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October 21, 2008 6:00 PM PDT

Defensive Computing for Lawyers

by Michael Horowitz
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Frank Hayes, writing in Computerworld, does a great job recounting how an Excel to PDF conversion resulted in Barclays Capital making a multi-million dollar mistake in their offering to buy part of Lehman Brothers. In and of itself, it's an interesting story, but Hayes concludes with this advice for using technology:

Keep it simple.
Don't make assumptions.
And never, ever trust tech more than you really have to.

Agreed.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

Michael Horowitz is an independent computer consultant and the author of several classes on Defensive Computing. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
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by BenjaminWright October 22, 2008 7:38 AM PDT
Similar problems happened in the world of paper, xerox machines and typewriters. A creditor lost millions of dollars because, sometime in the 1980s, a law firm secretary typed $92,885 on a mortgage for a ship, instead of $92,885,000. The mistake was replicated into scores of different paper documents, reviewed by many lawyers. No one caught the mistake until the ship owner went into bankruptcy. The Law of Electronic Commerce (Little Brown) Section 5.3, 1992 Supplement. --Ben
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by DrollTroll October 22, 2008 12:34 PM PDT
Dude, Defensive Computing is more then enough, we don't need no Defensive Xeroxing or Defensive Typing blogs!
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by tenc21 October 23, 2008 9:41 PM PDT
Keep it simple.
Don't make assumptions.
And never, ever trust [ tech] more than you really have to

Hey, these rules apply to lots of things; you can put in lots of words for "tech" and these rules still work. It's just common sense,. [eg, business plans, war strategy, voting surveys, romantic relationships, etc.]
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About Defensive Computing

Michael Horowitz is an independent computer consultant and the author of several classes on Defensive Computing. He views Defensive Computing as taking steps, when things are running well, to avoid or minimize the inevitable problems down the road. It's about educating yourself to the level where you can make your own intelligent decisions about keeping your computers and data happy and healthy. If you depend on computers, yet are on your own, without an IT department or nearby nerd, this blog's for you. His personal web site is michaelhorowitz.com.

He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.

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