Denise Howell is a seasoned appellate and intellectual property litigator based in Los Angeles. Denise writes one of the first and most popular law-related blogs, Bag and Baggage, coined the term "blawg" and helped pioneer podcasting for lawyers. Microcontent obsessed since 2001, she is frequently quoted in the media on legal issues involving intellectual property and technology law. "Sound Policy" is Denise's show at IT Conversations, and it's also what she hopes results from the briefs she submits to court. Email Denise at dhowell@gmail.com.
Dennis Kennedy is a computer lawyer and legal technology expert based in St. Louis, Missouri. An award-winning author, a frequent speaker and a widely-read blogger, he has more than 300 publications on legal, technology and Internet topics, many of which are collected in his e-books. Dennis has been described as someone who knows almost every rock song in existence and, more importantly, how they apply to technology and law. Email Dennis at his gmail address.
Tom Mighell is Senior Counsel and Litigation Technology Support Coordinator at Cowles & Thompson in Dallas. He has published the Internet Legal Research Weekly newsletter since 2000 and blogged about the Internet and legal technology at Inter Alia since August of 2002. With Tom's singing, Ernie on guitar and Dennis' encylopedic knowledge of rock music, we may have the beginnings of a good band, if this whole blog thing doesn't work out. Email Tom at tmighell@swbell.net.
Marty Schwimmer left a partnership in the largest trademark practice in the world and founded Schwimmer Mitchell, a full-service IP micro-boutique in Westchester County, New York, where he represents owners of famous and not yet famous trademarks. He founded The Trademark Blog, the first IP law blog and the one with the most pictures. He is the first to come in and the last to leave in his firm. Email Marty at marty@schwimmerlegal.com.
Ernest Svenson practices law with a mid-sized law firm in New Orleans, specializing in business-related lawsuits. Most of his practice takes place in federal court, especially the Eastern District. He is best known for his weblog Ernie the Attorney, which he started as an experiment. Like many experiments it got out of control. Nevertheless, he continues to practice law and, occasionally,
to seek enlightenment. Email Ernest at esvenson@gmail.com.
About this blog
Between Lawyers provides just-in-time group commentary on the issues
raised when technology, culture and the law intersect. We take you
behind the firewalls and conference room doors to show you how
experienced lawyers deal with these issues and help you prepare for
the new challenges we all face. For more, see our introductory post.
The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, the new book from Between Lawyers' own Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell is now now available for preorder at the ABA Web Store. There's a 15% discount if you preorder now.
The book reflects the idea of collaboration that underlies the Between Lawyers blog.
Here's the book description from the ABA Web Store:
This first-of-its-kind guide for the legal profession shows you how to use standard technology you already have and the latest "Web 2.0" resources and other tech tools, like Google Docs, Microsoft Office and SharePoint, and Adobe Acrobat, to work more effectively on projects with colleagues, clients, co-counsel and even opposing counsel. In The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, well-known legal technology authorities Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell provide a wealth of information useful to lawyers who are just beginning to try these tools, as well as tips and techniques for those lawyers with intermediate and advanced collaboration experience.
Collaboration technologies and tools are the most important current developments in legal technology and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Explained with minimal technical jargon, the book focuses on highly practical and usable ideas that you can put to work straight away.
With practical advice on how to use specific tools and concrete action steps to take, lawyers and law firms at all levels will benefit from working together better.
You'll learn:
+ The basics of collaboration and collaboration tools
+ How to select and implement tools and strategies
+ The best ways to collaborate on documents, cases, transactions, and projects
+ How to collaborate inside and outside the office
+ How to collaborate using tools you already have or own
Technology now makes it easier than ever to work with others -- this is the first guide dedicated to the special requirements of the legal world with the practical steps it takes to do it right.
I'm planning to write an article about what I'm calling "MacGyver" technology tricks. I'm assuming that you are familiar with the MacGyver concept (or you can wikipedia it).
