contact information for any of your contacts who are also members, which is a handy feature.

Enter a new player, Keepm, which focuses solely on contact management. It will import from Gmail, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, etc. For someone who just needs a central contacts repository and does not want to muck about with all the social networking that comes with Plaxo and LinkedIn, Keepm looks like a simple, lightweight, and central contact manager.

[via Lifehacker]

Free is better, and open source is superior. There are fantastic free and open source alternatives to the software lawyers use every day. Here are my top 5 most valuable free applications for lawyers:

1. OpenOffice.org

Office 2007 is pretty, but from a user perspective, it is an upgrade hardly worth the pricetag. Plus, Microsoft’s rejection of Open Document Format, which is becoming the world standard (and should be the courts’ standard, if they can de-Microsoft their thinking), is troubling. OpenOffice.org, or OOo, is a fantastic alternative. It is also in wide use worldwide, and sponsored by Sun Microsystems. This is a full replacement for Office, minus Outlook, and attorneys can make the switch and not look back. Among other things, OOo can save to .doc format, and makes it easier than ever to create PDF versions.

2. TrueCrypt

As I have said many times, encryption is no longer optional. Law firms that do not encrypt client data are risking lawsuits if and when client data is stolen. TrueCrypt is a serious piece of encryption software that makes encryption easy and convenient. My favorite feature is the ability to back up the encrypted container so that my backups are encrypted, as well.

3. AVG or Avast anti-virus

It is a bit eerie how much Norton and McAfee resemble the viruses they protect your computer in. Virus-like, they invade every nook and cranny of your operating system, bogging your computer down. Uninstall them and go with a free alternative that protects just as well and doesn’t slow you to a crawl.

4. GnuCash

Looking to move beyond your outdated accounting software? GnuCash is a double-entry accounting package that should do the trick just fine. If you like sending Quicken files to your accountant, you can do that, too will have to make do with printing out HTML reports (see comment, below).

5. UltraVNC

UltraVNC (and numerous other free VNC applications) lets you access your computer remotely from anywhere. Setup takes just a bit of knowhow, but once you are up and running, it is amazingly smooth. Best of all, you can access your computer using any VNC with any operating system for maximum versatility.

Finally, if you do use free, open-source software, support the project by donating.

I am going to be taking my first vacation since going solo this Friday, and I’m a bit nervous. About my cases, that is. Since I have no support staff, if something comes up (despite my careful preparation), there isn’t anyone who can pick up the slack. So I need to be able to check voicemail and make calls, check e-mail, keep up-to-date with my schedule, and have access to all of my files.

Also, we are going to be in Barcelona for a week, the most pickpocket-friendly city in Europe, so I would rather not bring along expensive toys, if I can avoid it. So the laptop needs to stay at home.

Here is what I came up with:

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Along with Ubuntu 7.04, Mozilla released Thunderbird 2.0 today. Thunderbird is Mozilla’s cross-platform e-mail client, and with the Lightning add-on, a full personal information manager (PIM).

If you prefer free software, or you don’t need a full-featured client like Outlook, give Thunderbird a try. I’ve been playing with it, and it really is a pretty sweet program. With a little monkey-wrenching, it is definitely good enough for a solo or small firm to use for managing e-mail, contacts, and calendaring. With custom contact fields and instant search capabilities, in some ways Thunderbird may be more flexible and workable for law offices, actually.

One of the problems with using Outlook to manage e-mail is that there is no easy way to manage attachments. Outlook is not a good place to store attachments. Outlook basically rolls all your information–e-mails, attachments, tasks, appointments, and contacts, into one .pst file. So the more attachments, the more data Outlook has to manage, and the slower it runs. I’ve heard that if your .pst file gets above 1 GB, Outlook borders on unusable. I’m not there yet.

You can remove attachments (after saving them to your client file, of course) one at a time, but this is tedious and inefficient.

There are a slew of add-on programs to help with this. Can anyone recommend a few to try to start? If not, I am going to start plowing through them, one by one.