ABA

Problem: A very good witness is on the stand. Defense counsel cross-examines at great length as to differences between three statements. By the third occasion, the witness is hopelessly confused, and the jury as well (as well as the judge). Solution: Counsel?s notes should be indexed to specific portions of each statement, and a direct comparison of these segments should be prepared into a single demonstrative exhibit. Lesson: Visual comparisons are far more clear than verbal.

Two federal judges recently ruled that the FBI may not track the locations of cell phone users without showing evidence that a crime occurred or is in progress, saying that to do so would violate long-established privacy protections. Judges in Texas and New York denied FBI requests for court orders that would have forced wireless carriers to continuously reveal the location of a suspect's cell phone as part of an ongoing investigation. Other judges have allowed the practice in other jurisdictions, but the recent rulings could change that. Depending on a wireless phone's capabilities, carriers can determine either precise or rough locations of users when they make or receive calls, a feature primarily used for emergencies. In the New York and Texas cases, the courts approved FBI requests for other information from the wireless carriers, including logs of numbers a cell phone user called and received calls from. But the FBI also sought cell-site locations, which the courts said amounted to the ability to monitor someone's movements. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York and Magistrate Judge Stephen William Smith from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas ruled that such information requires law enforcement to show probable cause that a crime has been or is being committed. Opinions in both cases may be found at http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/USA_v_PenRegister/.

Every single attorney in the firm should know enough about the firm?s software and hardware to be able to do the following. If you can click the mouse, use two fingers on the keyboard, and/or dictate, you can accomplish these tasks. But you will need training assistance to get to this point: - locate, open, edit, print, save and close a document - produce a simple letter from scratch using templates, styles and copy/paste - fax a document - copy a document - scan a document -open, save, create, and send an attachment to an email -create and respond to email - effectively use the basic telephone system features of forward, retrieving and leaving voice mail messages, and conferencing

It's been a busy month so far for roll-outs and rumors of new online services. We are seeing the early rounds of an escalating battle between Google and Microsoft to become the dominant online user service provider. But don't expect Yahoo or AOL to sit this one out on the sidelines. Microsoft launched its new search engine at live.com (http://www.live.com/). Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of information services at MSN, predicted people's reaction (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MICROSOFT_INTERNET_SEARCH?SITE=NYPOU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT): "They're going to say, 'Holy cow, I had no idea that search could get this much better!' " Google search is pretty good, so we'll see if the immediate bovine exclamations prove to be warranted. Google leaked (allegedly by accident) its plan for offering consumers infinite online storage.(http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GOOGLE_STORAGE?SITE=NYPOU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2006-03-08-20-29-35) "The online copy of your data will become your Golden Copy," Google's notes said, with the original information kept on a user's PC essentially serving as a backup. But there's more than meets the eye to both these disclosures. Regular readers have seen my comments on Web 2.0 applications. If not, review here (http://www.okbar.org/members/map/articles/2006/011406.htm). Microsoft wants to grab headlines by touting a better search engine than Google. But check out Windows Live (TM) Ideas (http://ideas.live.com/) for the real scope of their plans. The laundry list includes an improved webmail service, automated computer maintenance, custom domains, traveling favorites, Microsoft Office Live on the web and a whole lot more. Then check out the newly released Microsoft Gadgets (http://microsoftgadgets.com/) feature. Microsoft says "Gadgets are a new category of mini-application designed to provide information, useful lookup, or enhance an application or service on your Windows PC or the Web." There are lots of interesting Gadgets available on day one, including many simple games, information presenters, applications that enhance current Microsoft services and even all sorts of Gadgets that work with Google (http://microsoftgadgets.com/Tags/Google)or iTunes.(http://microsoftgadgets.com/Tags/iTunes) Then they've made it easy for developers and hobbyists to design and publish their own Gadgets. It almost looks like Microsoft is promoting an open source movement or a return to the early days of computing when independent developers released all sorts of applications from the silly to the sublime. But this is all under Microsoft's live.com umbrella. So every new Gadget (and there will be many) adds to Microsoft's empire. The concept from Google is no less breathtaking in its scope when you think about it. Online storage has been around for a long time. Google's Gmail (http://mail.google.com/) invites massive online storage of e-mail archives at no cost. But the concept of online storage is gaining more attention for typical, non-expert computer users. I was summoned to a friend's house a few weeks ago to look at a computer that had been in service for too long and was obviously nearing the end of its lifespan. The computer was too old to upgrade or send out for repairs. So I noted that the most important step was to copy off onto CD's or a thumbdrive any important documents and other data while the computer still lived. I made a casual comment that the family's large collection of digital pictures of their children growing up was likely the most valuable part of the computer and if they hadn't been burning copies onto CD's, that was the first priority. The wife mulled over my remarks for a few hours after I left. My friend later advised me that by the next day my comments about computer data triage had become not just their first priority in data management, but their primary focus in life. Happily all of the pictures were saved- in duplicate - with a set now stored off-site. But I'm,sure the idea of online backup would not seem unreasonable to this couple. So what?

When you are reading a document or a webpage and the font is a bit too small to comfortably read, here's a quick solution. Hold down the control key and use the scroll wheel on your mouse to easily enlarge the text, zooming in. This doesn't work with everything. But since it works with True Type fonts, it will work most of the time.

From a November, 2005 trial: Prosecution?s first witness, a police officer. Using ELMO to show photos and diagrams. He keeps using (not well) the zoom feature (to distraction). The lesson here: CHOREOGRAPH your use of exhibits. Have a clear goal in mind about what and why you use any tech feature. Too much movement on the screen distracts jurors. Next up? Photographs of every room in the house where the crime occurred. Next lesson: simply because you have pictures of a room doesn?t require you to use ALL of them ? make sure they show something jurors care about. Final lesson: an ELMO is terrible for photos ? it just makes everyone dizzy, and the jurors end up turning away.

Recently Forbes ran an article entitled "Your Business on Demand" (http://www.forbes.com/2006/02/08/sap-oracle-salesforce_cx_tt_0208straightup.html?partner=ecommerce_newsletter). This article is interesting because it is a reflection of hosted applications moving into the mainstream. Hosted Applications (formerly known as Application Service Providers) have been around for some time. The basic concept is moving software applications on to the Internet. Then instead of loading, configuring, supporting, maintaining and upgrading an application, you just access the application online with a browser. All of the application support issues are handled by the provider. Lawyers have been hesitant to use hosted applications, since they are concerned about having client data on hardware outside their offices. The Forbes article points out that both large companies and their software providers are moving in this direction. It also points out that the market for online applications is expected to grow to $3.6 billion by 2008. What this means is that clients are moving their mission critical data online. As a long time advocate of hosted apps, I've always felt moving data into a secure data center versus having it onsite makes much more sense. In fact the Utah State Bar's ( www.utahbar.org) database (as of last May) is in a hosted application located in a Tier One data center. Lawyers would do well to educate themselves on the hosted application model and watch for ways to adopt it. This will move client data to more secure locations; it will decrease technology burdens for lawyers and it will provide better client service tools that allow online client interaction.