Standing Committee on Legal Technology
April 1999 Vol. 6, No. 2
Statements or expressions of opinion or comments appearing herein are those of
the editors or contributors, and not necessarily those of the association or committee.
Contents
* From technologies front line
* Can your computer count past 1999?
* E-mail and Internet access, essential tools for modern
communication
Opinions about the products discussed in this issue are strictly those of the authors. Their opinions do not constitute endorsement or recommendation by the Illinois State Bar Association.
By Todd H. Flaming
1999 is an exciting year in legal technology for the ISBA and for Illinois practitioners. If you haven't been keeping up with the latest developments, read on.
The online discussion
First, the ISBA is making strides in allowing its members to use each other as resources. For awhile now, the ISBA has had an online discussion group going. If you can send and receive e-mail, you can join.
How does it work? The actual mechanism is called a "list server." You send an e-mail to ISBA asking to join. Then, your e-mail address is placed on a list. You can then send an e-mail to everyone on that list by sending one message to a particular e-mail address. At that address is a computer that bounces the message to everyone on the list. Someone else can respond to your message by replying to that list server.
The effect is an ongoing discussion by e-mail. The main ISBA list allows members to discuss just about anything. We have discussed and debated everything from the death penalty to the advantages of the latest software. Sometimes debates can even become heated.
Another advantage of the list is that you can ask questions of other practitioners. Usually you receive a number of helpful replies within minutes. In effect, the list server allows you to tap into the experience of hundreds of experienced lawyers from around the state.
Right now, only a little over 300 people are on the list. But as more people learn about it, it will become more popular.
To subscribe, visit the ISBA's Web page on the subject. It is at http://www.isba.org/Discussions/.
Free statutes online
We had a hard time believing it would ever get done. But it did. The Illinois General Assembly put the Illinois Compiled Statutes on the Web. That's right – they're free. You can get to them at http://www.ilga.gov/ilcs/
chapterlist.html.
One downside is that the site contains a disclaimer that the statutes are not the "official" statutes, only what was created from the databases used by the General Assembly and staff.
Nonetheless, it is nice to see them online. Now that they are online, you can search them fairly easily. First, you browse through by major topic. Then, you browse through the acts. Use the "find" feature on your Web browser (e.g. CTRL-F on Microsoft's Internet Explorer) to find a particular word or part of a word on a page. Then click on the particular act, all of which will be the resulting page.
Also online are the public acts (http://www.legis.state. il.us/publicacts/publicacts.html) and the bills (http://www. legis.state.il.us/legisnet/legismain.html).
As you may already know, other states have put their statutes online, and the federal government has done so as well. I have placed important ones on my Web site. Visit http://www.toddf.com/start.html.
By Jay R. Giusti
Copyright © 1999 Jay R. Giusti and ISBA Committee on Legal Technology. All rights reserved.
The merger of two Chicago small civil litigation firms during March 1999 required careful technology choices. The smaller office, handling primarily insurance defense, was all-Macintosh, networked on a LocalTalk local area network, extensively using e-mail, shared files, network printer and a single user database of files. The other firm, with much subrogation and other insurance-related matters, was wired long ago for Ethernet but with nobody using the network. Support staff and some attorneys use a mixture of DOS/Win3.x/95/98 machines with dedicated printers, but no e-mail or other shared files or applications, and all file information apart from the physical files has been maintained manually on index cards.
First decision: Macintosh, WinTel, or mixed for the seven-attorney combined firm? It is turning out to be a mixed environment, but through a perhaps surprising solution. The toughest choice was finding a multi-user database manager to keep track of the diary, clients, files and contacts.
The Mac-oriented firm (to which I have been of counsel for several years) has long depended on computer technology. They had first tried putting together a custom database using 4th Dimension, a very powerful but complicated relational database for both Macs and PCs from ACI (California), but it just took too much work to produce fairly simple reports. That database was booted when Gavel & Gown announced Amicus for Macintosh, and the firm hung on for a couple of years waiting for the Mac-based multi-user network version (Amicus Team). Since November last year, we found only two problems with Amicus Team: the first being the publisher Gavel & Gown; and the second Amicus Team itself.
