Legal Commentary

The National Law Journal reports that our Gulf Coast colleagues are making great use of their BlackBerries.

Here's an excerpt of the story on today's NLJ website, by staff reporter Vesna Jaksic:

A number of law firms and law schools in Louisiana said all their employees were safe after Hurricane Gustav, but didn't expect offices to reopen until later this week or next week.

Gustav ripped through Louisiana on Monday as a Category 2 hurricane, leading to an evacuation of about 2 million people and to hundreds of thousands of residences without power. But without the strength of 2005's Hurricane Katrina and with lessons learned from that storm, the legal system seemed to be functioning better this time around.

Courts, law firms and law schools in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and the vicinity implemented their emergency procedures before the storm and have been regularly posting updates on their Web sites. Backup computer servers were used to ensure that e-mail could still be used, lawyers relied on their BlackBerrys to continue communicating with clients, and law students could access their school's Web site for regular updates from their dean.

"Everyone is safe, everyone is sound, everyone is well and that's really the most important," Howard Shapiro, who heads the New Orleans office of New York's Proskauer Rose, said of his staff.

Shapiro, who was in Jackson, Miss., on Tuesday, said he was able to use the contact information his firm prepared ahead of the storm to ensure that all of the 23 employees in New Orleans were accounted for. The office, which relocated to a new downtown location in August, was still in lockdown mode Tuesday afternoon, but many lawyers worked from remote locations, he said.

"Nobody stopped working because our e-mail system and e-communication server never went down," Shapiro said. "All our client communications remained intact."

The  site of New Orleans' Stone Pigman Walther Wittmann said on Tuesday afternoon that its New Orleans and Baton Rouge offices were not damaged but will remain closed on Wednesday.

Stone Pigman's Nancy Claypool and Janine Sylvas' shop -- they are both AOK. James Zeller at Chaffee sez his firm's e-mail system is working like a charm. (See post below for other NoLa legal tech folks).

    Rest of the above story is here.