Ralph Losey
What are the best and worst things about your job?
The best part is the opportunity to help shape and create new law that promotes real justice. I also like to learn new things and use all types of computers and new software.
The worst is to observe injustices and stupidities and be unable to stop them; not to mention computer failures.
Who was the first lawyer you ever worked under? What is the most important lesson that you learnt from him/her?
Maurice Shams, a tax lawyer in a small law firm that I went to work for out of law school in 1980. He taught me to improve a document somehow every time you look at it.
If a seventeen year old came to you and asked you whether he/she should consider a career in law, what advice would you give?
That they should definitely consider it, especially if they like to think, write, and talk, and if they care about justice. It also helps to enjoy arguments. To go into it for the money is the wrong reason. They should go into sales if money is their motivator.
What was your first car? When did you buy it?
A Ford Mustang in 1966. Technically my mother owned it, but I considered it my car.
Which is your favorite restaurant?
If you are in the U.S. you might see a national chain that I like called Houstons . There is one in the small town where I live called Winter Park , Florida , which is just outside of Orlando , where I work.
What is the best book you read in the past year?
I liked Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success, I featured the ideas in his book in one of my blogs this year.
Where did you go on your last vacation?
Don’t remember. It’s been too long. But seriously, we went to the mountains of North Carolina. I live in Florida, which is itself a vacation paradise, but it is flat and hot. We like to get away to places where it is cool and hilly.
Which historical figure would you invite for dinner? If you could only ask one question of him/her, what would you ask?
Rabindranath Tagore. What does wisdom mean to him?
What is the most significant change that you would make to the law school curriculum?
We are adding “Electronic Discovery” classes now to the University of Florida School of Law where I teach a course every semester. It is starting to make big change in that students who take the course are much better prepared to practice law where 98% of all written evidence is digital, not paper. Lawyers in the U.S. are not keeping up with the rapid technological changes of the past twenty tears and this has created a crisis of competence on many levels. I suspect that India will face this same crises soon.
What is the most significant change that you would like to see in the legal industry in the next five years?
The Law must keep up with society in order to do its job as a guardian of truth and justice. Society is undergoing rapid, profound changes driven by technology and an explosion of information. Lawyers must keep up with these changes in order to remain relevant and do our job. We need to make the special efforts required to understand the new technologies and manage the vast, ever evolving forms of information. This is not easy and requires a new type of specialist, a lawyer that focuses on technology. Just as India is now a world leader in Technology, it is my hope that it will also soon become a world leader in technology law and lawyers.
(Ralph Losey is co-chair of the Electronic Discovery practice group at Akerman Senterfitt, a Florida-based law firm with offices in New York, Washington DC and Los Angeles. He is also an Adjunct
Professor at the University of Florida College of Law where he teaches
advanced e-discovery. He also writes the e-discovery Team Blog.)
