“What should I use?”
I was speaking to a new-to-Ontario lawyer audience in the semi-annual Professional Competence and Practice in Ontario series. My session covers confidentiality and using technology. When I started giving this session in the late Aughts, I focused on the tools that lawyers could use to mitigate the problems they might face. Increasingly, though, when I get a question about “what”, I try to refocus on “how” and “why”.
The question should be: “what am I trying to do?”
It’s not just law practice either. There is an internal team that asked for some information management insight. Their approach was essentially “we need to do document management and we’d prefer not to use SharePoint”. It’s a tool-focused approach. Instead of making assumptions that you even need a tool, how do you get people to ask “what am I trying to do?”
In the case of the man in the photo at the top, whose picture I creepily and stealthily took on the train, it depends. If he’s virtue signaling his device, keep it up. If he’s reading confidential information, perhaps hold the device lower. Or read it later. Or he could use a screen cover that makes shoulder surfing harder.
There are a world of options for many problems. Unless you choose one option first, and skip the determination of whether you need it or not.
Another change in my presentations: photos! I disagree with the “no PowerPoint” people but I have gotten away from using much text any more. Metaphors and images.
Where Do I Start?
A lawyer came up to me after the session and asked me that: where do I start?
In the research world, we might suggest that they start with certain resources. I’m perceived as someone with technology knowledge, if not expertise. I get the feeling that people think there are special resources for learning that people like me use.
But lawyers aren’t learning to become technologists any more than I am. They need to know how to use the tools they have available; they don’t need to master the domain in which those tools are developed. The best answer in most cases is to use a web search engine or your product manual or support web site.
And if you think that’s not what I do, you’re mistaken.
As I say, I’m working on a SharePoint knowledge management project. Actually, I’m still guessing that it is a KM project as I am going to meet with the team who is in information seeking mode. In any event, as I try to pull the strands of our discussion into something they can visualize, I keep running into SharePoint challenges:
- I want to use an Enterprise wiki but it needs more Web Part spaces (how do I add a web part slot?)
- I’m using a controlled vocabulary for tags but it’s not appearing in the Term Manager (and once I have terms in there, how do I edit them?)
- search isn’t retrieving content objects that have been in the system long enough to have been indexed (what gets searched in a team site?)
Each of these questions required answers. And unfortunately, our IT department’s SharePoint team is a shallow bench. While some of the solutions required IT’s involvement to create a workaround since they didn’t know how to configure the default behavior, other things I could implement myself. With knowledge scraped from the web.
Spoiler: the SharePoint project did end up being a bit of a KM project. And we also ended up deciding that the best route forward was to go back to the beginning and figure out what problem we were trying to solve.
I start where I expect any lawyer to start. Not with a huge background in the technology they’re using, but with a problem. What are you trying to do?
Once you have a problem identified, you can figure out better whether you need a tool or not, and if so, start to look at which one. Problem identification you can do on your own (how do I manage passwords, how do I ensure a lost device doesn’t expose information, how do I license technology products that support multi-factor authentication) and then you can start seeing if there is a tool to match.
Some lawyers make a wrong initial assumption, which is that if they are using technology to practice law, only technology can help them ensure confidentiality is preserved. There are many solutions and technology is only one of them.
Anti-virus is a good example. One lawyer asked about using anti-virus and what was best. I don’t think there is a best. It’s a tool and it will perform a function. Windows users can rely on Windows Defender. Or you can add antivirus to your device, although many of them will impact your security in other ways that you may not realize. But no matter what product you use, you still need to be smart.
Another example involves the roles on your computer: who is the administrator (or root user) on your computer or device? That account can make all sorts of changes to your settings and software. Sure you can harden your computer, if you know how. But even if you don’t, you should be thinking about what it means when a dialog pops up and tells you something is being installed.
We don’t tend to do legal research in a vacuum. We start with a problem and try to find an answer to it. The same thing works with technology.
What Do I Use?
My old approach – particularly when I was knee deep in technology at the American Bar Association – was to have a ready list of current products that I could offer to those needing a starting list. I recognize now that, while that might be helpful and buff my appearance as an expert, it’s not a very solid approach.
I’m now much more skeptical of people who tell me that any given technology is the best for whatever purpose. First, it assumes they know what purpose I intend to put it to, and second, it assumes that they know every tool that could potentially perform a function.
Neither is likely to be the case. And so I don’t make those assumptions myself any longer about how other people need to solve their problems.
Here’s another example: password managers. Where to start? What to use? I’m particularly cautious. I use offline password managers that reside on my devices. But it’s not because I’m resistant to using cloud tools (read my book). I synchronize my closed password file to the cloud so I can get the latest on any device.
It’s not the best way; it’s just my way. You may be concerned about losing your phone. You may prefer a browser-centric practice approach. You may not use multiple devices or have many passwords. You may prefer encrypted Microsoft Office files.
You use something that solves your problem.
What’s Your Problem?
One thing that is clear to me each time I give this session is that lawyers are not aware of the risks they take using technology. I find that, rather than talking about details and products, it’s better to shine light on threats. Do you know what you’re sharing? Do you know how your tools work?
Are you always aware when the person sitting behind you on a train might be looking at your device’s screen?
It’s fun to have done a regular educational seminar for more than a decade and see it evolve. I wish I had reached this point faster but that’s part of growth. It can be hard to know – when you’re expert adjacent – to step back and ask questions. This is especially true when lawyer CLEs on technology tend to be productivity, action-focused. And when internal teams want a solution like SharePoint, if only as a beacon of hope if not an actual answer to a problem.
Lawyers who are aware of the challenges can adapt to them as they see fit, and as fits their practice. Otherwise they’ll have technology failures like corporate SharePoint implementations, where the tool drives the choices rather than the other way around.