My Cousin Vinny and Resilience in Law Practice

After a CLE a few months ago, I sat in a bar sipping bourbon and listening to my friend, Jim Dedman, explain his plans for doing a blog series commemorating the 20th anniversary of one of the all time great lawyer movies, My Cousin Vinny.

Jim asked me if I would write something about the movie to take part in the anniversary. I love movies in general and lawyer movies in particular, so I readily agreed. It gave me an excuse to rewatch the movie, which I hadn't seen in at least ten years.

I'm pleased to say, the movie holds up well after 20 years. As a native New Yorker, an Italian and a lawyer living in the south, I really like this movie on a lot of levels. Not the least of which, it should be noted, is Marisa Tomei's star-making performance as Joe Pesci's big-haired, beautiful, foul-mouthed automotive expert witness/fiancee.

Here's a clip of Marisa in action, in case it's been a while since you've seen the movie:

I could watch clips of Marisa Tomei all day, but this being a law practice management blog and all, I wanted to write about a different aspect of the movie: resilience. 

Resilience, as the psychologists use the term, refers to one's ability to cope with stress and bounce back from setbacks.  Throughout the first three-quarters of My Cousin Vinny, Joe Pesci's Vinny suffers setback after setback. Yet each night he works hard and each morning he comes back to the courthouse to do battle for another day. 

Vinny didn't seem to know a lot of criminal procedure, but the man was a model of resilience.

We are each born with some measure of resilience. If your worldview tends to lean in the glass-half-empty direction, hope remains. A growing body of evidence indicates that we can learn resilience, or to "fall up" as Shawn Achor put it in an article on the Harvard Business Review website.

I'm working my way through Achor's terrific book, The Happiness Advantage, and have been recommending it to anyone who will listen. If you're not quite ready to start reading the book, but are a little curious about how you might learn resilience, you can check out Achor's excellent (and short - 2o min) presentation, The Happy Secret to Better Work:

So, check out the video and the book, and and see if working to cultivate resilience in your life also produces benefits in your practice.

It worked for Vinny Gambini.

Are Passwords the Weak Link in Your Firm's Security Chain?

Law firms spend a lot of time, energy and money trying to create a secure environment, both physically and digitally, for their clients' confidential information. Disciplinary bodies, such as the North Carolina State Bar, spend gobs of time sorting out the ethical implications of cloud computing and software-as-a-service for lawyers.

Then along comes an article like this.

PCMag.com ran a story - and a story on this theme pops up once a year or so - noting that the number one most used password employed by business users is "Password1". I can't imagine that law firm users are appreciably different when it comes to choosing passwords from other business users. In other words, while law firm IT folks and managing partners wring their hands about which level 5 data center is secure enough to serve as the digital fortress for the firm's client information, it's entirely possible that the average user in the firm is using a password so common and obvious that it is akin to leaving the front gate open and the drawbridge down.

I've written about passwords in general and LastPass (my favorite password manager) in particular at TechnoLawyer.

If you decide not to use a password manager but want to beef up your password procedures in your office, search around for articles like this one from the New York Times a few years ago that detail how to create strong passwords.

Sunday Evening Streaming: Miracle on 34th Street



It's a week until Christmas, and if you are not totally Christmased out, there's a few decent holiday flicks streaming on Netflix. My choice tonight is Miracle on 34th Street - the 1947 version with Maureen O'Hara and Natalie Wood.

An added bonus for lawyers: Miracle on 34th Street features one of the all-time great courtroom movie scenes when the Post Office delivers Santa's mail. Who can't summon up a little love for a movie where a lawyer saves Santa Claus?

Natalie Wood is adorable, Edmund Gwenn is a terrific Santa and if this scene with the little scared Dutch orphan missing her two front teeth doesn't make you smile, you're made of stone.

