Technically Legal

Shredding

If the holidays (or the end of a calendar-based fiscal year) may bring a new computer to your office, you will face the question of what to do with the old one.  That question includes many subquestions, ranging from recycling (it's probably illegal to just throw it in the trash) to repurposing or donating. 

But if it's leaving the office, you'll want to be reasonably sure that no one else can pull any data from its hard drive that might include client secrets or privileged information or that might allow identity theft. One option is physical destruction of the hard drive: melting, shooting, acid baths, and so on.  But short of that, you could use a liveCD with a copy of "shred."  Even a few passes should provide a reasonable comfort level. There are other ways to do essentially the same thing.  But do use one of them (or have your tech support do it).

Computer connections 18 months and up

Every month or so, someone asks where something connects to something else, such as where to plug in a cable to show a presentation through a projector, or where to hook a printer to a laptop. Luckily, the answer these days is generally the children's toy answer. It's almost always simply fitting shapes: square peg in the square hole, star-shaped peg in the star-shaped hole, and so on.  Even hard drive cables are keyed by shape now, rather than requiring someone to match the red cable to pin 1. Software use may always pose problems; but at least the hardware connections are easy.

 

Real uses for a live CD

Live CDs (i.e., an operating system that runs from a CD, without needing to be "installed"—rather as one used to boot DOS from a floppy rather than a hard drive) sometimes come across as mere demos or toys. But they do have some practical uses, even for lawyers.

One such use is for when you're out of your office and can use a computer, but don't trust it not to have had a keystroke-logging program or other spyware already installed. I spent a month in the Czech Republic this summer.  As I didn't trust the PCs in Internet cafés there to be secure, I didn't want to log in to my email (let alone to a law firm file-server) with any ID and password.  So I used the café just once, using a throw-away email account (whose ID and password had nothing in common with any "real work" ID or password) for some non-privileged communications. The rest of the time, I used a PC that I bought-to-return, but I ran it only from a live CD.  That way, no keystroke-logging program ever had a chance to start (and I was reasonably confident that there was no hidden logging device). When I sold the PC back, there were no Windows event logs to indicate that I had even ever turned it on.

(For curious lawyers: "buy to return" is a statutorily defined contract type in the Czech Republic. One buys something, but the contract gives one a right to make the seller buy it back at some determinable price within some agreed time. The end result is much as though the temporary buyer had rented.)

Staying at home (well, in the U.S., but at the office), a lawyer can find practical uses for live CDs in troubleshooting or upgrading her computers. Two examples come to mind.

One is when installing new memory. Bad or intermittent memory errors can be responsible for flaky computer behavior. So if you add memory to a computer, it's good to test it. Several live CDs include the "memtest" program, so after installing the RAM you can boot from the CD, and run the memory test for long enough to satisfy yourself that the RAM is good, before you reboot to Windows. Of course, one has long been able to use memtest from a floppy; but lots of computers don't have floppy drives anymore.

A second is to help diagnose whether some problem is due to a hardware or software issue. If a computer's speakers or some other component work when the computer is booted from a live CD, but not from the installed Windows, you at least know that the hardware is fine. Knowing this much may at least save you from the kind of shoot-aim-fire tech support that prematurely suggests you buy new hardware.  Conversely, if the same problem appears even under the live CD, you are on good ground returning some hardware for a refund.

Live CDs have other uses, of course. But most of them are not sufficiently related to real-life law practice to be worth mentioning here. And the field where live CDs excel that is highly law-related (electronic discovery and drive copying) is almost exclusively in a "hire an expert" category for most lawyers.  First, you don't want to have to be a witness to the procedures used. (Minn.R.Prof.Cond. Rule 3.7's three exceptions won't apply.)  Second, you don't want to run the risk of botching the procedure. 

File Name Lengths

Earlier this week, I was on a "60 tips in 60 minutes" panel for Minnesota CLE. We actually delivered the promised number.  (More, in the written materials, as each presenter tucked in some "extra.")

An attendee asked "in Windows Vista, is the maximum length for file names the same as XP or longer?"  Live, I didn't know whether it was only the same (256 characters), or in fact longer. Nor did the other panelists. 

