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Apple iPhone Apps for Lawyers | Virtual Data Rooms – Online Document Management & Collaboration | Firmex

April 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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A few really interesting iPhone apps were recently released that could prove very useful to lawyers, each incorporating speech to text dictation into their platforms in various ways.

The first, and my personal favorite, is Siri. Siri is a free iPhone app designed to be your personal assistant. The app provides a wide range of information, from the local weather, nearby restaurants, movie listings and times, to details about local events. You can even check a flight’s status or book a taxi. Simply speak into your iPhone or use Siri’s intuitive interface to type in your requests.

In addition to providing the specific information, such as an address or the start time of a movie, Siri provides an assortment of ratings and reviews from a number of websites, thus making it easier for you to choose a restaurant or movie.  And for attorneys who tweet–Siri just added a new feature that allows you to send a status update to Twitter by dictating it into your phone.

If you’re in the market for a basic speech to text dictation tool that works quite well, the free Dragon Dictation app is for you. Simply speak into the phone and your words are instantly transcribed. The text is fully editable with the additional functionality of “copying” to a clipboard, text message or into an email.

Finally, Vlingo is another voice command app worthy of note. Using the free version of Vlingo, you can tell the app to search Google maps, update your Facebook or Twitter statuses, search the Web, or initiate a phone call to one of your contacts.

Using the paid versions of Vlingo you can dictate an email or text message. However, Vlingo goes one step further than the Dragon Dictation app and allows you to dictate not only the content of the message, but also the name of the contact, and if it’s an email, the subject of the email. The SMS and email features cost $6.99 apiece or you can purchase both for $9.99.

All 3 of these apps are must-haves for busy attorneys. Each has the potential to transform your iPhone into an information gathering and transmitting voice command center. Imagine the possibilities!

via Apple iPhone Apps for Lawyers | Virtual Data Rooms – Online Document Management & Collaboration | Firmex.

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Toyota exec warned on defect: We need to come clean | Reuters

April 8, 2010 By

A senior Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) executive in the United States warned in a January email that the automaker needed to “come clean” on a safety defect that caused accelerator pedals to become stuck open.

The January 16 email from Irv Miller, then Toyota’s top U.S. spokesman, was sent five days before the automaker launched a recall for about 2.3 million vehicle to fix the sticky accelerator pedals.

“We are not protecting our customers by keeping this quiet,” Miller said in his email. “The time to hide on this one is over. We need to come clean.”

A copy of the document was obtained by Reuters on Thursday. Its release comes as Toyota considers whether to appeal a proposed $16.4 million safety fine by U.S. safety regulators.

The email exchange between Miller and a Japanese colleague arguing against responding to media reports of mechanical failures highlights the gap in the level of urgency at the U.S. arm and headquarters — a problem that Toyota later acknowledged contributed to delays in its responses.

The email from Miller, who was about to retire a month later, was one of thousands of pages of internal correspondence collected by U.S. government officials investigating Toyota.

The U.S. Department of Transportation proposed the fine against Toyota — the largest allowed by law — and said that the automaker had knowingly delayed the recall for defective accelerator pedals.

Toyota has two weeks to decide whether to appeal that penalty for the first official finding that the world’s largest automaker violated U.S. safety regulations.

Toyota spokesman Mike Michels said on Thursday that the automaker had not determined its response yet.

The automaker said it would not comment on Miller’s email.

“We have publicly acknowledged on several occasions that the company did a poor job of communicating during the period preceding our recent recalls,” Toyota said in a statement.

via Toyota exec warned on defect: We need to come clean | Reuters.

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Facebook Flub Leaks Private E-mail Addresses – PCWorld

March 31, 2010 By

Private e-mail addresses that many Facebook users wanted to keep hidden were revealed publicly last night on a multitude of Facebook profiles, Gawker reports. The glitch lasted about 30 minutes before Facebook sealed the gap.

An anonymous tipster altered Gawker of the breach in an expletive-riddled message: “6:46PM: I cannot [bleeping] believe it. Everybody's email has been turned on to the public for at least the past 30 min. I tried going into my account to remove my email b/c I have an issue with a crazed stalker. But I wasn't able to. God I [bleeping] hate FB!! When will they ever learn?!”

It might be that Facebook’s recently proposed changes to its privacy settings could be to blame for the hiccup. PC World writer Paul Suarez reported that “One of those changes [to Facebook's Privacy Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities] would make it possible for Facebook to send your name, photo, friend list, and any public information about you and your friends to preapproved third-party Web sites.” A slight tweak to broadcasting profile information could have resulted in this embarrassing flub.

via Facebook Flub Leaks Private E-mail Addresses – PCWorld.

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What is Metadata? « eDiscovery Assistant

January 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I was surprised with the interest in the PST blog posted a few days ago.  When you have worked in the software industry as long as I have, too much is taken for granted.  Just because someone uses MS Outlook, doesn’t mean they know what a PST is and what important information, other than eMails, it may contain.  Knowing this, it is worth taking a few minutes to define metadata and ways it may help with litigation.  Like the buildings in the background, metadata is hidden but very real.