Most often one hears Amicus being lauded for its visual interface, an appealing and largely successful attempt to replicate a file folder metaphor. In that respect, Gavel & Gown has certainly taught their competition some basic lessons on clear interface design. And we found that it produced with acceptable limitations a weekly calendar in an attractive, easy-to-understand single-page format. Gavel and Gown seems to believe that litigation attorneys never have multiple events scheduled at the same time (apparently judges and adverse counsel routinely call to check with most firms in advance of scheduling hearings and depositions), and that each attorney covers only her or his schedule, because Amicus Team proved dismally inadequate in the network version. Our primary requirement was to be able to produce daily and weekly calendars of events for all attorneys in one combined document.
Amicus Team comes in two completely segregated flavors: a Mac server for Mac clients; or Windows server for Windows clients. We were advised by Philip, the over-extended sole tech support person for Macintosh users in the midwest, until he was hired by Apple Computer, as well as by the regional sales manager that the Macintosh version could not produce the desired weekly diary report, but that the Windows version could print a "group schedule." This turned out to be blarney: rather than a time-sorted day by day list of events (in a traditional desk planner grid format), the "group schedule" is only able to list events arranged sequentially by each of the selected attorneys for that time period. In other words, events could not be listed on a daily basis arranged by time sequence; instead, the "group schedule" lists all events for Attorney A, then all events for Attorney B, then Attorney C, etc., and we would have to look through all attorney schedules to see if anyone would be available to handle a particular event.
Or, I was able to deduce, we could purchase an extra user license (called an "office" in Amicus terminology) for a dummy super-attorney, who would be assigned as an attorney to every single file. We would then be able to produce a weekly calendar of events for all files, as long as the dummy attorney formed the basis of the search. However, it turned out after days of pointed inquiry, it is not necessary to use the Windows version of Amicus Team just to do that, since the Mac version could do the same.
It became increasingly obvious to us that Gavel & Gown much preferred its Windows customers, and that its support for Mac users is nothing less than dreadful. The 30-day return guarantee was illusory, since it took G&G several weeks to confirm that our single-user version's data file could not be imported into Team without corrupting the calendar entries, and still G&G refused to refund the purchase once we finally received a special data file from the Mac tech guy to conduct our tests. Our firm had been the only one, supposedly, that had attempted to upgrade from version 3.1 of the Mac stand-alone to the Mac Team version, so the file corruption bug had not been reported before. Other areas of dissatisfaction included poor network performance during our testing (due to Amicus Team's file sharing technology, tremendous amounts of information gets copied from the server machine to each client "office" during startup), and our being unimpressed with a Chicago based VAR that Gavel and Gown recommended.
What is the current plan? The Mac lawyers and staff have moved in with very little fuss, essentially replicating their previous setup except now plugged into 10/100BaseT Ethernet. (Asante's brand-new stackable 10/100 DualSpeed FriendlyNet hubs have performed invisibly.) The DOS machines will be phased out, and replaced by fast Pentiums or Macs. The firm database will be TimeMatters, which impressed us greatly (especially compared to Amicus Team) just for the way that it superbly handles an honest-to-goodness full-featured firm-wide calendar, on top of its great overall flexibility (and pricing less than Amicus Team). Although TimeMatters is not a Mac product, our early testing showed that G3 PowerMacs, PowerBooks or iMacs running TimeMatters under Windows98 should perform very well. The downside is having to enter data on all of the files, both from Amicus and from the other noncomputerized paper files, into TimeMatters, which we know will take a serious firm-wide commitment in the coming weeks.
By David Clark, Editor
Each November for the past several years, I have had the opportunity to attend COMDEX in Las Vegas. The largest computer products show in the world has yet to fail in dazzling and overwhelming in the speed of change and product life cycle.
It's fascinating to me to see a new product unveiled one year and go back the next and determine the metamorphosis of continuous. Of interest to me is the new generation of ultra portable slimly configured notebook computers. Sony, Toshiba and the other well-known names are present with their offerings. One lesser known company with an especially exciting product is Twinhead.