As an example, consider using a digital camera or cameraphone as a document scanner in a pinch (or sending a document as a fax to a nearby fax machine when you aren't able to print it any other way).
I'm looking for some good examples and wanted to get a little help from the readers of this blog.
Remember, the idea is not something like using the top of your laptop as a cutting board, but ways to use software and hardware in unexpected, but logical and useful ways, in a pinch when you don't have the normal tools available. Another example: using a video iPod to run your PowerPoint presentation when your laptop won't work with the projector. I'm also looking for something that the average lawyer would be able to do with gadgets, hardware and software (or Internet apps) readily at hand for most lawyers.
However, I'm not looking for examples like this one, because it requires that you have a specific device available.
You get the idea.
Let me know your best ideas by leaving a comment to this post or joining the Between Lawyers Facebook Group and leaving your recommendations as a response to the discussion thread there.
In this episode, Dennis and Tom discuss the use (or potential use) of Facebook by lawyers, giving some potential benefits and risks, practical tips, and observations about their experiments in using Facebook. They also talk about how they use the Google Reader for RSS feeds and Google Docs and Spreadsheets for simple collaborations. They also talk about the other podcasts they listen to and how they listen to them.
It's a good introduction for lawyers and other legal professionals to these topics.
You'll find the podcast episode here and there's an archive of earlier podcasts.
It's also a good time to remind you to check out Denise Howell's podcast - This Week in Law - on which you'll find some of the authors of the Between Lawyers blog appearing from time to time.
As more and better communication and collaboration functions move to the Web (under non-negotiated, vendor-centric terms of use), what are our obligations as both tech- and ethics-savvy lawyers? I for one am not about to give up Gmail. So, what's the best practice?
Shun Web services, you simply can't control the data? Use Web services only when you have specific, confidentiality and reliability guaranteeing service level agreements? Use Web services liberally, but acquaint yourself with the applicable terms of use and make sure clients are amenable?
Members of the Between Lawyers blog can be heard in a number of recent podcasts.
Tom Mighell and Dennis Kennedy have posted the latest episode #5 of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, in which they cover the recent ABA TECHSHOW, legal technology trends for 2007, current developments in electronic discovery, and their upcoming book on collaboration tools for lawyers.
Between Lawyers' own Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell are pleased to announce that they will be writing a book on collaboration tools that will be published in early 2008 by the American Bar Association. The book is tentatively titled: "Collaboration Tools for Lawyers: Essential Ways to Work Together with Colleagues, Clients and Even Opposing Counsel."
Nearly every lawyer finds that colleagues, co-counsel, clients and even opposing counsel use the Internet and technology to collaborate and work together on documents, projects and cases. In the simplest scenario, lawyers and clients use the "track changes" feature in Microsoft Word to work together on a document. Technology today lets lawyers take collaboration to the next level. Many legal technology tools now include collaborative elements.
At the same time, lawyers increasingly use the Internet in many ways to work together. From document sharing to videoconferencing, there are more tools than most lawyers can imagine for working together, online.
Two key trends are at play here. First, for years lawyers have understood the clear benefits of collaboration and working together as a routine matter. Second, the availability of simple, inexpensive (even free) collaboration technology has created an environment where working together makes sense to nearly every lawyer in nearly every firm. The push forward on both trends is likely to continue.
Two other important factors also come into play. First, business clients are routinely using technology to collaborate and will expect their lawyers to follow. Therefore, collaboration tools illustrate a classic example of a client-driven technology. Second, events in the world from increased travel costs to possible pandemics make it even more likely that these tools will be adopted by necessity.
To the extent lawyers have experimented with these tools, they may have the nagging feeling that they are simply touching the tip of the iceberg of what might be available to them and how they might use these tools to their benefit. We believe that they are right to feel that way, because it is undoubtedly true.
The book will provide intensely practical advice for lawyers and law firms wanting to take better advantage of these tools and the benefits they bring. It will take a look at how to use these tools wells, focus on both categories of tools and specific individual tools, and provide concrete action steps and techniques so that even the least tech-savvy lawyer can catch up with the early adopters and successful innovators.
