Technology_in_practice_april 2013

Transcript

TECHNOLOGY IN PRACTICE Nigel Cotman SC TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction:!...............................................................................................................2 A: Conduct of a Practice:!..........................................................................................3 Practice promotion: Accessibility and Visibility. Phones, Websites, Social Networks. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3 Time management: the Diary Rules. -------------------------------------------------------5 Information and legal research: JADE and AustLII, Lexis and Google: --------------8 Writing and written communications: ------------------------------------------------------10 Removing the past.----------------------------------------------------------------------------10 Writing on Tablets: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------14 Printing: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------15 Not typing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------16 Remote communications: text, fax, telephony and videoconference. ------------------19 Entertainment/life-style and the physical chambers environment. ---------------------25 B: Management of a Practice:!.................................................................................31 Legal Practice Compliance issues: disclosure and disclaimers. ------------------------31 Billing systems:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------31 Records maintenance and searching. -------------------------------------------------------37 C: Practice in a digital age:!.....................................................................................40 Acquiring and Maintaining your digital menagerie:--------------------------------------40 Financial choices: -----------------------------------------------------------------------------48 Service/Troubleshooting:---------------------------------------------------------------------49 Disposal:----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------49 Optimising data creation and use across a practice: --------------------------------------50 Cloud computing: -----------------------------------------------------------------------------51 Remote Computing and local networking: ------------------------------------------------53 Data security: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------56 Backup and Offsite data storage and retrieval: --------------------------------------------58 How to manage your carbon footprint and guilt: -----------------------------------------59 Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards legislation. © 2013 Nigel Cotman 2 Introduction: Seven major areas for application of technology to the conduct of a practice, not including the particular use of technology in litigation, are covered: · Practice promotion; · Time management; · Information storage and retrieval; · Writing and written communications; · Not writing: voice recognition; · Remote communications; · Entertainment/life-style. Four major areas for application of technology to the management of a practice are covered: · Legal Practice Compliance issues; · Billing systems; · Revenue law compliance; · Records maintenance. Lastly, general issues concerning practice in a digital age are covered, being: · Maintaining your digital menagerie; · Optimising data creation and use across a practice; · Data security and storage; · Practice friendly disposal of equipment; · How to manage your carbon footprint and guilt. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   3 A: Conduct of a Practice: 1. Practice promotion: Accessibility and Visibility. Phones, Websites, Social Networks. 1. If you exhibit a capacity to be tech savvy in a useful form, you are selling yourself. There are technical capabilities that solicitors generally have and use and sensibly expect from barristers. It is no longer quaint to be technically illiterate. You are creating unnecessary costs for others if you are. 2. Using a mobile phone and in particular a smart phone with email receipt capacity gives you accessibility to your client base: solicitors. It gives comfort to your solicitors that you can be contacted when needed. 3. If you want to have rules about access to you (such as, excluding days or times) to protect your family and/or sanity, say so as part of accessibility discussions with your solicitors. If it is clear, there is no problem. You can set up phones to not respond during times you reserve. 4. I will return to phones because most phones are not just phones. 5. An email address is necessary and is useful if it has two characteristics; 1. It is not [email protected]; 2. It is principally your identity based, not where you are, at least during a time when you may be moving your locale and ISP address frequently. If you are a reader, don’t have the address: me@thefloorI’mreadingonnow.com. 6. Your email address substantially is you in practice over the years. Have one that belongs to you, not where you are. Every time you move it will be a problem to notify your contacts of that move and not lose people you value through the cracks. Likewise, if you think you may be nomadic in your practice over time, look for an ISP that can give you a generic address, the feature of which is your name in a memorable form. The convention of [email protected] is perfectly good, unless your name is very long, in which case it invites error to use it and it is a nuisance for others. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   4 7. Most floors use a floor web site to promote the floor and its members. Participate effectively in the site. That means: (a) get a good quality photo taken; and (b) have short pithy text to support it and you effectively. If you have articles or other work that can be posted, tell the site master. Keep the clerk or whoever updates the site up to speed with what you are doing, so that you can be featured or mentioned on the site. You have no idea who is reading and why. Briefs come from such exposure. If you are confident about your comments, blogging through the web site may suit you. However, remember once started a blog can become a substantial commitment of time and effort to maintain. 8. There are examples of barristers having their own websites around Australia and in UK. Some are brilliant. Others are an embarrassment. If you want to go down that path, choose carefully what you are doing and how you are doing it. You probably need expert help not to look clunky. However, a web presence may be a significant advantage. Certainly it overcomes to “nomad” issue for your email address. Your email address will be linked to your web site name and is you and yours forever and wherever. You can have your site hosted by an ISP anywhere in the world. 9. Facebook: You have read the articles about posting of crazy weekend photos. Don’t do it. Don’t let you friends have the opportunity to do it. In any event, tell them how serious this all is. Their conduct in posting can affect your career at the bar. Assume you will be Google/Bing/Blekko-ed by someone researching you if you are put forward for a brief. What will they find? 10. Business networking sites do exist, such as Linkedin which have a specific business focus and allow you to use social network strategies for your work. The current wisdom is that social network tools do provide high visibility for small business and are firming up as at, or near, the core of contemporary business and social interaction. Certainly you can find, extend and cultivate a visible circle of friends and contacts using these tools and promote your expertise and availability and maintain existing relationships. Every little bit helps. 11. Twitter: #matterforu. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   5 2. Time management: the Diary Rules. 1. You and your clerk/assistant need to know whether and when you can do a job that is on offer. 2. You need to know when and where you are meant to be in the future to perform the work that you have. 3. Both these issues constantly project out in front of you. 4. Usually you are billing the time that you have spent on a matter, or billing an event that was anticipated but now is a matter of history. 5. In short: 1. Inability to reliably and accurately detect availability is a loss of potentiality to do work. 6. 2. Unrecorded commitments are a disaster waiting to happen. 3. Unrecorded work is income you could have had and never will. Capturing information about what you have to do and when you are available to work in the future and recording what you are doing and have been have been working on in the past, is critical to a less stressed and possibly lucrative life at the bar. 7. You need a bullet proof diary that accurately and conveniently records that information in real time and is accessible to those that need it on a time critical basis, that is, at least you and your clerk/assistant. 8. Electronic diaries provide the capacity to perform all the required time management tasks, because: 1. they are always available to you in convenient devices that you are likely to have with you; 2. they can operate in an environment where they are exchanging information with other renderings of you diary on other machines at other places which are used by you or by others; 3. they are or may be stored in cyberspace and information from them can be pressed into immediate use in other platforms or applications; Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   6 4. the data is more secure stored off machine and off site; 5. you can record the transition from work to be done to that which has been done easily and immediately, usually, or at least often, by simply editing the record of expected time to record the reality of the time actually spent or details of the task done (assuming that it is different from that which was initially recorded when the event was first diarised). 11. An electronic diary is available for all computers. One is either found in big packages (Office) or as a stand alone product (Outlook or iCal), or as free services such as from Google and Yahoo, both of which offer online calendar services with significant add-ons, such as sharing with others. Barnet has a calendar service that you, and everyone in chambers, can share with your clerk. You have a personal view, the clerk can see everyone. Most calendars interact with major packaged diaries such as Outlook. That is, they can exchange records of events (or large slabs of information) from one to the other. 12. An electronic diary is found on most good phones, such as iPhone, Nokia, HTC running Windows Mobile or the Google Android version, Blackberry, Samsung or on Palm type devices. Most have an associated proprietary desktop calendar that runs on your desktop or laptop computer and contains the diary in large format and can exchange information with the phone, so they remain “synced” (contain the same data) if you take the trouble to do a sync. With most current systems you should be able to set up a cloud based connection between all your machines, so that syncing happens without the need for any intervention by you. More on that later. 13. To be very effective, your mobile device (phone, iPad, etc) needs to be able synchronise (exchange and equalise data) with a diary/calendar program on your computer, which preferably is an industry standard one, such as Outlook or iCal, which in turn will readily sync with other calendars in other applications or on other machines. Most business oriented phones or devices do this. However, check before buying. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   7 14. If your diary is always with you in your phone there are no cracks, no notes to self, no excuses. Because of syncing, your diary is also on, at least, your chambers computer and, therefore, backed-up. 15. However, in Court at a directions hearing, a printed rendering of your electronic diary may be useful, if for no other reason than it is easier to use in court in a freewheeling debate about available dates within long time spans than a phone screen. A diary running on an iPad or a laptop is fairly easy to use directly, because of the larger format. 16. BUT an entry in the printout of you diary should be updated as soon as possible into the electronic diary via your mobile device or your computer diary. Make a habit of immediate recording. 17. In short, the electronic diary is incapable of being matched for efficiency in effectively defining your practice commitments and converting your time into money. More on the latter topic later. 18. Cloud computing applications, such as iCloud, (see below) coupled with an electronic diary will join you and your clerk at the data hip via the internet. 19. There are myriad “To Do” applications around, which allow you to create and prioritise lists of work to be done, events and so forth, with reminders and prompts attached to them. Some relate directly to and reflect a diary others are stand alone. If you need that sort of prompting, look at the market. 20. More remotely from time management, if you want to organise your relations with your solicitors and others you rely on for work, CRM packages are available to systemise the collection and use of relationship information to cultivate goodwill. 21. Sitting over the top of diaries and the like on smart devices are various integrating systems, which detect, for example, an entry in your diary about a meeting and the identity of the attendees and location and reminds you of the meeting, tells you whatever information you have about the attendees and gives you a map and directions to get to the site by detecting where you are and where you need to be. Systems like Google Now aim to anticipate your data needs and satisfy them. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   8 3. Information and legal research: JADE and AustLII, Lexis and Google: 1. I assume all of you are aware of the existence of and means of access to electronic databases of primary and secondary legal materials and how to search them. 2. If I am wrong in that assumption about you, fix that immediately. As a practising barrister you cannot be technologically illiterate about legal reference retrieval, any more than an inability to use digests or legal encyclopaedia could have been excused in the recent past. The fact is that your capacity to reach out into a world of research material is unparalleled. Most of what you can easily do was inconceivable in the not too distant past. Use it to your and your client’s advantage. 