Technology Forum Meeting - Transcript of Discussions - Page 4  <<   >>

MR. GOLDFARB: David Goldfarb. I am the firm. And I think of myself also as a country boy in the Empire State Building. We have an elder law and trust in estates. It's a six-attorney firm. To the extent we have any knowledge, I'm a knowledge manager also. I have been involved with technology in different degrees for a number of years, starting in college and programming, and that's just how my interest began. It developed when I was with the Legal Aid Society of New York for many years. I helped them automate their system to case management system and sort of bridged over to some kind of, you know, case trafficking and other things.

In our own firm, we started a web site in about 1995, 1996, which has been a big help to our practice ( www.seniorlaw.com)in the elder law area.

With the State Bar Association, I've been on the Executive Committee of the Trust and Estates Section, and the Executive Committee of the Elder Law Section. I'm chair for both section’s technology committees.

For the Trust and Estates Section, I guess, in connection with the ECTF, I worked on developing their web site such as it was at the time. And I was one of the people, who posted directly to the web site and maintained it for the section. And one of the things we did was we put up the official forms for the surrogates court and made them available to practitioners, I guess, this was the first time this was done. That's now really been taken over by OCA. They do their own official forms on their site, so we link directly to their forms. For a number of years, I guess, we were the only source of getting the official forms, and it was very controversial at first. None of the county surrogates wanted to accept the official forms. They wanted their own forms used for each county. OCA said you have to accept the standard forms. Now it's accepted practice, and now NYSBA has it on CD ROM, HotDocs forms, and all the courts accept them.

The Elder Law section has been very interesting because there are effectively using an electronic mailing list. The list has become a very integral part of the practice for many of the Elder Law firms. It has become really a good knowledge source for practitioners in the field.

Anytime I go to conference, or any time I speak at a CLE program, somebody will come up and say what a wonderful resource the mailing list has become. They tell me that, “They could not practice without that list -- the information you get, the timeliness of it.” In our area of practice, sometimes there's no other source of information for fair hearings decisions that come down even unreported court cases.

There's just a major case in Upstate New York where there will be a published decision, which was horrible. The judge reversed himself. Never published the decision -- decision where he reversed himself. Had to do with social security payments whether they can be in thrust order not. You can't get if any place else if not on list.

I write a book for Lexis on New York Guide to Trust Estate and Financial Planning for the Elderly, and you can't keep it up-to-date without the kind of information you get from the list. Not only do you get the cases that are not published; the fair hearing decisions; and everything else; but, you also find out what the practitioners need to know and want to know and what their interested in. We've added a whole section on divorce and something in family law, and those things are something we never had before. That's a big area you learn from the list. People are concerned about getting into what the protections are, what it really means. So I just really feel what the Bar Association can provide to practitioners in this kind of a community and network especially within the sections is just going to be invaluable resource.

MR. GALLAGHER: Thank you, David.

MR. LENNY SIENKO JR.: He (MR. GALLAGHER) made me go last because
of what I said to him at dinner last night. I still should expound my theory on entertainment driving technology, but I don't think I will.

I'm Leonard Sienko. I'm a sole practitioner from Hancock, New York, in Delaware County. Chris asked me where my firm was. I said sitting across from you here at the breakfast table; I'm the firm.

I first used computers in 1973. We had a big old fat terminal with yellow paper and we had to punch in instructions. And I used it for the very worthwhile task of playing Lunar Lander -- see if I could crash that module or not. It proves my thesis that computers are supposed to be fun. That's why we use them. At least that's why I used them. I moved on and bought a PT 210, which was a terminal that I put acoustic coupler where you put a phone into it. At the rate of 24 BAUD -- not 2400 BAUD; 24 BAUD. You could dial-up Dialog at Lockheed aircraft, and do a little research or get some citations checked. I started showing up in court with my citations check, and I would tell the judge there's been some new law on that, Your Honor. Let me see that. I hand it up. After a while when I pulled out shiny paper, the other lawyers started to cringe. I knew I had something then.