Collaboration Tools for Lawyers: Essential New Ways to Work Together with Colleagues, Clients and Even Opposing Counsel, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell (expected publication date: early 2008)
Tom Mighell and Dennis Kennedy provide a great list of resources for learning more about Word's Track Changes feature and redlining in their article, "Staying on Track with Track Changes," in the March issue of the ABA's Law Practice Today webzine.
Between Lawyers' own Dennis Kennedy has identified seven legal technology trends lawyers, law firms and law departments (and those who sell products and services to them) should be considering in 2007.
The money quote:
By the end of 2007, we will be talking about a clear and growing digital divide between technology-forward and technology-backward lawyers and firms and a subtle restructuring of the practice of law.
It was recorded a while back, but I wanted to recommend the excellent discussion on legal technology and outsourcing you will find on the podcast featuring Ron Friedmann and Ross Kodner that's part of the Coast to Coast podcast series. It's called "Legal Technology: A Doubled-edged Sword?"
Ron and Ross are on top of their games and you'll get some fascinating insights into the ways law firms are using outsourcing and insourcing. We talk about Law 2.0 on this blog on a regular basis and this podcast will give you some practical ideas about what Law 2.0 might mean and what it might look like.
Ron Friedman has some spot-on comments about the recently released 2006 AmLaw Tech Survey of the largest US law firms.
The money quote:
My concern is that the results of the survey, while accurate, can be used by law firm management to thwart innovative ideas offered by lawyers, CIOs, marketers, knowledge managers, and others.
This might sound a bit acronym-soupy and cryptic, but the proverbial lightbulb is over my head at the moment, and I think it will have more impact if you attempt to understand why yourself rather than having me explain. So first, please listen to the current episode of the Gillmor Gang:
Then: consider how a virtual law firm (or a very forward thinking conventional one) might be in the perfect position to leapfrog ahead by eliminating the CRM (customer relationship management) line item from its technology and marketing budgets, and instead adopting a client driven, "vendor relationship management" approach to business development.
WisBlawg's Bonnie Shucha reports that LexisNexis is now including a lengthy list of blogs (including this one) in its Newstex database. Yet another example of the paid online legal database companies tying their business models to the location of relevant information that already is online for free. Makes me wonder how long it will take before a well designed, ad-supported free legal search competitor comes in and seriously syphons off subscribers. Google undoubtedly does this already, even though it doesn't (yet) do vertical search.
History in the making and participatory law in action — behold LawClinic.TV. From the press release: "Fordham University School of Law today became the first academic institution to launch a video blog or 'vlog.' The vlog, LawClinic.TV, features one-to-two minute videos of clinical law professors and students sharing their thoughts on clinical law education and written commentary from Fordham’s director of clinical education, Professor Ian Weinstein."
This is cool. Legal technology wizard Ross Kodner has debuted his new blog, Ross Ipsa Loquitur. I know that it will be a source of great info. I've learned a lot from Ross and had a lot of fun presenting with him on legal tech topics. Welcome to the Land of Blog, Ross.
There's an excellent article at APC Magazine, warning businesses who lock down their Internet access that they're in danger of losing employees. But that's not all they're in danger of losing. There's a reason "digital natives" are so reliant on the 'Net they will resort to elaborate and policy-violating workarounds: they get things done there. They knowledge-gather. They connect. They market. They produce. What's at stake for businesses who fail to grok this goes far beyond recruiting and employee retention. I give any such outfit five years of soulless survival, at the outside. (Via Techmeme)
Just out this week, Socialtext Open: "Socialtext Open is released under a standard open source license, and contains all of Socialtext's enterprise grade code aside from enterprise management and enterprise integration tools."
Wikis at work,
BEA, IBM, Oracle, SAP Ramp SOA Spec Efforts: "The group also has setup what they call a 'vendor-neutral Web site, designed as a wiki' they will use to collaborate, communicate and gain feedback from developers. There's a place for news, white papers, public specifications and access to information on early deployments."