3. Undertaking primary legal searching on a free text basis (i.e. putting in a word and asking the system to search for its occurrence in a library) can be of limited utility, even using Boolean operator assisted searches (e.g. “word” AND “word” or word NEAR word etc, searches), because of the fairly indiscriminate nature of the search. It usually will return too much. Discriminating, consistent, searching in print based days led to head-noting, indexing and digesting of cases. Head-notes, indices and digests made uniform in expression and classification what was, or could be, in varying degrees, idiosyncratic or obscure in the printed reports. In the digital world, the problem of idiosyncratic expression is now on a massive scale, because of the amount of the data available. Guessing what turn of phrase might have been used in judgments to refer to a matter you are searching for is not a terribly satisfactory research base. 4. Google, Bing, Blekko and other “generalist” search engines can be used for legal research but you need to be very good at using them to get manageable results. For tips on searching see, for example, http://www.google.com/ support/websearch/ for basic and advanced search techniques, including how to search only particular sites or groups of sites, do literal searches, use wildcards and Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) and so forth. It is worthwhile to look at these both for the possibilities they offer and to understand the limitations of search syntax, i.e. why you may not get a result Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   9 you expect from a search. These search protocols are fairly general in application, so learning in one system will give you useful skills in using others. (This, or these, issues are embedded in the current debate about using AI in discovery) 5. LEXIS, and services like it, deal with some of the issues of large scale searching by providing, in effect, legal research specific data sieves and also present digests and the like (as well as indexing the indexes and digests). Have a competent legal researcher walk you through LEXIS or look at having sessions with company representatives to explain their product and its use. 6. Explore AustLII and Law and Justice Foundation website: http:// xml.lawfoundation.net.au to see what is available free. All the judgments and legislation you will most frequently need are there, along with court lists and portals to most Courts, which gives you access to rules, forms, practice notes, etc. 7. If your phone or tablet is web enabled (and it should be and most are), bookmark the Law Foundation site, or at least the court lists page. AustLII has an app for the iPad. Lexis has a mobile phone optimised search page you should bookmark on your phone or get the App. Web enabled phones or tablets allow access to web based research facilities on the fly. 8. An interesting development in legal research is Barnet’s JADE product, which fuses the determinism of an editor’s head note with the power to harness individual practitioner’s insights into the possible applications of a judgment outside its apparent topic or that topic which was considered the relevant topic at the time of an earlier headnoting. There is a capacity for users to “update” the headnoting in a wiki type environment by suggesting additions to it. 9. Much headnoting is a reflection of the interests or issues of the particular time it was written or the prejudices of the author. In printed reports that expression of interest or prejudice is now largely fixed by the printed form. However, as time moves on, cases may become important for quite different reasons from those reflected in the original headnote. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   10 10. The user feedback loop of JADE is immensely powerful at revealing the richness of the common law process and rendering its primary resource, the judgments, useful and accessible on an ongoing basis. It is a digital extension of the notebook that every barrister once had, with his or her favourite cases or passages on particular topics jotted in it. Individual insights can now be shared and compounded by ongoing collegiate feedback and mass access to the feedback-enriched case material. 11. JADE now has a very extensive cross referencing of passages in cases to the cases citing them and a hyperlinking of the cross referenced material, so you can switch between the case or particular propositions in it and its treatment elsewhere, and back again, effortlessly. 12. JADE is always looking for good editors to digest cases so, if you have some spare time, contact Barnet. Headnoting and digesting sharpens the mind immensely. 13. For non-legal archive searching, Trove, the National Library site, is a must. 4. Writing and written communications: Removing the past. 1. Word processing (WP) has been with us for thirty years. Mr Wang presented the dedicated word processor in 1976, shortly after I came to the bar. At that time the Bar was ruled by IBM golf ball typewriters (as seen on “Mad Men”), and liquid paper was used for correction and sniffing. Typists and a Dictaphone were essential tools of the barrister. 2. At that time printers were slow, expensive and incredibly noisy, even the ubiquitous dot matrix printer. Laser printers were the thing of dreams. 3. Word processing using a generic program, “WordStar”, on a personal computer became available in 1982. This combination of technologies set words free from being captives on paper to being objects on a screen to be moved, changed, enhanced or diminished at will by the primary author working on relatively cheap machines. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   11 4. With word processing and electronic storage media came precedents and forms stored in electronic form to be used and reused without loss or degradation. 5. With a population of documents produced in electronic form (the “soft copy”) came the ability to manipulate material between documents by the cut, paste and edit. Slowly, the work “page” that accepted only words also accepted images, spread sheet tables and sounds, so that a “document” became, at least in its native soft copy form, something immensely rich compared to its paper cousin. 6. With the introduction of the internet in the mid 1970’s and the capacity to send email and transmit files of electronic data as email packages, came the possibility of word processing files becoming ubiquitous and capable of sharing the words in them not as images (a “picture” of a word on paper) but as a live object capable of being pressed into service again and again in new documents with or without changes. 7. With the development of the World Wide Web on the internet and HTML or hyper-linking of documents came the possibility of hosts of accumulated text becoming available in a “primary” format or incorporated by reference into a document while living on the web. The trimmed photocopy and sticky tape as a means of copying original text into a new document was replaced with the capacity to create “original” copy documents that only an expert could unpick. 8. Every person capable of hunt and peck typing became a competent typist. 9. The cycle of draft, type, edit, retype, re-edit, retype, finish, was telescoped into draft, alter on the fly (dare I say, screen) and finish. 10. It is all very powerful and very convenient. However, it has dangers. 11. There is a danger associated with electronically produced documents in native file format. They carry all their electronic baggage with them. 12. It is possible that a document file records every keystroke, move, deletion, edit and format decision. Every comment, insertion, deletion and query is Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   12 probably in the file that apparently has only a document in it 1. The next time a colleague sends you a file, open it in “track changes” mode. You will probably see ALL the author’s work and most intimate thoughts about the content. I received a document which, in track changes mode, very frankly said beside one submission: “how on earth can we say this?” It was a good question. In its final form, the submission wasn’t there. 13. Before you publish electronic files to the world consider what is on/in it. AT LEAST strip out the changes by using the global accept changes function. 14. If you want to send a document file by email a better practice is to “print to PDF” or “email as PDF” the file, or “save as a PDF” and send by email that PDF file of the final version of the document. 15. A PDF file when looked at on screen is, in effect, a digital photo or image of the “top” or visible part of the WP document, like a print copy. Most WP software allows a “to PDF” print selection, with or without a send by email choice. Use it. As a file saved in PDF you can email it as an attachment to your email and it can be opened and printed at the other end. 16. Only send native WP files to trusted recipients and only then if you warn them what is on the file you are sending, in case they are silly enough to on send the file outside the magic circle. 17. If you have hidden columns in a spreadsheet file that you are sending, say so. If it is material you don’t want to publish, print to PDF the pages as you want them to be seen and send that, or create a new spreadsheet by copying values of the selected visible columns to a new sheet and send that. 18. Remember, PDF, like a printed page, is a picture of words. Some PDF programs make the page “live”, in varying degrees, for search or copy functions but, that is happening on receipt, it is not what was sent. OCR (optical character recognition) can turn the words in the PDF back into “live” words capable of being word processed, text searched and so forth, but, again, that is the start of a new cycle of processing, without the original baggage. 1 The log files of the computer will also record that information in files at varying degrees of depth in the application or the operating system. Trying to delete those files or information is also logged by other log files, and so on. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   13 19. Most copiers or scanners have an OCR capability which, with a PDF or any document that is clean, will yield very accurate conversions back to word processing text. That process is the OCR of the paper version of a PDF file. PDF files themselves can also be scanned for OCR in the computer by appropriate software. Software such as Adobe, Nitro and Google Docs can do the conversion. Some will recognise and convert text in any medium, such as picture files (e.g. the photo of a written sign is recognised as text in a photo and OCR’ed). See Evernote’s capability as an example of this process. 20. Speaking of photos of documents, if you are working on a document make sure you give it a file name as you start and set auto backup to relatively short cycles. This gives you reasonably good security against software or hardware failure and loss of precious work. However, a WP freeze may occur. Word has a penchant for that when running on Mac. On a Mac use the program Grab, or on a PC Screen Save to take a photo of the page on the screen before you reboot of the program and get the recovered page back up. You can then check if the recovery was complete against the screen shot and retype whatever is needed to get you back to where you were. 21. BTW, don’t plagiarise. It is now possible in a few keystrokes for a reader to catch out the plagiarist and hoist them with their own petard. Acknowledge. It shows you did the work. When you cut and paste from a webpage to a document you import the electronic trail. In any event, the text itself can be put into a search engine and the original document found. 22. Obviously it is convenient to share electronic documents with a work group to work on. That process requires strict version control, so that the same document is not being changed by a number of people independently and at the same time. 23. A group editing process mediated through a website is called a wiki. The dropping of iWork.com has left Apple without an obvious collaboration tool. iCloud doesn’t appear to do the job. A commercial web site called Huddle, allows setting up workspaces on the web with restricted and layered access to materials put there for collegiate work or comment along with a number of other facilities. It is very clever. I will mention it again under telephony. Box Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   14 is designed for mobile devices and desktop collaboration and has free space on it. Barnet has a facility for group work on files using web browsers. Office 2010 has the same facility using Windows Live as does Office 365, the new cloud based Office package, using SkyDrive. Zimbra.com is a platform independent front end or desktop which allows wiki work as an aspect of its functions. Google docs provides a very good free wiki platform. Go to http://www.google.com/campaigns/gonegoogle/masters-demo/ index.html for a fantastic demonstration of how a wiki works, as you collaborate in real time with the great literary masters of the past. You can access it via Google Drive by clicking on the Share button, creating a document and nominating the people or a circle you want to allow to work on the document. They can work individually or simultaneously on the document. It is also great for group planning of holidays or functions. Writing on Tablets: 19. iPad and iPhone and many other tablets have virtual keyboards or can make a bluetooth connection to an external keyboard. The Microsoft tablet includes the keyboard in the flexible cover. However, tablets can also record hand writing done on the screen as an image of the “squiggle” that is your writing. Some can convert handwriting to typescript on the fly or indirectly. This is not new. Palm devices did it very well 10 years ago. Android machines are benefited by the old Palm software. I am unconvinced the current versions of conversion of handwriting to typescript on iPad are up to the Palm standard yet but the progress is very quick. 20. If you are a bad typist, or you don’t like the virtual keyboard on tablets, hand writing notes may be an alternative. The note can be read or printed later. My default preference is Notetaker HD which is a paid App with a high level of functionality. A useful feature is the capacity to set a dead zone at the bottom of the “page”, so your wrist doesn’t register as performing writing on the screen if you are resting your hand on the screen. You can write in different colours and sizes and highlight text you have written. The system accepts any freeform entry, such as diagrams or mind maps. Penultimate is another cheaper paid app that appears to be faster at recording the stylus movement. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   15 Neu.Notes is free as are a number of other apps to the same effect, such as Bamboo. Adobe Ideas is directed to mind mapping and semi graphic uses. It is free at the basic configuration with paid App having capacity to layer. Soundnote records a meeting as well as providing for note taking. Writepad purports to do handwriting to typescript, as does Evernote via a web upload/ download. 21. If you are going to use writing on an iPad, get a good iPad/iPhone stylus. There are a number that range from penlike size and thickness to quite chunky units. The stylus must be able to transmit an electric charge from your fingers to the screen, so any old stick type stylus will not work. (Likewise with waterproof cases for iPhones and other touchscreen phones. There are special versions of the cases which can transmit the charge through a transparent cover and the phone can work inside the case. Sailors and paddlers take note.) Printing: 22. Generally, for documents you are publishing to people outside chambers, use the best printer available to you, so your work looks as good as it can do. 23. For your own consumption, you can print documents you have made or received in booklet format, if you have a duplex (two sided printing) printer and set things up correctly. It is a very easy way to conserve paper, because it reduces the paper consumption by 3/4 from single page printing. Just two sided printing, or two pages per page, halves the paper used. Two pages per page, double sided, is perfectly adequate for reading drafts. 24. Check your WP program’s print function and the print function working with your PDF reader. You will probably find a booklet print option. If you cannot find it, make some enquiry how to do it. There are some neat little programs available on the web that will do the page shrinking and reorganising to make a document a booklet when printed. Judgments and affidavits are particularly useful in that form. To bind the job either simply whack a staple or two down the spine or hole punch and use a small folder. Otherwise, fold the pages firmly, open the booklet and lie it face down on a cardboard or foam plastic Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   16 pad, open your stapler flat and push staples through the spine crease into the pad underneath. Lift off the booklet, push flat the staple spikes inside and you have a bound document. 