Articles

Excerpt: Back in 2015, we wrote an article entitled “How Will Watson’s Children Impact the Future of Law Practice?” What a lot has happened in two years! The children of Watson and other Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies continue to spawn at an ever-accelerating rate.

Only recently has genuine real-world usage of AI in law firms begun to flourish. Amid the initial hype, about 5% of what was ballyhooed as AI, in our judgment, was not. Even today, there is an astonishing amount of hype – everyone wants to say they’ve boarded the AI train. As we write, an article from InfoWorld was just published entitled, “Artificially Inflated: It’s Time to call BS on AI.” While great ‘clickbait’, we think the title overstates the case. The peaks and troughs of AI are well documented, and as we are now at a peak, the hype factor gets greater, while the reality (often very good) is lost in the noise of the hype.

As large firms, which certainly need to be at the forefront of innovation, begin to invest considerable sums in AI, the landscape is changing. Large law firms simply cannot afford – for monetary and brand reasons – to be left behind. Clients will begin to see the efficiencies of AI and its extraordinary possibilities wherever AI may be found. AI will be a honeypot to clients seeking those efficiencies and possibilities.

A brief note: An article of this length cannot adequately address all the players in the legal AI market and what they can do. We call out a few names simply because we’ve run into these companies through colleagues or our reading.

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Excerpt: The FBI says that ransomware nets cybercriminals $1 billion a year. No wonder so many people want a piece of that pie.

Computerworld recently reported that hackers spreading ransomware are getting greedier. In 2016, the average ransom demand to provide the decryption key for encrypted data rose to $1,077, up from $294 the year before, according to a report from security firm Symantec. Symantec also reported a 36% increase in ransomware in 2016 from the prior year. We are aware of small law firms in Virginia that paid $1200 and $3000 to get their data back – the damage being furthered by the length of time it took to restore the data.

Helping to fuel the ransomware boom is the digital black market, where hackers can sell ransomware kits for as little as $10 and as much as $1,800, making it easier for other cybercriminals who can't code to get a piece of the action.

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Excerpt: Let’s dive right in. If lawyers understand their technology . . .

Lawyers can save money

Serious money can be saved if you don’t listen to a vendor peddling snake oil at a conference or an IT consultant whose prime concern may not be your wallet/purse. When you learn about technology, you at least know the right questions to ask. You may not know enough to make the decisions and you may still need guidance, but you may know enough to be a “BS filter.” And once you smell that bull, you’ll know you’re talking to the wrong person. That is very useful in and of itself.

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Excerpt: Remember the good old days of ransomware? You would get an e-mail saying that you owed the IRS money and could pay it via a helpfully included link. Lots of people did this because it was only a couple of hundred dollars. And who wants to duke it out with the IRS? The same dull-witted people fell for the e-mail claiming that someone at your home had downloaded music or movies illegally (much more likely true than the first scenario) and you needed to pay a fine so no one would come after you (or your spouse/child) for a much greater sum. Again, the price was relatively small and many people paid.

The likelihood that a lawyer would fall for these primitive versions of ransomware was small. Fast forward to the days of Cryptolocker which began in 2013. This ransomware Trojan attacked computers running Microsoft Windows, propagating itself by getting a user to click on an attachment or a link contained in an e-mail. Click on the link or attachment and “Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner” the malware invisibly downloaded and began to encrypt your files. The malware encrypted files stored locally on the computer system as well as on any mapped network drives, such as those files on your server, connected flash drives and other external USB drives.

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Excerpt: Over the last 20 years, I have reviewed hundreds of resumes. Most of them hit the wastebasket very rapidly. There are a lot of reasons why.

1. The author can’t write proper English, punctuate properly or obey the rules of grammar. Even little things matter – attention to detail is important in the business world and a resume should be proofed carefully before it is sent out. Don’t just proof it yourself – have someone you know to be a good editor review it as well.

2. The resume sounds like puffery (“I am wonderful” is not the right tone).

3. The objective has no hint of personality or originality. Some are like eating a spoonful of the Sahara. Add some color (without going bonkers) and make yourself stand out. I always like language that indicates that applicants are self-starters who enjoy both working individually and in a team. You’ll certainly have to do both. The truth can be refreshing. I remember someone whose objective indicated his passion for digital forensics while noting that, thus, far, his experience was limited. His passion and candid recognition of his minimal experience struck me, both in his resume and in his cover note. He still works for me.

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Excerpt: When we were asked to do this article for senior lawyers, our first question was: “Are they still practicing law?” The answer was that the majority of readers were likely retired but certainly not all. We were therefore asked to do a general cybersecurity piece where the advice would apply to those still practicing as well as to those who have retired but want to ensure their personal security.

We thought the best way to do this might be through short, plain English tips. Technology makes the “plain English” goal a bit challenging, but . . . away we go!

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Excerpt: More and more companies and law firms are moving to the cloud and not in a small way. BetterCloud reports that by mid-2017, large enterprises are expected to have adopted 52 Software as a Service (SaaS) applications on average. In last year’s survey, 14% of G Suite organizations and 5% of Office 365 organizations ran 100% of their IT in the cloud. It shouldn’t be a surprise that those percentages are expected to increase. By 2020, it is expected that 50% of G Suite organizations and 34% of Office 365 organizations will be running 100% of their IT in the cloud. The message is that the cloud is here to stay, but what does that mean for law firms? Should lawyers move to Google’s G Suite or Microsoft’s Office 365? This is a question we are asked more and more by audience members when we lecture – it has begun to recur so often that it finally occurred to us that it might be a useful article.

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Excerpt: One of a law firm’s most critical assets is its website – and yet protecting it is a priority that is often overlooked. Reading this and you’re not in a law firm? The same rules apply, so keep reading!

A lot of lawyers simply don’t think about protecting their websites. They ask why anyone would target them, especially if they are solos or small law firms. The sad truth is that, today, the majority of attacks against websites are automated. The bad guys throw out a net looking for websites with vulnerabilities and pull in whatever insecure fish they can find – along with any data held on your website.

If you are targeted, the risk is much greater. In all likelihood, you are now facing a more sophisticated attacker with a clear agenda who is likely to have more sophisticated tools.

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Excerpt: Some days are just more interesting than others. You could almost hear the mournful wailing of spooks (the CIA kind) as WikiLeaks released thousands of documents describing sophisticated software tools used by the Central Intelligence Agency to break into smartphones, computers and even Internet-connected televisions.

The New York Times reported that the documents, at first review, appeared to be authentic. The initial release, which WikiLeaks said was only the first part of the document collection, included 7,818 web pages with 943 attachments. The entire archive of CIA material consists of several hundred million lines of computer code according to WikiLeaks.

Initial reports overstated what the technology could do, suggesting that the encryption for popular apps such as Signal and WhatsApp had been compromised. As the details become more clear, it was noted that the apps themselves were NOT compromised. Rather, if the phone was compromised, by malware for example, encryption doesn’t do you any good since the app has to decrypt the message for you to read it, thus allowing a successful attacker to read it. The real news was that both Androids and iPhones have allegedly been compromised by the CIA and allied intelligence services, meaning that apps such as Signal and WhatsApp cannot protect your privacy.

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Excerpt: Can lawyers actually manage their technology (instead of it managing them)? Can firms create and enforce policies that provide a secure environment for their users and protect client data, rather than acting like computer usage and security if the “Wild Wild West,” where anything goes?

Buying, implementing, replacing, and securing technology are huge challenges – especially when you have billable work to do. And yet, technology (and the policies that govern its usage) is the most important part of a law firm today – at least after the carbon-based units!

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