Tom and Dennis have posted Episode 3 of The Kennedy-Mighell Report podcast, in which they talk about their recent trip to the ABA TECHSHOW and developments in legal technoloogy and the implications for lawyers, law firms and clients of lawyers.
Dennis Kennedy will be one of the presenters for the May 18 teleseminar "Technology Primer for Solos and Small Firms." Attendee who register on or before May 12 have the chance to win a copy of the Fourth Edition of the excellent book, Flying Solo.
This teleseminar may be of special interest to big firm lawyers thinking about a solo career because you won't have the risk of running into one of your colleagues in the seminar room. ;-)
Consider this use of technology in the practice of law:
Imagine that you can have an Internet communications feed between a lawyer in a courtroom, arbitration hearing or deposition and other lawyers, outside experts and/or client representatives who receive a live feed from the proceedings. Those outside the proceedings can use instant messaging or other techniques to assist the lawyer at the proceedings in much the same way they might if they were physically present.
I saw this kind of technology demoed live at the ABA TECHSHOW in 1998. I thought that it was a great way to improve the representation of your client and offered some significant benefits for training and supervising lawyers, savings on travel costs, and the like.
As I understand the story, there does not seem to be a question about whether the outside consultant could not be in the arbitration hearing, although there is a lot of discussion about whether this use of technology should be disclosed to the other side. There is not a lot of discussion about whether this approach afford a client better representation.
Here's my question: Am I missing something here if I am thinking that this is an innovative use of technology (even though the tech has been around for awhile) rather than a "corruption of the legal system"? I'm willing to learn where I'm wrong, but I like this use of technology.
I think it was in the March 3 edition of The Gillmor Gang that Steve Gillmor had some characteristically blunt and insightful commentary about the reluctance of corporate IT departments to embrace new technologies that are compelling but disruptive of the existing infrastructure. This can be both frustrating for users and counterproductive from a business standpoint. Against this backdrop I was interested to read Paul Chin's article in Intranet Journal,The Value of User Generated Content, Part 1. [Via Genie Tyburski] Part 1 puts the issue of things like blogs, wikis, and discussion groups (discussion groups? less relevant at the moment than podcasts, I would think) in a corporate IT person's context, comparing these media forms to the "engineered content" (apt phrase) that heretofore has populated intranets. Part 2 (still to come) will examine how "[i]n order to find a happy middle ground when using UGC, and not to appear overly controlling, a formal set of content posting guidelines should be agreed upon by both the intranet owners and users." (Emphasis mine.)
So, it seems that IT departments may be beginning to come to terms with "UGC" and its inevitability as part of the corporate environment. As to the important related policy decisions, though, I certainly hope the norm will be for these to be the ultimate province of other parts of the organization.
The March issue of Law Practice Today is out, and it's devoted to one of my favorite events, ABA TECHSHOW (and no, it's not just because I'm on the planning board). For those of you who aren't familiar with TECHSHOW, it's a 2-1/2 day technology conference for legal professionals -- it features over 50 educational sessions on technology issues ranging from electronic discovery to disaster recovery, Internet research to advanced IT. In this month's issue of Law Practice Today there are some TECHSHOW-specific articles as well as articles with the type of high-level content that you'll find at TECHSHOW. Of the articles featured this month, I'll highlight a few:
-- Dan Pinnington's How to Make the Most of ABA TECHSHOW is a great overview of the conference, and how you can extract the maximum technological goodness from it;
-- Want to learn more about some of the featured speakers before you go? Many of them are also bloggers, and in my article ABA TECHSHOW Bloggers you not only get to meet some of them, you can also find out the topics on which they are speaking; and
-- If you're still not sure your boss will approve a trip to TECHSHOW, check out Tips to Get Management to Approve Attending Your Next Professional Conference by Bob Weiss.
