By Jennifer Ellis, Esq.

When I became aware of a keyboard made specifically for lawyers, I found myself interested. I didn't think too much about it for the lawyers at my firm, Lowenthal & Abrams, PC,  I actually thought about whether it would be useful for our paralegals. As a result, I decided to buy a LegalBoard for one of our paralegals to use in her day-to-day document work. Then, while waiting for my order to ship, I was provided one of the LegalBoards for free in return for writing this review. This means our firm ended up with two of the LegalBoard keyboards.

I offered the free keyboard to Caroline McKernan, one of our paralegals. Caroline works for a medical malpractice/catastrophic injury attorney.

One Firm’s Assessment

After about a month, I asked Caroline what she thought about using the LegalBoard over that time - and this is what she told me:

• The keys feel nice to depress and aren’t too sticky or stiff. 
  • ( JE: When I asked another paralegal to try the keyboard, she too commented on its quality and how easy the keys are to use.)
• The bottom row is taller/more proud from the edge than I’m used to and as a result I sometimes find myself accidentally holding down the Ctrl button with the side of my hand. This is something that will change with time.
• A lot of the special legal functions are on the number pad, and so far I often forget to toggle off the special functions before I try and use it as a number pad (for dates, citations etc) which causes silly output issues. I have gotten more used to this the more I use it, but it still occasionally trips me up.
• Some of the legal functions are more geared toward appellate and/or federal work, and so are not of the greatest utility to me. This is because our cases aren't generally super brief-heavy. Paralegals and attorneys with brief-heavy work would find this very useful. 

Caroline's assessment, in the end, is that the keyboard has some useful features, but she doesn't think she would want to spend this amount of money on it. In other words, while Caroline liked the keyboard, she did not feel it would be worth the price for the work she does.

Quality Construction vs Time Savings

I have to agree that the cost of the keyboard is quite high when compared to standard keyboards (the LegalBoard retails for $65) and I am not sure that I believe that its cost is worth the potential time savings for the paralegals at our firm. But I can tell you that the keyboard is well constructed and solid, much more so than the average $25 device you’d find online or at your local big box store. If you produce documents that consistently use the specialized symbols that are common in some legal documents, you may well find that the value of having keys dedicated to these symbols contained within a well-constructed keyboard is worth the cost. If you are interested, I recommend that you do what my firm did: buy one LegalBoard and see what you think before you invest in new keyboards for everyone.

Jennifer Ellis is an ethics and legal malpractice attorney with the Philadelphia personal injury firm of Lowenthal & Abrams. She also manages the firm’s online presence. In addition, Jennifer serves as a law firm marketing consultant under the name Jennifer Ellis, JD. She assists lawyers with social media, websites, SEO, law firm technology and more. She is a nationally recognized speaker and writer on subjects including ethics, social media, law firm technology, law practice management, websites and marketing. Find Jennifer online at jlellis.net, lowenthalabrams.com and @jle_jd.

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One of the products that caught my attention at the 2017 show is a USB storage device that claims to be “the world’s first unlimited capacity USB drive,” called “Moore.” I’m still not sure which of the above categories it fits into yet.

If you’re like me, you probably have thousands of data files saved on various internal and external hard drives. Currently, between active files and backups, I have a half-dozen hard drives on the desk in my office with the ability to hold 12 TB of data. The idea of “unlimited” storage in a single device is very appealing. However, even if you’ve had zero physics courses in high school or college, you’re probably wondering how “unlimited” storage could be possible.

As shown at CES, the device itself looks like every other thumb drive you have ever used. It has the ability to store 64 GB of data on the device itself—the “infinite” storage comes in the form of cloud storage. So, you would have access to any of the unlimited amount of data that you have stored on the company’s cloud server as long as you have an Internet connection. Without an Internet connection, you’re limited to the 64 GB of data that Moore can store locally.

The promised innovation of “unlimited capacity” would come from how Moore manages the local files versus the files stored in the cloud. Moore promises to use “machine learning” (aka artificial intelligence) to “know” which files you are most likely to use and to have them available on the device. It will “learn,” over time, which files you use most often and make them available on the local device, shifting other files that you use less often back to the cloud. A representative at CES also said that Moore would also be able to learn to make other files that are related to the ones you access most often, available locally on the device.

While the company claims that you can have access to your files with or without an Internet connection, this is a bit of an oversell. Sure, you can access the locally-stored files without an Internet connection. As you probably guessed, you cannot access any of the cloud-stored files without an Internet connection. If you’re on an airplane and hadn’t planned ahead by storing specific files on the Moore USB thumb drive, you’d have to hope that Moore had learned enough about your file-using habits to have the files you really wanted to work on available on the device. If it didn’t, you’re out of luck accessing that file until you’re connected to the Internet again. One bonus of Moore over any other USB drive is that any changes you make to files stored on the Moore device will be synced with the versions stored in the cloud the next time you connect to the Internet.

What remains unclear, however, is how the initial decisions are made on which data to store locally and which get immediately shunted to the cloud.

Data stored on the company’s cloud servers is protected using AES 128 bit encryption. In transit between the cloud servers and the USB device, the data is protected using the HTTPS secure transfer protocol. The USB device itself also uses AES 128 bit encryption and can be password protected. (In a 2012 article, EE Times estimated that it would take a supercomputer over a billion years to check all the possible key combinations of AES 128 bit encryption.)

The device’s name is derived from “Moore’s Law,” in which Intel co-founder Gordon Moore observed that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since their invention and would likely continue for the foreseeable future. (Moore’s estimation actually proved to be a little low. The current rate is that transistors are doubling once every eighteen months.)

The product remains in development and is not yet available for retail purchase. Pricing has not yet been set for the device or monthly cloud storage. Depending on the final pricing, the device could be useful as an encrypted, password-protected, USB storage device to protect client-confidential information… the encrypted cloud storage would be a bonus.

A version of this article originally appeared on the American Bar Association, Law Practice Division's Law Technology Today webisite.

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USB flash drives have become so commonplace as to be forgettable. Now, however, Kingston Digital is introducing the largest capacity flash drive - and at 2TB of storage space the DataTraveler Ultimate GT can't be ignored. It boasts the ability to store up to 70 hours of 4K video. The device is made of a zinc-alloy metal casing for shock resistance. At about an inch, it's physically bigger than most flash drives, but still small enough to easily fit in your pocket. Retail pricing was not available. http://www.kingston.com

Thanks to Bob Ambrogi over at Lawsites for the heads-up about the LegalBoard - a computer keyboard customized for lawyers and legal drafting. In place of a 10-key pad that might be found on the right-hand side of a standard computer keyboard, LegalBoard has placed a customized keypad that includes characters and symbols commonly used in legal drafting, such as: Section; Paragraph; and Copyrights, as well as commonly used words like Plaintiff, Court, and Id, among other features. Pre-orders are available online for $65.00 at LegalKeyBoards.com.

Because many bags look alike, any accessory that makes luggage look different than the rest or that can help you get it back when that luggage goes missing is useful. A French company, Biblelib, is introducing a one-size-fits-all luggage cover that dresses up your suitcase, protects it from scuffs and dirt, includes an integrated QR code for tracking, and up to $500 of replacement insurance if the bag never makes it back to you. Covers are already available online for approximately $60.00.

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