It turns out that for most users' situations it's the same in theory, but slightly longer in practice.  The Microsoft FAQ gives the same maximum length: 260 bytes (or English characters).  But that's a maximum path length and includes a null. So "c:\" takes up three of the characters, and the null takes a fourth, leaving 256 bytes left for any combination of folder names and file name.  That produces the potentially longer names in practice in Vista: instead of losing characters to

C:\Documents and Settings\Michael Trittipo\My Documents\Litigation\Mom and Pop vs. Goliath Enterprises\Discovery\Spring 2007\filename.txt (138 characters)

Vista has shortened the default document path to

C:\Users\Michael Trittipo\Documents\Litigation\Mom and Pop vs. Goliath Enterprises\Discovery\Spring 2007\filename.txt (117 characters).

The 21-byte savings comes from shortening the "special folder" names: turning "\Documents and Settings" into "\Users" and killing the pointless "My " cuteness.  "\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft" becomes "\Users\All Users\Microsoft" and so on, as Michael Kaplan discusses.  Also, some path names are reportedly being shortened behind the scenes. 

The examples show why lawyers might sometimes care: it's easy for lawyers to give long names to folders and files, and to nest folders fairly deeply.  But in general, here's a 61st tip: don't give a letter the name

Letter Demanding That Michael Trittipo or Any Other Blogger or Bloggers at Technically Legal URL used by Minnesota State Bar Association Cease and Desist Linking, Copyright Infringement, or Passing Off of Information Viewed on April 1, 2007 as Accurate on Any Other Date.doc

That's 275 characters right there: and that's without the necessary leading characters for whatever path it might be put in. There are still good reasons to rely on folder paths (metadata, in a sense) to organize things, rather than try to put every bit of description in the file name itself.  "Demand letter of 4/1" will do fine, if the folder path does the rest.  One advantage to document or case management systems is that they will take care of path names, without you having to do so (and without the risks of accidents that come from using Windows Explorer directly).

Invisible Behemoths

A member recently complained that one of our council email distribution lists was broken.  The evidence?  It was rejecting his message to his fellow council members.  No, it didn't say why. 

Investigation quickly showed that the list service program was working fine.  I had the member send me a copy of the rejection message and of what he was trying to send.  The rejection message said "mail action aborted; exceeded limit; 7812 kB maximum message size."  Sure enough, his message was that big, and the list had an "etiquette" limit of 2 megabytes.  His response?  "But it's only four attachments, only about a dozen pages.  They're just some candidates' bios." 

That was true enough.  There were only four attachments.  Three of them were one page each, all between 25 kilobytes and 35 kilobytes.  No problem.  But the fourth attachment was over 6 megabytes by itself.  True, it was only nine pages long.  A bit wordy for a bio, but page count wasn't the issue. 

The problem was that it was an image PDF resulting from a scan.  It all had been scanned at high resolution and high color, as though it were nine large glossy photographs. There was no  good reason.  Everything except a letterhead logo and a signature on the cover page was dirt-ordinary black-on-white print.  Maybe the little spot of color was important to the candidate.  But most likely, no one thought about what would happen if nine pages were treated like high-quality photos by Jim Brandenburg.

What could the candidate have done differently?  Scanning at a lower resolution would have helped, of course.  Scanning in black and white, not even grayscale, let alone color, would have helped.  But it would have been best to print to PDF, not print then scan.  If it was vital to the candidate that the logo of his firm or the signature be in color, the best solution would have been to scan just that, then insert the image(s) into the Word or WordPerfect document, and then print to PDF.

What could the council member have done differently?   He could have had his email program set to show file sizes.  Or he could have read the five lines of the error message to notice the part I quoted.  Sure, there were a couple of technobabble words.  But with only five lines, the "exceeded limit; maximum size" bits should have been close enough to plain English to be seen.

What could I have done differently?  I could have used the problem as a teachable moment, and might have saved the lawyer from someday missing an e-filing deadline due to rejection of an overlarge scanned document to be filed.

Of course, what I actually did was to reset the list's etiquette limit to ten megabytes temporarily and ask the member to re-send, because I'd "fixed" what was "broken."  I took the easy way out, on the theory that most the council members probably receive their email at the office over a T3.  Tough luck for any council member using a modem.  (Except that I've now re-instated the two megabyte limit.)

