By Peter LaSorsa
I have been asked a few times by attorneys, clients and just friends who know I handle technology issues the same question — how long should my password be? The answer is... it depends on whether you want a guaranteed secure password or one that is probably secure. At one time, if you had a six-to-eight string of numbers and letters, your password was considered secure. However with the increase in computer processing and the advances in cryptic code-breaking software the new six-to-eight is 12.
Why 12? Well, recently researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology focused on the issue of password security and they determined that with current technology it would take the bad guys 17,134 years to break a password of 12 characters. Bad news if you are planning on living for 18,000 years but good news for the rest of us. In case you are wondering, an 11-character password can be broken in 180 years. And you can imagine how drastically it decreases from there. I know, 180 years is plenty so why the overkill. Technology is increasing at a rapid pace and although the numbers I am giving are true today, they will come down severely in the next few years. So the idea is to build in room for new technology and advances by the bad guys.
The researchers believe the best password is an entire sentence, preferably one that includes numbers or symbols. Why an entire sentence? I know many people have been taught that words are weak for passwords but here is the logic. A sentence is both long and complex, and also easy to remember.
Legal tech
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April 14, 2011 |
Practice News
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April 7, 2011 |
Practice News
By Peter LaSorsa Electronic discovery has been the hot litigation issue for a few years now. Probably at the forefront of electronic discovery is email. I would hasten to say everyone in the business world utilizes email, except those still clinging to their Luddite ways. There was a recent case that involves email in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit that is worthy of mention. In United States v. Warshak[1] the Court held that email might be private and constitutionally privileged. The Court ruled the portion of the Stored Communications Act that allowed the government to access Internet Service Providers “(ISP”) stored emails older than 180 days with just a subpoena or court order unconstitutional. I believe this is the first such statement by a court on this level. In short the Court said that email stored with commercial ISP’s have the same Fourth Amendment expectations to privacy and actual protections of privacy as phone calls and letters. In this case, the government issued a subpoena to the ISP requesting and receiving 27,000 emails from Steven Warshak. Those emails were utilized to help secure at 25-year prison sentence. The problem was the subpoena allowed the government to secretly get access to the emails without the knowledge of Warshak or without a search warrant. In affect, the government by-passed the constitutional mechanisms of obtaining a search warrant and therefore, the constitutional protections afforded Mr.
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December 30, 2010 |
Practice News
By Peter LaSorsa LexisNexis unveiled a new legal research platform created exclusively for solos called remarkably, Lexis Advance for Solos. You can access it at: http://www.lexisnexis.com/newlexis/advance Advance is offered at the flat-rate subscription price of $175 a month and a second lawyer is an additional $140 a month. You cannot add a third as this program is only for one and two person law firms. Also included under this price is access by your paralegal at no cost. For zero dollars a month ISBA members get free access to Fastcase. Let’s look at the features you get with Advance and you can determine on your own if you believe the extra $175 a month (you have to sign a 1-year subscription so the commitment is for $2100 a year) has value to you. The main features of Advance include primary law from all 50 states and U.S. territories, including all federal and state case law available on traditional LexisNexis, all LexisNexis headnotes and case summaries, and all available statutes and constitutions.
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December 8, 2010 |
Practice News
By Peter LaSorsa In a recent survey more young people are utilizing text messages than email as a form of communication. In fact, both Google and Facebook are investing heavily in the text message application space. The difference between SMS (a text message) and email is not just the weight and friction of the user interface and cognitive load of having a subject line. The main difference is in social and mental framing of that medium of communication. Sending a text message to someone’s Gmail or Yahoo mail does not make it an email. Most young people (read this as your clients for the next 30 years) believe email to be too slow and formal and prefer to text. As an attorney, a decision has to be made as to whether to fully engage in the world of text messages and if so, how will you preserve the client communication? There are times when a text message makes sense, your client is running late, do to a late train, the train is crowded and a phone call probably will sound garbled—instead a quick text (stuck on train is 15 min late k for appt?). Whether we like it or not that is the way the 20 something generation thinks and communicates. I quick text response of (fine) and the issue is solved. The advantage to this type of communication is that you may be out of the office and rushing back for the appointment and now you can relax knowing you will have extra time. I know many will argue an email will accomplish the same task but only if both parties have smart phones with email capability. Additionally, if you are just getting out of court you may have 10 or 20 emails in your inbox and by the time you get to them, it is too late to take advantage of your extra 15 minutes.
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October 21, 2010 |
Practice News
By Peter LaSorsa You are involved in a lawsuit and have your secretary search the Internet for incriminating postings or pictures of the other party. Your secretary searches Facebook and Myspace, does a Google of the persons name and comes up with no information or limited information. It doesn’t seem like your opponent has anything on the Internet that will hurt the case. Or perhaps your opponent is an anonymous posting and you are trying to find out who this person is. Have you exhausted your options and is there anything else you can do?
