Robert Pirsig spent a good deal of time on his motorcycle in the 1970s contemplating the metaphysics of quality. In my own way, I’ve been on a similar quixotic mission for at least the past eight years — in search of “quality” in the e-discovery search space. This particular quest for the Holy Grail has involved seeking out the perfect search where one finds “just” highly relevant documents in response to a FRCP 34 document request,  or, as a matter of early case assessment, “just” the hot documents one needs to win the case. I’ve searched the world over for answers, and along the way decided that I had been asking the wrong question.
At one time, I thought I knew what the problem was, and what the information retrieval “task” should be to overcome the problem. The problem, I thought, was simply the naïve use of keywords. Or at least, the way lawyers naively think about keywords when going about the task of searching for electronic evidence. I think many lawyers still practice with the assumption that using simple keywords, without more, to find responsive ESI is sufficient to get them through the day in dealing with their e-discovery obligations. While this remains a problem, it is not in my view the problem. And the task is not simply to try to “beat Boolean” with other search methods.

e-Discovery Team - In Search of Quality: Is It Time for E-Discovery Search Process Quality Standards?

Washington, DC (February 1, 2011) — Legal publisher Fastcase and the District of Columbia Bar Association today announced a partnership that will provide all active and judicial members of the D.C. Bar with free access to the Washington, D.C. libraries in Fastcase’s comprehensive online legal research system.

Beginning February 1, 2011, more than 70,000 attorneys will receive free and unlimited access to one of the nation’s largest law libraries through the D.C. Bar website, www.dcbar.org. The service is unrestricted by time or number of transactions, and unlimited printing, reference assistance, and customer service are included for free.

The D.C. Bar is one of the nation’s largest bar associations, representing almost 10 percent of all attorneys in the United States. Its partnership with Fastcase reflects the Bar’s commitment to providing its members with outstanding services that enhance their practice.

“The D.C. Bar is excited to announce this new benefit and free resource for our members,” said Katherine Mazzaferri, Chief Executive Officer of the D.C. Bar. “Our members range from local solo and small firm attorneys to global law firm leaders, so offering free access to Fastcase is a valuable benefit that our entire membership can appreciate.”

Members will get free access to Fastcase’s D.C. law libraries, as well as the ability to subscribe individually to the Fastcase nationwide Premium subscription for $195 per member per year (the service normally costs $1,140 per year). Law firms can get even larger discounts by subscribing to Fastcase’s Enterprise Edition.

“A member benefit like this is difficult to value, but comparable services cost at least $2,000 per attorney per year, making Fastcase worth more than $140 million per year to members of the D.C. Bar,” said Ed Walters, Fastcase CEO. “Fastcase’s approach to research harnesses the power of smarter research tools. We can provide better service at high volumes, which makes partnerships like the D.C. Bar such an effective win-win proposition.”

With the addition of the D.C. Bar partnership, Fastcase now provides free premium legal research to more than 500,000 subscribers, in dozens of AmLaw 200 law firms, 20 state bar associations and dozens of voluntary bar associations and law schools.

“That makes Fastcase by far the largest legal research service outside of Westlaw and LexisNexis,” said Phil Rosenthal, Fastcase President. “Fastcase is larger than Loislaw and Bloomberg Law combined. And those numbers are paid subscribers only — they don’t include users of Fastcase’s award-winning, free mobile apps.”

Fastcase was founded 11 years ago by two attorneys seeking to democratize the law and build smarter tools for legal research. Fastcase has gained overwhelming support from state bar associations, many of which have upgraded to Fastcase from LexisNexis, Casemaker, and Versuslaw in the last year.

“We’re excited to work with the D.C. Bar,” said Rosenthal. “We are a D.C.-based company, and have spent countless hours practicing law on the same side of the desk as many of the D.C. Bar members, so we understand the importance of saving time, keeping costs competitive, and using the right tool for the job.”

Fastcase has gained very strong momentum in the legal research market in 2010. Fastcase was voted #1 in Law Technology News’s inaugural Customer Satisfaction Survey, finishing first in 7 out of 10 categories over traditional research providers Westlaw and LexisNexis. Fastcase’s free apps for iPhone and iPad have dominated the category, winning the prestigious New Product of the Year award from the American Association of Law Libraries. And Fastcase joined Apple, Google, Twitter, and others in the prestigious EContent 100 listing of companies that matter most in the digital economy.

About Fastcase

As the smarter alternative for legal research, Fastcase democratizes the law, making it more accessible to more people. Using patented software that combines the best of legal research with the best of Web search, Fastcase helps busy users sift through the clutter, ranking the best cases first and enabling the re-sorting of results to find answers fast. Founded in 1999, Fastcase has more than 500,000 subscribers from around the world. Fastcase is an American company based in Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.fastcase.com.

About The District of Columbia Bar

Created by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in 1972, the District of Columbia Bar is the second largest unified bar association in the United States. The D.C. Bar’s core functions, supported by member dues, are the registration of lawyers, operation of a lawyer disciplinary system, maintenance of a Clients’ Security Fund, and certain other administrative operations. The D.C. Bar serves over 95,000 member attorneys, which represents nearly 10 percent of all attorneys in the United States. For more information, visit www.dcbar.org.

