The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) has released a very comprehensive study entitled State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources. The study finds that state online legal resources are not authenticated and do not afford ready authentication by standard methods. Additionally, the AALL reports that only three of the state survey respondents expressed special concerns about authentication. According to the study's conclusion, state online primary legal resources are not sufficiently trustworthy and the public may reasonably doubt their authority and should approach such resources critically. The AALL study is a timely wake-up call for work that needs to be done to ensure the integrity and trustworthiness of electronically transmitted and maintained legal documents and information. The study is available online at http://www.aallnet.org/aallwash/authen_rprt/AuthenFinalReport.pdf .
Efficiently managing large amounts of information is a constant struggle for lawyers around the country, whether they're practicing in the largest law firm or the smallest governmental office. To address this information overflow, organizations implement records management strategies that take a variety of records – from a paper contract to an email saved on a smartphone – and ensure that the information in those records is accessible and accurate.
The ABA Law Practice Management Section has information about records management, including a book "The Lawyer's Guide to Records Management and Retention" by George Cunningham and John Montana. The 2007 ABA TECHSHOW also had a track on records management, and will continue that tradition in 2008.
Another great resource for records management information and technologies is ARMA, an international association of records management. Their conference is coming up in October in Baltimore, Maryland. Running from October 7th-10th, the conference will highlight topics ranging from e-discovery, records retention, and compliance to a "mini" Sedona Conference.
Court date scheduled in case involving access to information in computer RAM for e-discovery. eWeek reports that the U.S. District Court in Central California will hear an appeal of a magistrate's ruling requiring search engines to "create and store all logs" for future possible electronic discovery. Attorneys interviewed for the article discussed possible applicability of ruling to Voice over IP (VOIP) and whether, even if ruling is narrowly tailored, it won't cause other companies to adopt it as a preventive measure.
A strong password should be at least 8 characters long and include a combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers and symbols. Such a password, however can be difficult to remember. The problem is compounded when a user needs multiple passwords for different accounts. A passphrase can be as secure or more secure (if longer) and is much easier to remember. For example, "I Love TECHSHOW 2008!" is 21 characters long, with a good combination of characters. It is much easier to remember than a random password of the same length. (Adapted from a SANS Institute "Tip of the Day.") The SANS Institute is a great resource on information security.
A hat tip to Reid Trautz for turning me on to Anagram. This little application saves tons of time by allowing you to highlight the signature block in an email, right click, and then have an Outlook contact screen pop up fully populated with the data from the signature block. The software is really smart in figuring out what data should go in what field. The software is cheap ($29.95) and can be downloaded on the web at http://www.getanagram.com.
Ride the Lightning is the name of the new blog from Sharon Nelson. Sharon is President of Sensei Enteprises, Inc., an electronic discovery and computer forensics firm. Their firm is nationally known as experts in computer forensics and her husband, John Simek, Vice President of the firm, is maybe the most capable computer technologist I've ever met. This blog will no doubt become a "go to" site on forensics and discovery.
More important (to me anyway) is that she and John have become really my good friends over the years. Sharon and I served on ABA TECHSHOW board together and she followed me as chair of TECHSHOW. This summer she and I launched the podcast The Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology. Watch her blog. Although it attacks some pretty technical topics, I don't think it will ever be boring.
The ABA TECHSHOW 2008 Planning Board is hard at work putting together our next conference, and we'd like to get you involved. Help us choose the roundtable sessions that will be presented during TECHSHOW. Our popular roundtable sessions are designed to give attendees the opportunity to speak one-on-one with our legal technology experts, in a more conversational setting. To make sure we choose the topics that matter to you, please take this Roundtable Track Poll and vote for your favorite eight (8) topics. Thanks in advance for being a part of the ABA TECHSHOW planning process!