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October 14, 2010 |
Practice News
By Peter LaSorsa This article is probably best addressed to solo practitioners or those with just a few attorneys. I will say upfront that my email address is pmllaw@yahoo.com and has been since the beginning of my law firm. When first starting out my goal was to run lean and mean. Keeping costs low and not spending where spending isn’t required best accomplish this. One area where spending can get high is on technology and especially on computers and computer systems. You have a few options when choosing an email account. The first option is a free account from Google, Yahoo or Hotmail where the email is hosted on their servers and all that is required is to log in and send and receive email. Another option is to purchase your own email server and host your own email system, using say Microsoft Outlook. Lets take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of each. The advantage of the host your own option is you can have a more professional email (that is what I hear other attorneys say often about email addresses like jsmith@xyzlawfirm.com as opposed to jsmith@gmail.com). There are other advantages of using Microsoft Outlook as it relates to other legal software you may have. For example, your other software may allow you to integrate your emails into a document retention feature. The disadvantage to having your own email server is the purchase price, maintenance and fact that someone has to be responsible for its operation. You can outsource this but again it just increases the cost. What happens if you are on vacation for a week and your email server goes down?
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October 7, 2010 |
Practice News
By Shamla Naidoo Social networking provides a proven means to reach consumers worldwide, 24/7. The methods are simple to execute and provide cost-effective marketing with increased visibility and industry recognition at minimal cost. While many in solo practice lack opportunities for collaboration afforded to large firm lawyers, social networking creates greater access to peers for learning and collaboration than any firm could. After all, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, chat rooms, new-groups, message boards, and other social networking sites that specialize in legal topics/practice, are not limited by time zone or geography. Support, information and interaction are always accessible. This is the best of free-speech on the Internet. While this sounds great, what is the price we pay to reach clients conveniently, and to connect with potential clients and peers online? The benefits are so high that you cannot afford to not participate in these forums, however, discretion and thoughtful interaction is essential. Consider the following impact to your law practice as you calculate the cost of your right to free speech on the Internet. Every word you post creates a permanent record. That in itself is not an emerging issue in the practice of law–lawyers create permanent records of most everything we do. The difference is that our permanent record is usually created based on our client’s position and is mostly protected by privilege. In social networking we are generally representing ourselves and personal positions to those we know and/or trust. Web crawlers are specialized programs (popular amongst search engines) which traverse the Internet looking for all available content.
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September 30, 2010 |
Practice News
by Peter LaSorsa Google has launched a new program called Google Tags. The program works by giving your law office an eye-catching yellow tag on Google Search and Google Maps. Both Google Search and Maps are utilized by a majority of people on the Internet and represent a great market of potential clients. Google is currently offering a free 30-day trial after which you will be charged $25 per month. One of the nice features of Google Tags is that it allows you to highlight coupons, photos, and other helpful information that can help customers choose you. Coupons are a great way to track your advertising and increase your customer base. In our current economic situation, many people are looking for value and shopping around for service based on price. I know many lawyers’ turns their nose at coupons or other creative ideas for attracting customers, but I believe those lawyers are missing the boat and not taking advantage of technology to the fullest. Even if you get a few new customers a year with Google Tags, your total investment will only be $275 (11 months at $25 per month and one month free). I believe when you balance the cost of traditional advertising or other forms of online advertising, Google Tags offers a cost-effective way to reach potential clients. Peter LaSorsa can be reached at lasorsalaw.com. He also publishes a blog at www.illinoissexualharassmentattorneyblog.com
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September 10, 2010 |
Practice News
By Peter LaSorsa This is not meant to be an advertisement for eFax but rather an evaluation of the pros and cons of using an electronic faxing service instead of the traditional fax machine. I recently was in an attorney’s office for a deposition and noticed he had staff feeding pages into a fax machine and then calling the other side to discuss some issue related to the quality of the fax. I was amazed that people still utilize the old fax machine. I have been a subscriber to eFax for about five years now and can’t imagine not utilizing the service. First a brief primer on what eFax is. You pay a yearly fee and in exchange you receive a fax number (area code of your choosing), and unlimited faxes for the year. You can also select plans that limit the amount of pages you can send or receive per month (and you pay extra when you go over that limit). Basically, you send a fax by opening the eFax software, selecting a document from your computer and typing in the other persons fax number — then hitting the send button on the computer screen. You can even have yourself cc’d on the fax. Receiving a fax is even easier. When someone sends you a fax, it shows up in your email inbox as a pdf file. The great advantage to receiving the fax this way is easy storage on your computer and the ability to forward the fax to your client — who probably doesn’t have a fax machine. It’s also great because I can get the fax on my Blackberry and review it while out of the office. Another great advantage is you can send a fax from your desktop, laptop or any other computer.
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September 1, 2010 |
Practice News
By Shamla Naidoo Two weeks ago I wrote about the Houston lawyer’s client whose personal information was dumped in a parking lot. Most states have Breach Notification Statutes that compel companies to notify consumers of such “breach” incidents. Many states apply breach notification obligations where there is inappropriate disclosure of computerized personal information. This makes sense given how easy it is to expose large volumes of data that are stored, generated or shared by computer systems. In Illinois, 815 ILCS 530, commonly known as the Personal Information Protection Act, governs the obligations for such incidents that affect an Illinois resident. The statute defines a data collector and the definition includes privately and publicly held corporations, and……”any other entity that, for any purpose, handles, collects, disseminates, or otherwise deals with nonpublic personal information”. By definition, this statute governs all law offices and even those of us who practice as private individuals are covered because we handle information of our clients that are non-public and personal. Attorneys are data collectors in Illinois! So, you are covered by this statute but what does that mean for your practice? In short, when you are responsible (directly or indirectly) for the inappropriate exposure of your client’s personal information, you must notify them or you will be in violation of 815 ILCS 530 as an unlawful practice under the Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act.