Something else you can mention to your boss is that if you register for ABA TECHSHOW by March 10, you'll save $200 off the regular registration ($300 if you're a Law Practice Management Section member).
Okay, enough of the sales pitch. Check out Law Practice Today and see what all the fuss is about.
Thomson West has a new tool, Westlaw Watch, that sounds like a subscription based aggregator for materials available from West. From the press release: "The new clipping functionality provides a way to target relevant legal and business information and distribute it in a timely manner. . . . Users can access their Westlaw Watch results in a variety of ways including e-mail, personal digital assistants (PDAs), RSS, intranet/portal, and XML."
From what I can tell (I kicked the tires for about 5 minutes) the idea is good but the implementation could use some work work. Curious to know if anyone else is more impressed. Curious to know what it costs.
(Also interesting, at least to me: that Thomson West has my personal/blogging email address on its press release distribution list.)
Actually, I have lots, some admittedly more lofty than others. One is that law firms and their clients will find ways to spend less on IT without sacrificing performance or convenience. Robin "Roblimo" Miller's book Point & Click OpenOffice.org seems like one of many excellent possible starting points.
It's often a very useful exercise to stand in someone else's shoes and see things through their eyes.
For lawyers, one exercise is to try to see things from the point of view of your clients. When it comes to legal technology, I usually refer to this approach as "client-driven technology."
Michael Kraft and Robert Enholm have written a great new article called "GC Tech Wish List for 2006" that will give lawyers some ideas about how legal technology looks from the corporate counsel's side of the table.
There's a cautionary tale well worth your consideration in The Wired GC's post and it will help all of us who are trying to determine what Web 2.0 applied to law (or Law 2.0) will look like.
In the kind of story that fuels the general level of suspicion many people have about advice from huge consulting firms, I saw that CNET has an article called "Gartner's advice: Halt BlackBerry deployments" that makes the usual advice you get from lawyers seem clear and concise.
I can't resist quoting:
The research note advises enterprises to "stop or delay all mission-critical BlackBerry deployments and investments in the platform until RIM's legal position is clarified," because "U.S. BlackBerry users would lose messaging services...and international users would lose message service while traveling in the U.S."
However, Gartner expects the two companies to reach a settlement within three weeks because an agreement would be "in both companies' interests."
There is a possibility that RIM could bypass the patent dispute by deploying a workaround, but Gartner said this path could be "highly problematic."
"RIM claims its workaround is legally sound, but its history in the courts does not inspire confidence. Moreover, end-user validation and implementation would take time, resulting in a temporary loss of service," the research note said.
Gartner advises enterprises "not to sign any agreements that could involve them in the RIM-NTP dispute" and "demand that RIM discloses its workaround plans."
If RIM deployments are not mission-critical, Gartner said, enterprises could take no action for the moment but rather "assess the potential impact of operation outages of unknown duration."
I believe that advice covers every possible side of this issue and hedges every bet.
In fairness, I read only the article and not the full research report.
Perhaps this is the best summary of the report:
"If you read it closely, we're telling people to sort of take a break here and wait until this case settles within two to three weeks," Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney told Reuters.
Of course, if you expect the case to settle, as everyone seems to believe these days, why report that the sky is falling?
Between Lawyers's own Tom Mighell has published an excellent, succinct explanation of basic Web 2.0 concepts, along with a great set of examples that might be used by legal researchers and lawyers. Get the details here.
Tom and I (Dennis) also participated in a roundtable article in the new issue of the ABA's Law Practice Today that a group of us created using the Web 2.0 tools at Writely.com. The article, "Looking Back and Looking Forward" looks at some of the technology tools we used and liked in 2005. The issue had a "Best of 2005" theme and Tom and I also polished up Tom's "Strongest Links: Ethics" column from earlier in the year, and added in some new, interesting ethics sites. The new column can be found here.
I'll note that there's been a lot of discussion about wikis and some new legal wiki projects announced in recent days. It's an area to keep your eyes on.
