Category Archives: Strategy

California Lawyer, eDiscovery California, Education, Law Practice Management, Privacy, Security, Strategy, Technology

Calbar Solo Summit 2014: So Much for Cutting Back!

Solo Summit 2014

 

Hi All – hope things are going well with you.  I said I was planning to cut back on presentations, but somehow I was selected to do two programs at the upcoming State Bar of California Solo & Small Firm Summit in Newport Beach (note that's a change from the usual location, Long Beach).  So, without further adieu, here's my schedule:

 

Solo Summit 2014 - Friday

Friday Lunch Program:  11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

(Program 17, June 20th)

Junior Associate to Senior Partner: Confidentiality, Privacy and Technology Governance

Generally speaking, senior attorneys tend to be intimidated by technology. On the other hand, junior attorneys tend not to be intimidated enough!  This program strikes the balance and answers the burning question, “Am I doing enough to protect the privacy and confidentiality of both my practice and my client information?”

MCLE: 1.0 Hour Ethics

[I was awarded one of the coveted plenary sessions for the first time.  Normally, we break into three concurrent MCLE presentations, but the plenary sessions have all 250 attendees.  I'm going to have to be on my toes for this one…]

 

Solo Summit 2014 - Saturday

11:00 a.m. to 12 noon

(Program 32, June 21st)

Leveraging Technology to Beat the Big Guys in the Discovery Game

Panel presentation of the rules and new technologies pertaining to ESI (electronically stored information) that will level the playing field to allow a solo or small firm attorney to “go toe-to-toe” with a large law firm throughout the discovery process — even during the most complex and voluminous litigation. The speakers discuss cutting edge litigation technology advancements which translate to cost savings and more streamlined management of electronically stored information. New technology trends discussed include computer assisted review, analytics, the latest trends with computer forensics and automating litigation hold policies among others.

MCLE: 1.0 Hour Ethics

Hope to see you there!

Books & eBooks, Education, Law Practice Management, Strategy

Shameless Plug Alert: The California Guide to Growing & Managing A Law Office

Grolo2 Cover - Cropped
I heard rumors that people who preordered the book were starting to receive their copies and now it's official.  The book is out.  Obviously, you should buy several copies for members of the entire family as holiday gifts.  After all, what better time to share the knowledge than on, say, Memorial Day weekend?

But I'm not pushing…not…pushing…

Education, Metadata, Scope, Strategy, Technology

Upcoming Presentation: Metadata – Legal and Ethical Challenges

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I'm presenting a webinar with my good friend and past-LPMT-Chair Robert
Brownstone, entitled:

Metadata: Legal and Ethical Challenges:

Avoiding Information Risks With Various File Types,
Electronic Redactions, Location-Tracking, “The Cloud” and eDiscovery.

This is a live,
90-minute CLE webinar/teleconference with interactive Q&A Thursday, May 2nd,
2013 from 1:00pm-2:30pm EDT, 10:00am-11:30am PDT.

And yes, as the subtitle suggests, this is not a 101 presentation.  If you're interested in checking it out, click-through to the Strafford web site for more info; and stay tuned.  I have many more of these in the pipeline.

Cases of Interest, Education, Law, Law Practice Management, Metadata, Privilege, Scope, Security, Spoliation, Strategy, Technology

The Exchange – San Francisco Wrap-Up


MP900387819Today's General Counsel Institute (Formerly the Executive Counsel Institute) held the San Francisco stop of their "eDiscovery for the Corporate Market" series, nicknamed "The Exchange".  Prior to this, I'd only attended in Los Angeles – and only the first day – but I was on a couple of the panels this year, so attended the entire one-and-a-half-day event.  The moderators for this location were Browning Marean III, Robert Brownstone and David Kessler.

This format is still working for me, folks.  The roundtable approach and ability for all attendees to participate is simply a great way to info-share, and as I've mentioned in prior summaries, the vendor attendees do not overpower the conference with blatant pitches.

