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Teach Lawyers Technology

My Uncle Joe worked for the New York City Fire Department. Born and raised in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, he retired as a Lieutenant of Rescue 1 in Manhattan on the Westside.

When I was a kid, my Uncle Joe had some career advice he never tired of telling me. “Take the test, Dougie,” he’d say. “Take the test.” Uncle Joe was telling me I should take the New York City Civil Service Exam. You couldn’t do better than that for benefits and job security.

May I suggest you take the test? Not the civil service exam, but the one I built below. It may move the needle on job security in your legal career.

Below you’ll find links to…

  • a sample license agreement or
  • a sample brief.

Inside each you’ll find text that looks good, that is, the formatting appears correct, but feels bad. By “feels bad” I mean the text is not automated. The paragraphs are not automatically numbered, so you cannot generate the Table of Contents.

Based on the competencies identified by the Legal Technology Core Competencies Certification Coalition (LTC4), I’ve buried some questions in Comments throughout the text to test your ability to provide competent representation to a client.

LTC4 certifies lawyers as competent in the use of technology to support their practice. The critical business processes supported by LTC4’s core competencies include document review, document revision and filing a brief or executing an agreement.

Full disclosure: I’ve been a director and officer of the LTC4 since its inception in 2014. The American Bar Association has redefined lawyers’ “duty of competence” to include “stay abreast of …relevant technology…” since 2013. Who knew? So brush up on Model Rule 1.1, see Comment 8.

And take the test!

Have questions or comments about the test? Have questions about LTC4? Like to learn more about LTC4 Certification? Let’s talk privately.

Here’s how it works.

  1. Launch the document of your choice: License Agreement or Brief.
  2. Enable editing and save the document to your PC.
  3. Open the Review Pane and follow the instructions in each of the Comments listed there.
  4. Save as you go.
  5. When asked to provide information about the stock prices, e.g., average price over time, launch the spreadsheet: Stock Prices. It will open in whatever spreadsheet program you use.
  6. To file the brief or to execute the license agreement, turn the Word doc into a PDF and save it to your PC.
  7. For the License Agreement only, launch the PDF: License Agreement Executed Signature Page. The executed Signature Page will open in whatever “viewer” program you use. Replace the blank Signature Page with the executed one and save the complete document to your PC.
  8. Last step: Click here to attach your work product — both Word doc and PDF — to an email and send it to me.

I’ll get back to you with my evaluation before the end of the following business day.

And if we do more business together, here’s where you would pay me with the debit/credit card(s) you use on Amazon.com:

Of course, any information you share with me is strictly confidential and I will never share it with anyone, ever.

Thanks.

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