It's highly likely that we will be putting together a roundtable article about the potential uses of Web 2.0 tools in the legal profession for next month's issue of Law Practice Today. If you are interested in being a contributor to that article, please let me know.
As many of my friends know, I've been bitten by the Web 2.0 bug lately and done a lot of thinking (but not very much public writing yet) about how Web 2.0 might be applied in and to the delivery of legal services and practice of law. Steve Nipper has also recently raised the question about how to bring Web 2.0 into what is fundamentally a Web 1.0 world.
I think that this is a very important, yet quite esoteric, topic. However, The Wired GC has made an enormous contribution to the discussion with his post called "Web 2.0, Law Style," which definitely makes my "must read" category. It's both a good introduction and a map of the territory and its implications.
I expect to see not only more discussion of the topic (and I invite you to use the comments to this post as one method to do that), but some actual announcements of things that fall into the Web 2.0 category, including at least one of the ideas mentioned in the Wired GC's post in the very near future. In fact, I'm quite sure of it.
Dennis Kennedy in the New York Times today on metadata, Beware Your Trail of Digital Fingerprints: "If you take the time to educate yourself a little and know the issues, you can avoid problems pretty easily." (I'm less sanguine about that for the nonbusiness or small business user, whose document distribution habits aren't being scrutinized by a department of minions dedicated to avoiding these sorts of snafus. How many users do you know, for example, who have the time or inclination to make heads or tails of these search results?)
Evan Schaeffer and Between Lawyers' own Tom Mighell and Dennis Kennedy have written a new column where we take on one of the most interesting questions in the practice of law in 2005: if everyone thinks that electronic discovery is the next big thing in the practice of law and is so important, why are lawyers staying away from electronic discovery in droves?
I was thinking after we had our discussion of metadata in Word documents the other day on Between Lawyers that electronic discovery could actually be fun - checking for metadata and using all the new electronic discovery tools. Most lawyers, it seems, prefer to stay squarely in the world of paper. I've even heard that some judges make it all but impossible for lawyers who want to get electronic files to obtain them.
Is your lawyer asking you to print out documents for a hoard of high-paid associates to review or more comfortable pawing through a banker's box of papers than mousing through computer files? Maybe it's time for clients to become a lot more concerned about what their legal fees buy them in the world of practice-as-usual. In any event, you'll want to read the column to see how Evan, Tom and I grapple with the question. It's a thorough, well-rounded conversation that will make you think.
The three of us write a regular, more or less monthly column called Thinking E-Discovery on the DiscoveryResources.org site.
We had a follow-up discussion this morning on our back-channel email list about metadata and the post on metadata I made yesterday.
We thought we'd let you see our discussion and invite you to join in.
Marty started it by saying:
Dennis:
Maybe you could recommend a specific meta-cleanser and provide a link?
Meta-cleanser - sounds like something an existential cleaning service might use.
Marty
p.s. The WSJ ran a piece on the UN report with the title "Will Bill Gates Topple Assad?'
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Denise replied:
How do you reconcile the tension between the fact that on the one hand metadata can convey information you might not have wanted to convey, and it also enhances searchability and the richness of one's internal database? Is the solution just to ensure metadata is purged before things break free of the firewall?
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Dennis replied:
Aye, there's the rub.
In the article on my blog and when I speak about this issue in more detail, I try to reconcile the two faces of metadata and emphasize that it can be quite a good thing. (e.g., "Metadata is not inherently evil. It is often quite useful.")
I'd almost think of metadata with the idea of DRM in mind. Internally and with clients, metadata, especially the collaborative info, is incredibly useful. However, in someone else's hands, it can be quite damaging. The "scrubbing" is almost like sending the doc out with limited rights and access to the "full" document, at least conceptually.
So, metadata can't be handled appropriately without considering who the audience is (or might be). You then start to think of the document not just as a document, but as a published product.
In the classic approach, you would "scrub" the document (or create a new clean version or create a PDF) just before you sent it to an opposing party or someone who should not see the metadata. I.e., handle it as a separate process before the doc leaves the firewall.