25. Printing from a tablet (iPad or whatever) may require some intermediation if you don’t have an AirPrint enabled printer. WePrint Server, allows print output from your tablet via wifi to your printer attached to your desktop or that is on the local wifi network in chambers. An app called Print Sharing works as a AirPrint emulator and so wirelessly connects your iPad or iPhone to your Apple computer to print to its printer. See also Airprint Activator. 5. Not typing. Voice recognition 1. I observed above that everyone who can type, even slowly and badly, can produce a good looking result, thanks to word processing. In short, everyone can type. However, not everyone wants to type. 2. The combination of a capacity of a computer to “hear” and process sound into a digital form from the analogue, and match the resulting file of a sound pattern against a huge number of files of sound patterns associated with words until it finds a match and then present the word as an addition to a text file in a nano second, is the product of a convergence of the prodigious growth of computing power of processors, the increased size and speed of RAM and large scale disk storage becoming absurdly cheap, working with some very clever algorithms in some very clever programs. Couple those capabilities with capacity in the programs to create more sound/word pattern files on an experience basis (so as to cope with new words or the eccentricities of speech of the user) and to parse phrases or sentences to resolve ambiguity, then very effective spoken “typing” becomes a reality. 3. Dragon Dictate and MacSpeech Dictate are my choice. They are related programs in that the latter uses the recognition and parsing algorithms of the former but in a different user shell. The former only works on a Windows platform, the latter Mac. The same algorithms drive Siri. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   17 4. Speaking to create documents is now a feasible strategy, at least for “first cut” typing. That is, the dictated document is the subject of a keyboard based editing process (by the author or another person) to finalise it, but the bulk of the grunt work is oral. 5. I can now talk at conversation speed to my computer and be confident of at least 90% success in recognition. With a wireless headset, wandering the room chatting to the computer while reading folders or books is easy. The less than 10% of error can be a bit wild, but that is fine by me. 6. A couple of judges clearly use dictation software, because the word “antelope”, or other random additions, occasionally appears in judgments, somewhat unexpectedly and usually out of context. Referring to his own use of the system, Austin J observed that this is not an appeal point: Australian Securities and Investments Commission v Rich [2009] NSWSC 1229 at [20], citing Vines v ASIC (2007) 62 ACSR 1 at 11; [2007] NSWCA 75 at [28], per Spigelman CJ. 7. It is important to recognise what the major issue is with proofreading voice recognition created documents. The incorrect words are the wrong word, not a misspelled word, which we usually pick up easily. Usually it is a “sounds like” substitution. Accordingly, when you are proofreading your brain can make subconscious substitutions to “correct” the text as you read and you will miss the solecism completely. Great care is needed. The read-back function in many computers can be very useful, either having your words as dictated read back (a function within the package), so you can compare them to the text, or having the text as transcribed by the machine read back to you in the machine “voice” using a special or generic text to voice program. 8. Editing can be done by you or by an assistant armed with the voice file as dictated by you and the text file as created, son one can be compared to the other and adjusted. 9. Most dictation software will allow the use of a digital dictaphone or even a telephone used as a dictaphone, and the downloading of a sound file to the computer which “reads” that sound file into a document. Because the Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   18 environment in which a dictaphone is being used is relatively uncontrolled and affected by, for example, the noise of the grip of the hand on the machine, the results tend to be less satisfactory than work done in a quiet office directly to the software. 10. On the other hand, the noise filtering technology in bluetooth headsets built for mobile phones, but which can be paired with a computer with bluetooth capability (which is most), is rendering the need for a quiet ambient area unnecessary and may give much better results than an ordinary microphone. Be aware of the medical argument about the effects of using either mobile phones or bluetooth headsets at all or for extended periods. Wired headsets and directional microphones are available. An iPhone can be used as a microphone for Dragon if on the same network. 11. As a bonus extra, most voice recognition software allows voice command control of the software on the computer, as well as dictation to insert text in a variety of software. So, you can invoke a new program, switch between programs and perform functions within the program using voice commands. It is easy, after practice, to open the mail software (a command), read the emails (a command) and respond to them (a command and text addition), all using the voice commands and then return to an open document to continue dictation. Look Mum, no hands! 12. Dictation software is now available for mobile devices such as phones and iPad, either in specific apps, such as the Google app, or as a standalone product to apply to apps running on the machine. Dragon has a voice directed search platform that searches across a number of search engines and offers the best responses to you. 13. The iPhone 4S has voice recognition for most text input systems on the phone, such as messaging (look for the little microphone symbol). You can dictate the message and it is converted to text on the screen (though the conversion work is not done on the phone itself). 14. The voice recognition system, Siri, on the iPhone 4S and later and iPads is Dragon based, but is processed off the phone by remote Siri servers and the Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   19 result transmitted back to the phone. Siri is remarkable in that the system is not simply text to word matching, as discussed above, but is seeking sense in the words spoken and responding appropriately. That is, there is an artificial intelligence function added. Siri sets out to recognise a phrase spoken as a question or instruction and to respond by undertaking the activity required by the instruction or providing an answer to the question. So, the statement “wake me at 7” will be responded to by “You have an alarm for 7 o’clock. I have turned it on” and the function performed. Quite complex phone functions (adding to reminder lists, diary entries, note taking, dialling, SMS) can be directed in this way using a relatively free form of speech. The statement to Siri: “lunch tomorrow with my wife” is construed and a dialogue entered into which ultimately results in a diary entry at a nominated time and a confirmatory email to my wife. The interrogation system will often result in a web search being conducted for you, but that said, Siri is capable of answering directly on a range of topic which no doubt are increasing. Remote Dictation services 15. A parallel strategy to the use of dictation software is that of speaking to a computer using a line or USB microphone or bluetooth headset to create a sound file, that is a file which when activated replays the sounds recorded, (think MP3 file for words). The software to do this is preloaded on most computers. A sound file can be emailed. A person sitting in Singapore or on the south coast of NSW can receive that email, load up the sound file, play it and type the dictation from the file and return a typed version by email within an hour or so or overnight local time. You can do the edits and print and sign. It is a very economic service. It is driven by electronic payments systems, you can pay by credit card. More of that later. 6. Remote communications: text, fax, telephony and videoconference. Text 1. Email, SMS and IM or Chat and various person to person text transmission systems using bluetooth or infrared make it very easy to move written thoughts and images around with various degrees of complexity of content Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   20 and formatting and over different distances. I will assume that you are all familiar with those systems. As a quiet, pithy way of communicating to someone who can’t talk readily, or when time shifting is necessary, SMS is unbeatable. Don’t type SMS at the bar table. For older users, it is obvious when you do. There is a very particular fixed stare and hunched shoulders that older SMS creators usually have. Younger users can SMS without any apparent movement, which is spooky. You can send SMS from your phone, or from your computer if you use a service such as Barnet’s web SMS gateway. If you are a big SMS user and it is costing you too much KIK provides an internet based free instant messaging system that works on smartphones (or tablets) to other KIK subscribers. It is literally instant messaging. It is excellent if you are part of a group with a high short message requirement and a low tolerance for delay. Similar systems are in Skype and Google messaging and now Messages, since iOS5, which defaults to the cheapest means of passing a message from one iOS device to another, using the internet where possible rather than SMS on a telephony system. Mountain Lion is now out with the desktop Messages system for apple computers. The messages sent or received are mirrored on your portable devices so you can continue a chat started on the desktop on an iPad or another idevice. 2. Chat type text communications (IM) is attached to most social network systems plus Skype and some other ostensibly voice based systems. Unlike SMS the typed message is seen and responded to in real time, allowing a text conversation and multi party conversations. It has its uses. Messages can be sent in the expectation they will be seen hours later and responded to, so it covers some of the same ground as SMS. These same platforms usually have file transfer systems which are very efficient as an alternative to emailing a file. 3. The dangers of email are well known. Don’t write and send email when affected by any chemical or when tired and emotional. Email requires concentration. Check the recipient box twice, particularly when replying, in case you have invoked “reply all” or made some unintended inclusion in recipients. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   21 4. Email allows one to act in haste and repent at leisure. Take a deep breath before clicking “send”. 5. If you can display your Outbox, keep it on. It is a useful check that an email has in fact been sent. Else, keep a sent sound turned on, so you can hear it go. For various reasons it may not, and you need to know that ASAP. 6. If you have a variety of email addresses based on different services being accumulated onto one email program, care is needed to ensure that a reply sent using the computer that you are on and its ISP will in fact be sent if the “sender” (you, in one of your email forms) is not a recognised by the local ISP’s server. Usually, if you have a number of servers represented in your email list you can toggle between sender addresses in the reply email and find the one that works, which is usually generic addresses like .google or .yahoo or .me. 7. Setting up your phone or tablet to take email as IMAP (not POP), if you can, will save you money on 3G usage, because only the headers of an email are downloaded to the phone, unless you request the whole email. Try to get spam filtered out at the server level so you are not downloading all those fascinating invitations. Check what your ISP (internet supplier) can do. 8. Conversely, if you are sending large files as attachments to an email the email may be rejected by the recipient’s ISP. A better strategy is to upload the file to a directory in a cloud file system (iCloud, Google Drive, SkyDrive, Dropbox etc) that you open and then you email the link to the file to your intended recipient so they can download the file, usually by just clicking on the link in the email. 9. You can check your email on your computer’s email program (Apple’s Mail, MS Outlook, or whatever) or, with most ISP services, using Webmail through a web browser if you are away from your desktop machine, overseas or whatever. Check with your service provider how to access and use their webmail system. You can use web based email, such as Gmail or Yahoo which uses a browser based access system. Messages on those systems can be accessed by conventional email programs as well, by directing them to collect Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   22 mail from that system. The setup for your email program to do this may be built in. Otherwise, you may need to go to the host site to find the description of the mail server addresses and other necessary information to configure your email program. 10. GoogleWave, which was in beta testing in the public domain, promised to be the next major development of email. It was web based, not email program based, and allows almost complete freedom to move between a traditional text email through multimedia messages to direct chat and speech or video conferencing in the same environment and with as many correspondents as you wish to address. There is a YouTube posting demonstrating the system. Unfortunately, Google have cancelled the project for want of uptake. Facebook has been suggesting that it will move to fill this space with a hybrid email product but still has not. 11. On any view, email is in a state of flux with competition to displace it as the dominant means for communication on the internet. 12. Barnet permits email to be sent using SMS by sending an SMS to a dedicated number with the email address as the opening line and a message following. MMS 13. Most phones have MMS as well as SMS. MMS allows multi media files (the MM) to be sent on the mobile phone network. Photos, sound and video files etc can be transmitted by the phone immediately on being created using the phone or acquired by the phone from some other source. If you are a lousy SMS writer, or don’t like typing on a phone and don’t have dictation to SMS capacity, see if your phone acts as a voice recorder. Most do. If so, dictate notes to yourself or others and send the voice file by MMS if you need to send a short message. The recipient will receive a message that talks to them. Beware, according to your phone plan data usage allocation, this can be expensive because the files can be big. 14. As a related matter, photos taken on a phone can be useful, as well as decorative. If a presentation is being given on a white board and you haven’t taken notes (or even if you have) photograph the white board, load the photo Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   23 onto your computer later and read the presentation on your screen. Qipit.com and Evernote are applications that allow OCR of a phone photo image to produce, as far as possible, text from the photo, so it can be searched using word search. 