Futurelawyer

Do You Know This Man?

Apparently, AI isn't all seeing and all knowing. We have all received bulk emails from LinkedIn suggesting people we might want to connect with, haven't we? Connections are what LinkedIn is all about, after all. So, I got a chuckle this morning when I got this email from LinkedIn, suggesting I might want to connect with this fellow named Richard Georges. I admit that self knowledge is a skill learned over many years, and I have spent 76 years getting to know myself. I have always followed Polonius' advice to his son, Laertes: "This above all, to thine own self be true". Know yourself, and you cannot then be false to any man, right? Oh well. I guess I will connect with myself today. At least, I know that I won't reject me.

Michael Wade Is Planning A SubStack Management Site.

"I will avoid inflicting arcane management theories but will pass along practical information that is easy to understand, and which can be put to immediate use."

What if you could read about decades of management wisdom in one place? If I had to pick someone to write it, it would be Michael Wade, who has been dispensing wisdom about management topics for some years. We follow each other, and have similar backgrounds as Army officers and lawyers who try to speak about modern topics in an understandable, common sense way. He is much smarter than I am, and I have learned from Execupundit about how organizations function in the real world. As he says in his introductory SubStack post, you don't have to write about arcane management theory. You can be wise and practical and make the concepts easy to understand. I respect that, and have tried to imitate it in my meanderings about Stoic philosophy at the FutureLawyer page. Congrats, Michael. I hope to be your first subscriber.

Facebook Friends - Turn On Two Factor Authentication - Do It Now.

Two Factor Authentication On Facebook. Every time a Facebook friend gets hacked, they have to send out messages to their real Facebook friends telling them, and advising them not to accept Friend requests from them. I always leave a message to them to turn on two factor authentication. It works by requiring an extra step to sign in on Facebook. You need to apply a code sent to your smartphone or other device in order to log on. Since the scammers don't have possession of your phone, they can't hack your account. Okay, it isn't foolproof, but it is the best thing you can do to make yourself a harder target. This article shows you how to turn it on. I am your Facebook friend, and I want to help you. I also am tired of posting messages about two factor authentication. Yes, it is cumbersome when you have to log in. But, once you log in on your devices, you can stay logged in, so the the inconvenience isn't every day. Of course, on a regular basis, you should log out of everything, turn off your machine or device, and re logon to all of your apps. But, that is a story for another day. Want to be safe, grasshopper? I have three words for you: TWO FACTOR AUTHENTICATION.

AI Memory - Kevin O'Keefe Gets It.

the-impact-of-memory-in-openais-chatgpt-elevating-your-conversations-with-ai/ Back in 2005, when Kevin O'Keefe introduced me to blogging, he knew intuitively that it would be huge for lawyers. In fact, it is now the biggest compendium of legal knowledge in the world, and he is the world's biggest aggregator of legal blogs. Then, when I was pooh-poohing Twitter as a method of lawyers reaching clients and the public, he was opining that it would be as big as legal blogging. He was right. I was wrong. Finally, however, we have jumped on the same tech train, and we both see generative AI as the biggest thing to hit human knowledge and lawyer productivity ever. He uses AI the same way that I do, and we both are using Chat GPT to pare initial research and writing tasks from hours to minutes. As for those who say lawyers can get into trouble using it, we say that AI product is just a starting point, and that editing and rewriting its content in the lawyer's voice, and checking the accuracy of its fact statements, are just as essential to its use. So, learn how to use Chat GPT, grasshopper, or be left in the dust. In this post, Kevin show how the newest AI feature, memory and style, can make AI work product even more specific to the lawyer using it. If Chat GPT makes a mistake, just let it know, and it will remember. It can also learn to mimic your legal style, and, over time, will become indistinguishable from the real thing.

 

The Twitter Files - True Journalism Isn't Dead Yet.

Michael Wade at Execupundit.com points out this interview with Michael Shellenberger, who, with the consent of Elon Musk, released the so-called Twitter files, which showed that Twitter, pre Musk, was engaged in a campaign to alter the public's perceptions to fit a political narrative. Such manipulation should bother free speech advocates, regardless of your political beliefs. Free speech is the cornerstone of our Republic. It should never be abused, if we want to keep it.

 

Nineteen Years And Counting.

First FutureLawyer Blog Post. While I began the FutureLawyer website in 1996, on a date lost to history, it occurred to me find out the date in 2005 when I converted the site to a daily blog, on the advice and counsel of my guru and friend, Kevin O'Keefe. I attended a web presentation he gave in Chicago early in 2005, in which he predicted the future of human and lawyer communications, using this new fangled thing called blogging. From that day forward, since my first blog post in August, 2005, I have written blog posts every day since; except for a few days I was recovering from open heart surgery in 2015. (And, I was bugging my wife and doctors for computer access as soon as I could speak). It has been a labor of love, and it is my feeble attempt to follow the advice of Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics to keep a daily journal. I suppose that is why the blog morphed, over the years, into a combination of legal tech, poetry, philosophy, and anything else that was on my mind on a particular day. Most amazing is that Typepad, my blogging environment of choice, has every post online and available. (17,559 of them). My plan is to post every day until I can't anymore. Blog on. 

Are You At Inbox Zero?

We all use email these days to practice our professions, learn things, keep up with the news, talk to colleagues, and a host of uses that makes email essential to our lives. Marketers and corporations know this, and inundate us with bulk mail to induce us to buy their products or services. However, they make it difficult to avoid, and every consumer is familiar with the unsubscribe gambit. Click the wrong box, and enter email hell. My favorite is the screen that says: "Are you certain?" One of the best features of GMail is that it will often put an unsubscribe box at the top of the email, which, when clicked, does the job for you. This avoids having to visit the marketer's website, and navigate the jungle of choices. So, if you no longer want a marketer's email, look for that box first. You can't get to Inbox zero if you can't cull the pretenders. 

ChatGPT For Google Email And Search - Solo Lawyer's BigLaw Weapon.

ChatGPT For Email. I have been having a lot of fun creating legal specific applications that leverage the power of Chat GPT to give my solo practice the power of an army of law clerks and paralegals. I have created databases that include all Florida case law, all Florida law found in statutes, regulations, and secondary sources, and, earlier today, a database permitting generative AI searches into every word ever written or published in my FutureLawyer blog, or any other social media site. CloudHQ, an application that I use to sync stuff between web based applications has created a ChatGPT search box that automatically does a Chatbot search of anything I look for in Google, and which creates intelligent emails based upon email that I receive in GMail. The possible applications of this technology are mind boggling, and I am just scratching the surface. All of this is possible with a $20 a month Chat GPT Plus subscription, and a few dollars for the Cloud HQ application. So, before you spend hundreds of dollars on somebody who promises you the moon, play with it yourself. You will be amazed at what you can accomplish with a little investment of your time and intellect. I cannot emphasize this too strongly. Learn this stuff of say goodbye to your law practice. I will likely be dead before that happens; but mark my words, those of you who are young enough to be looking a decades of law practice in the future. You must know this. 

Hi, I'm The FutureLawyer - I'm A Social Media Influencer.

So, if I write a blog about life, and law practice, and death, and nobody takes my advice, am I still a social media influencer? Ziggy and I have much in common; including the shoulder parrot.

Is There An Age Requirement For Profile Photos?

Is it illegal to use 20 year old photos as a Profile photo? We all want to put our best fact forward on Facebook and Social Media, right? Forget that you ever saw photos of me as an old man. We were all young once, right?