It did make me think though (as well as Professor Bassett’s email) about how much the outage would affect others. The Orlando Sentinel article made a point, that nobody memorizes phone numbers anymore. I know I haven’t *ever* purposely memorized a number in my adult life. The only phone numbers I have memorized are either ones I use so frequently that it would be impossible to not have them, or the ones my mother drilled into my head as a kid so I would know how to get a hold of her if I got lost. I’ve never had to use a paper map, either. Scott Maxwell is right that most of Gen Z would have no clue how to use one.
I think many law firms would greatly struggle with an outage like that if it were on a bigger scale than the AT&T outage. While the firm I work for is comparatively back in the stone ages with how the firm runs (We still have a card catalog and I still get paid with paper checks for reference), we still would be in trouble if we lost the internet. We couldn’t get our clients’ emails, couldn’t get to the digital files, couldn’t write up our documents.
That’s just for the firm I work at, which doesn’t use NEARLY as much technology as others. Most firms today couldn’t do any research, couldn’t use their firm management software, couldn’t pay anyone, or receive payments, and more. I don’t know if anyone could even access their backups (though I don’t know if those are locally stored or not, I don’t quite know how those work.)
Is there any way to really prepare for that possibility, while still keeping up with modern technology? I assume there must be a way, but I’m not sure what the solution would be there. Maybe some form of local storage, but there’s no way most people would have enough storage to hold everything. Any thoughts?
I think many law firms would greatly struggle with an outage like that if it were on a bigger scale than the AT&T outage. While the firm I work for is comparatively back in the stone ages with how the firm runs (We still have a card catalog and I still get paid with paper checks for reference), we still would be in trouble if we lost the internet. We couldn’t get our clients’ emails, couldn’t get to the digital files, couldn’t write up our documents.
That’s just for the firm I work at, which doesn’t use NEARLY as much technology as others. Most firms today couldn’t do any research, couldn’t use their firm management software, couldn’t pay anyone, or receive payments, and more. I don’t know if anyone could even access their backups (though I don’t know if those are locally stored or not, I don’t quite know how those work.)
Is there any way to really prepare for that possibility, while still keeping up with modern technology? I assume there must be a way, but I’m not sure what the solution would be there. Maybe some form of local storage, but there’s no way most people would have enough storage to hold everything. Any thoughts?
Hi Katie,
ReplyDeleteI had a similar thought last week while also experiencing the cellular network loss. I couldn't reach people for a good portion of the day, as I had no wifi, and I thought about all the people, lawyers and other professionals, who must have experienced a lot of frustration that day. As a society, we have become very dependent on being able to use our phones for calling, texting, emailing, and doing research without having to rely on wifi. Losing cellular ability means losing all of that, which can be detrimental in some lines of work. Clients can't reach their lawyer, lawyers can't reach their staff, and communications get delayed and lost. Thankfully that outage only lasted a few hours, but I think it hopefully got lots of people thinking (if they hadn't already) about backup plans in the case of a larger, more disruptive outage.