QUESTION: We’ve read an incredible number of articles about Year 2000 compliance. What should a law firm do to be sure we can function with our computer systems and software after the millennium? Our larger clients are also asking us about what steps we have taken to be in compliance. What do we need to tell them?

ANSWER: It is very difficult to sort the good information from the bad when there are so many articles being written about various aspects of Year 2000 compliance. There are a number of steps law firms should take to ensure they will be able to work, produce documents, transmit e-mail and faxes, enter time records and prepare bills, and enter ticklers and appointments in their case-management systems after Jan. 1, 2000.

Some recent articles paint a doom-and-gloom scenario about what will happen on the first working day of the new century. They forecast things like elevators not working because the chips that operate them haven’t been tested or updated, airplanes sitting on runways unable to take off because their flight plans can’t be followed, production delayed because suppliers can’t ship products to manufacturers, and financial markets unable to process trades, bringing the economy to a halt.

Year 2000 compliance already is a problem for large corporations and government agencies because they need to be able to work with records that expire after the new year. Imagine if the Social Security Administration were to issue checks to infants thinking they had just celebrated their 100th birthday!

Why is the Year 2000 a problem? In the dawning of the computer age (circa 1960), computer storage space and memory were expensive and entering data through punch cards was cumbersome. In designing early software programs, the year was represented with two digits rather than four to save time and space. For many years, this was a fine situation.

As we near the new century, however, this shortcut is coming back to haunt us all. There are no uniform ways of handling dates early in the next 100 years. Even in certifying their products are Y2K compliant, vendors are using different methods to ensure that dates in the first few years of the new century will be seen as more recent than dates at the end of this century. For example, Corel Corp., the maker of WordPerfect, has tested most of its products and has certified them as Y2K compliant in that they will interpret two-digit dates from 00 to 50 as within the 21st century (e.g., 2015) while dates from 51 to 99 will be assumed in the 20th century (e.g., 1955). Depending on the use of the dates, this could prove problematic. For more information about Corel’s compliance, check its web site at www.corel.ca.

Microsoft has an even more confusing interpretation of compliance. It classifies its products into five categories: compliant (which includes products that may require a patch or maintenance release to be compliant); compliant with minor issues (it’s not clear what these are or how minor they truly are); not compliant; testing yet to be completed; or will not test. To further confuse people, different versions of Microsoft products interpret the same dates inconsistently. For instance, in the Excel spreadsheet program, Version 5 will interpret a two-digit date lower than 20 as belonging to the 21st century and a date equal to 20 assigned to the 20th century, while Excel 97, Version 8 understands a two-digit year lower than 30 as part of the 21st century.

Start now

While the warnings may be overly pessimistic, putting your head in the proverbial sand and ignoring the issue will not make it go away and can leave you and your firm unable to continue to serve your clients in a little more than a year from now. For small- and medium-sized law firms, preparing for the Year 2000 requires testing and checking on several fronts.

The first set of issues focuses on your firm’s physical plant. Dell Computer’s Y2K Questions and Answers page on its web site, www.dell.com/year2000/faq/faq.htm, has a thorough list of questions outlining its efforts in assuring customers they are in compliance.

These questions provide a sense of the effort publicly held corporations must make to certify their systems will be able to continue as flawlessly as they do now.

Among the questions are:

“Are you seeking or intending to seek confirmation from your suppliers that they are addressing the risks associated with Year 2000 transition? When is such confirmation scheduled to be completed?”

“Have you examined your HVAC, security/access, elevators, PBX, firm and alarm systems, etc., and have you implemented a plan to upgrade or replace?”

“Will you be able to pay all your employees, produce financial statements, and conduct normal business, not directly related to supplying your customers with goods and services in the Year 2000?”

“Have you planned to conduct full systems tests on internal mission critical systems in 1998 or 1999?”

In the meantime, major corporations have been working on testing their systems for more than a year already. Recently, in fact, there was a test on Wall Street to see if brokers’ computers and those of the stock market could handle trades and transactions after Jan. 1, 2000. There were only a few minor glitches, but there’s still a year or so to remedy them.

In contrast, it has been my experience that law firms are not yet addressing the Year 2000 issue or are focusing on part of the issue and not dealing with the big picture. While you may not own your facility like Dell does, you should make sure your landlord is checking all the facilities in your office building. If you use a payroll service, you should verify that it has or will have its computers in compliance in time for the first payroll of 2000. Finally, and most important, you need to test every computer and software program in your office to ensure they will be able to continue to meet your firm’s needs.

System clock

From the reading I’ve done, it seems most hardware manufacturers did not address Y2K compatibility with the system clock, or BIOS, until early 1997. The BIOS is responsible for providing the basic information a computer needs to get started and contains one of the critical clocks used by personal computers. Generally, beginning with the Pentium 133 MHZ models, the BIOS was made Year 2000-aware. Some major manufacturers like Compaq, Dell and Gateway enable you to determine if your computers are OK by plugging in your serial number or ID onto their Y2K page of their web site.

If you have other brands, you also might want to check those manufacturers’ web sites, if available, to see if they have a system to allow checking for compatibility. If you bought a no-name computer or even a name-brand computer before 1997, you probably are in trouble with your hardware. For additional information about hardware-related issues, you might want to check the five-part series by InfoWorld, which is on its web site at www.infoworld.com/year2000.

