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Legal IT Professionals welcomes new columnist
29 July 2010
Legal IT Professionals is proud to announce that Jan Berinstein has agreed to join the panel of colmnists. Jan Berinstein, Ph.D. runs her own software-training company, CompuSavvy Computer Training & Consulting, which caters to the legal profession. Over the past 15 years, she has trained staff at numerous law firms, government agencies, corporate legal departments, and various other organizations throughout California. Via her company, she teaches computer lab classes as well, most of which are tailored for lawyers, legal secretaries, and paralegals. She provides her training clients and her students with copious handouts that she writes herself.
The author of Formatting Legal Documents With Microsoft Word 2010 (May, 2010) and Formatting Legal Documents With Microsoft Office Word 2007 (May, 2009), Jan also works part-time as a legal word processor, a position she has held for more than 23 years.
Jan is a well-known figure in the legal community. She has given presentations on a variety of technical topics for LegalTech L.A., the Beverly Hills Bar Association, and several legal secretaries’ groups. Her blog, found at http://compusavvy.wordpress.com, offers article-length tips about Word and WordPerfect (among other computer-related subjects). The blog, which is regularly cited in TechnoLawyer’s BlawgWorld newsletter, was included in the American Bar Association’s “60 Sites in 60 Minutes 2010” list in March of 2010.
Jan has B.A. in political science from UCLA and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. In addition, she completed a two-year certificate program in journalism at UCLA Extension (UNEX) in the early 1990s and spent several years working as a freelance writer and copy editor.
From 1994 through approximately 2003, Jan taught UNEX’s flagship “Computers & the Legal Environment” class, as well as an “Internet Legal Research” course and a number of Word and WordPerfect seminars. She has been teaching “Computers for Adult Learners” classes via The Osher Institute for Lifelong Learning at UNEX since 2006.
Jan served as a contributing author on Laura Acklen’s Absolute Beginner’s Guide to WordPerfect 12 (Que, 2005) and as a technical editor on Ms. Acklen’s Absolute Beginner’s Guide to WordPerfect X3 (Que, 2006). In addition, Jan wrote a blurb about overrated software for the August/September 2003 issue of Law Office Computing. She is the administrator and webmistress of WordPerfect Universe (www.wpuniverse.com), a WordPerfect Office users’ help site.
Jan's first column can be expected the first week of August.
"A common vision for control and governance of email and documents that will satisfy legal requirements and address cost and feasibility concerns from the IT department is slowly emerging. The publication of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) has helped a great deal by codifying the common components that the legal department needs and that IT must provide." 
"The persistence of temporary backup files for four days presents obvious security and privacy issues. If such files contain sensitive, confidential, or otherwise privileged information, their existence can expose a law firm to malpractice risk, court sanctions, or other serious problems / penalties
"The UK Legal market is certainly not a leader in Social Networking but one or two firms are using some of the tools such as Linkedin, Blogs, Twitter and a couple are experimenting with Facebook as a consumer facing marketing tool. " 
