I've been going by the online screen name "LawTechGuy" for a while now. I remember coming up with it in late 2002, when I was a paralegal at a small commercial litigation firm in Chicago. This was the first company after college that I worked for, and I had just recently been promoted from an office clerk (someone who made copies, managed supplies, ran errands, delivered packages, filed briefs in court, and various other routine tasks) which I had been in for a little over two years. The very first case I worked on as a paralegal was a ground-breaker for the firm because it was the first one that dealt with large quantities of electronic documents, for which we had used a vendor to process in a way that could be loaded into a searchable database called Summation. All of the paralegals had some basic training in how to use Summation, but it wasn't until we really started trying to use it to the fullest that we ran into issue after issue. I think by the end of 2002, every person in Summation's tech support department knew my name :P
For whatever reason, I became the firm's resident "guru" on Summation since I had so much interaction with it, and I was constantly answering questions and assisting the other paralegals and attorneys with how to use the database. That was when I really discovered what the field of "litigation support" was, and I set my mind to trying to learn as much about the integration of law and technology as possible. I've since moved on from the firm, initially spending a year at a service bureau that processed paper to convert to electronic images compatible with the database, and then landing an opportunity with a computer forensics firm, where I am today.
Now I deal with managing our company's client workflow and serving in a consulting role to attorneys who need help navigating digital discovery in their cases. Our company specializes in trade secret misappropriation cases, and many of the projects we work on involve tracking computer usage activity to determine if, when, how, and what confidential or proprietary corporate data may have been taken and disseminated to competitors or otherwise used in an unauthorized manner.
While I originally envisioned "lawtechguy" as a name to use in professional circles, I ended up relegating it to something I would use in my personal hobby: role-playing video games. I've used it as a screen name for numerous gaming forums, and since it was the name I was going by when I started playing Final Fantasy XI, I kept it to identify myself when I started recording and posting cutscene videos on my other blog.
Fast forward to 2009 -- seeing as I'm somewhat vain and like to know how much popularity my videos get, I did a Google search earlier this year for "lawtechguy". Imagine my shock when I discovered a website, www.lawtechguy.com Okay, okay... I know it's my own damn fault for never registering the domain in the first place, but really, c'mon! Anyone who had done a web search up until the middle of this year would have seen all the references to my gaming activities. And my FFXI cutscenes blog is still the #1 site that comes up on Google.
As I mentioned, I don't even use this name in a professional capacity anymore since a lot of people in corporate America don't necessarily look too favorably on those who play games in their spare time. So why then would someone else who was trying to establish a professional website decide to utilize a name that up 'til now has clearly been associated with gaming? Beats me.
In any case, I doubt I'll really use this space for much of anything after this except maybe a pointless rambling here and there, but I feel a bit better now for venting to everyone.
End rant.
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