My name is Barry Bayer. I live and work in the unfashionable Southern Suburbs of Chicago, and have been practicing law since 1969. I have been writing about personal computers, generally, since I bought my first Apple ][ in 1979, and computers and other technology for lawyers, specifically, since 1987. My law office writing has mostly appeared in local and regionally legal newspapers, in the form of a weekly column, co-authored, over the years with Mark Welch, a Bay Area journalist, lawyer, teacher and Internet media expert — Mark’s latest Web work can be seen at www.welchenglish.com — and Benjamin Cohen, a Chicago area lawyer and early CP/M enthusiast. (What’s CP/M? That’s a cue for an historical essay, but I don’t have time at the moment.) Back columns are available on Westlaw in the lawprac file, and the subject matter for the last hundred columns or can be viewed from www.lawtechreview.com’s main page, here.
Although I can say a lot in my weekly column, 1200 words can be limiting. A blog will give me space to add things that would otherwise end up in the bit bucket overflow, and to touch subjects that just didn’t find room in the columns. There is, of course, another reason: I have been writing about blogs, and encouraging lawyers to join into the great conversation, for more than two years. I’m already paying for a Web site. WordPress blogging software is free. (WordPress is available under the GPL, the GNU General Public License.) Why not give it a try? (Who knows? My WordPress experiences will undoubtedly end up in a review, in the regular columns or elsewhere. And, of course, I’ll discuss them here.)
Of course, I won’t limit this Blog to Law Tech. There’s a lot happening in Technology Law, and what good is a Blog if you can’t get personal once in awhile and a little on politics, some related to Law Tech and some not, should complete the balance. As with everything else on the Web, this Blog is a work in progress. I’m working on the blogrolls, a little fancier appearance, and RSS feed and so on.
The main purpose of this Blog, though, will be to supply solid information about technology that lawyers might be interested in using. I hope it will be useful and entertaining.
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