Jim Calloway, The Daily Record Newswire
Google Glass likely isn’t on your firm’s radar right now. Most law firm partners have never heard of it. And the product won’t even be available to the public until 2014. It’s currently only in use by Google employees and a few thousand “explorers.”
Google Glass is worn like eyeglasses and allows the wearer to record and take pictures without others knowing, which has some people worried. After all, it’s a given that the technology will be misused in all manner of creative ways.
Some businesses have already announced that Google Glass will be banned from their locations. One of the first to announce the Glass ban was Seattle’s 5 Point Cafe. The restaurant got a fair amount of online publicity with the announcement. Its stated rationale of wanting to protect customers’ privacy seems rational to me. It’s true that most everyone in a restaurant these days is carrying a smart phone in his pocket or purse, but at least it’s usually clear when such a device is being used as a camera.
Search Engine Journal recently posted the “Top 10 Places that Have Banned Google Glass,” and law firms didn’t make the lineup. But I believe law firms will join what could quickly become a fairly long list of businesses that employ the ban.
Would you want a client or witness in your waiting room recording your other clients waiting for their appointments? How about the number of exposed documents that a person might walk by on the way to his appointment with a lawyer? What about the lawyer conferencing with the client? Your advice is what you sell to clients. Would you really want to give a client the ability to post the video of an entire consultation with you online?
And before you say, “Sure, why not?” remember that the video could easily be edited to take things out of context. A client could also compromise his legal matter by failing to secure a video taken in the lawyer’s office.
With many months still to go before the Google Glass launch, a website called Stop the Cyborgs has created free, downloadable Glass-ban signs in the tradition of the red no-smoking design and is selling printed stickers, T-shirts and posters with the “Glass-free” logo.
Yes, I’m often an early adopter of new technology, but when Google Glass is released to the public, I suspect many law firms will join the list of detractors.
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Jim Calloway is director of the Oklahoma Bar Association Management Assistance Program. He publishes the weblog Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips at http://jimcalloway.typepad.com.