BTW, I think the good of metadata far outweighs the bad, and, frankly, it's not that difficult to deal with metadata in most cases, if you take the time to learn about it.
I'd mention a metadata scrubber, but since I'm not getting any royalties on the gigantic amount of business I'd send over to them by mentioning a product on this blog, I probably won't do that on the blog. ;-)
Microsoft has a free downloadable Remove Hidden Data tool for Office 2003/XP that some experts turn up their noses at because it doesn't clean EVERYTHING, but, if you are aware of what it doesn't do, most of the time you'll be fine with it Note that it's for Office 2003 and XP, but, seriously, why are law firms still using older versions of Office as we near the start of 2006?
. Donna Payne has a cleaner called Metadata Assistant that's more or less become the de facto standard tool in legal. It's $79.There are a couple of others (E.g., EZClean.or Workshare Protect.)
Even with scrubbers, you still have the possibility of user error problems.
Both Tom and Ernie are very knowledgeable on these issues and probably have a few other pointers.
My main recommendation is to go into MS Word's properties and turn on what I think is called the "Show Hidden Data" setting (that's the one that will automatically show you the stuff in docs people send to you). Also very helpful is a setting that will pop up the properties window when you first save a document, so you can delete some of the standard automatically-generated metadata.
I think that most explanations of metadata are laden with fear-mongering. Of course, this is probably called for since the greatest danger of metadata is not knowing that it is created in the first place. It's a very binary problem. If you know about metadata and know about the threat then the odds are you aren't going to make a mistake (note I said 'the odds are' and not 'you won't make a mistake').
I think many people don't want to understand the problem; they just want to avoid it. And for those people I would say this: make your document into a PDF using some tool that lets you 'print to PDF.'
Make sure that you have chosen to print only the document and not 'the tracked changes' or any similar thing.
Then after you 'print to PDF' open the document and see if the metadata is visible in the PDF document. If it is go back to step #1. If it's not. then feel free to send it.
If you are doing anything more complicated than that (i.e. redacting using an advance PDF function in Acrobat etc.) then read everything that Dennis has written on the subject of metadata and be afraid. Be VERY afraid....
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Dennis replied:
I really agree that the basics of metadata aren't that hard to learn, if you just invest a little time. Once you start sending Word docs around, though, you really should know what you are doing or you're asking for trouble, just like the UN group.
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Marty replied:
pls blog this thread
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One in our occasional series of looks into our behind-the-scenes discussions.
The Times Online reports the latest in the growing list of documents that have been released with previous edits and other information still contained in the documents and readily accessible.
THE United Nations withheld some of the most damaging allegations against Syria in its report on the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, it emerged yesterday.
The names of the brother of Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and other members of his inner circle, were dropped from the report that was sent to the Security Council.
The confidential changes were revealed by an extraordinary computer gaffe because an electronic version distributed by UN officials on Thursday night allowed recipients to track editing changes.
Extraordinary computer gaffe? These "gaffes" have become all too commonplace.
And too many lawyers remain unaware of the issue.
As an example, a lawyer sent me an email today noting this article and saying, "is my understanding correct that the two ways of preventing prior versions from being disseminated in a Microsoft Word document are by either changing the format to pdf or rtf, or by clicking 'accept changes' in Word?"
I thought I'd share my answer to that question:
Arrrghhh!!! Your second assumption is probably the CAUSE of the revisions being able to be revealed! It's absolutely not the solution.
The first method will generally work, but you can mess up and reveal revisions and other information (which I'll refer to as "metadata") even when using RTFs and PDFs. If you want to be really sure, you'll want to use a metadata cleaner and then save the document as a PDF. However, even then you need to become acquainted with the various issues out there and the actual dangers in documents.
