Dennis Kennedy

A bunch of us have been talking and writing about "green legal technology," which refers to using law office technology in more energy-saving and ecologically-sensitive ways, i.e., green computing.

From turning your computers off to better power management to server virtualization to software as a service and hosted applications, many things are happening in this space. It's definitely become one consideration that should be on your list as you consider your technology options inside and outside your office. I recently saw a blog post about a new computer bag that was covered with solar cells so you could charge your notebook computer and accessories. There are philosophical and economic rationales for green computing.

As an interesting (at least to me) aside, I was doing some research for a new page on green legal technology resources I want to add to my website (and for a future Strongest Links column Tom Mighell and I have been discussing) when I found, to my surprise that a Google search on "green legal technology" had zero hits. I believe that I've officially coined a new term.

It's funny how Google has changed the landscape for neologisms. If you think up a new term and "google it," and you get no results, you really do feel like you've coined a new term.

Admittedly, I'm no Denise Howell, who coined the word "blawg," but I've come up with the occasional new term over the years, at least according to my Google searches at the time the terms appeared to me in a burst of light.

Who can forget my classic "Blawg City USA"? I really liked my terms "fourth generation legal technology" and "4G legal technology," both homages to John Robb, and subjects that I want to revisit and write about in depth one day soon.

In the past year, I hit on the new terms "electronic discovery 2.0," "edd 2.0," and "litigation 2.0," quite a run. I was the #1 result on "e-discovery 2.0" until recently. I'm not sure that I coined that one last summer too, because I don't like to use the term e-discovery, but the reference in this post suggests that maybe I did. While I wish I would have coined "Law 2.0," I first saw that from The Wired GC, so I like to give him credit whenever I can.

Ah, if as a result I could amass even 1/10 the fortune Denise Howell has earned from coining the word "blawg" . . . .

Yes, that's an inside joke that I'm sure Denise will appreciate (listen to an earlier audio version of same joke).

I suspect that of all my clever new terms (blawgilicious, blawgadelic, the list goes on . . . unfortunately), it'll be Blawg City USA that I'll be most known for. The other ones seem to get thrown into the conversation (a good thing) on a regular basis and it'll be easy to forget where they came from - or, maybe not, thanks to Google's servers. See Mark Cuban's interesting take on that point. It's the conversations that the terms start that matters most.

I seem to have let this post drift away from "green legal technology," but I'll follow-up on that idea soon. "Green legal tech"? Just checked - I got that one too. What new terms should you be coining?

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Learn more about legal technology at Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Central page.

Technorati tags: legal technology electronic discovery 2.0 Law2.0 green legal technology green computing litigation 2.0