In March, Sensei’s Sharon Nelson was featured in High Performance Counsel’s #TopOfMind. High Performance Counsel (HPC) is a place to find authentic leadership on a range of issues, including that of leadership itself in a changing industry, a digital workplace and a global economy.

Excerpt (Sharon’s Quote): If 2017 was the year of artificial intelligence proving its practical worth to law firms (and it did!), 2018 is looking to be the year of blockchain. Most lawyers still look like the proverbial deer in headlights when they hear the word “blockchain” but it is here in a big way already, particularly with respect to cryptocurrencies. Currently, those who embrace innovation in the law are seeing the promise of blockchain as a distributed ledger of transactions that will impact smart contracts, real estate transactions, estate planning, financial transactions and much more.

Perkins Coie now states it has over 40 attorneys focused on blockchain technology and digital currency. What does that tell you?

See more here.

Sensei’s John Simek was recently featured in “ ABA TECHSHOW 2018: From First to Last Ripple” by Sean Doherty with Attorney at Work.

Excerpt: The final ripple at TECHSHOW featured a crescendo of tips and tools from the “60 in 60” session, an annual affair highlighting the latest in apps, new technology and work hacks. This year, conference co-chair Debbie Foster, a partner at Affinity Consulting Group; Lincoln Mead, director of Information Services at Utah State Bar; Tom Mighell, vice president of Delivery Services at Contoural and also TECHSHOW co-chair; and John Simek, vice president of Sensei Enterprises, orchestrated the session and shouted out their favorite findings, which included:

Fastcase AI Sandbox, a private digital environment to analyze law firm data using artificial intelligence and data analytics tools, Fastcase resources, and other external libraries to derive new insights to drive decision-making.

DuckDuckGo, a search engine (and Chrome extension) that doesn’t track you, follow you with ads, or store your personal information. From the DuckDuckGo blog, check out “How to Live Without Google.”

ROSS Intelligence EVA. Upload a brief (drag-and-drop) to ROSS Intelligence, and EVA returns, for free, a hyperlinked list of cases cited in the brief that received negative treatments.

Other notable tips included AI tools like Voicera and Jog.ai that attend your phone conferences and transcribe phone calls; Anchor lets you record a podcast on your mobile device, with remote guests; and Tresorit, a cloud-based storage provider that puts encryption keys in the hands of customers.

And finally, until next TECHSHOW, cover your Apple watch to mute a call. Priceless, from Debbie Foster.

Read the entire article here.

Excerpt: A dead finger, that is.  Believe it or not, cops are now opening iPhones with dead people’s fingerprints.

A couple of days ago Sharon Nelson (on her excellent Ride the Lightning blog) covered a Forbes article that discussed a suspect who mowed down a group of people in his car, went on a stabbing spree with a butcher’s knife and was shot dead by a police officer on the grounds of Ohio State University.  To try to access the phone to learn more about the assailant’s motives, an FBI agent applied the bloodied body’s index finger to the iPhone found on the deceased suspect.

In that case, it didn’t work as the iPhone had gone to sleep and when reopened required a passcode.  But, this technique is working in many other cases.  Separate sources close to local and federal police investigations in New York and Ohio, who asked to remain anonymous as they weren’t authorized to speak on record, said it was now relatively common for fingerprints of the deceased to be depressed on the scanner of Apple iPhones, devices which have been wrapped up in increasingly powerful encryption over recent years. For instance, the technique has been used in overdose cases, said one source. In such instances, the victim’s phone could contain information leading directly to the dealer.

See the entire post here.