I put my first computers in my office about 1986. They were Macintoshes. They're still Macintoshes. I think differently. I don't care about the rest of 90 percent of the world. I'm right, and I know I'm right, and they'll never get my Macintosh away from me.

I have six computers for three employees, including the ones at home. I have done various things in regard to computer site used to be the president of the Delaware County Bar Association, so they made me do the web site so we had one of the first bar association web sites in upstate New York. I did my dues as a member of the House of Delegates for various terms, and I thought that maybe we could use computers not to kill so many trees. I used to marvel every time before House of Delegate’ meeting sent a packet six inches high, and they sent it UPS, and I said, "Please, please don't do it. Just give me the money. I don't want to do that anymore."

So I was really interested in using the computers to enable the State Bar Association to communicate better with the community of members they had. So, I put together my own e-mail list for my Delaware County Bar Association and started pumping things out to people, pushing things, content onto their desktops, and most of them seemed to like it. I got judges, Attorney General's
office, and most of the practitioners of my county are all receiving content from me.

Every now and then they'll say, "Make sure that I get such-and-such," or, "I lost that e-mail. Send it to me again," so I know they're out there. I know they're getting the content I'm sending them. I have done other things in terms of putting together materials. Dave Miranda got me to do a chapter on e-mail encryption -- it was really timely after 9-11; I don't know whether that's going to go out or not -- in the NYSBA Internet Guide for Lawyers, but I published it myself, on my own web site.

I also am contributing editor of something called wErief, which is the General Practice Section’s electronic newsletter, which we send out monthly series of links and descriptions of links we think are useful. We did our first issue this month on family law. If we get the technology working at hotel, we will get a chance to look at this electronic newsletter.

I think we move way too slow. I went through NYLawNet, ECTF, whatever the iteration is now. We're already three years behind, so we're basically always catching-up. So, we've got the Titanic. We're on the deck. We see the iceberg. We've got to turn the ship.

MR. GALLAGHER: Thank you, Lenny. Later this afternoon, we'll talk about how we can encourage others to join in on our discussions about the role of the bar association as this relates to electronic networks.

PROFESSOR PETER MARTIN: I'm Peter Martin, and to my utter delight, part of the journey that goes under the flag Legal Information Institute has involved a series of evolving partnerships with folks in this room. This is only the second or third time that we've had a large physical gathering here at Cornell. But it represents the future that we're exploring together that relationship has been strong and evolving and hasn't required us to sit in the same place at the same time.

MR.GALLAGHER: Thank you Peter for having us here, and we are looking forward to hearing what you have to say about the future of the profession.


MR. STEVEN KRANE: Well, hi, everybody. I'm Steven Krane, and for another 78 days, I'm president of this Association.

MS. THARP: Seventy-seven and a few hours.

MR. KRANE: Seventy-seven. Don't push, or I'll make it 79.

MR. KRANE: I want to thank you all of you for coming. This is something that Steve (Gallagher) and I have been talking about for years. And it's great. One of the great things about being president is that you can have an idea and talk to people and get people to show up -- you know, even to come to Ithaca. I'm a firm believer that if you get the right people sitting in a room together -- even a virtual room -- you can come up with some great ideas.

I don't think there's anything more important for our members and for the bar at large than the use of technology. And we've seen what it's done over the last 10, 15, 20 years. And I can remember, you know, reminiscing about dinosaur days, cutting and pasting memos. And we had blue paper for memos, so we had blue-out, little strips across our memos and photocopy it so it might look decently. The typist was doing the revisions. It took forever to do anything.

I was actually the first lawyer in my firm to use a computer for work. I had a clerkship at the New York Court of Appeals, and I learned how to use a word processor. When I got back to practice, "I couldn't write anymore. I can't work that way. I've got to have computer," and I was met with opposition with people who said, "Lawyers don't type. Secretaries type." I said, "Well, this lawyer types, and I'm much better at a computer." So they found me an old XT with 10-megabyte hard drive and said, "Here." I was in bliss. At home, I had dual floppies, so I had a hard drive. Who would ever need more than ten Meg for anything? That was 1985.

