from my inbox

Random mail in my inbox this morning: a certain unnamed CLE sponsor is presenting an entire day on "The Mold Challenge in Washington."

This is a subject about which I have discovered I am terribly out-of-date. I had no idea. There is clearly no time to lose.

I can earn six hours of CLE credit, and, should I want it, credit for something called "industrial hygiene," which sounds suspiciously like scrubbing factory toilets, but isn't. Snacks (blue cheese, perhaps?) and refreshments will be provided during discussion of the science behind the mold problem, the different causes and types of mold and their health ramifications, the types of claims that can be brought as a result of mold infestations, the present state of mold litigation, and devising an "action plan" for handling a water intrusion and mold infestation scenario.

But where's the controversy? After all, "some health effects from mold exposure remain controversial because of the potentially significant consequences; yet crucial and legitimate scientific questions remain unanswered. Our incomplete knowledge of noninfectious health effects related to mold exposure is due to limited research support and lack of documented health effects in the context of well-defined exposures. "

Yeah. Let's debate mold, or at least vote for more funding for it.

commas, tabs, and slashes

And if that title has you thinking "Lawyers, Guns, and Money" you have identified its scansion.

I have a document. It is a Word document. It is 150 pages long, single-spaced. (You know where this is leading can't be good). This document is an index of sorts, and has been around for some years. It has a number of different fonts and colors in it.

Now, to my way of thinking, this document shouldn't be a Word document. This document should be, oh, an Access database.

I saved this document as a text document to strip out what I can of the formatting that ails it. Now, I want to ship the contents of the document to Access (which is usually not the direction that data goes with Access and Word, I admit). Even I know that the document should be comma-delimited or tab-delimited so that the data will pigeonhole itself in the db that I just created to receive it.

Now, the original author of this document, PBUH, in his or her exuberance, liberally sprinkled this document with a number of commas AND tabs. AND slashes where there should be a delimiting mark, comma or tab, pick one. AND slashes as well where there must not be a delimiting mark of any sort, so I can't do a global search-and-replace on the slashes.

I speculate that this is because no one thought enough about the function of the original document when it was created to understand that the information in the document was a database, and not simple text.

And that is why I am still working at 11 p.m. thinking evil thoughts about the original author of this document.

the land that time forgot

When I first hung out my shingle in 1998, there was FindLaw. Well, there still is Findlaw/Thomson/West, but in 1998, FindLaw offered free websites for lawyers. They didn't police it very well, so various advocacy organizations and paralegal services could be found in the index to sites. The templates were quite limited, but there were certain ways that you could jimmie them around to get a bunch of content into the site, especially if you know a little HTML. I wasn't really interested in graphics anyway, just text. Since law is certainly an area where content is king, I built a quite useful and respectable site for a sole practitioner.

In 1999, or so I judge by the dated graphics and the copyright notice on the control panel page, Findlaw stopped handing out little corners of the Internet free for the asking, probably at the time of one of their mergers with--or into--bigger and bigger fish. I remember cynically thinking, when they announced that they weren't handing out new sites, and were offering paid site design, that my little free site was not long for this (virtual) world.

By April 2003, I was in the process of designing a more ambitious site, having outgrown FindLaw in the same way I outgrew my first database program, when I had the opportunity to join a larger firm, which meant eliminating the content of my old site. Although I have screen shots of every change in content that I made in that site over the years (a New York state ethics requirement), it pained me to take it down. I didn't want to eliminate it completely because, well, because.

Now here's the funny thing. It is now 2005 and my little ghost of a site is still here. And on a page that contains a "copyright 2005" statement, FindLaw says: "Currently, FindLaw is not offering free Firms Online web sites. However, we will continue to host existing web sites." And so my dusty little site still bravely offers my updated resume to the the world, where prospective clients stumble upon it when they google me (in fact . . . I apparently have some current clients who google me, or read my blog, from time to time. Guys. I know who you are). Who would have thought that electrons could be so persistent?

here's a pretty fishy

Another pic courtesy of my law partner.