Be aware that you can reintroduce that hidden info in a variety of ways after you think that you have "cleaned" it. By the way, don't make the assumption that the doc was in MS Word, even though the odds are that was the program used here. You can pull that prior version info out of other programs as well, including the beloved tool of many lawyers, WordPerfect. In addition, be careful about the assumptions you make about different versions of different programs. Don't make assumptions - make it your business to learn about the issues and the solutions.
This is important stuff, often with embarrassing and far-reaching results. There's no excuse for lawyers (and others) not to be familiar with the basic issues of metadata and to be knowledgeable about both the problems and the solutions. That is, unless they want to have their documents or their clients' documents appear in similar stories in the newspaper. Too many lawyers are operating in the dark on this one. Lawyers routinely send me documents that have metadata that is either easily visible or can readily be surfaced with little or no effort.
I posted a short primer on metadata and the related issues on my blog at http://www.denniskennedy.com/archives/2005_10.html#a000891. Use it as a starting point and then set aside a little time to get yourself up to speed on these issues. Making assumptions in this area is especially dangerous.
How many times do you (and lawyers in general) need to hear the alarm go off on these issues before you stop hitting the snooze button and going back to sleep?
The new issue of the ABA's webzine Law Practice Today has about ten articles on disaster recovery and business continuity issues for law firms (and others) in this month's specially-themed issue. That's in addition to 6 or 7 (depends on how you categorize the articles) on marketing, management, technology and other practice issues (check out the McKenna and Buchanan articles in particular). And it's all free!
You may notice that Tom and I have put our lawyer membership cards at risk by taking a creative and non-traditional approach to writing the column. We had lots of fun (another word not often associated with lawyers) writing the column in this style and hope that you enjoy the article and find the resources we list to be helpful in considering and using IM as a collaboration tool.
Windows SharePoint Services Applications Template: Legal Document Review: "This application for Windows SharePoint Services is for company legal departments to post legal documents and templates, communicate requirements and processes, and provide contact information. It also features a legal document review tool for managing, prioritizing, and tracking employee requests to review contracts and documents." (Thanks, Steve!)
The Inquirer reports that "According to an NOP World survey, 50% of law firms in the UK are missing basic security measures and just under half have no budget dedicated to digital security..." (Thanks, Steve!)
The Electronic Filing and Service for Courts blog has a nice piece titled The Benefits of Mandatory E-Filing, with which I mostly agree; while there are clearly major benefits to e-filing, I'm just not sure making it mandatory (at this point, anyway) this soon is the right strategy. Yes, I know e-filing is mandatory in the bankruptcy courts, I just wish they had handled it a different way.
The reason why: like it or not, many attorneys are not equipped with sufficient technological skills to grasp the intricacies of e-filing. I write this with a trace of sarcasm; while the average reader of this blog would no doubt find e-filing a snap, many attorneys are still way behind the technology learning curve. I'm talking mostly about solo (and some small firm) attorneys here -- large firm attorneys may not have the skills, but they certainly have staff capable of processing an e-filing transaction.
A case in point. My firm subscribes to the Courthouse News, a great service that delivers an e-mail to us each day with descriptions of the latest court filings, both state and federal. A few months ago, the Courthouse News described a lawsuit filed in federal court by a lawyer here in Dallas, actually against the Northern District of Texas. The lawyer alleged that he lacked the computer skills necessary to e-file, and therefore the mandatory e-filing system here was discriminatory. We'll see how far this lawsuit goes, but the point is made: some lawyers are not equipped for this brave new world of e-filing.
A solution? Before a court system decides to go mandatory, they should offer e-filing as an option, with the notice that at some point in the future, e-filing will be the only option. At the same time, the court system should offer some sort of class to teach the basics of e-filing to lawyers and their staff. The classes can be online, at the courthouse, or in seminars through the bar association. I know some of the federal courts here in Texas require the attorney to take such a class before registering to e-file, but so far the state courts that have e-filing don't provide any obvious training -- at least in Texas, anyway.
Denise Howell
Dennis M. Kennedy
Tom Mighell
Marty Schwimmer
Ernest Svenson