The broader issue, of course, isn't any of the three actors' actions.  It's that our computer programs aren't set up to make relevant quantities (the math) clear to us.  We can see how big a page is, on paper.  But a page electronically might be tiny or gigantic.  The problem is, that to most users, the behemoths are invisible, and nothing in their programs highlights the invisible sizes.  Sure, they could learn how to find out the sizes.  But they shouldn't have to make the effort.  They're busy practicing law, and have better things to do.  Email programs and scanning programs should add default settings that make file sizes obvious, big and bold and unavoidable: maybe something like a CPU meter or a speedometer, always up front to make the invisible apparent.

Math and Magic

Once in a while, it helps to have a reminder that computers are not magic.  In particular, they are subject to various quantifiable limits, and it can avoid frustration to remember those limits, even to do a little math about them.

Recently, I had to make copies of partitions on two computers to preserve potential evidence.  On one computer, I didn't think ahead clearly enough about the computer's age.  I made the copy (using Helix and dd) across a USB cable to the new target drive.  It took over five hours. Why so long?

The partition was about 30 gigabytes.  The data transfer rate for USB 1.1 (which was all the source computer had) is 1.5 megabytes per second at best.  So for 10 gigabytes, elapsed time is about (30 GB / 1.5 MB/s) * ( 1000 MB / 1 GB) = about 20,000 seconds: about 333 minutes, or five and a half hours.  The math is so simple that I should have done it in advance and brought along a book to read.

On the second computer, the partition was again around 30 gigabytes.  I again used Helix and dd.  But this time I made the copy by connecting the target drive through the built-in IDE cable.  The data transfer for the cables and drives at issue could reach up to about 30 MB/s: about 20 times as fast as USB 1.1.  Instead of 333 minutes, the math comes to about 17 minutes. 

Both copies were successful.  Their MD5 hashes matched the original partitions'.  But guess whether next time I'm going to do a little back-of-the-envelope calculation of the time options available? Yep.

Forms vs. Functions

Damien Riehl writing in the Computer Law Section blog notes a recent 9th Circuit decision holding that a company operating a bankruptcy petition preparation website was engaged in the unauthorized practice of law. 

The decision seems sound given its facts, and the Court says that its decision is about only those facts, not to the use of forms or software generally.  The decision emphasizes the following:

Frankfort held itself out as offering legal expertise. Its websites offered customers extensive advice on how to take advantage of so-called loopholes in the bankruptcy code, promised services comparable to those of a “top-notch bankruptcy lawyer,” and described its software as “an expert system” that would do more than function as a “customized word processor[ ].”

That emphasis allows one to wonder, though, whether a company that charged the same, and produced the same forms, but whose pitch was different, could escape the “unauthorized practice” decision.  What if a company's pitch was

Many people don't need personalized legal advice.  Many cases fall in a routine middle range. Personalized legal advice can only come from a lawyer. But it will cost more upfront than mere form preparation.  Only you can decide whether the extra cost is worthwhile.  If you are willing to forego the possible advantages of personalized legal advice, our you-tell-us-which-form-to-fill-in approach may be for you.  Sometimes an off-the-rack suit does as well as a tailored one.  We claim no expertise; only that many lawyers wouldn't invest much thought in your case, either."

It's a rather insulting pitch.  But it avoids the "expert systems" claim.  Of course, the site would have to operate in accordance with its "we're just scriveners, not experts" claim, too.  Rather than choose what forms to fill out, it might provide merely some text describing when form A is used and when form B is, and then provide a "select: A [] or B []" radio button. But it could be done.  HotDocs interviews do that kind of thing.

The idea is open to criticism on two sides.  On one side, a court might still be able to find it was unauthorized practice in substance, despite the "we're no substitute for experts" facade. On the other side, it might not fly as a sales proposition.  But maybe that's the point: a clear disclosure that the customer's taking a risk and could be making a mistake by not hiring a lawyer might be enough.