Most importantly, I learn something new every single time I attend; and that's the point, isn't it?  Let me share with you the sessions that were covered this year:

  • Polling the audience (Pain points, role, expected outcomes)
  • Data security, social media and the cloud (with a healthy portion of BYOD included)
  • Dealing with challenges of legal holds
  • Recognize/reconcile the ethical and contractual tensions that can arise between I/C, O/C and providers
  • Importance of day-to-day processes, management skills, swimming upstream, info management and governance
  • Effective and efficient project management
  • Recalibrating the program – unaddressed issues
  • Resources and tools
  • Search technologies and forward thinking

And most importantly, several coffee breaks…

Every flavor of eDiscovery professional is represented at these conferences, from lawyers to techies to support staff; and each brings to the (round)table their real-world perspective of what they see on a daily basis.  Practical information, not theory!

I encourage you to check it out the next time the conference is in your area.

Education, Implementation, Law, Law Practice Management, Science, Scope, Strategy, Technology

ReInventLaw Silicon Valley: GoldenState & the Three Bears

RILSC 2013
What the hell was that???

I’m speaking of the all-day ‘experiment’ (that’s what I’m calling it), ReInventLaw Silicon Valley 2013 conference this past Friday.  Is that a criticism?  Not at all.  This was the kickoff event of a collaborative effort; law students, professors, technologists, investors, inventors, attorneys and everything in-between, all convening in one place (The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, to be exact) to talk about the future direction of law practice.  Approximately 40 speakers in all.  You read that right; 40 speakers in a single day (enough to make an LPMT Chairman cry).

And what did we see?  Good talks, bad talks, decent talks, shameless sales pitches, moderately-shameful sales pitches.  Terrible speakers with outstanding messages, outstanding speakers with terrible messages & mediocre speakers with mediocre messages.  Speakers who went on too long, speakers who didn’t go on long enough and speakers who were juuuust right (yes, this was the LPMT-equivalent of the Three Bears…).

And of course, live streaming Tweets hosted on a PC with an IP-address conflict (DHCP, my friends; old school!).  There were funny tweets about there only being five ties in the room (I happened to be one of them).  My response was to create the hash tag, #thesmartesttiesintheroom.

In other words, I had a great time!  It’s very easy to criticize something like this, I suppose, but the organizers were able to land many hard-to-attain speakers while simultaneously coaxing approximately 350 people (by my rough count of how many actually showed up vs. the 500 tickets that were distributed) to convene in one location for a healthy exchange of ideas.

I gotta go…my porridge is getting cold…

Implementation, Management, Media, Rants & Raves!, Strategy

Yahoo! and the Robot (not Remote) Employee

MP900427654

Wouldn't the world be a perfect place if we simply followed every talking head who pontificates on a subject (yours truly excluded…)?  Of course, the goal doesn't usually involve the content of the story, but to create a bait headline that'll compel a reader to click-through (the shortest way to accomplish this: make them angry).  And what a perfect subject to select for this purpose; Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer rescinds remote privileges!

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Then, the experts swoop in to tell us what she's really doing:

  1. Implementing a stealth layoff by pissing-off employees, who will then quit on their own,
  2. Discriminating against working moms (what about dads?),
  3. Taking us back to draconian times!

You get the idea…and you know what?  Every one of these claims might be true!  But, perhaps she is:

  1. Putting her arms around a human resources issue that's grown out of control,
  2. Fostering improved inter-company relations,
  3. Trying to better-assess a situation she can't see.