Tech site Tested writes an informative piece on all the things you can do to avoid running your phone through a factory reset, but eventually comes around to noting that, through dumb luck, it’s occasionally unavoidable.”

Lifehacker – When and how to give your Android a clean wipe

• Once again someone in government fails to understand how to properly redact a PDF, but this time it’s a federal judge. Oops!
• A reviewer for Business Insider says that you should skip Acrobat X unless you really want to spend $199 (and that’s just for the upgrade). Still, the review was mostly positive. I’ve liked Acrobat X and I think it’s got some good stuff going for it, especially the OCR improvements.
• What can pizza menus teach us lawyers about cloud storage? Well, leave it to tech-savvy and folksy pragmatist Jim Calloway to give us the answer, along with some really useful tips.

PDF for Lawyers: Friday Roundup of Acrobat Tips

Such costs can start to accrue even before a complaint is filed; and, depending on the types of systems and data involved, the costs of preservation can mount quite quickly. This is particularly true for types of ESI that are not normally subject to long-term retention and that are not easy to preserve in a manner that will withstand attack from a knowledgeable adversary.”

New York Law Journal – Preservation: E-Discovery’s Oft-Overlooked Price Driver

Cross-platform TrueCrypt led the pack by a massive landslide with a hefty 73% of the vote. Following behind the winning-so-hard-it-hurts TrueCrypt victory, Disk Utility (Mac OS X) scooped up 8% of the votes. Following close behind Disk Utility were 7-zip (Windows) and GNU Privacy Guard(Cross-Platform) with 7% of the vote.”

Lifehacker – Best File Encryption Tool: TrueCrypt

Leor Exploration & Production LLC v. Aguiar is the name here given to a group of interrelated commercial litigation cases arising out of a multi-billion dollar oil and gas discovery. There were multiple claims and counter-claims, including fraud, breach of contract, and negligence. It also involved a bitter family rivalry. When Judges O’Sullivan and Seitz were shown clear and convincing evidence of what the individual defendant had done, they responded as they needed to do to protect the American legal system. They threw out his claims. Assuming this sanction order is upheld on appeal to the Eleventh Circuit, it will stand as the largest e-discovery sanction case in history.”

E-Discovery Team – ”Win-At-All-Costs” Litigation Using Illegal e-Discovery Leads to Dismissal of a Billion Dollar Case

The WD TV Live Hub is easily Western Digital’s most feature-packed streamer yet, with a 1TB HDD within for storing who knows what locally. There’s also an Ethernet socket for pulling down content via the web or your local network, and a pair of USB ports allow for storage expansion or transfers. Naturally, it’ll handle Netflix, YouTube, Pandora, Blockbuster on Demand and UPnP / DLNA streaming to your favorite game console, but the lack of inbuilt WiFi (it’s available via an optional adapter) puts a mild damper on an otherwise fantastic sounding product.”

Engadget – Western Digital stuffs 1TB HDD into Live Hub networked media streamer

Glympse fills a much needed niche in the location sharing world. Glympse offers you the ability to share your location, including not just the location at the moment you share it but your in-progress travel, with anyone for a limited window of time. Traveling to see a friend on the other side of the state and dinner hinges on your arrival? Send him a Glympse of your travel plans and he’ll be able to keep an eye, in real time, on your trek across the interstate.”

Lifehacker – Glympse Is a Real-Time and Private Location Sharing Tool

The warning is titled a “Global Virus Alert,” shows “Your PC may be in danger!” in bright red, and urges the user to “SEE THREAT DETAILS” and “GET PROTECTION.” The prompt is very poorly designed: it looks a lot like malware masquerading as an antivirus (in fact, we would say that newer fake antimalware prompts are more believable than ZoneAlarm’s warning).”

ARS Technica – ZoneAlarm caught using fake antivirus scare tactics

Resource Shelf – Cornell’s Legal Information Institute Partners with Nolo To Add New Content to Wex Legal Dictionary and Encyclopedia

Now, though, adding image and video capture to the touch makes even more sense. Apple’s FaceTime video chat software is Wi-Fi-only, and while 3G support would certainly make It more useful on the go, imbuing the iPod touch with the ability to make video calls greatly expands Apple’s addressable market with FaceTime, brings the touch into a whole new category and possibly makes it the first affordable, carrier-independent mass market videophone.”

Engadget – Switched On: FaceTime prepares for prime time

Beyond the warning pages, the actual malware looks like the real deal: it allows you to scan files, tells you when you’re behind on your updates, and enables you to change your security and privacy settings. Performing a scan results in the product finding malicious files, but of course it cannot delete them unless you update, which requires paying for the full version. Attempting to buy the product will open an HTML window that provides a useless “Safe Browsing Mode” with high-strength encryption. To top it all off, the rogue antivirus webpage looks awfully similar to the Microsoft Security Essentials webpage; even the awards received by MSE and a link to the Microsoft Malware Protection Center have been copied.

While the malware is a pretty good attempt, it’s not perfect. The goal is to get the user to download and install something, shelling out some cash in the process, which neither of the three browser vendors would ever recommend.”

ARS Technica: New malware detects browser, shows fake malware warning page