15. Recording matters of interest on a view by photo or movie taken with your phone is quick and convenient. Because they are date and time stamped (and may also contain geographic location information) such photos can be a significant record of matters observed to prove that state at a later date. Faxes 16. Systems like Barnet’s Deskfax allows you to receive faxes as an email (or an attachment to an email) and to send documents as faxes using your email system (using the same “send to” function or “print” function as you ordinarily use). If you are dealing with people who insist on using fax machine, and you don’t want to have a fax machine or to bother with faxes, Deskfax type systems are a boon. FYI, faxes predate telephones and were originally used on the telegraph system, principally to send photos for the newspapers. It is a very old technology and very robust. Telephony 17. The internet and the presence of high speed data transmission networks, both wired and wireless based, has provided a means to bypass conventional copper wire analogue telephony as a means of voice communication with fairly high levels of reliability. VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) for chambers phones is now the norm rather than the exception. 18. The striking feature of internet based telephony is that the devices that can employ these systems are as many and varied as inventors can conceive and therefore the functionality of those devices, besides transmitting voice, can be very skinny or very large. 19. The convergence of computers, computing and telephones as devices is increasing in sophistication, so that a generation of mobile phones now on offer includes a capacity in the machine to determine what means of connection are available and optimise the connection as to cost or speed, or Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   24 both, choosing between VOIP on WiFi or 3G and now 4G. The same networks can be dealing in parallel with voice, data and video. Systems exist (e.g. Uniden and a Telstra badged phone) that allow bluetooth pairing of your mobile phone with your domestic or chambers phone, in the same way as it occurs in a car. The mobile calls are routed through the “local” handset system which takes over as the mobile handset. You don’t have to carry your mobile around at home. Again you can use the most economical connection, choosing between your mobile carrier and any other system you are using for outgoing calls. 20. Your chambers phone, if on VOIP, will be capable of gathering information on your phone usage either on board the phone or on a website that you can visit and download the data (yes, your VOIP phone has a webpage. Do you?). If your practice is telephone intensive and you want that information for billing or verification of events, it is all there, usually as a spreadsheet. Ask your systems administrator or telephony supplier how to access that data. 21. Conversely, your computer can be used as your telephone and telephone answering system and calling point. Have a look at Phonevalet (for Macs) or Ezvoice as examples of how powerful a VOIP system running off a computer can be. However, it may be a touch of overkill for a small practice. Video conferencing: 22. It is inevitable that video conferencing will become more popular as a cost saving device to avoid travel time, however short, and gather people who otherwise could not be conveniently gathered. The presence and use of Skype makes that clear. Having a computer with built in or added video conferencing capability will become essential. It is cheap at the base levels. It is standard in many personal machines (phones and computers). 23. Facetime is the wifi based video conferencing capability now built into iPad, iPhone 4 and the latest iPod Touch for iMachine to iMachine communications (including desktop and laptop). Google+ has Hangout which, like Skype, works across platforms, so an iPad can address an Android phone in video calls. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   25 24. In addition, more sophisticated venues and systems are available on a rented basis around town. 25. Test your video conferencing system before you use it to ensure you don’t have a feedback loop between your microphone and your speakers which will generate echo or howling. Move or redirect the speakers, or a headset can be used to overcome that issue. During a video call you can usually exchange files with your counter-party so that a discussion and editing of a document can occur in real time. If you are using a wiki, both or all participants can change and observe the changes occurring. 26. Clean up the background of the shot in which you are sitting and check your telephone habits. Remember, you can be seen! 27. I noted Huddle above in relation to collegiate work platforms for document creation, editing and review. A part of Huddle is secure group or one to one video conferencing, so that the issues or particular matters can be discussed “face to face” on the internet with the documents in play at the same time. Remote learning 26. The NSW Bar Association now offers CPD by internet access to the Streaming CPD material on the Bar website. You will need a user name and password. 7. Entertainment/life-style and the physical chambers environment. 1. Chambers can be made more agreeable by inclusion of music. The same devices that can provide you with your work tools can, with supplementing, provide very high quality sound or images for distraction or to assist concentration. For example, Bose make tiny but very efficient speakers for use with any music producing device with a headphone port. The soundscape produced is astonishing. It adds quality to your life at modest cost. A sound bar speaker set gives virtual surround sound music from one speaker (two if you get the subwoofer). Bluetooth stereo headphones and loud speakers are available. No wires. 2. If you have multiple devices and music spread over them, iTunes allows you to invoke iTunes Match, for an annual fee. Match scans your music Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   26 collection(s) and uploads to the cloud any idiosyncratic tunes. Music you have bought or which iTunes recognises remains where it is. Thereafter, you have access to all of your music on any of your authorised devices and, better still, if you had a poorer version of an item that is on iTunes, the better version is played or downloaded. If you delete songs on a machine, you can download the cloud version. If you lose the lot on a machine you can replace it. 3. In addition to your own music to listen to, most players (like iTunes or Windows Media Player) also allow access to internet radio stations. There is an astonishing selection of them (country and western), with themes to satisfy the most obscure music tastes. Music can be purchased through iTunes Store, Google Music, Amazon, Bigpond and so forth. 4. Last.fm is an internet radio that you seed with an artist or song you like and it constructs and plays a playlist of related music on the fly. It is a free service. The results are always interesting. If you don’t like a track, skip to the next. It is better than radio. Pandora, which originated the technology, is now available in Australia. To do the same with your own music collection, use the Genius playlists function in iTunes. Paid music streaming services, such as JB HiFi’s, Rdio, Sony etc, are worth a look. Spotify is up and running. 5. Decoration from electronic photo frames using your photos, carefully selected, is a nice touch. iGala gives you a wifi enabled frame that downloads photos from your web storage. 6. Get a good chair. All chairs are not born equal. You will spend lot of time in it. 7. Nespresso make outstanding coffee machines and coffee. 8. A tropical reef in a tank is fine, if you don’t mind the smell of dead fish. 9. Computers can be turned into a TV. If the screen is a good one (and you can get resolutions higher than HD for little money), you can be watching high definition TV on your computer using a digital decoder. Most chambers are wired for TV reception. You can record programs to your hard drive to time shift and, copyright permitting, burn to DVD using your DVD drive. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   27 10. Digital TV decoders, such as Elgato (on a Mac) and Hauppauge may allow converting analogue sources, such as VCR or output from vinyl discs, into digital format and be burned to CD or DVD. Yes, your vinyl collection and VCR can live again as a CD or DVD or simply be streamed from your computer. You can even edit out the more egregious dust “pops” from records using basic sound file editing software. 11. Your phone is now a respectable still and movie camera. There are myriad photo apps. BTW, the + volume control on an iPhone and on its headphone acts as a shutter release so you can, amongst other things, eliminate camera shake. 12. ABC iView allows you to catch up on programs or series you have missed on free to air ABC. It is a free download using Internode as your ISP. Other channels, like SBS, have a similar facility as do various ISP. The BBC paid streaming service is extraordinary for the range of its library that is online. 13. Alternatively, you can download to your computer SD or HD film content that is free or bought, if you have a player. Perfectly adequate ones are free downloads themselves. Bigpond has a movie and podcast purchase and rental facility, as does Apple iStore. Where these are offered as downloads, beware the huge size of these files and any limits or breakpoints in your data plan. Check the floor acceptable use policy before you download at chambers. Movie downloading can cause very nasty and expensive shocks. Some video cards and media players (like Apple TV) upscale low quality video files to as close as possible to HD, so even low grade YouTube video doesn’t look too bad on a large (like 50”) screen. Don’t download HD unless you need HD. 14. Your handheld device (i.e. your phone or tablet) will probably be capable of running Apps (applications), being small programs that harness the various capabilities of your device to deliver useful or amusing results. I have listed some useful apps for your practice in the footnote below2. I use apps on an iPhone from five news services set up for mobile devices, SMH, ABC, BBC, Huffington Post and New York Times. These give you a small screen 2 AustLII; CaseBase Citatory; Documents; Dragon Dictate; Dropbox; Evernote; Google Drive; iAnnotate; Numbers; Pages; Office2HD; PDF Reader; QuickOfficePro; Scanner Pro; SkyDrive. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   28 version of the papers or news service. The ABC App also provides streaming radio and video from its stations. For recreation, as a kayaker I am interested in weather forecasts. The BOM app puts the current weather radar feed onto your phone. You can see rain and read wind speed and direction for Sydney, or where ever you are. Windfinder.com gives an outstanding rolling week forecast in an easy to read graphic as does Seabreeze. Manly Hydraulics Laboratory gives a real time feed of tides, wave size and water temperature from the wave rider buoys off the coast. BOM has a real time wind speed feed from Fort Denison and North Head. The GPS in the phone with an app allows tracking of route, distance and time and reporting on a paddle. Runkeeper is neat and versatile for different activities. Nike has feature rich free running etc app which, if you want to, pairs with its shoe insert. The SMH Good Food Guide tells you where restaurants are relative to where you are, or a nominated spot, and their rating, specialities and reviews. Select one and the telephone number, address and a map to guide you there appear. Tap the phone number and book a table. Post a review after the meal. Urbanspoon adds to all that a random choice element to restaurant selection, if you want it. Shazam allows the identification of music playing anywhere, as to the actual recording playing, and allows you to buy it on iTunes or Amazon immediately, downloaded to your phone. Just start the app, hold up the phone so it can “listen” and wait 10 seconds. SoundHog is Shazam on steroids. You can sing to it. AroundMe identifies and provides information about and a map track to a large range of businesses and local features (i.e. hospitals and taxi) for the area you happen to be in, using the GPS built into most phones coupled with an internet connection through 3G. I found the nearest all night chemist in Adelaide at 3am thanks to AroundMe. Stanza is a reader for electronic books as is iBooks, Kindle and Borders which allow purchase of books onto the phone or iPad. If reading at night, try the white text on black page setting. The Google app allows spoken search requests. It is very accurate in speech recognition mode. I can look at photo albums I have posted to my iCloud web page created using iPhoto on the mobile device or the computer, or looking at Photostream which make the 1000 most recent photos available on all idevices you own. My Pages and Numbers on the iMac Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   29 automatically provide the same programs on the handheld devices with the documents worked on via iCloud, and vice versa. Dropbox provides the same facility outside iCloud and at the moment is probably the superior product for maintaining synced documents across machines. iPhone Explorer (running on your PC or Mac) makes your phone or tablet memory accessible to drag and drop files. Skype loaded on the phone permits web calls to bypass the 3G carrier if wifi is available and the use of an iPad as a phone (as does Facetime and Messages). Pinger, Viber and other web based telephony systems are specifically directed to handhelds. Adobe Ideas allows free style sketching of ideas in picture format, saving and transmission of them. iPity is quotable quotes from Mr T, spoken by the great man himself. A set of illustrated yoga poses and a speaking french phrase book are an obvious necessity. The Smule app is a delight. It converts an iPhone into an ocarina that you can learn to play, by blowing into the mike and fingering the “holes” on the screen. There is now a violin and piano app for the iPad. You can also listen to people all over the world as they grapple with the instruments and join them. Facebook to keep track of children and friends and Linkedin for colleagues and Google Earth are there. NASA’s website and Star Walk, an annotated virtual night sky, oriented to the way the phone is pointing, takes care of matters off planet. Flipboard and Longform are media aggregators or accumulators that put highlights from dozens of newspapers and magazines in one place grouped by interest or the online feed of a magazine or site. A week’s music is on the system which can be played into headphones or speakers or plugged into an FM radio transmitter when in a car or in a hotel, so you can listen to the music on an available radio tuned to the same setting. This gives you your music, podcasts, spoken books and so forth, where-ever you are. Most cars now have bluetooth connectivity to and a good interface with music players. 15. You can watch movies on the handheld. Mac the Ripper or Handbrake will convert your DVD or other video formats to compressed files suitable for viewing on an iPhone. See also, Toast. There are equivalents for other devices. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   30 16. getjar.com is a goldmine for apps for all devices, as is the App Store in the iTunes Store for iPhones. Many are free. The rest usually cost a few dollars. There are high cost/high functionality apps, such as the TomTom app for the iPhone or the iWork programs from Apple (Pages, Numbers etc). Of course, the App Store app runs on the iPhone, so you won’t miss anything and it deals with updates to your collection. 