Saturday Stuff You May Have Missed

While you were busy working this week, you may have missed some interesting legal technology stuff on the web. Here are some links to get you caught up:

Wolfram Alpha is a cool search engine - but did you know you could use it to create a password, create a QR code, or tell you how much college tuition is going to cost in a few years? Check out 10 Fun and Interesting Things to to with Wolfram Alpha from 3 Geeks and a Law Blog.

There was an interesting article in Fast Company about Why In-Person Socializing is a Mandatory To Do Item. 

Brian Solis published a report called The State of the Blogosphere (hat tip: Kevin O'Keefe). Spoiler alert: blogging is a terrific way to increase your influence.

Why Siri (and Majel) Are Not the End of SEO for Lawyers

Siri, the iPhone's wonderful new digital assistant, has made some waves since bursting on the scene.

There are entire websites devoted to chronicling Siri's responses to weird questions; there was a bit of a kerfuffle over its apparently pro-life search results; and a few commentators have asserted that Siri is going to kill search engine optimization (SEO).

Respectfully, I disagree with that last bit. At least as it applies to lawyers.

Why?

Because, fundamentally, I think hiring a lawyer is more like researching an illness than looking for an ice cream cone.

Let me explain.

Part of the hub bub about Siri killing SEO comes from the fact that Siri doesn't search Google for answers. Instead it (I am having trouble not calling Siri "she") searches Yelp and other non-Google properties. So, if someone searches Siri for, say, a divorce lawyer, that person is going to get search returns based on an amalgam of location (using the phone's GPS) and social (sites that include user reviews of the service.)

So far, so good - it's easy to understand why this might be bad for Google, and in return bad for SEO. Leaving aside for the moment that Android's soon-to-be competitor to Siri (called Majel, a name you might find amusing if you have ever worn Spock ears) will undoubtedly continue to search the Goog, there is another reason why I believe Siri won't kill SEO.

It has to do with casualness.

You see, I love Yelp and other user review sites. When I travel, I frequently rely on the reviews and the location-aware app on my iPhone to find a good spot for breakfast, a coffee shop with free wifi or just an ice cream cone (because what else would one do in Ohio in the dead of winter?) I'm comfortable relying on the wisdom of crowds to find this kind of stuff, and for these small things (plus grocery stores, gas stations and the like) location is often an important decision factor.

The thing is, I'm pretty relaxed, pretty casual about finding ice cream cones and free wifi. If a coffee shop doesn't work out, I don't feel like my day - let alone my life- has been ruined. And therein lies the rub.

Most people with legal problems are not relaxed or casual about them. They are freaked out, overwhelmed and frightened. Just like people with medical problems. They feel like their lives could be ruined and sometimes their right. They want the best answers to their questions they can firm and they are quite likely to research on the internet (78% by one recent reckoning) to find the answer.

"Siri, who should I use for my lung transplant surgery?"

There is a Joe's Lung Transplant and Taqueria 0.9 miles from your location. It has two positive reviews.

Providing answers to those life-hanging-in-the-balance questions still seems like a pretty solid strategy for a lawyer. Whether through a blog or informative website or social media, giving folks valuable information when they desperately want it isn't going out of style just yet.

None of this is to say that location and mobile are not going to be very important for lawyers - figuring those things out early will undoubtedly provide a competitive advantage. But before you quit writing your legal blog or adding valuable content to your firm website, stop and ask yourself: are the clients who need your services casual and relaxed about their problems or are they worried to death?

If you're not sure, you can always ask Siri.

My New Favorite Free App: Caffeine for Mac OSX

We tend to spend most of our time focusing on the big stuff in life. I used to have a paralegal who was a tough as nails ex-Army guy fond of saying, "ya gotta fix what's killing ya first."

Despite the obvious, if a bit alarming, wisdom of this advice, sometimes it's the little things in life that matter most: a courteous driver letting you merge into hellish traffic; a hand-written thank you note; Jon Stewart and the 2012 Republican primaries.

That in mind, I am completely smitten with Lighthead Software's Caffeine app for Mac OSX (and not just because the name makes think longingly of my home away from home.)