Metadata is data about data.  For example, in addition to the text of an eMail message or an MS Word document, bibliographic information about the document itself is recorded.  It is maintained automatically by the operating system (ie Windows Vista) and, for eMail messages, may include Date Sent, Time Sent, Subject, Text Body, HTML Body, Filename, Author, File Size, File Date, File Time, eMail header information, To, From  and other fields depending on the users setup and configuration of both MS Windows and MS Outlook.  There are over 150+ metadata fields in a typical MS Outlook capture.  Which ones, if any, are relevant to the litigation, only the legal team can answer.  What is important is to understand it is available and can be searched like the text in the document itself.

via What is Metadata? « eDiscovery Assistant.

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The New Exchange 2010 Dumpster

December 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

In my previous blog I exposed the naked truth about Exchange deleted items and how easy it is to destroy potential email records.

Microsoft must have listened because the new version Exchange 2010 includes substantial improvements to the “dumpster” and deleted item behavior and closed the potential “leak” for eDiscovery.

The new Exchange 2010 dumpster is a complete new design.  Here is a link if you want the complete story.

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/09/25/452632.aspx

The new Exchange 2010 dumpster features that are key for legal discovery are:

-          The new dumpster now includes all deleted items from the mailbox including email, calendars, contacts, and more.  The old dumpster only included email.

-          The new dumpster is indexed so it can be searched using the new multi-mailbox search tool in Exchange 2010. The old dumpster was not indexed and could not be searched.

-          The new dumpster has been extended with new Purges and Versions folders.  Users can no longer bypass the dumpster behavior with a manual purge.

The Purges folder keeps items that users purge from the dumpster and keeps them for the length of the dumpster retention period.

The Versions folders keeps a copy-on-write snapshot of email that users modify.

The new Exchange 2010 dumpster still operates with a retention period (14 day default) or custom.  The new dumpster features are a welcome addition to Exchange.

By capturing all deleted items and by preventing users from purging email, it closes all of the  major “leaks” for email discovery and compliance.

via The New Exchange 2010 Dumpster | Email Archiving & Storage Management Experts.

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Communications with Attorney Using Company Computer and Email Account Not Protected by Attorney-Client Privilege : Electronic Discovery Law

December 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Alamar Ranch, LLC v. City of Boise, 2009 WL 3669741 (D. Idaho Nov. 2, 2009)

In this case arising from a land use and permitting dispute, the court ruled that emails sent by a non-party to her attorney using her work computer and work-assigned email address were not protected by the attorney-client privilege.  In so holding, the court relied in large part upon the existence of company policy which put the employee on notice that her emails were subject to monitoring and were not confidential.  Emails sent by the attorney to the employee’s work account were likewise unprotected where the attorney was on notice of the employee’s use of company email and should have recognized the risk that such emails were unprotected.  As for emails sent to the attorney by other clients and copied to the employee, the court reasoned that such emails retained their privileged status where the senders non-employees of the relevant company were not on notice of the potential exposure of their emails to outside scrutiny.

[continued] Communications with Attorney Using Company Computer and Email Account Not Protected by Attorney-Client Privilege : Electronic Discovery Law.

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Some Courts Raise Bar on Reading Employee Email – WSJ.com

November 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Big Brother is watching. That is the message corporations routinely send their employees about using email.

But recent cases have shown that employees sometimes have more privacy rights than they might expect when it comes to the corporate email server. Legal experts say that courts in some instances are showing more consideration for employees who feel their employer has violated their privacy electronically.

Driving the change in how these cases are treated is a growing national concern about privacy issues in the age of the Internet, where acquiring someone else's personal and financial information is easier than ever.

“Courts are more inclined to rule based on arguments presented to them that privacy issues need to be carefully considered,” said Katharine Parker, a lawyer at Proskauer Rose who specializes in employment issues.

In past years, courts showed sympathy for corporations that monitored personal email accounts accessed over corporate computer networks. Generally, judges treated corporate computers, and anything on them, as company property.

Now, courts are increasingly taking into account whether employers have explicitly described how email is monitored to their employees.

via Some Courts Raise Bar on Reading Employee Email – WSJ.com.

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Creating Email Portfolios for Small EDD Productions

November 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment

more and more law firms that would like to use Acrobat to capture, review and produce email as part of a case.

A great solution is an Email Portfolio. Acrobat can convert an entire folder of email in Outlook or Lotus Notes into well-organized PDF Portfolio which lets you sort, filter and search.

The Outlook integration provide by Acrobat offers the following:

  1. Convert individual email messages to PDF
  2. Adds attachments in their native format into the PDF of the message
  3. Combines all of the converted messages into a PDF Portfolio
  4. Adds a full-text index to the PDF Portfolio

Acrobats email archiving feature is intended to be a personal email archiving tool, however with a bit of tweaking and perhaps a plug-in like Evermaps AutoPortfolio, you may be able to use it successfully to manage small EDD productions.

via Acrobat for Legal Professionals: Creating Email Portfolios for Small EDD Productions.

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