Technology Forum Meeting - Transcript of Discussions - Page 3  <<   >>

MS. LEBER: I'm Bernice Leber. I chaired the Federal and Commercial Litigation Section of the State Bar Association in '98 and I currently sit on the NYSBA Executive Committee as a Member-at-Large. And I'm a member of David's ECTF committee along with other people who are here today. I am a commercial litigator. I work in a New York City small branch office of a 350-person firm called Arent Fox, which has offices in New York and D.C.

In terms of the firm and where we've come in the last 20 years, I mean, I still remember producing documents using IBM MAG cards, so I'm a real -- to coin a phrase, dinosaur. But, the last 20 years have been remarkable in terms of what we can do, as opposed to relying exclusively on our staff. And I think that's the freedom that we never had before. And it also permits you to work with clients on documents in a much easier fashion.

In terms of what my firm does, every lawyer gets as P.C. or a laptop to take home. There's a docking system. We're linked up with the typical stuff you expect. We have e-mail. We're on Microsoft 2000. We have time record management systems, spreadsheets.

One of the best things that we have is E-library, although I'd like to talk sometime today about why E-libraries in the New York library system are so poor, or at least maybe that's just a function of my firm. But we have the whole gamut. There's an intranet and Internet. On the Intranet, the firm creates forms, sort of similar to what you were talking about and sharing systems and file systems, the whole gamut. You can work on other people's documents and see what other people have done in research so you don't need to re-create the wheel.

On Internet, the firm has sort of been a pioneer in having chat room discussions, FREDS. It particularly works well with IP, our IP practice, where people can sort of dial in and see what's happening and ask questions of lawyers of the firm even if they don't have a client relationship. And we have newsletters and e-mail services for people, whether or not they're clients of the firm, which are all very nice and useful and interesting that it doesn't extend beyond that. We have a FTC Internet practice site.

I suppose, my particular interest began in '98 when I chaired the Federal & Commercial Litigation Section, and had 1,800 people to communicate with and I just couldn't do it. I couldn't call 1,800 people. I called Steve Gallagher at the State Bar Association, and I said, "I hear you're the guru. You've got to help me." And we developed an electronic mailing list for the executive committee of the section so 96 people could communicate on a monthly basis. We were eating through lots of lumber with our monthly reports, and the cost was just incredible. So with Steve's help -- I should say, foresight, we developed a system to distribute our reports electronically.

We developed a few other innovation approaches for distributing the Commercial Division Law Reports via email. That worked very well in terms of publishing work published by the Office of Court Administration. Our efforts help the Courts publish the Commercial Division Law Reports.

I won't take a lot of time but I will say that I think that the experience that Steve and I had was really an eye-opener. Teaching people in the bar association that this is an actually friendly way to communicate, could and should be expanded to all the sections and committees including the executive committee.

But, I guess, in terms of what I see, I sort of see that as being an important function of what we do as well as how do we communicate to the world and to the public.

MR. GALLAGHER: Thank you Bernice. Today you will finally get to meet the people from Cornell who did all that great work for us.

MS. LORRAINE THARP: I'm Lorraine Power Tharp, and I'm president-elect of the New York State Bar Association. I'm also Cornell Law '73. Married to a Cornell Law '71. We met in the law library, and on my first day here, as a matter of fact. I was telling Bernice I was so impressed that a third-year law student was so serious in his studies that he was there in the library on the first day of classes. Many months later, I found out that he and his colleagues had come into the library because this was the first year Cornell had admitted more than four women in the class, and they were just down there checking out their colleagues.

MS. THARP: I also live in Saratoga Springs, so we have to chat later (referring to Alisa Dalton). I am a partner in a large -- by Albany standards -- firm, and I do commercial lending and transactional work. I had said in my bio I was a dinosaur, and having heard some people who claim not to be technologically proficient, and what they do know, I'm trying to think of a another word that can be described for dinosaur. But I think I must represent a fair number of practitioners.

Our firm you know is obviously computerized, and we all have access to Internet, and we all rely tremendously on e-mail and my calendar and that sort of thing. But once we get beyond that, I think there's a fair number of us who feel challenged in this area. The firm itself is going through looking at the document management side of things. And the debates are ranging between the techies and the non-techies, and the costs and all of that. So I'm hoping to bring something back to the firm on that issue.

The member benefit I think of this type of discussion and what comes out of it for the Association is enormous. And that's my real hope and interest for being here. Thank you all for coming.