Caffeine does one thing and does it simply and well (the app, that is - the stimulant does a host of delightful things): when you click on the little coffee cup icon in the menu bar, it prevents your Mac from going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. It is, in essence, a little master switch so you don't have to go digging around in System Preferences to set the Energy Saver.

It works beautifully for presentations and any other time that you don't want your Despair, Inc. screen saver popping up.

Free from the Mac App Store.

Put TripIt Pro in Your Travel Bag

I'm traveling today and tomorrow, heading up to Columbus, Ohio, to speak at the Ohio Bar Legal Technology Conference.

When I travel for business, I have a few tools that I heavily rely on. First among them is TripIt.

TripIt is a web-based application that helps keep even the perennially disorganized traveler on task - it provides a central place to store flight, hotel, rental car and other travel plans in a master itinerary available on your iPad, iPhone or Android phone. It also has an iCal feed so you can pipe the plans right into your Outlook or Google Calendar.

TripIt Pro ($49/year) ups the ante by adding in:

• instant alerts for flight delays and gate changes
• tracking the availability for flight refunds
• sharing the details of your trip with the folks who need to know where you are

The thing I love best about TripIt, though, is the hard edges: I don't have to worry whether I stored my information in my calendar or Evernote or Dropbox. I know definitively, if it relates to travel, all my key information is stored in TripIt. That alone is worth the price of the Pro admission.

If you fly at all, check out the free version of TripIt and if you fly more than say, six times per year, definitely consider stepping up to the Pro.

Happy trails.

Kindle Fire: Initial Impressions

It would make my technology life immeasurably easier if Apple, Google and Amazon would all just learn to get along. Imagine: hardware and software designed by Apple; search and apps provided by Google, available as iOS apps; and cloud storage of media by Amazon.

But alas, it's not to be.

In this world, Apple, Amazon and Google all compete to offer roughly the same set of products. As does Microsoft, for that matter, but most of their recent product offerings have been, shall we say, less than inspiring. See generally, Zune.

Competition is supposed to be good for consumers though, or so sayeth the Book of Adam Smith, 1:16. I'm an iPad fan, and have been since I got my greedy hands on my first iPad 1 last year. Most of the Android tablets have not even caused me to look twice in their direction. 

But last month, when Amazon released the Kindle Fire, their $199 tablet to throw into the mix, I wistfully gazed over the fence. Yesterday, my fence gazing ended as I came into possession of a slightly used Kindle Fire of my very own.

I'm planning on putting it through its paces over the next few weeks and will update more if there is more to say.

For now, though, I wanted to share my initial impressions.

Before I go further, I want to affirm my bona fides - I might be an Apple iPad fan, but I am also rooting for Amazon here. I love Amazon. The UPS guy is at my house so much I've started to be suspicious that my wife may be having an affair. Plus my dog keeps calling him "daddy", but that is another matter.

I am an Amazon Prime customer, I stream video from Amazon Instant Video over my Roku, and my wife and I love their Subscribe & Save feature - so much so that we had a package of Pepcid delivered yesterday in a box so small I couldn't even look the delivery guy in the face.

All of which is to say, I am an Amazon fan, too.

That settled, on to initial impressions.

Hardware

The case is nice; it is very solid feeling, heavy but not in an unpleasant way. The rubberized back is very nice to the touch. I miss the "home" button from the iPad, but that may just be a matter of time.

Size

This is a surprise to me, but I love the smaller form factor as compared to the iPad. I haven't done much with it yet, so web browsing and other functions may be inhibited by the smaller size, but just as a device to hold on and type with two thumbs, I really like it.

Set Up

Set up was pretty easy. I reset all the factory settings and entered my Amazon credentials and was off to the races. Unfortunately, the race didn't last long; shortly after connecting to my home wifi, the Kindle Fire mysteriously couldn't hold the signal or reconnect. A short examination of my million other devices confirmed the wifi was working fine.

