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People tend to think of the law as slow-moving, immutable and disconnected from daily life. And lawyers have a reputation of being cautious and resistant to change. But in fact, when technology or sweeping changes are necessary to better serve their clients, improve access to justice or simply make their work easier, lawyers can be pretty progressive.While fundamental change can take decades, in the past 100 years legal professionals have eagerly adopted technological innovations, streamlined the law and launched new practice areas that were unimaginable just a century ago. The innovation of written laws dates to 1750 B.C., but many of the most important innovations in the law have come in just the last century. Here is a list of 100 technological, intellectual and practical innovations that have fundamentally changed the way law is practiced.Shutterstock.comINNOVATIONS IN THE COURTROOMThe oldest known shorthand services were offered in 63 B.C. by one Marcus Tullius Tiro. And in 1913 … [Read more...] about 100 innovations in law

Data storage can be like remembrance of unrequited love: It never fully fades. So what’s a law office with aging computers to do?Kill the storage device.If you give away an old computer (or sell it for the $50 it may be worth), re­move the hard disk first. We know of no wipe technique that is certain to totally clean a hard disk. The only way to be 100 percent sure the National Security Agency (or some less skilled but highly motivated recovery agent) can’t glean privileged information from a dead hard disk is to remove the disk and physically destroy it. Wipe it first, but physically destroy it. And when disposing of the pieces, pay attention to lo­cal environmental rules.Here is how we decide when to destroy a hard disk:• When it has crashed or failed to the point of unreliability.• Or it is too slow to be useful.• Or it works, but is smaller than 10 gigabytes.Some might put that last number higher, since you can buy a 300-gigabyte hard disk … [Read more...] about Hard Drive Homicide

Emphasizing that the full claim scope must be enabled, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently affirmed a ruling invalidating a patent for failure to enable the full extent of a claimed open-ended range.  MagSil v. Hitachi Global Storage Techs., Inc., Case No. 11-1221 (Fed. Cir., Aug. 14, 2012) (Rader, C.J.).The patent-at-issue claimed a read-write sensor for computer hard disk drive storage systems.  In particular, the claims called for a tunneling junction wherein applying a small electromagnetic field causes “a change in the resistance [of the junction] by at least 10 percent at room temperature.”At the district court, the patentee, MagSil, advocated for a broad construction and the lower court found that the claims cover resistance changes from 10 percent “up to infinity.”  The specification of the patent, however, taught a maximum change in resistance of only 11.8 percent at room temperature.  One of the named … [Read more...] about Lack of Enablement Snares Patent’s Open-Ended Claim Scope

Are you concerned that Big Brother (including the National Security Agency) is not only watching, but listening, recording and even transcribing your confidential client conversations?The good news for lawyers worried about maintaining their duty of confidentiality is that there are tools and safeguards to help them. In a session entitled “N.S.A.y What? Firm and Client Data Security & Encryption in the Age of Monitoring” held at ABA Techshow on Friday, Sensei Enterprises vice president John Simek and Oracle Corporation’s Chris Ries provided tips on gadgets and best practices for lawyers to use if they wish to avoid the NSA’s massive net.“Lawyers need to be very cognizant of their communications being intercepted by NSA,” said Simek. Even worse for lawyers is that they can’t even be certain what the law is, since the status of the NSA’s various programs and the data they collect seems to change every day. Plus, given the secretive … [Read more...] about Tools for lawyers worried that NSA is eavesdropping on their confidential conversations

We’re quickly approaching 2018, and a week doesn’t go by without another variant of malware causing havoc across the globe. First it was the WannaCry ransomware worm, which infected more than 230,000 computer systems in over 150 countries, demanding ransom payments in exchange for the decryption of files. More recently, a new variant using code from the Petya ransomware (named “NotPetya”) struck first in Ukraine, followed by other European countries, and disabled critical utility services, such as the radiation monitoring system at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, as well as affecting the countries’ banks and commuter systems.What caught the attention of lawyers was an apparent infection in one of DLA Piper’s European offices that brought the law firm’s normal operations to a halt. As we write, the extent of the damage is still unclear.Times have changed since CryptoLocker first ran wild in 2013, but the results are still as devastating. The … [Read more...] about Practical cybersecurity for law firms: How to batten down the hatches