No option for Law Firm

Given that in the UK this Thursday we will be going to the polls for our General Election, I thought I should do an election themed post. Having trawled through the manifestos of the three main parties I was intending to do a “BBC style” evenly balanced view on what the plans in the manifestos would mean to IT.

But then given that this is my own blog I thought no I’ll give you my thoughts and that means there will no doubt be some bias! After all the comments are open for you all to air your thoughts in return.

So here is my opinion on what the manifestos might mean to IT, feel free to disagree either in the comments or on May 6th

In the Liberal Democrats manifesto IT comes up as follows:

Better government IT procurement, investigating the potential of
different approaches such as cloud computing and open-source
software.

savings that can be made across government – such as on pay, public sector pensions, and IT provision

In Labours:

continuing to cut bureaucracy and inefficiency in procurement, IT and overtime

giving virtually every household in the country a broadband service of at least two megabits per second by 2012

priority in the expansion of student places will be given to …. , technology, engineering and mathematics degrees

We will scale down the NHS IT programme

And in the Conservatives:

a freeze on major new Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) spending

We need to boost enterprise and develop a low carbon,
hi-tech economy

We want Britain to become a European hub for hi-tech, digital and creative industries

Make Britain the leading hi-tech exporter in Europe (whole section of the manifesto)

An economy where Britain leads in science, technology and innovation

So if you remove each parties plans to cut IT costs in government (which to be honest is inevitable given our spend on debt interest alone is higher than our spend on schools!), what are you left with?

Well the Liberal Democrats have a admirable but somewhat woolly commitment to look at open source software and, er well that’s it. Labour promise to give all of us (although watch for that virtually comment!) 2Mb broadband and a more worthy commitment to technology degrees. Not much so far, so we’re left with the Conservatives to focus a whole section of their manifesto on  growing the economy through the technology sector (Listen to the section here).

Clearly no one is going to base their vote solely on the IT sector, but in a display of complete and utter bias I say that Conservatives show a much more compelling view for the IT sector.

And in a final show of unbelievable political bias I leave you with this video, enjoy

p.s. That’s it I promise, no more election posts until at least 2014 (unless of course you all vote Liberal Democrat, we end up with a hung parliament and we go through this all again in October!)

Everyone who has ever lost data from their computer knows the importance of backups and for a law firm (no matter what size) it’s critical. I don’t suppose there is much point in me outlining the detail of why? But if you are interested in a good summary of why backup is a good idea try this site.

Also don’t fall into the trap of assuming that electronic data is not as safe and so keep everything as a piece paper. More often than not electronic information is just as safe (if not more so) if looked after. Take a look at this story as to why a printout in an offsite facility is not necessarily that safe!

If you work for a big law or mid-sized law firm, you’ll probably have an IT department and they will probably have some or all of the following:

• A regime of daily and weekly backups of your data
• Transfer of older backups to offsite locations
• Larger firms may have multiple online data centres with your data replicated between them

For small law firms the picture may be different, but still there maybe a tape or disk backup. This may be taken offsite or perhaps even locked in a fire safe.

But even with your data backed up, there is more to just having the data safe when it comes to recovery from a disaster. As this cartoon from www.casecentral.com perfectly sums up:

One benefit of a disk based backup (for example, on a small scale, a USB drive) is the fast recovery time. Just plug it in and access the data (in tech speak this is known as a small RTO or recovery time objective). Also there is no worry that at the time you need the backup the restoration software is not available!

For big law this switch to disk based backup is fine, this is why many have set up their multiple data centres, but what about small firms? USB drives can handle computer failure, but what about fire, flooding or other natural disasters? It’s a pain to keep swapping USB drives and taking one offsite or to have to lock it in a fire safe overnight etc (especially as the most convenient time to do the backup is overnight!)

Well take a look at this drive I recently got my hands on. It’s called an ioSafe and it’s main aim is to resolve this very problem!

It’s basically a fire proof, shockproof and waterproof USB drive. I’m not brave enough to trash it in the quest for a YouTube video demonstration of its capabilities, so you’ll have to take a look at these demonstrations!

BBC – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8449893.stm

Channel 5 – http://fwd.five.tv/gadget-show/blog/episode-1-the-desert-challenge Note the follow on point on the C5 website on how they could have got the data back following the gadget show demo.

So what’s it like as a USB drive?

Well apart from the size and weight of the device it works pretty much as you’d expect. It’s low noise, there isn’t any noticeable speed difference to old my USB drive. The only mild criticism I’d have is that the activity light on the front is a a bit dim. But basically it’s a USB drive, and it just works as you’d expect!

The big benefit I can see of a device like this to a small law firm is that it can cope with a fire, a flood or I guess an earthquake! And the benefit over a DVD backup being taken offsite is that it can give a fast RTO (this could also be the case for it being used in conjunction with tape backups in larger firms to reduce the RPO – recovery point objective (more tech speak I know, but that basically means the acceptable amount of data loss measured in time i.e. a days worth of data lost if you restore to that DVD that went offsite yesterday).

