New proposed N.D. Illinois local patent rules: comments by May 22

The Northern District of Illinois is proposing new local patent rules.  I wrote a short summary of the rules, which includes the diagram above.  The Northern District's web site has a posting providing the relevant details and a link to the rules.

How do you actually do e-discovery?

You'll find no shortage of sites highlighting the latest case in which an attorney or client was sanctioned for failing to handle e-discovery correctly. But how do you actually go through the steps of producing and dealing with electronic information in discovery? I recently presented a step-by-step approach with electronic discovery expert and consultant Mandi Ross at the ISBA Solo and Small Firm conference. Here is a link to view the PowerPoint slides from that presentation. It includes a summary of some of the key cases in the evolution of e-discovery law and a step-by-step process for how to think about e-discovery. Of course, a big disclaimer: this is not legal advice, just an interesting presentation.

Get Free Internet at Federal Court

The Northern District of Illinois announced that it is offering free wireless Internet access at the courthouse, available in the lobby and on the second floor cafeteria. For those who don't know, it is at 219 S. Dearborn Street in Chicago. I have visited the cafeteria, which is fairly impressive and a nice place to camp out. To use it, turn on your wireless card (some are always on), for Windows computers right-click on the little wireless access icon in the system tray (the lower right-hand side of the screen), select View available wireless networks, and select the WIZ network. It is unsecured and requires no password, so be aware it's like any other public wireless access, with all attendant risks.

Also, note this is the Federal Court building, so to use you must either sit in the cavernous lobby or go through security. And I suspect there are some security measures behind the scenes to monitor use.

Great how-to program for lawyers

The Illinois Bar's 2007 Solo & Small Firm Conference had tremendously useful tips for lawyers in firms of all sizes. Along with Nerino Petro, I co-chaired the technology track and spoke at several events. Here are some preliminary highlights. I will be filling in details shortly.

E-discovery:

• Top cases on ediscovery summarized--how we got here
• The practical problem: how do you meet your burdens without bankrupting both parties?
• Practical tips for using the new rules to greatly reduce the discovery burden

Virtual IT department:

• Using several remote access tools to manage your computer remotely (Dave Yavitz)
• Practical tips from an IT guy who gets the business side on how to simplify (John Ahlberg)
• Ethical concerns of using remote services--better read that privacy agreement (Judge Bob Moss)

Vista v. Mac v. Linux shootout:

• Vista: more stable than XP, a little better design, 3d-party software not ready yet
• Mac: great, slick, but expensive. Some software won't run on it, but very little
• Linux: example, Zonbu PC. Cheap, does what you need, no IT hassles

PowerPoint

• How-to tips (text callouts, diagramming, timelines, etc.) to be posted soon (some already below)
  
• Detox your slides--no clutter, abandon bullets where possible, use plain backgrounds.
• Use the evidence in PowerPoint, not characterizations
• Increase throughput by using summaries, like timelines
• Think strategically. Ask what the goal is and let that drive the presentation

60 tips/gizmos and gadgets -- too many: will add my favorites soon

Several other presentations I saw, all good. Will be adding them too.

I'll continue to revise this post somewhat over the next few days.

30 Dirty Tricks for Acrobat

This post by Rick Borstein has a link to a PDF with 30 Adobe Acrobat tricks for lawyers. There are a number of useful ones I like. Among them are

• using the pencil tool as a highlighter,
• reducing PDF file sizes with the optimizer (good for efiling),
• capturing parts of web pages to convert to PDF (good for evidence),
  
• searching across directories,
  
• indexing a directory for faster searches,
• embedding a search index in a PDF document,
• more efficiently converting TIFFs (discovery image docs) to PDFs,
  
• and converting DWGs (AutoCAD docs you get from engineers) to PDF

Tip: Send Big Files

Email systems block big files from being transferred. To send one anyway, use a service like yousendit, sendthisfile, or dropsend. Yousendit is run by a former Adobe Systems Inc. executive and funded by well-known venture capital firms, according to the WSJ, so it may be more trustworthy than others.

Free 366-page TechnoLawyer book

TechnoLawyer posted a book with some excellent articles from the various legal blogs ("blawgs" as the natives refer to them before hacking your computer to steal your favorites list). Just download it. The link is here. It is nicely formatted and easy to read on a computer screen.