Mix & match as you like.  Does that mean I support the decision?  It's not about that.  I, like you, can easily cite detriments as well:

  1. More hours/dollars wasted on fuel, time and wear & tear sitting in traffic (I've been wondering whether the increase in traffic would actually be noticeable to outsiders),
  2. Less quality/leisure time with family, friends or hobbies,
  3. More pressure on significant other/spouse/parent to 'pick up the slack' of the Yahoo! employee (i.e. What I'm getting at is, suppose this particular employee is also a caregiver to an elderly parent; it ain't only about children, is it?)
  4. More pressure on single, unattached employee for similar reasons (there are only so many hours in the day for grocery shopping, errands and of course, appointments).
  5. Don't even get me started on morale…at least in the short term.
  6. Higher costs for Yahoo! as well; supporting all of these additional bodies on-site will have a marked effect on resources, such as electricity, maintenance, space allocation, furniture & supplies, etc.

I hate to quote Facebook, but:  It's complicated.

This is why it's extremely difficult to be a manager; too many cooks and Monday-morning quarterbacks.  My favorite is the propensity to quote studies about the benefits/detriments of working remotely.  You know what?  It's irrelevant except as it pertains to Yahoo!! (So, when I want to add a 'bang' to a sentence ending in the word "Yahoo!", is that how I do it?).

Of course, there is a place for statistics and studies as a general guide.  But what matters most is, how do these statistics and studies relate to the specific situation at Yahoo!?  There are a lot of factors involved, and I don't see too many of these articles wading very far into the weeds.

Last point; substitute any other name for Yahoo!  Same rules apply.

P.S.  I've included articles from people who do know the subject well – a lot better than I do, anyway (e.g. Richard Branson) but I think his particular comments answer his own concerns:

"To successfully work with other people, you have to trust each other. A
big part of this is trusting people to get their work done wherever they
are, without supervision." [Italics added].

Two questions:

  1. Is it possible that Yahoo! harbors irrational mistrust of their employees?
  2. Is it possible that some employees have abused Yahoo!'s trust?

It could be one, both or neither.  I wonder how this will play out in the months leading up to implementation?  I wonder what things will look like six months after implementation?

Related articles
Silicon Alley Insider: Why Marissa Mayer Told Remote Employees To Work In An Office … Or Quit (YHOO)
Yahoo policy stirs hot debate on working from home
Ex-Yahoos Confess: Marissa Mayer Is Right To Ban Working From Home (YHOO)
Richard Branson Says That Marissa Mayer Got It Wrong About Remote Employees
Yahoo Issues Statement Over Home-Working Ban: It's Right For Us
Cost, Duties, Education, Implementation, International, Law Practice Management, Metadata, Privacy, Privilege, Sanctions, Scope, Social Media, Strategy, Technology, Zubulake

Summary of Executive Counsel Exchange – Day One

Last week, I attended day one of the Executive Counsel Exchange in Los Angeles, as has been my custom the past three years.  Just to clarify, this conference is sometimes referred to as the Executive Counsel 'Institute', but the actual program is called, "The Exchange" and the theme is, "e-Discovery
for the Corporate Market".

This year, the primary moderators were Browning Marean III of DLA Piper, my old pal Robert Brownstone of Fenwick & West and David Kessler of Fulbright & Jaworski.  This is one of my favorite programs because it's a roundtable.

The reason this particular conference is so beneficial is that attendees share their day-to-day experiences confronting the many eDiscovery challenges we know so well.  I've always considered the practical much more important than the theoretical – mostly because people, situations and budgets don't tend to comport to the (IMHO) wishful thinking that appears in many overly-optimistic project plans.

Take a look at the agenda.  If these look like the kinds of issues you see, think about attending.  The next event will be held in late March in San Francisco.

Education, Implementation, Judges, Law, Privilege, Scope, Strategy, Technology, vDiscovery Insights, Zubulake

v-Discovery Insights: Robert Brownstone of Fenwick & West LLP Discusses his Top 3 Concerns in Data Security

Robert Brownstone has been my friend and colleague for many years.  In fact, he was Chairman of @CalBarLPMT two years prior to me.  We recently appeared on a panel together called, "Under Fire: Defending and Challenging a Motion against Technology-Assisted Review – A mock Meet and Confer (26f) hearing".  He played the role of the Plaintiff's attorney and I the Defendant's.  Robert was a late addition to my panel and I was delighted to present with him again!

