Recently I've taken a position with a large firm based in Houston, Texas. Of course large firms bring challenges along with opportunities when it comes to legal technology. One of the more encouraging pieces of technology I've seen here in my first few weeks is called iScrub from Esquire Innovations. In addition to being a worthy metadata removal tool, I have come to appreciate our firm's implementation of the product.
Its integration with Outlook enables policy enforcement, to a greater degree. Any out-going emails that contain Word (or other predefined attachments) receive a pop-up prompting the user to select one of three options. These options are: 1) Full metadata removal, 2) Partial removal, or 3) No removal at all. The third option is primarily for documents sent internally. There is even an option to view the metadata prior to its removal.
Having given countless presentations on the dangers of metadata (most recently to disciplinary counsel), I have come to appreciate the significant lack of knowledge by many lawyers on the issue. Having lawyers aware of the issue is merely step one. Getting them to acquire and use good metadata management tools is step too. Having them create good policies and use technology to enforce those is a big step to step three. So I was pleasantly surprised to see our firm already on step three. Whether you use iScrub or another product, I highly encourage this thoughtful approach to using technology as a policy enabling tool.
After seven years of litigation, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion on August 6, 2007 vindicating the creators of vote-swapping websites that let Al Gore and Ralph Nader fans support their chosen candidates in the 2000 presidential election. The purpose of the sites, which included the now-defunct voteswap2000.com and votexchange2000.com, was to let a Nader supporter in a state where George Bush might win "swap" his vote with a Gore supporter in a state like Texas where Republican victory was practically assured. There was no actual way to enforce the swap. However, some government officials were not amused and came up with the bizarre claim that operating a vote-swap site was a criminal act. California Secretary of State Bill Jones even threatened to prosecute voteswap2000.com and votexchange2000.com. Both websites immediately shut their virtual doors in response to the threat of prosecution, but the fight did not end there. Site operators Alan Porter, Patrick Kerr, Steven Lewis, and William Cody decided to take the state of California to court. After a protracted battle, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the websites’ "vote-swapping mechanisms as well as the communication and vote swaps they enabled were constitutionally protected" and that California’s threats violated the First Amendment. The court noted that the efforts of these websites, while controversial, were conducted honestly and without money changing hands. Neither website has announced whether or not it will reopen its doors for the 2008 election, but the court’s ruling may prompt others to exercise their constitutionally protected right to swap votes. The court’s opinion may be found here.
Turn any airplane headphone jack into an outlet for your gadgets with this new device. It won't power a notebook, but you can certainly run your iPod or PDA with it.
Did you know that if you install the new version of Adobe Reader (8.1), built in is a PDF handler (previewer) for PDF (Adobe Acrobat) files? Installing Reader 8.1 thus lets you view PDF files right in Outlook 2007. The instructions for doing it can be found here.