A blog? Really? Is that wise?

2006 was going to be a year of many firsts. Among them was to be my entry to the world of blogging.

So much for my grand plans. But better late than never.

What stopped me, and what has made me consider starting again, was the realisation people actually went to benetbrandreth.com. But not friends, oh no! Strangers. Worse than that - potential employers of my services. After all that means that these posts are not just little messages in a bottle sent off into the ether never to be heard of again. They could have real-world implications. Naturally, it gives one pause...

And frankly I have been left pretty bemused by the whole blogging experience. Why would anyone want to read the unregulated, unedited ramblings of nonentities? No-one would. Or at least no-one for whom time is a precious, precious commodity that is slipping away faster than booze at the end of a hard day. Certainly there was no way that I wanted to add to the mass of burbling on the interweb. If I was to write anything for public consumption it would be because it was worth reading not just because I wanted to get it out.

Why then do I think I am safe to start now?

Not all blogs are simply idiots gibbering into the ether. There are some worth reading - those that bring some particular expertise out into the open Michael Fumento or which, by dint of their quirkiness Memepool, offer some particular outlet for distraction. My blog is not intended to be the latter but it might manage to be the former. In particular I think it might have some insight to offer into how technology can be harnessed by lawyers to make their lives easier and their work more effective.

You might think that most lawyers would be pretty up to speed on modern technology. You would be wrong. But I am based in a set of Intellectual Property barristers [www.11southsquare.com]. A large part of our expertise is patent law and cases that concern technical matters like computer contract disputes. Indeed many members of chambers have PhD's in some scientific discipline or another. But more than that - a lot of us are geeks. I for one revel in the role of early-adopter. But I don't think this is typical of barristers. I suspect most still shy from Maplins with real concern. Perhaps an indication of the general level of computer knowledge is given by Bar Council publications on the use of technology by barristers that include the most basic lessons on how to use Microsoft Word.

So there seems to be some potential interest in the musings of a barrister who is actively trying to use technology to make his work easier and better.

Now enter the Tablet PC. Long have I wanted one. I love digital information. The ease with which it is stored, transferred and disseminated. You can search digital information so much more comprehensively. You can cross-reference information so much more easily. You can order it and control it in so many ways. Best of all there are no piles of papers mounting on your desk but elegant boxes tucked away behind a cupboard humming with knowledge.

Yet certain kinds of information are difficult to digitise - hand-written notes, post-it notes that you stick on the witness statements at the appropriate paragraph, underlinings on the patent specification. Furthermore, certain kinds of information are hard to record except by hand-writing, post-it notes or underlining - an extempore judgment, a thought that comes to you as you are reading the witness statement again on the tube home, a response from an expert witness in cross-examination. What I wanted was the ability to take hand-written notes, on documents if necessary, and be able to treat them as handwriting. The Tablet PC seemed to promise this.

So I bought one. It’s an IBM Lenovo X41 with a 40Gb hard drive, 512Mb memory, 1.5GHz Pentium M processor. This blog was intended to be about me learning how to use it to maximum effect. Of course I was distracted. By actual work. But the lessons I learned are still worth disseminating. So if you're interested stay tuned...