17. If you are an iPhone user, don’t forget that if you are using a wifi network at home or in the office, your iPhone will find and can act as a remote control for all Apple products, such as a computer and Apple TV, that are also on that network, using the Remote app. Likewise the new generation of Apple TV can connect to and received streamed music, photos or movies directly from a iPhone or iPad using Airplay, so the items on your phone or tablet can be put to a 50” plasma screen or a full sound system connected to the Apple TV. Likewise you can Mirror from an iPhone or iPad to a big screen if an Apple TV is connected to it. The mirror function puts the screen of the handheld up on the TV on a real time basis, so you can share what you are seeing with others as you work on the device. 18. Conversely, if you are using iCloud, using Find My iPhone your computer (or iPhone or iPad) can find your iPhone or iPad if you lose it and indicate its location on a map and, if you choose, play as sound or send a message to display on the phone, or disable it with a new password, or empty it of data to protect your privacy. Your phone and iPad should be backed up onto your computer or iCloud (or whatever) anyway, so wiping the data doesn’t matter. You can reload on recovery of the machine or, if you connect a new machine, restore all the old system and setup onto the new machine. Backup of iPhones or iPad to iCloud is free for at least the basic information. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   31 B: Management of a Practice: 8. Legal Practice Compliance issues: disclosure and disclaimers. 1. Compliance is easy if you set up standard form documents in your word processing systems and email program that ensures compliance with the requirements of the Regulations, so that all documents you produce have the disclaimer on them as a matter of course, unless removed. Setting up the disclaimer as a signature in your email system means all emails will automatically have it added as you create or respond to email. The disclaimer at the foot of this document is simply a standard footer in the default opening document. 2. Having template letters for fee disclosure ensures that compliance is as easy as it can be to prepare and deliver them in short order. 3. Making compliance easy and the default position in your documents and systems heads off problems in the future. 9. Billing systems: 1. Cash flow is the entire basis of your practice and your capacity to survive over time. You cannot defer becoming a good biller. You will not last long enough to get to be good. 2. Billing efficiency pays for itself by the earnings capable of being recovered and by reducing the time spent dealing with billing and collection. 3. Time worked or events are usually the basis of billing. Converting time or events into cash flow requires a good billing system that is compliant with the Regulations. 4. There are a number of computer based billing systems specifically directed to barristers. 5. I use SILQ, so I will speak about it. There are also barrister/lawyer specific products from LEXIS (Back Office), Counsels Companion and many others. 6. The SILQ process is: Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   32 • Creation of matters files, starting with the data entry into a fee disclosure letter (matter, client, solicitor’s name address, rates, etc), which is one of a suite of pro forma letters or documents you use in the system. That data, if new, is captured into a file, or if not new (i.e. an existing solicitor), is drawn from previously created data file, so far as possible, of the particulars of the firm and individual that sent the brief to you. • Thereafter, as time is recorded by you in your SILQ diary, or in an electronic diary and imported into the SILQ internal diary, and from it loaded into the relevant matter file, it is combined automatically with charge rates to create WIP records and then bills, as a wholly or semi automatic process. • Paper invoices are generated and a soft copy filed with associated documents on your system. • Receipts are processed to maintain running balances of particular matters and overall cash receipts data. • Reminders, accumulations of unpaid invoices, or statements of the course of billing and payment in a matter can be sent to the solicitor from time to time as necessary. • Reports can be produced on all matters related to billing, debtors and cash flow. • Expenses can be tracked in a cash book format. • A full general ledger can be set up. • Lists of authorities, chronologies etc can be prepared within the system. 7. Barnet provides SILQ support with offsite backup storage, which can be set up by or for you. Otherwise, you can automatically email the data file to yourself, so there is effectively a backup on your ISP’s email server. Delete the old files from the server from time to time because they are very big. 8. The SILQ approach has the great advantage that data you have already captured (such as in your electronic diary) can be imported into another system, the billing system, for use with other standard or particular data with Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   33 no or minimal editing or revising, so that only exceptions have to be attended to, not the rule. This is very efficient use of time and data for billing. 9. Most billing systems are fairly intuitive, so that initially you can probably operate this type of system yourself. If needs be, get someone else to. However, it must be done to maintain cash flow. 10. SILQ used to run only on a Windows platform. It can be run effectively in a virtual Windows machine running on a Mac using VMWare’s Fusion or Parallels. However, a Mac version of SILQ is now available. Test versions of both are available for you to download to run on your system and buy if you like it. 11. For another very competent billing system for Mac OS have a look at Marketcircle’s Billings 3 system and its companion iPhone app. It does the time recording and converts time into bills. There are a large number of addon functions directly related to practice management on offer. 12. Filemaker Pro is the platform on which many such systems are built. Bento is based on Filemaker and comes with prewritten databases for time recording and invoicing and, again, runs on iPhone and iPad. There are user websites where people put up for free download solutions that they have written for a wide variety of business and social issues that employ the database programs. Electronic payment systems: 13. Include in your invoices an invitation that the bill be paid by direct deposit to your bank. That way you encourage immediate payment and reduce the costs of dealing with you. You also increase the transparency of the dealing. Include your BSB information on your bill and any reminder. If you are unsure what to include, speak to your banker. 14. If you want to be daring, at iCCPay.com (or the App Store) is an iPhone app for about $45 which converts your iPhone into a credit card billing terminal, so that you can process charges to a client or solicitor’s card on the spot. It links with a web based system which in background deals with the card issuer and a merchant account you have set up with your bank. Usual fees apply. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   34 Swipeit is a free iPad card terminal system. Check the App store for your device. 15. On a floor basis, merchant credit card services could be set up to collect payment at the end of a conference or other service, as happens in a doctor’s surgery, so long as a compliant bill has been produced first. With a competent billing system it is perfectly feasible to prepare one-off bills or bills for an event “on the fly”, so to speak, so that presenting a compliant bill at the end of a conference is quite possible. However, be aware that transactions charges do make this a very marginal proposition. 16. Conversely, you can use electronic transfer or BPAY to pay bills by internet interaction rather than by cheque. This is best done in an internet banking shell (see below) separate from your ordinary web browsing. Under internet banking systems you can also set up regular remittance instructions to automatically pay recurring costs. It is quick and costless. The information needed to do it is usually printed on the bills you are sent. The information you record when doing it is reflected in your bank statement, so the explanation of a payment is part of the records you get later from your bank. More on this later. Revenue law compliance: 17. The principal reason people don’t do BAS and income tax and other returns is that their financial affairs get out of control or become too complicated or require time to focus on the task of preparing returns and avoidance sets in. It is a natural progression. It can cost you your practicing certificate. 18. Using SILQ, or systems like it, makes BAS reporting easy. The systems can calculate the BAS received and on what and produce reports or even returns. You can also use those reports as a basis of a larger reporting and recording environment. Internet Banking: 19. However, you don’t even need to go as far as using SILQ type software to put your accounting house in order. Your bank will allow you internet access to download your bank statements in soft copy as a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   35 are very easy software for organising, sorting and manipulating numeric and text data. Microsoft’s Excel or Mac’s Numbers are common versions of the software. Again, Google has a free version that can be found in its Documents tab on the Google homepage. 20. Sign up for internet banking. It can be done online or speak to your banker. Go to your main bank account. Download (sometimes called “export”) the bank account statement data for the date range you want onto your system in a file named appropriately (e.g. “NABchqjan-mar2009”). Select “.csv” (comma separated values) as the file type if in doubt. “.cvs” is a generic format and will open in most brands of spreadsheet. Save the file to a place you will remember, like a “bank statements” folder. The saved file can be opened with, or imported into, a spreadsheet on your computer, if you have one, or in the Google product on the web. 21. Once in a spreadsheet you can copy the bank statement to a second sheet and start to edit it. Just sorting the data on the amount column puts all the receipts together (the positive numbers) and all the payments (the negative numbers) together. If you sort on amount and payee columns at the same time, you will get all receipts together and like receipts together and all payments together and grouped if there is the same payee. Remember to select the whole spread sheet before sorting on a particular column or columns, so you don’t just change the order of the data in the sorted column leaving the rest as it was. 22. If you are using a billing system, you can perform a reconciliation of bank deposits from the bank statement to billing system receipts easily and directly, by totalling the deposits to the bank account and subtracting non-fees receipts. Even if you are not using a billing system, if you identify all the deposits that are fee income and add them, in most cases one eleventh of the sum is the GST you are responsible for, subject to offsets, if you have been billing properly. 23. You can easily annotate the spreadsheet bank statement record of expenditure made by cheque with the cheque stub information (e.g. the payee and the reason for payment), by adding that data onto the spreadsheet. This turns the spread sheet into a cash book, and one which will reveal payments made by Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   36 you that include GST which is claimable in your BAS return. Your BPAY and transfer payments are already annotated with payment information from when you made them or set them up (see above). 24. Getting information in a readily digestible form, such as a spreadsheet, without having to do significant work, can eliminate nearly all the grunt of revenue law compliance. You process it, or you remit it by email to your accountant with your additional information. If you are using an accountant, and you should be, you are saving fees by presenting an almost complete set of data for processing into returns. 25. By the way, a recommendation from some security agencies is to use a separate computer from the computer which you use generally on the internet for browsing or to receive email just to do internet banking. Since there is considerable risk of trojan infection from even benign websites, having a dedicated banking computer is a good idea to secure passwords and access codes. It does not have to be a flash machine or fast or powerful. A net book will do. Once data is downloaded it can be sent to your ordinary working computer and processed. In any event, change passwords regularly. 26. Quicken and MYOB are accounting suites, which, as to some versions, allow loading of data from electronic bank statements and the addition of data and account codes by you or an assistant to create full blown cash journals which drive a General Ledger program. If your accounting needs are simple, this level of functionality may be excessive. Simple spread sheet accounting may suffice. However, these programs are relatively easy to use and very effective and allow you to perform analysis on your financial data easily. If you are running businesses in parallel to your practice, these types of packages become almost essential for reliable multi-activity accounting. 27. Accumulating reports that you have made quarterly for BAS purposes in soft copy form (the spreadsheets) also produces the bulk of what you need for annual income tax returns. Consolidation and sorting, which are easy tasks with electronic data, does the rest, at least for your practice income and expenses. Unless you segregate business and private bank accounts, the data will usually cover non-practice matters as well, so you can keep tabs on Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   37 private expenditure, domestic budgeting or any other arcane financial practices. 28. If you are in doubt, speak to you accountant to get spreadsheet templates set up for the processing of this data. It is quick. It is easy. It is effective to prevent issues with revenue law compliance in your practice and keep your practicing certificate safe. 29. Web based accounting systems have sprung up to exploit the fact that bank data is electronic. Xero.com is a local example. It offers a very elegant web based solution to producing very sophisticated accounts at very reasonable cost from very basic bank generated data edited by you. It also has the advantage of being off site processing, so that data loss and corruption are less likely than in the environment in which your computer is working. It is also platform independent (it doesn’t matter what sort of computer or software you are using). You just need a web browser. Mobile connectivity is also available. 10. Records maintenance and searching. 1. One downside of electronic storage of data is that it is vulnerable to destruction or corruption. That issue has to be combined with a positive statutory obligation to keep records for various purposes over time. That combination of facts apparently requires a more concrete form of record (paper, usually) be adopted. You may choose to keep paper files simply because some records come to you as paper and in large quantities. However, finding material in paper records can be difficult or impossible. Hence keeping a soft copy record of your paper records may have substantial utility. 2. Computers, combined with safe storage, can record the paper records by scanning and archiving the contents of paper records as electronic files. That can, not must, produce a searchable, organised, assembly of data for use in the future. 3. Converting paper to electronic files is useful if you can store them and search them. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   38 4. Most barrister’s floors have photocopiers capable of acting as high-speed scanners of stacks of paper. They will produce an image of the paper, with or without an OCR (optical character recognition) construction or interpretation of text on the page as if it was word-processed. These files can be stored as a record of paper transactions. They are, in effect, a photocopy, except in digital form. They can be printed to restore the “original”. They may be accompanied by the printable and searchable OCR text file. As noticed above software exists to “scan” electronic document image files such as PDF by OCR into .txt files in your computer. An app, Scanner Pro, for iPhone or iPad allows you to use the camera to scan and create PDF files. 5. Personal scanners are available cheaply but are usually significantly slower than a large photocopier. They are perfectly effective if you are methodical about scanning as you go and the demands are not great. 6. If you choose to use electronic files (alone or in place of paper files), you will need to address not only how to duplicate the paper into electronic form but also how to index the resulting files to allow effective retrieval. Simple folder creation is a start. Folders in the directory to which you are storing the material on your computer allows sorting of scanned material (and duplication in more than one folder if a file is relevant to more than one issue or subject) by whatever criteria you need to employ. Searching is a different matter. If scanned to PDF the text may be searchable. If there is doubt create .txt files from PDF using OCR. Most computer systems now have general search facilities that index all material on the system and allow quick access to it through a search function, with varying degrees of effectiveness. 7. dtSearch ($199) is a text searching program that can index your computer or selected parts of it. If you have searchable information it can be indexed and retrieved using complex search enquiries and plain language enquiries. If you have files that are not in searchable form (such as PDF) creating a text version of the files by OCR (see above) will expose them to indexing. A free test version is on cnet Downloads or the website. Copernic is another commercial program. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   39 8. Google used to have a free download of Google Desktop, a version of its search engine, which would continually review and index the contents of your computer. You may be able to find legacy downloads. You can then use a small popup window to find documents by content on your computer, in the same way as you would search the web. However, the search functionality is nowhere close to a dedicated system such as dtSearch for sophistication of searches. Alfred does a similar job to Desktop. 9. Using electronic storage means that data security then becomes a premium and secure storage: • off your computer (to avoid power surges, virus or other threats); • possibly off all computers (e.g. in optical disk form); and • off site to chambers, gives the best chance of data surviving accidents or malicious attack. 10. Off site storage is becoming increasingly common and cheap. Barnet offer such as service using the high security data storage centre in Harris Street, Ultimo. Your off site storage can become a virtual disk on your computer or be the target of backup or mirror storage in your computer setup. 11. Your computer can be set up to automatically archive or back up to an offsite storage system. Barnet will advise on that on request. The cost and quality (including likely longevity) of the service provider then become the issue for consideration. Do not use Dodgy Brothers ISP for your off site storage. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   C: Practice in a digital age: 11. Acquiring and Maintaining your digital menagerie: Selection of equipment and services: 1. A smart phone is close to essential as a business tool. A phone that can work on 3G (or 4 and 3G) and WiFi, when it is available, is useful to reduce the costs of connectivity, at least for data. You can put a wireless router in your chambers or make your computer a wireless access point, if it has that facility (as Apples do), so when you are in chambers wifi is the default connection. 2. Exotic phones can come bundled with connection plans at a monthly rate or they can be bought outright from the supplier or on eBay or on auction sites. Take care with the phone plan so that it allows data in an amount suitable to your needs. 3G data is coming down in price. However, a mistake can be very expensive. 3. Set up your phone to take email as IMAP (not POP), if you can. It will save money on 3G usage, because only the headers of an email are downloaded to the phone, unless you request the whole email. Try to get spam filtered out at the server (supplier) level. Check what your ISP (internet supplier) can do. 4. Perfectly effective computer equipment can be procured very cheaply, new (see for example MSY.com.au) or second hand, and combined with freeware software be highly functional. For a source of freeware see, for example, Tucows.com. For amazing and crazy tech goods, go to thinkgeek.com. 5. The combination of the internet and ubiquitous connection capability makes off machine software feasible. That is, software can be acquired on terms that it only comes onto your machine when needed, if at all, and therefore only requires very small devices for processing and storage. This is one aspect of the business model that is cloud computing. Office 365 is a good example. Another variation actually does the computing off device, so the device can be dumb, but a fast communicator, and produces smart results. This is the Siri model Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards legislation. © 2011 Nigel Cotman 41 6. The “hired” software model takes capital and maintenance costs off the table and substitutes monthly charges for scaleable and fully maintained software suites. The disaggregation of the old suites of software has reduced the effective cost because you can cherry-pick the bits you actually need. 7. Circa $400 will get you a small laptop running Windows with web cam functions and WiFi. Combine it with a bluetooth dongle (a USB plugin) and a USB connected or bluetooth enabled mobile phone on a 3G network acting as a modem (called “tethering”), or using a USB 3G wireless dongle from Barnet or your phone carrier, such as Vodafone or Telstra, or your own wireless hotspot from your MiFi or Apple or Android phone and you have an internet device capable of working on all networks just like a $4000 machine. Some machines will let you insert a phone chip or data chip into the computer to allow it to run the 3G wireless connection to the internet. 8. For software to run, Google, for example, has a free suite of software of similar functionality to Microsoft Office, Google Docs, as does Openoffice. Google wants to create platform independent software so all software runs in your web browser and couples with GoogleDrive cloud storage. Work can also be stored off machine. Work can be shared and used as a wiki. It is highly effective software. You can download the work to your local machine in a variety of formats, sync, or just store in the cloud. 9. As to your web browser, in addition to Safari and Internet Explorer in Mac and Microsoft world, there is also Chrome and Firefox (and Thunderbird the email client for Firefox) available as free downloads. They aim to be the fastest and most convenient browsers. Test drive today, they are impressive. Opera is another free choice, particularly for handheld devices. It is small and fast because it uses a compression of feed and caching technology. 10. Good quality networking devices such as wifi and wired routers can be obtained for $70. 11. Floor networks will probably allow you to access devices such as high quality printers on your floor without an investment in any printer of your own. Check the floor price per page before electing to use the big machine as your Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   42 primary printer. Printers themselves are very cheap. Get a duplex printer if possible. It allows two sided and brochure printing, which saves paper, which is the expensive bit, apart from toner. 12. In short, entry costs to perfectly adequate equipment are very low indeed, or zero capital if hiring. In turn, that equipment gives you access to an information rich environment, which itself is substantially free. 13. You can buy just a laptop and have a large screen and full sized keyboard in chambers and at home, which you plug into the laptop which you carry to and fro. There are sophisticated docking stations and even single plug systems that allow connection to such setups and which also power the laptop. Using a separate screen attached to a laptop allows you to run two (or more) screens, the laptop’s and the freestanding screen, and split your desktop between them so your current work runs on one and your email, web etc runs on the other. No window switching any more, just slide the cursor from one to the other screen, which the machine treats as one. You can do this with most desktop machines as well. Special multiple screen stands are available. 14. Whether you are using a laptop or a desktop machine, spend money on a good screen. That is what you will work with all day. That is the bit that will ruin your eyes, or at least make using your machines unpleasant, unless you get a good one. 15. You can now choose whether to use a mouse or not. Apple makes a freestanding touch pad, like the one in laptops, but larger. It allows you to use fingertip stroking and tapping to control the cursor on your desktop or laptop machine the pad is paired with. It is much less tiring to use than a mouse and requires little space on a desk. Gesture detection hardware and software will probably make any tracking device unnecessary shortly. Typing on an image of a keyboard projected on any flat surface is already possible. 16. Platform choice (e.g. in operating systems Windows; Apple; Linux; etc) is a matter of taste to a point. It is becoming increasingly a non-issue at the hardware or machine level. Windows 7 appears to have dealt with the Vista issues. Windows 8 is out and claims convergence of desktop and tablet Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   43 computing interfaces. I prefer Apples, but I have machines that run all three systems. They all talk to one another anyway. My Apple choice is simply a preference. It is undoubtedly true that there is a huge amount of software written for the PC platform which is relatively cheap or free. The PC machines are generally cheaper than Apple. Microsoft is throwing huge resources at developing its own cloud based and mobile environment. It is capable of doing great things. However, the sheer efficiency and functionality of Apple equipment/systems gets me every time, even at a premium price. Linux is making great strides to get into the business space. However, I am too lazy to use it on more than a media player system. 17. Be aware that since Apple machines went onto the same processor chip sets as PCs, Apple machines can run Windows and all Windows based software in virtual machines created by such software as VMware Fusion ($119) or Parallels. This is not emulation. The Apple is running Windows, for example (and/or Linux or UNIX, or whatever), in a window alongside its own operating system and native programs and/or other operating systems. You have to load the virtual machine software and a copy of your operating system(s) of choice) and the program(s) you want to run, and away you go. The VM appropriates all the peripherals (printer, USB, internet connection) that it needs using its tools and drivers. It will even suck an entire PC into the Apple and run it on call alongside the Apple applications. 18. There are also emulation packages, which will allow an Apple to run PC software without the PC operating system being available, and vice versa. They are usually VERY software specific, that is, only particular programs will run in a particular emulator. Check very carefully before you buy. 19. When choosing a machine to buy (or hire) the major variables are probably going to be: the processor (core duo is now a minimum); whether there is, and the quality of, the video card, which will determine how good a screen image you get on your monitor(s); the amount of RAM (the internal high speed memory) available and to which the machine can be expanded, which can significantly affect operating speed (more is better is a safe rule); and disk storage (expect 500 gigabyte to 1 terabyte now) and type. BTW, you don’t Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   44 need 1 terabyte of disk storage unless you are storing HD movies or TV (150 hours of HDTV is 1 TB). It is a huge storage. 1TB would hold 4,050,000 judgments of 44 pages in RTF (247 kb) or 176 million pages. In Word format it is nearly double that. In plain text format it would be many multiples again. 20. If you have a system that is not too old but it is sluggish, check the amount of RAM and how full the disks are. You may be able to fix the issue for small money by, say, putting 4 gigabytes of RAM into it and/or a disk drive that is not stuffed full, or having a spring clean of the drive. If you retrofit an SSD (solid state drive) and put the operating system on that drive you will get a nearly “instant on” computer. SSD is what tablets and phones are based on for all memory. Very large SSD are available for under $250. However, with whole new reasonably high spec PC systems, with new operating system, costing $800, mere upgrade solutions may not be worth the time, cost and effort. The SSD is still a good idea in a new system. Mac Pro now comes with SSD as the only drives in some of the line. There are no moving parts at all. Hybrid SSD and platter disk drives are now available and optimise the location of data between the two media to give you the fastest retrieval possible. 21. If you buy a new system, see if your existing hard drives can simply be put in it as a backup drive. Else, you can get a USB connected external mount for the old internal drive and connect it to the new computer temporarily as an external drive. Older drives need careful handling. They usually don’t hot swap, but can be mounted externally. Newer drives are close to plug and play. It saves mucking around with copying files if you can directly access your old drive in the new machine. If your backup is comprehensive you can restore from the backup to the new machine. Belkin makes a USB cable file-moving device to copy files from an old to a new computer. Apple owners just put the two machines in the same room or on the same network. The machines do the rest to completely replicate the old on the new. Cool. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   45 Tablet Computing: 22. The iPad launch in April 2010 and the anticipated, and now realised, flood of other tablet devices (including iPad iterations), is a whole new area of interest for barristers. 23. Tablet computing has been around for a long time. Electronic readers have been around for a while. The whole area has a touch of “déjà vu, again” about it. However, the fact is that the new machines are very powerful and the environment into which the tablets are being launched is redolent with high quality content, much of it designed to be used on tablet devices. As a light and convenient way of taking large amounts of written or visual consumption material to court, or to any out of chambers location, and to be able to access it and read it easily and call down more or transmit information about the material, I expect tablets to become important in a barrister's practice over time. Anecdotal evidence is of a very high take-up by lawyers, which for a new device is very rare. Observation confirms the anecdotes. 