On a broader note, the decision reminded me of why I prefer to think of lawyers with good sources of model, not form, documents.  Models can be adapted.  Of course, a recognized, familiar form can be good, if it allows a lawyer to save his or her client time, by being able to rely on knowing the form's contents (and their acceptability) even without reading every word.  But that happens in only a few areas of practice, as far as I know.

End-of-Year Benchmark

Someone whom Santa hadn't brought a new PC asked me about deals on computers for the New Year.  But she was a little tapped out after her own gift-giving.  So I looked at used PCs.

In the Twin Cities, one can buy a used "Vista-capable" PC for about $140-160.  That's for a P4 or similar processor, 1.5 GHz or faster, with 512 MB or more of RAM and a 40+ GB drive.  And the price includes a legitimate Windows 2000 Pro or XP Pro, so one could buy the upgrade version of Vista and save $100 off its full price.

With prices so low, it's hard to get worked up over the hardware requirements for Vista approaching its January launch.  It's true that Vista wouldn't install on the lowest-end machine I tried to put it on, one bought in 1999.  The 784 MB of RAM was fine, but Vista saw that the speed was only 667 MHz, and declined to install.  It's hard to see that as a big problem, though, when the street value of such a PC is only about $50-60 at best -- with an upgradeable Windows OS to boot (pun not intended).

I'm not suggesting lawyers should go get Vista right away.  The risk of compatibility issues bars that suggestion just yet.  Even Microsoft's own Accounting Express 2007 warns on attempted install on Vista RC1 of an incompatibility.  But lawyers who are finding that a PC bought before 2000 is too slow might be surprised at how little a better PC would cost.  Even a new P4/3GHz/1GBRAM/80GB PC can be had with XP Pro for $600-700, as 2006 turns into 2007.

 

More or Fewer

No computer technology choice is right for everyone.  All depends on the problem to be solved.  Take the question of whether to have more monitors or fewer.

Some people feel their monitors give them too little screen area. They may move to to double monitors, as I use at work. That allows having, say, the text of a court decision in a research window, and the text of a brief in another, or the text of a model contract or your notes in one and a contract being drafted in another. So you can see both just by shifting your gaze, rather than shift from one pane to another. (Larger and widescreen monitors are another option. But two 4:3 LCD monitors will cost less than a single 16:9 monitor with screen area equal to the two 4:3 monitors' summed areas.)  People who work with a lot of text in multiple documents, like lawyers, often find it useful to have two or more monitors on a single PC.

Other people may keep two or more computers running at a time doing different jobs. But these people lose a lot of physical space when each computer needs its own keyboard, video monitor, and mouse. And often, the work being done on the second or additional computers doesn't need regular checking; maybe only being looked at once a day.  Many people with this issue move to KVM switches, that let them keep just one keyboard, video monitor, and mouse, for two or more computers.  Remote session control is another option for solving this kind of problem, but either way, the goal is to have fewer monitors than computers.

If you go with multiple monitors, try to keep their displays as similar as possible in brightness and contrast levels. Your eyes will feel better.

Forms, Samples, and Sharing

Document assembly is alluring. The MSBA has long provided fillable PDF forms for the statutory Uniform Conveyancing Blanks. Practicelaw.org will soon offer server-based HotDocs assembly of some forms. Exari has a demo of similar online document creation. Major legal research companies also provide forms.

But forms are not always the best practice tool.  A form says "there is one way to draft it." In fact, there are many ways to draft any complaint. Sure, the rules give some "form" complaints. But the introduction notes that the "forms are intended for illustration only." That caveat mirrors Rule 84's statement that the appendix forms are intended only "to indicate the simplicity" allowed -- far from purporting to show best practice.

Generally I prefer samples to forms. A sample says "there's more than one way." I'd rather see six samples of a complaint for some cause of action than a single form. Having varied samples allows greater appreciation for what's essential versus what's desirable.

The same goes for contracts. I have no quarrel with the services contract the Exari demo produced for me, and I liked the web interface. But that document's main value for me would still be mainly to save manual typing for a rough skeleton; not as a revelation of best clauses. Any such contract I'd draft for a client would contain significant changes.

It's valuable for a bar association to help its members with forms. But it's even better for an association to provide ways for lawyers to meet and to share ideas (and sometimes samples, appropriately redacted) directly.