 

eDiscovery California, Education, Judges, Science, Strategy, Technology

eDiscovery California: Upcoming Panel: eDiscovery and Legal Technology in Practice Conference – San Francisco

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I'm going to be on a roundtable panel at the Thomson Reuters 'eDiscovery and Legal Technology in Practice' Conference 2012 in San Francisco.  It's an all-day event, taking place on December 5th.  It's a terrific agenda; here's the scoop on my specific panel:

12:00pm – 1:10pm

Under Fire: Defending and Challenging a Motion against Technology-Assisted Review – A mock Meet and Confer (26f) hearing.

Panelists:

Nicole Armenio – Kroll Ontrack Solution Architect
Perry Segal – eDiscovery Attorney and Management Consultant, Charon Law
Hon. Socrates Peter Manourkian – Judge of the Superior Court, County of Santa Clara

It's entirely possible that by 1:00pm, the attendees will all be thinking about lunch…

Cost, eDiscovery 101, eMail, Implementation, Scope, Security, Strategy, Technology

eDiscovery 101: BYOD = BYOA (ASPIRIN)

MP900438810In the upcoming Calbar book, The California Guide to Growing & Managing a Law Office, I do a side-by-side comparison between the benefits and detriments of BYOD.  I'm sure the same sort of comparison takes place in meetings at all kinds of companies.  There's no doubt that on paper, many aspects of BYOD might yield productivity gains and other benefits for the enterprise.

[Note:  In the book, I lay out information in the format of pros and cons because the goal is to inform a reader of the positives and pitfalls so they can make an informed decision.]

So, what's my opinion?  If I was the consultant, in most cases, I'd likely fall into the 'against' column.  Why?  I'll get to that in a moment.

For those of you who don't know my background, at one time or another, I pretty much did every job on the operations side of IT before I ever became a lawyer.  This allows me to look at facts through a wide-angle lens.  The way my mind works, I literally imagine an issue as a 3-D photograph.  Let's apply that to BYOD:

We start by playing 'swap' for a moment.  Imagine coming into work one morning and all of the desktops are different brands and chipsets; some of them are Windows, but a mix of XP, Vista and Seven, others are Macs with various versions of the O/S and still others are Linux boxes.  Now, you may actually see that in some concerns, for good reason.  But I'm talking about literally a different box on each desk in the office.

That would be kind of hard to manage, wouldn't it?

Maybe it wouldn't seem like it to you, but again, I'm thinking very broadly.  We're not just dealing with realities, we're dealing with expectations.  What do I mean by that?

When I read most of the articles that address BYOD, they speak in terms of locking down various functions on a device, such as email, via Exchange, for example.  But that''s not how I'm thinking; and it won't be how the employees/consultants will be thinking, either.

Nope.  If it's a device supporting their job, they expect everyone up the chain to be able to support the entire device – not just components of it.  And, the enterprise should expect this as well, since a non-functioning device will ultimately affect productivity.

It means that your help-desk, field service technicians, level II (and level III) support will have to be proficient with every make and model of Windows Phone, Blackberry, iPhone and – if you'll pardon the pun – every flavor of Android.  Oh, and did anyone give any thought as to how you're going to back them up in such a manner that the company owns/controls the data?

That's what it means, Jelly Bean.

So, if you're considering BYOD, I hope the decision-makers are taking this into account and formulating policy.  Never mind that I didn't get into the fact that, if litigation arises, staff may have to turn over their personal devices for imaging or examination.  I also didn't get into how growth highly affects BYOD.  We all know the person who runs out and purchases the brand-new, untested, unpatched version of X the moment it's on the market.  Apple Maps, anyone?

I hope you bought the 1000-count bottle…