24. I have been using an iPad 1, 2 and “new” since 2010. It is a brilliantly convenient device. So convenient is it that a more were needed to end domestic poaching. For recreational or business use, a small, biddable and flexible machine that puts the internet literally at your finger tips in a book format and delivers prodigious quantities of stored material in a clear, large, format is a boon. The next generation machines will be more exciting again. 25. A tablet is particularly useful for consuming data rather than for generating data. The limited internal virtual keyboard, the position of the device at rest, and other issues, make creating major documents or spreadsheets a very inefficient process on a tablet, unless you add an external keyboard, many of which are now available. However, large scale production is not, or was not, the design mission of a tablet. They were originally meant to deliver content to the user in an always-on, convenient and portable device. That limitation of mission is being swept away by some of the software for these machines and users’ imagination. Particularly for music production, photography editing and graphics applications, tablets are becoming primary production devices, driven by finger gestures, that are more powerful and intuitive than the Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   46 desktop machine versions of the same or similar software. This extrapolation of tablet computing will increase the production capability of tablets. Spoken word input is already available on iPads as well as Siri or Dragon. Handwriting recognition will improve. These input changes alone will fundamentally alter the role of these machines in the near future. 26. If you envisage using a tablet away from a conventional wifi source, a 3G or 4G data service is required. Usually that is a 3G data chip in the tablet. Relatively cheap data-only services are available from the major carriers. You can get up to 12 month plans with 12 gig of data, so unused data at the end of a monthly billing period ceases to be much of a problem. If your requirements for 3G use are modest you may be able to get away with using your phone to assist the pad internet connection and not buy a 3G enabled machine in the first place. 27. Phone tethering is now possible for the iPad, and other wifi tablets. The iPhone operating system allows the iPhone to act as a wifi personal hotspot connection and an iPad can connect to that. Other tablet manufacturers may permit tethering using wifi or bluetooth and other phones offer wifi hub service. However, that may be a relatively more expensive way of handling data, compared to a data plan, because it is data on a phone plan. 28. One or the other (an internal chip or access to a phone data system in a phone or another device) are essential if downloading data is a part of the anticipated use and an accessible and reliable conventional wifi service is not known to be available. 29. Apart from phones as a portal to data for tablets without their own 3G capability, a species of intermediate devices is around which will take a data service chip (or a phone chip with data capability) from, say, Vodafone, and act as a wifi hub for any wifi enabled device to connect through that chip. Internode is selling Mifi which is a battery powered device that allows up to 5 wifi enabled devices to connect through one 3G chip to the internet. You could use an iPad operating on wifi to Skype through Mifi using a cheap data plan chip, I suppose. Netcomm offers the MyZone. These systems are useful when travelling to avoid roaming charges. Get a local 3G prepaid chip, insert Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   47 it into the portable wifi hub and connect all wifi devices through it with data roaming turned off in the devices. Using this strategy ought to allow iPads to address 4G systems by putting the 4G chip in a 4G capable MiFi-like device. 30. The Samsung Galaxy phone does the same thing as MiFi, as do most Android and iPhones. 31. Because an iPad is not a phone and doesn’t have phone service chip, it doesn’t function as a phone except using, say, Skype or Google+ Hangout or other VOIP on wifi. On iPad2 and later, Facetime (the Apple version of Skype) is enabled and can talk to most other Apple late generation idevices as a video phone. An iPad also has SMS or IM capability through Message. It will do email and web browsing. For that reason you can do workarounds to achieve some phone communication functionality on an iPad if your phone is down or left at home. SMS can be sent from a web based SMS service. I have mentioned Barnet’s SMS gateway above. Another possibility for short messaging is KIK, mentioned above, or even Twitter. 32. The operating system upgrade for iPad in November 2010 aligned the iPad with the iPhone 4 as to most functionality and adds wifi printing capability to a limited range of HP printers. The addition of Airtime also allows wifi streaming of audio, video and picture material off the iPad onto Apple TV and any other devices with Airtime capability, which will probably include most projectors or displays, speakers and stereo systems over the next few years. Print Central is a small app that allows iPad and iPhones to print to a network printer on the same wifi network. You can “mirror” an iPad screen onto a projector or TV screen using Airtime and an Apple TV for presentations and the like. 33. You can buy stylus which will work on touchscreen phones and other touchscreen devices so you can write or draw on the screen without using a finger. The stylus is not just a stick because it has to transmit the charge in your skin to the screen to work. With a stylus, using either note taking apps or script to typeface apps has become practical. The Palm devices of 10 years ago did perfectly adequate writing to type translation. The current crop of tablets are reinventing that wheel. As noted above, it may be a more useful Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   48 way of using a tablet for records of meetings than typing on the virtual keyboard. Entry level: 34. There is a real choice to be made between you adopting cutting and bleeding edge technologies or being a follower. Some products have some public use record. Others are barely out of beta testing and may be on the market for all the wrong reasons. Depending on how pivotal a device or software is likely to be to your survival and sanity, the more risk aversive you might sensibly be. There are risks in being an early adapter or adopter, even with a large supplier. Ask Sony betamax or HP Touchpad owners. 35. Choices for less mission critical equipment and software are easy because if an attractive concept is offered and it works, you are streets ahead, and if it doesn’t, nothing is lost except, perhaps, money or pride. 36. Likewise in the choice between branded and “unbranded” goods. Depending on how mature a technology is, there may be no reason to pay more for branded goods. However, the more important the component is, such as disk drives, the more important a reputable manufacturer may be. The more “innovative” the product the more quality control and thorough testing maybe at a premium, and you pay for that. At bottom, it is a cost/benefit assessment. Other issues, such as multi v single function devices, portable v stationary, dumb v smart, often boil down to taste, cost and whether a material advantage can be seen (apart from the cool factor). 37. Barnet offer all new barristers a free consultation on their technical requirements and has an ongoing consultation service. 38. Apple offers free advice on business solutions through the business consultants available by appointment made through the Apple Store’s website. 12. Financial choices: 1. Finance choices are usually own v hire. Cash flow considerations may be the most important determinant. Speak to your accountant about significant purchases. There may be significant tax issues with technology purchases. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   49 13. Service/Troubleshooting: 1. Unless you are technically able and have the time to address technical issues, access to a good technical service provider to deal with equipment and setup problems is essential. Barnet provides technical service as do others operating near chambers. Barnet provides free service in a barrister’s first year. It also provides a “spares” service, to deal with catastrophes. 2. You can acquire technical education as a user of software from some software suppliers, such as SILQ, and from various Apple stores where seminars are held continuously on the different software platforms you may be using, to give you basic or advanced skills in that or those programs. You can buy 1 hour a week for a year to be trained on one or all Apple products for $129. It is extremely rare you can’t learn something new and useful from a session. 3. Most software packages generate user groups on the web, where users exchange information and tips. Google (Bing or Blekko) the description of an issue and you will usually find an answer on a user group or look for the group and search it or post a question. SILQ’s forum is moderated and is hosted on its web site: http://www.silq.com.au/forum/. 4. Being familiar with how your equipment works may allow you to do a work around a particular failure of a device or its peripherals. For example, if you cannot print off a device, sending the file as an email to a machine which can print, or send as a fax, may overcome the problem. Copy it to a thumbdrive, or to your phone, change machines reload the data and print. Many devices have multiple I/O possibilities and just need some lateral thinking to solve a problem. 14. Disposal: 1. Ultimately, every dog has had its day and there comes the time to upgrade and dispose of the old. You should practice friendly disposal from an ecological point of view and a data confidentiality point of view. 2. It may be very tempting to sell a laptop on eBay having “wiped” the hard drive. NOTHING is wiped. All is recoverable, possibly even if the most vigorous data shredders have been run over the disk. You may be disposing of Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   50 your and your client’s most intimate secrets into a completely uncontrolled environment. The same goes for mobile phones, iPads and other “smart” devices and most modern photocopiers. All have significant memory in them which is very difficult to erase or delete or deal with without degaussing or physical destruction. It is designed to be robust and is. 3. If you are considering disposal of a business related device, get advice how to dispose of old technology. It, or parts of it, may require physical destruction for your position to be safe as to confidentiality and data security. 4. Barnet runs a recycling and disposal service, which includes removing and redelivering to you the hard-drives from defunct machines. Equipment that is in fair condition will be reinstated and sent to worthy causes. The rest has to go to dedicated disposal centres where environmentally responsible destruction can occur, including recovery of scarce metals and the plastics. 15. Optimising data creation and use across a practice: 1. As I noted above, diary information can be routed through cloud computing or information exchanges to be used many times for useful purposes without retyping or re-entry of data. This is a very efficient use of data and time. Various products enhance that capability. The Apple email product, for example, parses an email for date and address data and recognises it. An email asking about “lunch tomorrow” is recognised as meaning an entry can be made in your diary for “tomorrow” and at 1pm. Hovering the cursor over the entry in the email the user is offered an automatic entry to record that information together with whatever the system can detect in the email as to locale and persons. Usually it is correct. A telephone number or address in an email or document that is not recognised by the system as already being recorded will be offered to the user as an entry into your contacts book along with a guess at the name of the person concerned. Accept or edit and enter. Little or no typing is necessary to maintain necessary information. Zimbra permits similar exchanges between software packages and then shares over devices. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   51 2. This is very clever stuff and it illustrates how time and effort can be removed from your professional life by using intelligent systems. 16. Cloud computing: 1. Cloud computing mediates your devices that can talk to the internet, so that they talk to each other, to share information through “the cloud” on a “push” basis (new information one one device being actively sent to another device which is set up to receive it) or on a pull basis (the device calling for and receiving data) and vice versa. In the background of cloud applications is or are giant servers run by the cloud service provider that collect, manage and distribute information from and to your devices almost instantly, so that altering one of your devices alters all in apparently, and effectively, real time. 2. BTW, a cloud is the old system flow chart sign for the internet. 3. Apple (iCloud), Microsoft (Azure, Microsoft Live and Office 2010), Zimbra.com, Yahoo and Google and others, all provide variants on cloud computing, some for nothing, some for a fee. Barnet has announced an implementation of Zimbra and Exchange Enterprise 2010 on its servers. 4. I use iCloud, the Apple product, to connect an iPhone, an iMac in chambers, a PC W7 running Microsoft Office and SILQ, an iMac at home and an iPad and my wife’s devices. It is now a free service. You can pay for additional cloud server storage space. My clerk can access the cloud version of my calendar(s) on his machine on the internet because the cloud version is web based and so platform independent. That diary combines the information from all calendar sources (work or domestic) as each change is made in any place, which changes flow to the related devices, and can itself be edited on another device which edits will in turn drive the records on all its related computers. Contacts, email and so forth are synced through the cloud so all machines reflect the same information in real time wherever the information came from amongst the devices. As my Outlook or iCal calendar, or iPhone or iPad calendar, is updated, so will all other calendars on the system update. SILQ can access the Outlook calendar on its computer, which has been synced from Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   52 the cloud from the iCal diaries on any computer or device in the system to load that information into its files. 5. The cloud services (such as iCloud) can provide a “virtual disk” for file storage, so files saved to your virtual disk can be made accessible anywhere where web access can be exercised. Large attachments to emails are not transmitted as part of the email (and be blocked by recipient servers, as they usually would be) but are made available to the recipient on the web by a hyperlink in the email, pointing to where the file can be examined in situ, or downloaded from the virtual disk as a web browser task. Dropbox provides a free version of this function. 6. If your solicitor wants to send you documents in soft copy form and you have a public directory in your cloud server, give them the URL (address) of your cloud disk so they can upload to that disk and then you can download the files to your computer from it or leave them on the cloud to access them from anywhere you happen to be. It is quick and painless. 