You’ve probably seen something like this in a book at one point or another. This seemingly contradictory statement is there for a good reason: it’s there to prove that the printing process worked, and that the customer isn’t getting a botched print job. Books are composed of signatures: one large sheet folded to compose several […]
learning Splunk by analyzing phone dumps
More and more, lawyers are going to have to deal with digital data. I have three text dumps to deal with at the moment: two from Android devices, and one from a Windows phone. I have five figures worth of messages and wound up with four figures of responsive messages to be provided to opposing […]
Lawyerspeak
I think it’s basically a trope that lawyers have some of their own language. There’s a tendency toward double negatives- “I don’t disagree with you” and the like- but there are some ways in which the general language would benefit from upgrades. Vernacular Lawyer My bad. Mea Culpa. You’re a pain. You’re quarrelsome. This sucks. […]
Commentary on a healthcare proposal
I’ve long been critical of the Affordable Care Act as well as proposals from the GOP. They simply do very little to address the fundamental reasons for high cost. However, Karl Denninger has made a nice stab of something close to what I could agree with. I’ve long held that part of any solution is […]
Security Basics: what should I protect?
In the first post of this series, I talked about what exactly a threat is. It’s more interesting to delve in and look at what kinds of assets you actually have that you might want to protect. Of course, this is really situation-specific, and there are two major types of protection: protection from theft and […]
Security Basics: What is a Threat?
The legal industry is rather seriously behind other industries on security, and our whole business is keeping secrets. The bad news is that it’s easy to come to wrong conclusions in security. The good news is that lawyers already have an ethics framework and most have some knowledge about risk assessment. I want to take […]
On choosing open licenses
I’ve recently written a technical roadmap for one of my shadow projects. I’ll quote what I have so far about software licensing, at least as it pertains to feedstock: Open source feedstock preferred Licenses that permit us to keep the source internal, even when we distribute binaries externally (BSD, MIT, Apache) are approved for use […]
Updated UBE Map
I’ve updated my UBE Map for late 2014. Make sure to read my previous post and check out the ABA Guide to Bar Admissions. My source for information is the NCBEX page on the UBE.
MyCase review
Practice management is like doing taxes: it’s not something most people take any particular enjoyment in, but you have to stay organized and on top of things. I have high, but I think reasonable, expectations for services. They are: 0. Honesty. 1. Don’t lose data. 2. Make it easy for me to save my own […]
On holding a conference
Respect the audience. Treat them like adults. This means, among other things, assuming they know how to take appropriate notes and that they don’t need a “guiding voice” in order to figure out your message. Make your message comprehensible. This means having a central thesis and giving presenters useful guidance. Do not try to induce […]