MR. A. THOMAS LEVIN: I'm Tom Levin. I'm almost a president elect of the Association, breathing down Lorraine's neck.

MS. THARP: As I was down Steve's.

MR. LEVIN: My practice is on Long Island. I'm a partner of Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein. We're a big firm, 51 lawyers, primarily based on Mineola with offices in Manhattan and Albany and D.C. I am kind of a self-taught techie. I have no background in this particular area, but I have a great interest in it, and I read up a lot on it, and I use everything I can get my hands on.

I'm a gadget freak, so anything that's technical is fine with me.
Actually, I want to talk to Gallagher about my Blackberry. I got rid of it.

MS. THARP: We're looking at getting those.

MR. LEVIN: I think I got rid of it for bad reasons but, I've been on the ECTF, I guess, since it started. That's an area of particular interest I have.

My firm is fairly well automated. We have access to the Internet through our network. We have document sharing. They're not very well indexed, John (referring to J. Szekeres). That's the most amazing thing to me, how you get things in a format where people can find them when you want them. We have them, but we can't find them easily enough, and that's something I want to learn more about.

My prime interest in this particular program, and, I guess, for the Association, where I want to go with this, is the communication area. I think it's a fabulous opportunity for us to be able to have easy communications with our members and share a lot of information with them. Hopefully, we should be able to make the Association a much more attractive and better organization for lawyers to help them improve the delivery of legal services. So
I'm looking at that in particular.

There are obviously other aspects to it in helping solo and small firms that really don't have the ability to put money into getting people to plan these systems for them. This is something that we need to focus on as well.

MR. GALLAGHER: Thanks, Tom.

MS. PATRICE CROOKS: I'm Patrice Crooks, Assistant Administrator for the Legal Information Institute here at Cornell. While in law school, I did a program in law and technology management, and now I am the Web Master for LII.

MR. GALLAGHER: Well, Bernice (referring to B. Leber), when you called me in 1994, I called Patrice who, in turn, talked to Professor Martin, and your problem was solved.

MS. LEBER: Nice to meet you, Patrice.

MS. CIOFFI: You could have cut out a whole loop there.

MR. Jack LIPPERT: I'm Jack Lippert. I'm a country lawyer from Franklinville, New York. I'm a sole practitioner. I do about 30 percent of my estate is probate work, 30 percent is residential real estate, and 30 percent in family court, and 10 percent is you name it. I became interested in computers in 1990 as they might apply to a law firm. And I have on my computer every document that my office has generated since January of 1991 in searchable form similar to what language you use a search.

I recall having e-mail, and I asked other lawyers if they have e-mail because I thought it would be a better way to communicate, and they would ask, "What's e-mail?" So we've come a long way, the profession has, in the last 10 or 12 years, because now I think it would be the exception to find a lawyer who doesn't have e-mail.

MR. GALLAGHER: Jack, when I originally met you, you were collecting decisions from the NY Court of Appeals. Tell us about what you were doing to collect the decisions via the Court’s bulletin board service.

MR. LIPPERT: Right. The Court of Appeals had a bulletin board service, and I would download the cases as they would come out. And, again, using this same software, put these cases on a hard drive on a computer in my office, and these cases would be in fully searchable form.

MR. GALLAGHER: And then after our first here at Cornell with Professor Martin, you gave five years worth of Court of Appeals cases to Cornell to make these case available to anyone for free. So, when we start talking about building a community, Jack has demonstrated a sense of community from way back.

MR. GALLAGHER: Thanks Jack, and I am glad you could join us once again.

MR. THOMAS GLEASON: I'm Tom Gleason. I'm a practitioner in Albany New York. I'm primarily in commercial, administrative, health and other similar kinds of practice. I think the reason Steve invited me is because I'm on the Office of Court Administration CPLR Advisory Committee, and I'm the chair of the Subcommittee on Technology. I was involved in the work-up and the drafting of the regulations for the electronic case filing initiative which is now underway in Monroe County and New York County in commercial cases. I worked on the user’s manual for the Filing By Electronic Means system and also, I've generally been interested in electronic filing of court papers for quite a while now.

I really do think it's the future, and that it will provide some significant conveniences and far better research. I'm also interested in computer generated evidence, having worked with the Advisory Committee on some new rules in the CPLR that will allow for better standards for use of computer-generated documents as court exhibits. The current rules on admissibility of such evidence are a little antiquated, so we have a bill out there that hopefully I can turn you folks into advocates for as well.

MR. GALLAGHER: Thanks, Tom.