Her comment? "Coolness. Now get back to work." Is this the time to mention that this same partner amuses herself by deleting and restoring the software on her Blackberry in her spare moments? I thought not.

how very . . . circumspect

After discovering that my law school alma mater did not acknowledge alumni/alumnae blogs, I took a look at what the students there are doing. As usual I found my hope for the profession in its future practitioners. As it turns out, one blogger maintains a blogroll of law students at the school, which, as an alum, I sort of invited myself into last week. I note that I was carefully described as "a reasonable glimpse of the future awaiting some of us." Now if that isn't a delightfully ambiguous comment, I don't know what is. Hard to say whether I'm Dorian Gray or the picture in the attic.

An aside. What is it about law and the Internet that brings out delusions of Satanic grandeur in us all? The above-referenced blog is called "Three Years of Hell to Become the Devil," I style myself the Dark Goddess of Replevin, and one of my friends posts to a mailing list as the Daemon Empress.

Another aside to clueless educational institutions: my undergraduate college has had an index of alumnae websites up since around 1998 or so, although it's not accessible to the public. On the downside, on the other hand, their current format has the most putrid color combination I have stumbled across in several years.

upekkha

I am the owner of my karma. My happiness and unhappiness are dependent on my actions, and not on outside forces.

more alarming comments about databases

From my TM listserv this a.m.:

"Personally, I recommend Enterprise for all but the smallest firms because running on SQL makes it so rock solid. Because Enterprise does more of the computing on the server than Pro, you need to have a decently spec'd file server."

So. What are the "smallest firms"? And do I have a "decently spec'd file server"? I have no idea. Appalling.

database frustrations

In which is contained my primitive technical musings, demonstrating in real time why I am doomed in my aspiration to be a truly sophisticated user of technology.

As I post from time to time, I've been using practice management software for some time now. The brand I use comes in three basic flavors that I privately think of as Baby Bear, Mama Bear, and Papa Bear, or in more technical terms, Professional, Enterprise, and World Server. World Server in turn is broken down into Levels 1 through 4, with Level 4 providing " 1-2,000 concurrent users, may be Distributed or Non-Distributed, Fault-Tolerant Cluster [capital letters in original]." I don't even know what that very last bit means, but it sounds impressive, like this one goes to 11 or something. Aside from costing $19,500 for Level 4. Eek. Because I don't have much use for remote access right now, which seems to be the biggest appeal of World Server, I don't think I need that powerful (and expensive) a version right now. At this point I am trundling along using the Baby Bear entry level software.

One of the consultants in the moderated forum about the software that the manufacturer sponsors recently posted the following explanation of the difference between the Professional and Enterprise versions:

"Time Matters Professional uses a database engine called Topspeed. This is what I refer to as a 'Desktop Database Solution' since all of the processing actually occurs on your desktop and NOT on the server. In other words, to your server, the Time Matters database is just like any other file on its system. Your application (Time Matters) requests data from the database and the server sends you ALL of the data and then sorts it on your desktop.

The Enterprise version of Time Matters runs with a SQL database. What this means is that there is an "engine" running on your server which performs all of the sorting of the data on the server and then sends your application (Time Matters) only enough information to fill the screen. (Okay, techies, this is not entirely accurate but the analogy works.)

So, Enterprise is MUCH more efficient, not because of Time Matters but, instead, because of the realities of database applications."

Now. I have little knowledge of the finer points of database engine selection, management, and maintenance. Since I am in effect my own IT person, my lack of knowledge troubles me when I read stuff like this from someone who seems to know more than I do.

A quick surf around the Net led me to The TopSpeed Legend, which has an ominous sound to me somehow. It was also alarming that I couldn't find much else on TopSpeed anywhere. I hadn't heard of it before I started doing this research (not, admittedly, that this means all that much).

If I am reading between the lines properly here, if the "TopSpeed line of compilers * * * proved superior to all other compiler technology" in 1989, isn't that a heckuva long time ago for one's technology to have been superior? Why is it that, when I read reviews of different practice management software, no one ever talks about the reliability of the database engines on which they are built? Is this something I should be worried about?

Well, if I'm worrying, I suppose I could worry about the fact that my WinXP machine is based on a DOS foundation, and it's been so long since I've had XCOPY I forget who gets tied up.

But I digress. If I switch to the Enterprise version of my software, I get a SQL database. But is that a good thing, or not? I mean, I first heard of this database because of its association with a famous worm.

I'm afraid that my frustration with databases is a bit like my long-standing frustration with cars. When I rode a bicycle, it was clear how it worked. The force of my feet on the pedals made the wheels go round. My car is like a black box. I turn the key and off it goes. Or doesn't, but the reasons are never clear in either case.