7. As a lifestyle matter you can put movies and photos from your collection into galleries in or on the cloud with access permissions for your friends and relatives or make them available as an RSS feed to them to their browser or email program so as you update, they can see the new material. 8. iTunes allows you to associate up to 10 mobile devices or computers with your iTunes ID. Once associated, any purchase of music, books or apps made on any machine is pushed to the other associated devices without syncing. The facility is turned on (or off) in the “Store” section of the Settings on a mobile and Preferences/Store on a computer. All bought music on any of your machines is now available on all others. This is a separate function to Match which makes all music on any of the systems available to all others. Photos are pushed from the machine taking or receiving them to all others (Photo Stream). Likewise, as you create documents on an iPad or iPhone using Pages or Numbers the document is pushed to the cloud and to all your other devices and can be accessed on any machine anywhere as well as on your local machines instantaneously. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   53 9. The current battleground in computing and competition of the giants of computing is “the cloud”. Watch this space. 10. A different feature, in that it is not internet based, introduced recently is Airdrop which is found in Apple Lion OS which allows file transfers between wifi enabled Apple computers (desktop and laptop) by simple drag and drop. The machines do not need to be on the same, or indeed any, separate wireless network. They connect independently by their own wifi function and allow instant file transfers. This function removes the need for intermediating hardware such as memory sticks, or full scale network access. A related function is screen sharing between Apples which can be local or remote, across the internet. There is a cunning app called “Bump” which does the same thing with photos between mobile devices once bumped. 17. Remote Computing and local networking: Remote 1. You may want to be able to work from home on your chambers computer, or vice versa. If the only issue is access to files, you ought to consider an aspect of cloud computing which is the creation of a virtual disk on the cloud server which synchronises with your computers so that your files are accessible wherever you happen to be. Use iCloud, Skydrive, Google Drive or Dropbox for a free cloud drive. Alternatively, a service such as Barnet’s server based file storage and access system or its CloudDisk (see clouddisk.net.au) give much the same outcome. 2. If you are feeling cheap, huge capacity thumb drive (USB) storage units are available at modest cost (e.g.135 gig for $75). All of your work related files could be comfortably carried on one. Apart from the risk of losing them or dropping them in salt water (not recommended) they are fine. Thumb drives with built in encryption are available for some level of security. Ironkey military strength thumb drives (as seen on Thinkgeek.com) appear to be the ultimate. An alternative is to use your iPod or iPhone or any MP3 player with storage capacity, or a phone with a large capacity micro SD card, to carry large files in your pocket to work on at home. If you set up such devices to Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   54 have a disk capability you can have access to very large storage indeed. Download iPhone Explorer for PC or Mac to have drag and drop access to your iPhone or iPad’s unused storage. Solid state hard drives (SSD) can be used as external drives and carried around safely, because, like a thumb drive, they have no moving parts. 3. Barnet and most other ISP provide users with email as webmail, so your email can be accessed anywhere. 4. If access to the machine is a permanent issue VPN can help. A secure Virtual Private Network can be set up and your computers configured so that the peripherals at home (keyboard and mouse) drive the computer in chambers in a window on the host/home computer through an encrypted “pipe” in the internet. You see the remote computer screen as a window on the local machine. A Mac using “back to my Mac” will find your other Macs and offer screen and keyboard access to them. You can scare children at home by taking over their computer unexpectedly. 5. To do remote computing effectively you need high speed internet access at home. You may already have either Telstra (Foxtel) or Optus cable nearby or in fact connected to your house for an existing or old cable TV service. Both carriers provide high speed data services on their cable, at a cost, as an ISP. If you don’t want to, or cannot, use those carriers, explore the availability of ADSL2 to your home as a side band service to your telephone or “naked” on your home telephone line if it is not in use for telephony. Proximity to a telephone exchange and the quality of the copper lines critically affects the speed of ADSL. For ADSL you also will need small and cheap filters on telephone devices (including back to base alarms) in the house to keep a clean signal. All that said, ADSL is cheap and fast and at lower cost for available download than access to the Telstra cable network. Check with the suppliers as to where the node nearest to your house is. The closer, the faster. Usually you have unlimited upload capacity and pay for only download on ADSL plans. On Bigpond your uploads use up your “download” allocation. If you are doing remote computing two way traffic is increased above ordinary Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   55 domestic use of the internet so you will chew up allowed usage if both up and down are recorded against your allocation. Roll on the NBN! Local networking: 6. You may want to connect various devices in chambers to each other, such as a couple of computers, a printer and your phone, so they can exchange information or share access to the internet connection. 7. Bluetooth running on two or more machines may allow limited exchanges of data between devices in close proximity. It probably will not create a security issue if you pair equipment carefully. However mistakes can be made and a complete stranger be sent a file by bluetooth, usually when you are on a bus. Very embarrassing. Casual exchanges of files from a laptop to a desktop or a phone to a computer or another phone can be done using bluetooth. 8. A one to one wifi connection can be made between computers that have the capacity to do so without them being on a network. 9. A private physical network can be created in your room using cheap equipment that creates a wired and wireless network available to your machines. Install a router. 10. Install the router on the internet cable to your room and you can cable the other devices to it. Usually routers come with wifi capability. This may be necessary to allow your phone to conveniently operate in chambers, bypassing the 3G network, and be able to communicate with your computers. Your laptop may prefer wifi. However, do not activate the wireless without engaging a security level of at least WEP strength with a password that is not ABC123 (I use that one). If your system allows it two word passwords are very secure from a hack (unless they are your name) because finding two unrelated words by random addressing of the system is improbable in a time frame which is effective. 11. If you create an open wireless network anyone can freeload on your internet connection, and may be able to get into those computers connected to that network. If you are unsure what is possible, speak to a consultant. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   56 12. If a couple of computers are used in your practice, a networked printer in your room can make print sharing easy. That is, the printer attaches to the network, not a computer and is available to all computers to print work. Likewise, a backup disk can be networked. 18. Data security: Virus. 1. It is as impolite to share a digital virus as any other type. I would argue that you have a positive obligation to yourself and other users of electronic information to take reasonable steps to keep data movements clean of transmissible virus. That certainly includes prudent use of firewalls and antivirus programs and avoiding dealing with possibly infected material, such as emails offering you money for no apparent reason other than the death of a wealthy uncle. All other offers are genuine, as far as I know, particularly those about lost money in Nigeria. I know I am in line for a fortune. 2. Check how robust your ISP’s virus scanning of email is. There may be none, or it may be very good. 3. Run your own antivirus software. Windows users can download a free antivirus from Microsoft called Security Essentials. Beware a similar named web site; it downloads a virus. Go to the download via the Microsoft site. Being a Microsoft product it fits the operating system environment with the least degradation of speed. Some products will nearly stop the machine when performing on the fly or routine anti-virus checks. While Apple is not usually affected by virus, ClamXAV is a free download which scans for trojans and other nasties on Apple machines. 4. Maintain your operating system as current, especially for security patches. You can set your computer to download authorised patches and install them automatically. 5. While you may exercise high caution, a disclaimer on that subject on your emails is a good idea. Disclaim any warranty as to the email or files sent being virus free. Look around, there are lots of precedents. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   57 6. In addition to acquired antivirus software there are remote scanning sites associated with the major antivirus software manufacturers that can be useful for emergency treatment of a possible infection caused by a moment of inattention. Housecall is an example. Other websites purporting to be antivirus sites are probably dealing in trojans at best or wholesale data theft at worst. Do not use them. Do not respond to unsolicited invitations for security checks. 7. Use passwords and firewalls on your machines. They will not be 100% effective against a determined attack, but they certainly slow things down for a casual or less competent intruder. Change or rotate passwords regularly. Insecure internet connections: 8. Airports, restaurants and other semi-public places may advertise and have internet hotspot connections, which appear to pop up when you open your browser or simply have wifi active on a device and invite some response from you. 9. Take great care. Any person with a strong enough transmitter can put a bogus screen in front of you, which appears related to the site you are in, and ask for credit card details or other sensitive information, or simply wait to see what you will do by way of sending files or seeking to open sites, and log your activity for later use. 10. If you are travelling it may be safer to use a 3G dongle as an add on to your computer, a MiFi type product or use your 3G phone as the modem rather than use public hot spots. When using your phone as a modem, remember that bluetooth is highly insecure, if that is what is being used to create a modem connection. If travelling overseas beware of VERY high data charges on 3G networks when roaming. Buying a local chip for your phone or a data chip may be a good idea. 11. Before exposing your systems and data to strangers consider what you can sensibly do to protect it. Assume the worst. That is probably the best result likely to emerge. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   58 12. I have dealt with using a standalone “clean” computer for internet banking above. 19. Backup and Offsite data storage and retrieval: 1. Backup. Just do it. Backup the backup. 2. Set up automatic backup. 3. Backup to a place or a form that is not subject to the same risks as the computer being backed up. 4. If an Apple user, put a terabyte of storage onto the machine and set “Time Machine” going so that you can step back by minutes and then by day to a state of your machine before a deletion or a crash or a new installation and restore the deleted file or the whole machine. IN ADDITION backup to offsite storage. 5. Offsite storage is sufficiently cheap to make backing up the back up to such a site economical. Barnet have a free 500 megabyte offsite for users. You can buy additional space and/or have a heavily encrypted private disk that only you can access for backup or storage. 6. Offsite backup deals with not only injury to a computer but also loss of it by theft or fire or electronic insult, which event may also result in the loss of the backup device itself if it is in the same place. 7. If you are doing local backup, or off site, consider a family tree backup. The first backup is to the grandfather file; the second is to the father file; the third is to the son file (or whatever gender you prefer). Then, the fourth is to the grandfather file or folder, and so forth. According to your frequency of backup you have at least two backups likely to be “safe”. A variation uses separate media for each generation so that no two generations are on the same media. 8. If your loss is of email information (which may include significant numbers of critical attached files) check with your email provider how its servers are archived. For example, Barnet can step back its servers by fractions of a Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   59 second for some months. Accidental deletion or massive loss on your local machine can probably be substantially rectified by recovery from the server. 20. How to manage your carbon footprint and guilt: 1. Turn off the lights; 2. Use power saving modes in devices; 3. Turn off a computer that is not in use or use hibernate mode; 4. Turn off monitors when not in use; 5. Turn off power boards with transformers attached to them which are used to drive peripheral devices. They are consuming power even when the device is off. You can buy a remote control switch that will turn off a whole power board of transformers in one go as you leave chambers. You can buy a wifi enabled plug (Belkin WeMo) you can turn off from anywhere in the world. 6. Or else, subscribe to the distributed computing BOINC projects (such as SETI or Climateprediction.net ) so the idle time on your (on) computer can add to the sum total of human knowledge by crunching data for scientific research along with millions of other volunteered computers. This process of distributed computing creates the largest virtual machine(s) known to man. Turn off peripherals. They are not needed, except for the internet connection. 7. Use rechargeable batteries for mice, keyboards and the like. Apple now sell a “drip” recharger which uses very little power during a periodic overnight recharge. 8. Dispose of equipment through the dedicated technology scrappers, or recycle through aid programs if you have functioning equipment that can be safely disposed of by, for example, swapping a hard drive out. 9. Use double sided printing. Use two pages per page double sided printing for drafts if you need to print at all. Use “brochure” format printing for affidavits or authorities. They are perfectly legible. 10. Use recycled paper whenever possible. Use scrap for note taking in court. Just reverse pages and hole punch into a folder. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on   60 11. In short, give some thought to how to live with and use all this very powerful technology responsibly. There are even technologies to help you do that. Live long and prosper. Liability  limited  by  a  scheme  approved  under  Professional  Standards  legisla9on