The review of Twinhead's product PowerSlim is not an endorsement nor an advertisement, but offered as exposure to new things happening in technology. The legal profession is adapting albeit slowly to technology changes, and the day may yet come when computer notebooks will be a regular feature in the courthouse. The size, power and weight of the new generation of the notebooks may hasten the day.
Twinhead is a Taiwanese company that began PC production in 1987. The first laptop emerged two years later, and in 1990 they unveiled their first notebook. They produced computers under their company nameplate as well as OEM/ODM machines under private labels. NEC has recently begun marketing notebooks made by Twinhead under their own brand name.
The PowerSlim is the lightest, most powerful notebook on the market. Carrying a weight of 3.7 lbs. and in the closed position measuring only one inch thick, it certainly is an eye-popper. The PowerSlim contains an Intel MMX Pentium processor at 266 or 300MHz with onboard 32MB SDRAM and one memory slot to add up to 64MB maxing out at 128 MB. It offers 512K level 2 cache and features 4GB hard drive, built-in 56K fax/modem and external 1.44MB disk drive. An external 24X CD-ROM drive is included along with PCI stereo sound system with built-in speaker, microphone, and full duplex support. The monitor is a decent 12.1 TFT with resolution as high as 800 X 600 pixel SVGA with 16M colors (emulation mode). The keyboard is a full-sized 85 keys with inverted "T" cursor controls, Windows 95-defined keys, and defined hot keys for system control. The pointing device is an integrated two-button touchpad located on the palm rest. All of these features are specified at no additional charge.
Several other slim notebooks come close to the thickness and weight but all of them make you purchase separately both the disk drive and CD-ROM. The Twinhead PowerSlim retails for under $1600.
PowerSlim is one of a stable of notebooks that include a big brother model, the Slimnote GX that is twice the weight, twice the thickness, and more power. It even features DVD-CD capability.
The Twinhead Corporation's U.S. headquarters is located in Pine Brook, NJ.
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David Clark is the senior partner in a consulting firm, Clark & Partners, located in Dundee, IL.
Can your computer count past 1999?
By James Bumgarner
If your computer and software are programmed to assume that all year dates begin with "19," you should see what you can do to fix them before the year 2000; or before that, if your projected calendars, amortizations, or due dates extend more than two years from today. Because of the two digit system instituted when we had limited random access memory and disk space, it is possible that your entry for the year 2000 will show up as 1900.
This problem, if you have it, is not as simple as attempting an override. Your payroll, pension plans, case management, due dates, and all databases may well be programmed with two digit dates. If that is true, even an elementary knowledge of computer and software program- ming tells you that the number of lines of code involved is astronomical.
If you are an expert you might enter codes indicating that "00" is greater than "99" when in ascending sequence. As an alternate, if you don't have to go back too far, you might try coding 00 to 59 to indicate 2000, 2001, etc. By 2059, there will be software to take care of any problem with 2060. If you are not up to these possibilities, try commercial fix-it software, but be sure to get a guarantee. A defective program could require you to take the time to erase and restore--assuming you have adequate backup.
Bob Bemer, a 70 plus year old computer expert, who created the escape key sequence and was IBM's chief of programming standards, is working on a fix that lies in changing the object code (machine code). Here a compiler translates higher level languages into the code (ones and zeros) that actually run the computer. If this level is adjusted, it would obviate the thousands of changes required to update software programs. As he helped to establish ASCII and to use the name COBOL for a computer language, and to develop the standard for binary digits (bits) to be contained in groups of eight (bytes), he might well succeed. By the way, he created the backslash command that the World Wide Web has reversed to the forwardslash.
If you have better ideas than these, let your Standing Legal Technology Committee know at "jimbum@bumgarner.org," or to David Clark "dmclark@nvsn.com." Meanwhile, watch those statute of limitation dates that go past December 31, 1999.
Since the above was written, the Wall Street Journal has published articles on two consecutive days, the first on July 25, 1996, on the first page of the Money & Investing section, and the second on July 26 on the first page of the Marketplace section. Mortgages and insurance policies could be cancelled or miscalculated, and even time stamped e-mail and voice mail would be subject to interruption.