All ioSafe hardware also comes with a Data Recovery Service. So should a drive be damaged for any reason ioSafe will spend up to £500 to recover the data and then send it back to the customer on a replacement device!

For pure backup it’s a great concept and perfect for small business, but I can see a question and a future threat that you may want to consider:

The question – cost?

• A 1Tb version is £260 vs. a 1Tb standard USB drives cost of £80
• The value is in the fireproof, water proof aspect. Is it worth it? Well I guess if you look at a decent fire safe being £100, needing an extra drive 2x £80 to be able to pack a USB drive away each night in the safe. You’re at the same price! Then factor in the ioSafe convenience and  benefits of the DRS should there be issues with the recovery and the ioSafe doesn’t look too bad value wise!

The threat – cloud based backup!

There are some cloud based backup options but for law firms I see a few issues with these at them moment:

• Confidentiality – ensuring that this is met and for those particularly outside the US that cross jurisdictional issues don’t crop up
• Cost – most are subscription based and charged at cost per Gb. There could also be data transfer costs depending on your internet connection deal with your ISP.
• Risk of the company going bust and losing the backup of your data.

Longer term I think cloud based backup may be easiest form of backup, but for now have a look at the regime you have in place and check whether it would keep your law firm going in a disaster. If you’re after a little more piece of mind with a USB based system, then maybe ioSafe is just the device for your practice?

A lawyer sits in an airport lounge, pulls out the iPad and connects to the firms document management system (DMS) through the Autonomy iManage App in the AppStore. She flicks through the correspondence folder, checks her teams filed emails and reads up on the clients comments to the agreement draft. She then decides to dictate some amendments to her secretary using the built-in microphone. Launching the agreement from the DMS, she highlights the paragraph needing amendment and also launches the BigHand dictation app ……

<Fail> No multitasking on the iPad!

There have been plenty of posts why the iPad falls short some I agree with some I don’t. But as a device for lawyers or other business usage I think it’s a case of “not there yet”.

As well as lack of multitasking, I think for a tablet to be a great tool for a lawyer it would need to replace the touch keyboard with a stylus/pen and good handwriting recognition. Marking up a document on a tablet with a pen surely is the “revolutionary” vision Mr Jobs?

It’s not far off and to be fair to Apple I never thought it would be a business tool, it’s a consumer device. But as a consumer I’m personally not convinced there is a gap between the smartphone and the netbook. I prefer the former on the move and if I wanted something a little more the later would be more convenient (and less tied into the Apple eco system!)

So after all the hype, the multitude of blog responses (including this one) I’m left with the feeling that with the iPad Apple have maybe left us with another :-

The Apple Newton

“magical truly revolutionary product” – Steve Jobs on the iPad

Perhaps it’s just too early for the technology that will make the tablet a real killer device. I think there is a gap (especially in business) for tablet PC’s, but the revolution will only come when it’s as convenient as a pad of paper or a paper magazine!

This is not really a Legal IT post just a general post to mark today’s passing of GeoCities.

GeoCities : July 1995 – 26th October 2009

GeoCities was to budding web developers what the BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum etc were to budding developers ten years earlier. Starting in the mid 90’s it was a place to host web pages, enabling millions of people to upload their “under construction” images and dancing babies animated gifs!

RIP GeoCities!

I was reading an article yesterday, from an interview with Steve Balmer. It was about Microsoft’s direction and its competitors (in particular FireFox, Google and Linux). One comment stood out:

Yeah, we’re right now about 74 percent overall with the browser market, roughly speaking. But we’re having to compete like heck with IE 8, with great new features.

This to me showed how “off the ball” Microsoft are!

Now before I go on let me say the following. I hate seeing Micro$oft. I am not an Apple or Linux fanboy, in fact I would go as far to say I really don’t care of MacOS that much. Yes I really like the iPhone interface, but would never buy one thanks to having to have iTunes to activate the thing. So I use a Windows Mobile device. I’ve used Ubuntu and think it’s alright, but actually I honestly prefer Windows. I love the xbox. So I’m not Microsoft bashing here.

There now I’ve said that, back to the quote. In particular this sentence “But we’re having to compete like heck with IE 8, with great new features.”

My response as per the title, no, no, no, who asked for that? I don’t want more features, in fact I want less. I want my browser to be small and very fast and just let me browse. If IE8 had come out and was barebones fast as you like, I would probably have switched back from FireFox!

This got me thinking about lawyers and legal software and the same applies. Just give them the features they require. Make the next release of the Document Management System, the CRM system, the finance system, the template management system, the digital dictation system leaner.

Take Word or any Word Processor. How much functionality does the average lawyer need? Most law firms will also have multiple add ins to provide more functionality. The integration with the add ins should be slicker and removing of the unnecessary proprietary options easier.

Most people want to get on with the task in hand, the software should help that both quickly and easily. So with the browser, it should help me browse, end of! The DMS should help be file and retrieve my documents. Outlook should let me manage my email. etc etc 

So no more new features please unless it’s going to make the task I’m using the software for easier and faster!