Another aspect most people consider along with the hardware is the operating system software. Depending on the source, I have read that operating systems from DOS to Windows 3.1 through parts of Windows 95 will have problems crossing the century date. Windows 98 is Y2K compliant. Microsoft has a Year 2000 compliance guide on its web site at www.microsoft.com/y2k. Older versions of Novell NetWare also are known to have problems with 21st century dates. Again, the best sources are calling the vendor, your local dealer or checking the company’s web site on the Internet.

Another basic source are the newly issued requirements by the Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov. The SEC’s guidelines apply to all publicly held companies, but are good issues for consideration by companies of every size. IBM also has a very informative site that includes a detailed manual you can copy and print with Adobe Acrobat. The IBM Year 2000 Technical Support Center site is located at www.software.ibm.com/year2000.

Software considerations

Equally important to the smooth operation of any law office is the software in use. Fortunately, most word processors should be able to continue creating documents. For most firms, the main software tools are off-the-shelf products. If you are fortunate to have selected products from companies still in business, you can contact them or check their web sites.

In most law offices, the programs to test most thoroughly are time-and-billing programs, accounting programs, and data bases. With time-and-billing programs, you should make sure you can enter time, expenses, payments and process bills with dates in the next century. Similarly, with accounting programs, you want to ensure you can enter checks and receipts with Year 2000 dates and print reports with date ranges after Jan. 1, 2000.

Data bases can be trickier depending on what they automate. Case management systems, which essentially are custom data bases, should be tested more thoroughly. Enter appointments and “to do” items for two years from now and see how they are interpreted. Again, print reports with ranges of dates, check for date calculations such as 20 days from today, with today sometime in 2000. Home-grown applications based on data bases should be checked carefully as well.

There is an excellent article by Mark Jerome Yeary on the Netscape World web page at www.netscapeworld.com titled “How to Tell if you have a Year 2000 Problem: Step by Step.” It includes simple tests to see if your hardware and software will operate properly on the first day of January 2000. Before doing any testing, be sure to have several backups of your programs and data or, if you have the luxury, consider using a spare computer for the testing. Then, set the date and time to Dec. 31, 1999 at 11:59 p.m. Turn the computer off, wait a few minutes and turn it back on. If your system shows a date of 2000, your BIOS is OK doing a rollover test. If it shows a date of 1900 or 1980, you’ve got a problem.

The next test is using an arbitrary date like Jan. 3, 2000 or any other date after 1999. Set the date, turn off the computer, wait a few minutes, restart and see what date the computer thinks it is. This random date test is used to see if the real time clock inside the computer interprets dates correctly. Finally, you should test all the programs you use. Check for entries on days like Feb. 29, 2000 since, to add to the fun, 2000 is a leap year. (For trivia fans, the years 1800 and 1900 were not.)

Litigation angle

The last aspect of the Year 2000 issue that threatens the world’s economy is litigation. Many law firms have established Year 2000 task forces to assist clients with compliance. However, a number of firms have begun filing class-action suits against software and hardware vendors over older products.

Even though I am a lawyer, this is a troubling development. If vendors offer current products that will work correctly after 2000, I believe they should not be held responsible to customers who have chosen not to upgrade. The argument made by lawyers bringing these suits is that either the vendor should provide a Year 2000 fix to customers at no charge or they should have known and sold only products that would work in the future. This second argument is a difficult one to address. For example, should a vendor that began selling a product in 1987 have been expected to assume its customers still would be using that version without upgrading? How about 1997? When is it fair to expect a customer to purchase an upgrade? Unfortunately, it looks like these questions are going to be answered in the courtroom.

A recent article in The New York Times reported the filing of a case by J. Baker, Inc., a large clothing retailer seeking reimbursement from Andersen Consulting for a computer system that was installed almost 10 years ago, because the system is expected to malfunction in 2000. J. Baker, whose attorneys have taken the case on a contingent basis, have argued the retailer would have insisted in 1989, when the system was installed, that the system be ready for 2000 had the consultants brought up the subject. This suit raises some interesting arguments and questions concerning liability. Everyone has known about the new century. However, with the pace of hardware and software development over the past two decades, the question about when was it reasonable to worry about it is troublesome.

The other interesting lawsuit concerns Quicken, the most-popular check-writing program from Intuit Corp. The law firm Milberg Weiss, which specializes in class-action cases, filed a suit, Issokson v. Intuit Inc., in California. The suit alleged the on-line banking package of older versions of Quicken flash an error when someone tries to deal with dates on or after Jan. 1, 2000. The judge dismissed the suit, which was one of 10 similar suits against popular software companies including Symantec and Real World Corp., on the grounds there were no demonstrable damages yet to the plaintiffs because the program had not yet failed as a result of the millennium bug.

While Intuit declared a victory, it was a partial one at best. The judge gave the plaintiffs an opportunity to reword and refile the complaint. Some of the other lawsuits concerning Y2K bugs may successfully overcome the damages issue since they allege some damage already has occurred. How the legal issues play out could have a significant impact on the nation’s economy as we move into the next century.

For your own peace of mind, however, you should make sure the tools you have come to rely on in your own law office to service your clients are up to the test.

Carol L. Schlein is president of Law Office Systems, a Montclair-based training and consulting firm specializing in law firms. She formerly chaired the Computer and Technology Division of the ABA Law Practice Management Section. A lecturer for ICLE, she can be reached at (973) 746-6454 or carol@losinc.com.

Questions for Carol Schlein on law office technology may be faxed to New Jersey Lawyer at (732) 750-0010 or mailed to “Law Technology Questions,” New Jersey Lawyer, Koll Corporate Plaza, 485B Route 1, Suite 100, Iselin, N.J. 08830.