It appears that Prudential Insurance Company has some 125 million lines of code. That corporation and GTE are likely to spend in the hundreds of millions of dollars. It is so pervasive that anything having a chip will have to be checked out and reprogrammed if unable to pass the year 1999. For those who know computers, the fix should come early to permit as long a period as possible for testing the system changes. This may be one area where businesses will cooperate out of necessity because of the gargantuan efforts that will be required.
More recently, the Wall Street Journal has published an additional article, July 25, 1998, on page C1. According to this article, the year 2000 is the CEO's big secret. The main reason is the cost of reprogramming. As mentioned in the preceding paragraph, Prudential and GTE could spend several hundred million. It is no wonder that the corporations don't want to alert stockholders to such enormous expenses. Litigation experts are getting ready for the rash of possible tort and contract cases that will arise when the repairs are not made in time. A more than two year insurance policy written today extends beyond the deadline. Mortgage, note, and payment schedules are in peril.
Tort lawyers might well start boning up on the liabilities that may arise as a result of deadline failures and miscalculations. Inordinate corporate and business expenses due to errors causing losses to businesses and to their customers might well be considered due to negligence. Of course, the same applies to civil litigation and other matters that rely on scheduling or noticing.
E-mail and Internet access, essential tools for modern communication
By William M. Madden
Imagine that l0 years ago a member of the ISBA told the executive director that all communications between that member and the ISBA would have to be in writing, and delivered by courier, because the member owned neither a telephone nor a mailbox. What response do you think that member could have expected? How about, "Are you nuts? Get a telephone and a mailbox or don't expect to be receiving any communications from this Association!"
Jump forward in time to today and imagine a member tells the executive director that all communications between the member and the ISBA will have to be either by courier, U. S. Postal Service mail or telephone, because the member cannot communicate either by e-mail or by accessing information off of the ISBA's Internet Web site. What response do you think that member will receive? How about: "We will, of course, cater to your wish to continue to use only the expensive and time-consuming methods of communications to which you have shackled yourself, regardless of the fact that it drains our budget and impairs our effectiveness. Gee, we sure wouldn't want to presume too much about your willingness and ability to use modern methods of communications."
That courteous and understanding response would confirm my belief that Bob Craghead is a gentleman and a scholar. But I would encourage Bob to consider breaking with his tradition of civility and sensitivity and adopt, instead, my own reaction to the "imaginary" member's plea: "Are you nuts? Get e-mail and Internet access or don't expect to be receiving any communications from this Association!" Clearly, it's a good thing for membership statistics that Bob is the ISBA Executive Director.
Some people adapt to new technology quite easily and are actually anxious to use the cutting-edge stuff the moment it becomes available. Others are more cautious, migrating to new technology only after it appears that its ease of use and cost-effectiveness have been amply demonstrated and that its superior utility has been established beyond a reasonable doubt. Others, however, are "conscientious objectors" who dare you to drag them kicking and screaming into using each technological advancement, without regard to ease of use, cost effectiveness or utility.
These conscientious objectors' failure and refusal to fully utilize the most efficient, least costly available means of communicating may be due to their unwillingness to look at the facts closely enough to realize that the world is starting to pass them by. They were, probably, also the last ones to start using electric typewriters, credit cards, fax machines, cellular telephones, automatic teller machines, etc.
Some conscientious objectors refuse on principle to abandon what they view as the tried and the true, no matter how inefficient, ineffective and expensive it is.
True story: [By the way, I love John Madigan, and this little eccentricity has, over the years, only endeared him to me all the more. I wouldn't want anyone to interpret this story as a criticism of John. I'm sure John will chuckle with me, as he recalls this.] When John Madigan first joined the supreme court as its media spokesman several years ago, he looked at the computer we had placed on his desk and said, "I don't use one of those things; get me a typewriter." I got him an IBM selectric typewriter. John said, "I don't use one of those things; get me a real typewriter." We couldn't find one in state inventory. I finally asked my sister to give me the old (1920s version) Underwood (or Royal) manual typewriter that had belonged to my mother. I presented it to John, and he was finally able to settle in and type up his notes, letters, and press releases. John was happy but, because the old machine is so dilapidated [some letters had been worn down to a nubbin and the alignment of each line of type was casual, at best], we had to have a secretary retype his press releases before they were sent out.