10 Things About Technology You Want To Know But Are Afraid To Ask—from the Small Firms Big Success CLE Luncheon Series

This is a report of the last Small Firms, Big Success presentation on May 9 covering Technology.

By Guest Blogger, William Burns

I attended the 10 Things About Technology You Want To Know But Are Afraid To Ask lunch seminar presented by Phil J. Shuey Esq. on May 9. He is the immediate past chair of the CBA Solo Small Firm Section. I was impressed by his credentials. He has been working in the area of computer technology since 1978, when they had those original huge office computers that few people seemed to be able to understand.

The seminar was pretty basic information but pretty valuable for people like me who are not computer savy. I came away with a lot of new helpful information. I have Windows 7 and it is working just fine for me for what I do. I was wondering if I should upgrade now to Windows 10. Mr. Shuey says he also uses Windows 7 and it is fine for him. He said Windows 10 does not have the problems of Windows 8, but doesn’t see a need to upgrade to it at this time, although he forsees that down the road it will be good to have 10 because at some point all the upgrades from Microsoft will only be available through 10. Also, he said that starting on July 29,2016 there will be a charge to upgrade to Windows 10. Right now it is free. He said that there is an online article through the solo small firm section that discusses Windows 7 vs Windows 10.

Mr. Shuey said that if we use social media as a marketing tool that we should be aware of the demographics of who we are trying to reach. It we are trying to reach out to generation Y (or maybe it was generation x) people that we should think about the type of social media they use. Facebook maybe down the list at 3^rd or 4^th of what they use. They may use Twitter and others ahead of that one. If you practice elder law, you may not want to market with any social media because many seniors will not use any social media and if they do, Facebook  may be the only one.

I hardly ever text and wondered why I would ever need to text. I learned that texting is good when trying to communicate with some in a meeting that you do not want to disturb with a phone call or if you just want to send someone a message and don’t want a conversation with them. Some people, particularly young ones, only communicate by text and texting is their way of talking on the phone, so it might be the only way I can communicate with them. Also, you may want to text, because it is the “IN” thing to do.

There was much discussion about the cloud and how secure data is when it is put on the cloud. The cloud is a mechanism to save data elsewhere in case there is a fire in the office and it destroys our computer or if our laptop gets lost or destroyed or if we are out of town or away somewhere, we can access data from the cloud. The cloud is on the web and almost anything on the web can be hacked into, but the cloud is relatively safe and cloud companies are generally good trustworthy people, however depending on how sensitive the data is, you may want to pay more and use a more secure cloud company.

Finally, I liked learning about something called “drop box”. I can put all my documents for a case in a drop box and I can give the password to it to my client, so he can access all the documents in my drop box just as easily as I can. This might be better for me and the client than me mailing or emailing documents every time to the client.

I wish the seminar was longer than 1 hour. I am sure I could have got much more helpful information.

William Burns has been an attorney in the Denver area since 1985. During that time, he has practiced primarily in the area of residential landlord /tenant law representing both landlords and tenants. Besides practicing in the area of landlord/tenant law, Mr. Burns has represented many Debtors in Chapter 7 Bankruptcy cases. He can be reached at williamfburns1235@comcast.net.