Digital Practice of Law

Instant Messaging

IM is a must in lots of offices.  "Talk about instant messaging and some people think it all concerns teenagers exchanging information about the latest news, trends and fashions online. But instant messaging, or IM, is an essential business tool that has become indispensable in many workplaces. Today, 53 million American adults use instant messaging, and 21 percent of those, or 11 million, use it at work, according to a recent survey by Pew Internet & American Life. Many people like the casual and quick communication that instant messaging provides, said Nancy Flynn, author of "Instant Messaging Rules: A Business Guide to Managing Policies, Security and Legal Issues for Safe IM Communication."  "IM is essentially turbocharged e-mail," Flynn said. "It enables you to communicate instantaneously. You can respond to client questions in real time." . . ."

Online Courses for Judges

Online courses for judges go on nationwide pilot test. "In an attempt to make judges familiar with information and communications technology, the judicial department recently put two courses on the Internet for pilot testing by judges located in at least 10 regions around the country. . . "

Connecting Virtually with Your Clients

BP demands transparency from external legal advisers.  "BP is demanding access to key billing and financial information held by its external lawyers as part of a review of the energy giant’s global technology requirements. As first revealed on www.thelawyer.com (17 November), the FTSE 100 company has told firms that, in return for instructions, they must provide electronic intelligence relating to the matters they are working on. BP hopes that by gaining access to its advisers’ time-recording systems, it will be able to determine how many lawyers are recording time against a matter and whether or not they are billing at the correct rate. The company will also be able to ensure that its external lawyers are getting the right level of supervision without too much partner involvement. . . "

Broadband Use Increases

3-11-04 - Broadband overtaking dial-up in major cities. "Broadband is rapidly becoming the preferred way residents of major U.S. metropolitan areas are accessing the Internet, according to a study released Wednesday.

San Diego currently has the highest broadband penetration rate in the nation, with 52 percent of its residents connecting to the Internet using a high-speed service, according to online measurement firm ComScore Networks. Boston ranks second with an even split between broadband and narrowband customers. New York City is in third place with 49 percent.

The San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles rank ninth and tenth with 44 percent broadband penetration each.

Despite gains in certain major cities, dial-up services remain the preferred choice for Americans to go online. Sixty four percent of all online Americans still use a dial-up services such as America Online, MSN and EarthLink. AOL still holds the lead, counting 28 percent of the U.S. Internet population as subscribers."

Low Cost Intranet Conferencing

Collaboration service adds Web conferencing
2-23-04
"Collaboration services provider Intranets.com jumped into the increasingly competitive Web-conferencing market on Monday.

Woburn, Mass.-based Intranets.com sells collaboration services that enable workers in different locations to work together on documents and other common business tasks. The company has about 6,500 subscribers for the hosted service, mainly small businesses that don't want the expense and work of maintaining their own server to host collaborative documents.

"The fact there's no hardware or software to buy is very important to a lot of organizations," said Karen Leavitt, vice president of marketing at Intranets.com. "They don't want to punch a hole in their firewall to support users outside the company."

The company plans to target the same customer base with the new conferencing services. Customers can add Web-conferencing capabilities, which enable remote users to view online presentations and other common meeting functions, to the service at a flat monthly rate of $100 for up to 25 simultaneous users.

Most Web-conferencing services charge on a per-user, per-minute basis, but Intranets.com decided that flat-rate pricing would do more to entice new customers, Leavitt said."

Audio vs Video Conferencing - Paying Attention

RoperASW and TANDBERG - International Survey - November 2003
"Overview
In order to better understand the state of communication in business today, TANDBERG and RoperASW teamed up to conduct a survey of business professionals to measure behaviors and attitudes around specific communication methods used in the workplace. The goal of the survey was to compare the efficacy of face-to-face, audio, and electronic communication in accomplishing various business objectives and to
better understand how video communication might fit into the current mix."

In an audio conference:
23% gave full attention

In a video conference:
55% gave full attention

In an audio conference:
25% checked or wrote e-mail

In a videoconference:
3% checked or wrote e-mail

In an audio conference:
13% surfed the web

In a video conference:
1% surfed the web

Microsoft to phase out NetMeeting

"Instead, the company's Office Live Meeting software, based upon PlaceWare, will fill the void left by the gradual phase out of NetMeeting. Currently, both MSN and Windows Messenger utilize NetMeeting technology to power application and whiteboard sharing. Development is indefinitely frozen, however, and Microsoft's IM clients will be migrated to drive Live Meeting services. A Microsoft spokesperson told BetaNews, "NetMeeting is still supported and available with current editions of Windows although there will not be any new versions of NetMeeting."

"Microsoft believes that NetMeeting provides customer value in certain scenarios, and that Live Meeting will be a compelling complementary service in many situations," the spokesperson said. "Moving forward, it is expected that all future innovations will come within the LCS, Live Meeting and Windows Messenger technologies."

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