When I had a manual typewriter, it was also clear how it worked. The force of my fingers on the keys made the keys hit the paper. Now, my computer, and my database that is a repository of my knowledge for at least the last seven years, is a similar black box.

That really bothers me because, when you come right down to it, my database as it is currently cross-referenced is the most potent distillation imaginable of those seven years of experience. The more time I spend exploiting the power of this database, the more value it has to me. I would hate to have to reconstruct it. And at some level, perhaps having to do with the infamous Flash Upgrading BIOS Incident of July 2000, I am truly afraid that my box will go irretrievably dark and take all my data with it.

Yeah, I've got a jump drive (512 MB) on my keychain, and I carry my database backups in my purse at all times (Monday through Friday, five separate backups in fact). I'm going to add a universal document backup when the price of the 1 GB jump drives comes down a bit more. But I can't shake that lurking fear that, at heart, is the native's fear of the magical search function of the database brought by the conquistador. My reptilian brain takes over. I'm hopeless.

not among the nerdiest

I attribute my low score to my advanced age.

the legal underground word of the day: replevin

I couldn't possibly miss the chance to record a "Word of the Day" for Evan Schaeffer to overdub with rhythm and presumably melodic tracks. What word? What word other than "replevin," of course!

Just to make things more interesting I used the Bouvier's Law Dictionary definition from the 1850's or so.

If you google the word replevin my site is the second hit on the list. And I didn't even pay money to sponsor a link.

update: The Legal Underground Remix of my original recording, which reportedly reduced one of my friends to tears, can be heard here.

the latest proof that parody is dead

It is impossible to parody lawyers in this world because we set ourselves up so neatly. Thanks to Evan Schaeffer for his fine collection of really long law firm website legal disclaimers.

You just can't make this stuff up.

the answer is no

And the question was: can law firms even do KM?

and well beyond sharpies, too

Nick Dufill is a not a writer on the law or on technology per se, but his wonderful blog Beyond crayons: Businesslike visualisation for late adopters contains the most astute observations on mindmapping I have ever read. Most lawyers fall into the category of "late adopters" of technology that Dufill wryly salutes in his tagline, and this little blog should be required reading for any lawyer who is trying to make more than superficial use of their practice management software or any other relational database (note to really late adopters: click on the phrase "relational database" to see what I'm talking about). No, it doesn't address these issues specifically, but his writings address analysis and structure in a way that looks very helpful to legal troglodytes.

The only thing disappointing about this site was its brevity, though I suspect the author is emphasizing quality over quantity, and it is, after all, a new launch into the blogosphere. Blog on, please.

quacktrack

I have discovered the dizzying parallel universe of BlogShares, and its evil twin Quacktrack. I recall playing a stock market board game (not Monopoly) when I was a little girl, but the concept of trading shares in blogs is one that, given the distance I've already traversed through the looking glass, makes perfect sense. Making a market in my own blog? I am so there.

Interestingly enough--and perhaps this is the underlying purpose of the site--in noodling around this site I have found some beautifully written sites that I otherwise would not have, not to mention stumbled across a number of blawgs that I surely should have noticed before now, but just hadn't. It's a big electronic tent out there.

My favorite category of blog stocks: Internet/weird.

echidne of the snakes

One meets the best goddesses on the 'Net. Echidne of the snakes writes intelligently with a feminist bent, although she has been ill-advised on the legal subtleties behind the poor beautiful Shawnna furor.

Now, let's see. If Poor Beautiful Shawnna's lawyer had served the dirtbag husband with an amended petition alleging the pregnancy on November 4, the day Judge Bastine vacated the decree of dissolution, the decree could have been entered on...November 29! To enter a default, it's twenty days from the date of service, not counting the day of service, plus three days for mailing (he didn't need to be personally served because jurisdiction over him was already established with the service of the original petition). So the fact that it is January 12, and the husband has not been served with an amended petition that started the clock running again is the fault of...? Not Judge Bastine.

Oh, and if you've misplaced your Bulfinch, the original Echidne was a half-woman, half-speckled-serpent who gave birth to six other notable creatures: Orthrus, Cerberus, Hydra, the Chimaera, the Sphinx, and the Nemean Lion.