FEBRUARY 27, 2024 – Recently our eight-year-old granddaughter asked my wife and me, “When you were young, did you have technology?”
I thought of several snarky responses, such as, “How old do you think we are?!” and not as defensively, “Yeah. The wheel and the lever.”
A less sarcastic reply to her innocent question might’ve been, “Uh huh. Land line telephones and typewriters but until years into our careers, no personal computers, no laptops, no mobile phones—not even flip phones—no internet or email.”
I remember the advent of all these technologies (besides land lines and typewriters). In fact, I remember specific details of their introductions.
Take the cell phone, for instance. I had a client who was being deposed in a case involving a business dispute. He was a few minutes late for the proceeding for which the rest of us—the court reporter, opposing counsel (who’d be taking the deposition), [1] and I—had already assembled in a conference room of the other lawyer’s office. When my client arrived, he apologized profusely on account of having lost his way. He would’ve been tardier, he explained, if he hadn’t been equipped with his new technological wonder—a “cellular” phone with which he’d been able to call the lawyer’s office receptionist for directions (GPS, Mapquest, Google Maps, etc. all were for future development).
Despite the litigation context of our assembly, people were quite cordial, and the deposing lawyer was accommodating of my client’s explanation. In fact, he went a step further and expressed genuine curiosity about the newfangled phone. My client was more than happy to show off his new toy and make a couple of demo calls to everyone’s amazement. Eventually, the court reporter reminded us of the purpose for our gathering.
* * *
A second technology “incident” with details etched into my long-term memory was a conversation I had with one of the two—or was it three?—“technology assistants” in the employ of Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly. One of said assistants had just finished hooking up my new desktop—a 286,[2] fresh out of the box. After he’d run the machine through its paces, he assured me that it was ready to use—once I’d completed a group training session, the next one being scheduled a couple of days out.
I asked him how the roll-out was going. Was everyone getting a computer even if it was unwanted? (Yes) Were lawyers adapting? (Some yes; some no) When I asked for details, the guy began to laugh. “Ah hah!” I said. “I detect an amusing story. Do tell.”
“The other side of your floor was part of last week’s rollout,” he said. “About half the lawyers attended the first training session, which was the next day. A while after the session and after everyone had returned to their offices, I got a call from J__________. He was fit to be tied, madder ‘n hell. He couldn’t get his computer to work and wanted to know how much the stupid machines were costing the firm and on and on.”
On one hand, I was a little surprised. J_________ was one of the calmest, nicest, most easy going lawyers in the whole firm. I just couldn’t picture him being upset. On the other hand, the object of his angst was . . . a computer.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I went straight down to his office. I could see the anger in his face. ‘I can’t get the damn thing to turn on,’ he said. ‘I’ve hit the on-off button another half dozen times since our phone call and still,’ nothing. I hit it a seventh time. It was still dark. I then got behind his machine to check connections, and that’s when I saw the problem. The power cord wasn’t even plugged into the wall socket. I plugged it in, then hit the on-off button and the machine lit up. ‘The problem, sir,’ I said, ‘was that your computer wasn’t plugged in.’
“Don’t tell him,” the tech assistant told me, “but I think he was kinda embarrassed.”
* * *
Yet a third distinct memory I have hearkens back to the same era as the “unplugged computer.” The chairman of my group was on about a three-month kick of holding monthly lunch meetings to talk about a mix of recent caselaw highlights, significant developments in our individual cases/transactions, and general matters applicable to our practice.
In the “general matters” column, the chairman mentioned the new computer roll-out and the need for everyone to “take the training.” Then came what in hindsight was le piece de resistance.
“Next,” he said, “I want to call your attention to new way of corresponding, both internally and eventually with people outside the firm. It’s called email. Trust me,” he said, with extra emphasis to underscore the importance of what he was about to say, “it’s going to be very wide spread. It will be absolutely critical to our practice.”
A lot of us rolled our eyes the same way we’d scoffed at the idea that every single lawyer—even the old codgers—would have (and eventually use) a brand new computer.
* * *
About two years after that meeting, I’d moved on to the corporate trust department at Norwest Bank. One matter that I’d inherited at the bank was a litigation trust. My old law firm—Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly—served as outside counsel, and one of the lawyers on the case, Jerry, had actually attended the above-referenced meeting at which the department chairman had proclaimed the future importance of email.
In the course of working with me on the litigation trust, Jerry suggested that our communication could be much faster and efficient if we used . . . email. I agreed, whereupon he said he’d mail over (from his office two blocks away) an agreement governing our email exchanges! Even at the time I thought it was classic lawyer overkill in the form of a multi-page, single-space, 10-font document. Pursuant to department protocol, I wasn’t allowed to sign it until it had been reviewed and approved by in-house counsel, which, I was told, would take about two-weeks to complete.
I decided it wasn’t worth the effort, and communicated with Jerry the old-fashioned way: by fax and land line telephone.
* * *
My favorite early technology story with firmly memorable details occurred inside the bank. Our department was served (allegedly) by an ever-growing number of technology personnel. My division preferred to work with outside vendors, who seemed quicker, better, and cheaper, but for certain matters, such as an e-note app for internal communication and the support for it, we were wholly dependent on the internal tech staff. It seemed as though both the app and the support malfunctioned more than they functioned, and it drove us insane. We referred to the “help desk” as the “helpless desk,” primarily because when the app was down, we couldn’t reach the “help desk,” and secondarily, because even when we called or stomped down to the techie lair, we heard nothing but nonsense.
Several of us took the matter to our boss, the department head, who asked the techies to remedy the situation. After a month of Sundays, the techies announced that they’d fixed the problem and wanted to gather managers for a demonstration of the new and improved system.
The presentation required two people: one to place the prepared clear-plastic pages of the demo outline on the overhead projector and a second person to read the outline aloud as we read along on the screen at the end of the conference room.
After some preliminary mumbo-jumbo, person number two said, “Now we’d like to run you through a demonstration so you can see how the new system will work. Let’s see . . . let’s suppose . . . Yeah! Let’s suppose . . . ” the guy said, faking spontaneity, “that for some reason, you can’t get on line. What you’d type into the field at the top of your desktop screen would be, ‘Can’t get online.’ You’d then simply send that online to the help desk.”
“Wait a sec!” I said, not bothering to raise my hand. “Isn’t that a really bad example?”
Everyone in the room—except the two techies—burst out laughing. Two month’s of work at a cost not to be disclosed, the “tech department” hadn’t fixed a damn thing. The “help desk” was as helpless as ever.
Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
[1] The Honorable James Gilbert, who was later appointed to the Minnesota Supreme Court.
[2]About a year later (1992) my wife and I thought we’d get way ahead of the curve and buy a Dell 386 for our first home computer. With tax it cost just over $3,000.