I'm a little schizophrenic when it comes with technology. I hate everything Microsoft does, and I'm a loyal WordPerfect user, but that was kicking and screaming ten years ago when I was a loyal Display writer user. I have a cell phone, and I am never without my Palm Pilot (referring to a Daily Planner he held in the palm of his hand). So there are some things -- I selectively embrace technology.

Actually, I'm not using a Palm Pilot one of the vendors at Annual Meeting gave to me. I don't want it. You know, I'm not interested in using one of those things, which is a probably a mistake, but that's the way I am.

So the idea that I have been kicking around with Steve (Gallagher) for a while was, since technology is here -- hitting us squarely in the face -- we can maximum its use, or be left behind and perhaps have other professions start doing the things that we would ordinarily do.

It's important for us as an Association to really answer two questions:

One question -- and it's a broad major question – is, what should lawyers be using? What technologies should lawyers be embracing today and in the foreseeable future? I know that there are going to be things coming down the road that we can't even imagine, but as we sit here today, what are the things that every lawyer needs? And my focus has been more on the majority of our membership. We practice in small firms and sole practitioners. By and large, the big firms feel -- and I'm from a big firm -- we lag so far behind. It's just amazing, having to fight for every technological advance.

But, what is it that we should embrace? What I foresee -- and it's not unique to me -- but within the next five or ten years, you will barely ever have to go to court and barely ever have to have an in-person meeting with anybody. Even the largest law firms will start moving to suburban locations to get away from the high rents and terrorism risks. We will have virtual interconnectivity and virtual courtroom hearings -- through teleconferencing. We will be able to sit at our offices and have a camera sitting on top of our screens or whatever technology we have available to us. We'll have the judge and the adversaries, and everybody will be interconnected. You won't have to leave your office to go down to court for a hearing. We may even have artificial intelligence for dispute resolutions.

It's even starting to happen today. Electronic filing will be the norm. Having a paperless court system is a real likelihood. This is all coming, and a lot of lawyers will need help in using technology. There are some lawyers always on the cutting edge, but I fear the vast majority of lawyers take the view that, "Well, this is the way I've always done it, and I'm comfortable with it, and I don't need to change," but I think they do. I think we do as a profession.

So, Question 1 is, what are the technologies that we -- that lawyers need? And, the second question to be answered is, As the New York State Bar Association, what can we do to help lawyers begin to utilize these emerging technologies? How can we help our colleagues make the maximum use of these new tools in their own practices around the state? What should the Association be doing? Is it bulk buying? Is it product selection? Is it interconnectivity? What are the things that we should be doing as an association to help lawyers embrace these new technologies once we've identified what they are? So these are all sorts of ideas people have been kicking around for years.

I want to thank particularly Steve Gallagher for setting this up and Len (Sienko) for agreeing to be our facilitator, and Professor Martin for hosting us this morning.

By the end of today, I hope we can come up with some concrete recommendations -- real bullet point kinds of ideas for things that lawyers should be looking for in emerging technologies. What is it that every lawyer should know about, and what can the New York State Bar Association do to help the profession get there.

Now I'll sit back and listen to all of you people who know a lot more about these things than I do.

MR. GALLAGHER: Before turning the program over to Professor Martin, I’d like to explain how several of us in this room first met Peter. In 1994, the original NYSBA NYLawNet committee (now ECTF), came here to Cornell to hear from Professor Peter Martin regarding the impact the Internet was having on legal education. Lenny Sienko (today’s facilitator) and I have spoken on many occasions about how that one meeting reshaped many of our thinking. Cornell’s LII continues to be an international leader in this area, so we felt it was time to again check in with Professor Martin to get another look into his crystal ball.