Year: 2013
DropBox – a lawyer’s perspective
For anyone who hasn’t come across DropBox, the strapline on their site is as good an introduction as any: “Your stuff, anywhere.” In (slightly) more technical terms, DropBox is a cloud-based storage service which maintains a copy of one of more folders on your computer. The clever part is that it also ensures that the […]
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The best of both – bricks and mortar and virtual
The coming of the much-vaunted information age, improvements in digital and internet technology, and the increasing requirement for law firms to diversify and innovate over the last ten years has led to a series of interesting experiments in business models for lawyers. Law firms (as demonstrated by the success of such firms as Excello Law, […]
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Best of the Legal Web – specific practice areas
In the May/June Newsletter I considered some of the best websites for lawyers of general applicability. Here, I am covering resources focused upon specific practice areas. Criminal law It would be impossible to write any review of the legal web for criminal lawyers without referring to the truly excellent CrimeLine. Frankly if criminal lawyers had […]
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Recent developments in information law
Information law is a fast-moving and diverse area. It encompasses statutory rights of access to information, under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR), rights in respect of personal information, under the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), the right to respect for private life, under Article 8 of […]
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Keeping up to date with the law
BAILII has been providing free access to case law for 14 years and legislation.gov.uk provides advanced (if not yet up to date) open access to all in force legislation. These resources have changed the ground rules for law publishing: smaller publishers are relying on them, adding their own value and developing new update services. We […]
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Quill Pinpoint: How outsourced cashiering works
Julian Bryan represents Quill Pinpoint The challenge for small practices If you’re a partner in a small practice or a sole practitioner, the challenges of business management take many forms. First, there’s the likelihood that you’re managing all areas of your practice on top of earning fees. The cost of employing dedicated staff for specialised […]
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The digital shift – themes shaping the legal agenda
The first industrial revolution, which began in the 1750s, lasted for between 80 to 100 years. The pace of technological change today encourages us to believe that the second industrial revolution (IR2) will be completed at much greater speed. So if we take the mid-1980s as a starting point, with the emergence of optical disk […]
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Google Drive and Chromebook
Much has been written about the pros and cons of working in “the cloud”. Even in this Newsletter, if you search under “cloud computing” you will find 26 articles, written over several years! Just to re-cap, the essential concept is that data is stored in an online location which is accessible from an internet-connected device, […]
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Every silver lining has a cloud
In the last issue, I started looking at the issues of cloud computing and some of the data protection issues. This article continues that analysis. The Article 29 Working Party On 1 July 2012, the EU’s Article 29 Working Party adopted an Opinion (05/2012) on Cloud Computing, in which it analysed all relevant issues for […]
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Best of the Legal Web – general resources
Everyone has their favourite, “go to” legal website for information or research, but this compilation hopefully cuts across personal preference and offers a wide-ranging selection of some of the best legal resources for lawyers of all persuasions. Current Awareness To start, I would suggest that, for an excellent overview of the range of legal resources […]
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Are your online efforts working?
For law firms, word of mouth continues to be the principle generator of work. Firms historically tried to leverage its power using “thought leadership” marketing, through “offline content” such as newsletters, white papers and articles. Today, however, this is no longer enough. Target audiences have moved online, expanding the reach of word of mouth to […]
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Data Privacy Law app
Ireland’s first dedicated Data Privacy Law app has been launched by leading Irish firm A&L Goodbody. The Irish Data Protection Commissioner supports this useful tool as it is aimed at senior management, privacy law professionals and in-house lawyers who need to respond to an increasing number of data protection requirements and challenges that data security […]
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