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Ross Ipsa Loquitur

By: dmc-admin//May 26, 2004//

Ross Ipsa Loquitur

By: dmc-admin//May 26, 2004//

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Part I of II

Prosser

Ross Kodner

It’s one thing to talk about the liberating advantages of mobile lawyering and all the gadgets and gizmos that can enable any success-driven lawyer to strive to achieve the 7×24 work week. Mobile lawyers, equipped with an army of electronics ranging from laptops to PDAs, smartphones, pagers, and the inevitable Jabra headset, are increasingly more apparent in courthouses, in airport lounges and at the table next you at Starbucks.

For those who are the perennial earners of their preferred airlines highest elite status levels, it’s well understood that life on the road, away from home, family, consistent broadband Net connections and something other than half bags of airline peanuts is rough. This is all about our quest for quality of life on the road — being a Platinum Elite traveler and somehow managing to have a life in the process.

Both of us are “recovering lawyers” turned legal technology consultants. Our practices take us literally weekly, if not sometimes daily to the far corners of North America and sometimes beyond. We probably spend more time in airport lounges than we do in our own homes. Our quest is to seek some sense of comfort — a way to have some semblance of a life while on the road. There are a collection of gadgets and tips that can really help inject some quality of life back into the wandering life of the legal road warrior.

The following are some of these tools and tips. Collectively, these digital versions of Prozac help us keep our sanity, not to mention that “can do” demeanor that makes for a successful legal technology consultant.

Tom’s Sanity Maintenance Tools and Tips:

1. Creative Nomad Jukebox holds 20 gigabytes of MP3s. I use this to keep annoying people from talking to me on planes. I know that a 43-year-old looks kinda goofy with a set of earphones on, but it is a life saver. I must have a sign on my forehead that says, “Hi, please tell me all about you and your family because I care.”

Now, it says, “Hey, I’m a RAD 43-year-old jamming to Barry Manilow. Leave me alone.” Just kidding about the Barry Manilow — kinda. Check out the Nomad in its various iterations at [www.americas.creative.com/products/category.asp?category=2&maincategory=2].

2. Sony SRS-T77 speakers are the perfect companion for the Jukebox. As I type in Oklahoma City, I am cranking “Angry” by Matchbox Twenty through this remarkable device. It weighs about 8 ounces, and is the size of two CD jewel cases stacked on top of one another. I can listen to my tunes in my hotel room and not look so goofy. These are a bit tough to find, but a Google search for Sony Speakers SRS-T77 should turn help you strike sonic gold.

3. I use a portable training lab that has eight Toshiba Portege 2000s. These laptops weigh 2.8 pounds and are about 3/4 of an inch thick. I think I’ve heard Ross refer to them as “svelte.” They sport power-frugal Intel Pentium III 750 mobile processors with built-in WiFi 802.11b wireless Ethernet networking. Very cool and light, especially important when you are lugging eight of them in a portable vault around the country. While I use a heavier Dell Inspiron 4150 for my production laptop, if I don’t need the extra horsepower, carrying the Portege 2000 is a dream.

4. Getting data back and forth between the eight laptops in my mobile training lab was all the incentive I needed to look into all the new devices to transfer data quickly, cheaply and above all, easily. Because the Toshiba Porteges didn’t have an internal CD-ROM drive, I had to look for alternatives. I started with a 5 gigabyte PC Card hard drive that I got for about $200 (both Toshiba and Kingston Technologies offer these devices). Can you believe that? Five gigs on a Type II PC Card crammed into all of about a 1/16 of an inch of thickness … and for just $200. The PC Card hard drive is great for installs and larger data transfer needs.
Then I got a 256 megabyte USB Flash Drive. This is one of those USB devices that is about the size of a set of nail clippers, and holds 256 megs of RAM. For WinME and above, you simply pop it onto the USB port and it gets registered as a “Drive” in “My Computer” in a couple seconds. Then you can you can copy data to and from it as you would with any hard drive, CD or floppy disk.

I had problems with the first two I bought. I went mail-order and cheap and paid for it. On my third time I took my laptop to CompUSA and told them I wasn’t leaving until they gave me one that I could see worked. Turns out their store brand at about $70 works great. Finally, the Porteges have an SD (Secure Digital) card slot that can handle up to 512 meg SD Cards. I have one of these chips to exchange data between them if needed. It amazes me to see the large amount of data that you can store on a device that is literally the size of a quarter.

5. For mouse control in tight spaces, I have a wired Atek optical mouse that is about the size of a small cigarette lighter. I tried some wireless mice but I found myself in too many situations where I was getting interference and erratic operation. I do carry a Targus wireless, optical mouse that is great when it works. I only wish I could always rely on it.

6. On the projector front, I was pleasantly surprised at the quality you can get for such a good price. I decided to go with a BenQ LPD projector that weighs about 3.8 pounds, resolution of 1024 x 768, 1100 lumens, and a crystal clear display image. They had a promotion for a free second lamp (a $400 value) and I paid about $2,400 for the projector which is about $1,700 today. Just a few years ago, that powerful a projector would have cost thousands more and would have weighed more than double the BenQ’s payload.

7. When it comes to carrying all this gear around, I insist on wheels. For too long I tilted to the left for a few days after returning from a trip. With the amount of gear that I carry, the shoulder pain was simply too much to not go with wheeled bags. My mainstay over the p
ast few years was a Targus bag that looked much like the ubiquitous wheeled carry-on suitcases so many travelers have these days. The problem was that it didn’t fit under an airplane seat. This meant that I had to try to get on the plane as early as possible to make sure I had room for my bag — gate checking your computer because there is no more room in the overhead bin is maddening.

I like to be the last person on the plane, so I recently switched to a couple briefcase-sized rolling laptop bags. When I need to carry a laptop and a projector, I use a Samsonite wheeled bag that has room for a laptop, projector, and all the accessories one needs for a day’s presentation. For some reason you can’t find it on the Samsonite Web site, but a Google search for “Samsonite 931175” will find plenty of vendors who sell this outstanding bag.

I have seen more people dragging this bag around airports than any other computer bag. If I am feeling a little stylish, I’m pulling my U.S. Luggage bag. This leather bag comes in a tan leather that takes some of the “geek” out of dragging a laptop around an airport, and can accommodate the amount of gear that most road warriors need. It truly stands out from all the other black, corduroy bags that I see and I have had dozens of people ask me where I got it. Details can be found at [www.usluggage.com/product/D529.htm].

Now, if only Verizon would release a new Palm-compatible successor to the “once the coolest, now a little clunky” Kyocera 7135 SmartPhone I will have all the toys I need, er, want, for at least the next few weeks.

Look for Ross’ tips in Part II, June 9. Ross Ipsa Loquitur runs the second and fourth Wednesday of each month.

Tom Rowe is an attorney and founding principal of Practice Management Partners, Inc. in Cary, North Carolina where he devotes his time assisting law firms and legal departments in the implementation of the Time Matters case management system. Tom is the former vice-president of sales for Data.TXT, Inc., the publishers of Time Matters case management software. He can be reached at [email protected].

Ross Kodner is also an attorney and founder/president of MicroLaw, Inc. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Ross spends his time consulting with law firms and legal departments continent-wide assisting them in integrating technology into their practices. He is also the developer of the widely known Paper LESS Office process. Ross can be reached at [email protected].

May 2004 ©2003 Ross Kodner/Tom Rowe, All Rights Reserved.

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