CBA Record March-April 2023

LPMT BITS & BYTES BY ANNE HAAG 8 Technology Must-Haves for the New Lawyer N ew lawyers have a valuable oppor tunity to start integrating good technology practices into their devices or for users who require a CD drive. A USB hub is an easy way to expand your options.

5. A timekeeping solution. Your firm might already provide you with an automated tool for timekeeping and billing, or you might have access to a tool included within a practice man agement platform. If not, you want a tool that keeps track of time in real time. A phone call can be automati cally billed to a certain matter, or you can track your work with a stopwatch tool on your laptop. Whatever you tool you use, make sure you’re keep ing track in real-time and are building good timekeeping practices from the jump. 6. Good Zoom etiquette. It’s shock ing how many people still inflict their bad Zoom etiquette on others. Your camera needs to be stationary and squarely focused on your face. If your background is distracting, blur it. Mute your microphone when you aren’t talking. 7. Knowledge of how to remotely wipe your devices. No one wants to think about the worst-case scenario of their devices being lost or stolen, but it hap pens. My car was broken into, and my laptop was stolen in broad daylight last year. Given the nature of the cloud and remote work, all your devices likely include some level of sensitive or personally identifying work or client information. You need to be prepared to wipe them remotely if they go miss ing. This means that you should have backups prepared to avoid losing any information upon wiping the device. It also means that you need to know what steps you will take to wipe the device. When was the last time you logged into FindMyiPhone? Make sure you are confident in your preparation. 8. A legal-specific keyboard. The Legal Board is a keyboard designed specifi cally for lawyers. If you find yourself struggling to remember how to type symbols such as § or ¶ in a document, this keyboard might help improve your document drafting productivity.

career from the ground up. Being mind ful about a few technological elements early on in your career will save you the hassle of having to pivot midstream or retroactively impose good practices on an expansive and poorly organized system. Take this opportunity to make sure you’re armed with these eight essentials. It will save time (and money) down the road! 1. A reliable, updated computer. Your firm might provide you with a laptop and/or a desktop, but you need to have at least one personal computer that is reliable and fits your needs. If you work from home, perhaps a desk top is all you need. If you work on the go, you’ll need a reliable, light weight laptop. Whatever your setup, if you’ve been making do on an outdated machine since law school, now is the time to upgrade. 2. A USB hub. If there’s one universal gripe with modern laptops, it’s that there are never enough ports: manu facturers have minimized the number of ports to make laptops lighter and slimmer. This has caused headaches for anyone who relies on ports for routine activities such as charging multiple

3. A password management plan. The LastPass breach publicized in Decem ber 2022 shook up the world of pass word management and shone a light on the risks associated with cloud-based managers. If you were a LastPass user, you should probably jump ship. Every option for password management has risks and benefits, whether cloud based, localized, or handwritten in a notebook. It’s up to you to weigh the risks and benefits for yourself, but you need a plan to avoid the worst-case sce nario of using a handful of weak pass words for all your logins. To learn more about risks and benefits, I recommend that you access the seminar I taught in February, Password Management: Risk Sets and Options, it was recorded and is available to watch on-demand. 4. A scanner or scanning app. You need to be able to digitize documents easily and quickly for ready access, wherever you’re working. Many integrate with common cloud storage platforms so you can scan documents directly to the cloud. The Fujitsu ScanSnap line of scanners is hard to beat. Evernote is a good option for scanning on your mobile device.

Anne Haag is the CBA’s Law Practice Management Advisor, a certified crisis intervention counselor, and a volunteer with Resilience as a trauma informed ER advocate for sexual assault survivors.

42 March/April 2023