A little poking around on the web and I found this wifi problem to fairly common. Following advice in the Kindle Forums, I rebooted my modem and all was well. A hiccup, to be sure, but that is life with a first generation product.

Operating System

The home screen and carousel are easy to navigate, but the set up send a very different message from the iPads moveable app icons. Whereas the iPad says, "customize me, put things where you want", the Kindle Fire says, "look at all the great books and movies you already bought from Amazon that you can use on your Fire".

The difference is not a small one. 

When the iPad first came out, the question on everybody's mind was, "is this a computer replacement?" (I think the answer is no, but that is outside the scope of this review.) By contrast, the Kindle Fire is clearly not a computer replacement; the question it raises is, "is the Fire an iPad replacement?"

My initial reaction is that the Fire is in no way an iPad replacement, but at less than half the price, that's probably to be expected. I'll keep playing with it and let you know how it goes. The recent New York Times article about the Fire was even less sanguine.

Until then, here's a little musical interlude for you on the wisdom of playing with fire generally:

Another Reason to Switch to Google Chrome

I'm heading to Ohio later this week to hit the Ohio State Bar Association Legal Tech Conference. While I'm there, one of the things I'll be speaking on is web browsers. I'll be covering some tips and tricks to customize your web browser - it's amazing what a difference just a few well chosen extensions can make to the way you interact with the web. I've written previously about that in Technolawyer.

Before you dig into extensions and apps and themes, though, there is another decision to make first: which browser to choose?

The third party browsers, Firefox and Chrome, are both - in my opinion - better options than the ones that come preloaded on computers, whether Safari (Mac) or Internet Explorer (Windows). I'm not alone in that assessment, this chart of browser market share tells the story at a glance:

As the graph shows, Internet Exporer has dramatically lost market share, first to Firefox and more recently to Chrome. Even more recently, Firefox is losing market share to Chrome, too, whose meteoric rise shows no sign of slowing down.

I can see why - there's a lot to like about Chrome. The extensions and apps available are great, the hooks into Google's services are slick and the whole thing just works really nicely. It's what got me to move away from Firfox a couple of years ago.

Now there is another reason to like Chrome: the security. According to an article in Forbes, the security firm Accuvant released a study that assesses the security merits of the top browsers. A lot of the terms involved will make your eyes cross - sandboxing, plugin security, not to mention an alphabet soup of acronyms. Since most lawyers I know are not that interested in the nitty gritty of browser security mechanics (nor, truth be told, am I), I'll cut to the chase: Accuvant's study concluded that Google Chrome is the most secure of the browsers.

Unsurprisingly, Firefox's director of engingeering shot back with some comments affirming Firefox's commitment to security. And it's probably worth noting that Google commissioned the study. My overall point here is not to bash Firefox - I still think it is a great browser.

The takeaway is that both Firefox or Chrome are superior choices to Internet Explorer. It's a closer call with Safari, but in my opinion, the vast array of extensions and plugins with Chrome and Firefox tilt the balance in that race, too.

Just because your machine came preloaded with Internet Explorer does not mean you are stuck with it. Branch out. Try Firefox or Chrome or both. Check out some apps and extensions. Start customizing your browser experience and the web will never look the same.

Sunday Evening Streaming: Terriers

If your're looking for something new to stream on Netflix tonight, check out Season 1 (and, alas, the only season) of Terriers - a subtle and slightly askew crime drama starring Donal Logue (hat tip to Jim Dedman for pointing me in the direction of this terrific show.)

Terriers is set in Ocean Beach, a beachfront San Diego neighborhood that makes for a pleasantly unusual setting for a gritty crime drama. There are only 13 episodes, though, so savor every one of them before retiring Terriers to the recesses of other great shows cancelled too soon, like Sports Night, Freak and Geeks and Firefly.

As an added bonus, Terriers has an awesome theme song called Gunfight Epiphany by Rob Duncan.

Enjoy.