I have been speaking to groups of lawyers for more than a decade and whenever I do, I poll the audience about their use of technology. While I have used e-mail more than 15 years, I didn’t generally ask audience members about their e-mail usage.

In the early days, my questions were about whether they were using computers at work at all, whether they had one on their desk and so on. Over time, the questions began to focus on whether their office computers were connected to each other, which word processor they were using, whether they were using their computer to manage billing. More recently, the typical questions are whether the firm is using software for case and document management, and how they’re using e-mail and the Internet.

As with any new tool, there is a learning curve. With a tool as dynamic as the Internet, there are new uses added virtually hourly. For many attorneys, the motivation to learn about e-mail was the first long-distance telephone bill when a child went off to college. While they wanted to keep in touch regularly, the expense of telephone calls could be prohibitive on top of tuition, books, room and board. Since their children were given access to electronic mail at school, the natural solution was for mom and dad to get e-mail at home.

When people have asked me how to motivate attorneys to use office applications, I have answered the trick is to find some annoying issue the attorney has to deal with that could be easily resolved using a computer. For example, it may be as simple as finding the opposing counsel’s phone number or reviewing the firm’s receivables. In the past, on the rare occasions when lawyers were given training on software applications, they usually were taught basic word processing. For those of us who never took a typing class in school, this was the wrong introduction to computers. For many attorneys, mastering e-mail at home made them more interested in using their office computer.

Once you’ve convinced the lawyers in your firm to begin using computers for more tasks, you must be ready to help them with new ideas to keep them eager to turn on the computer. Using the Internet, both for research and e-mail, is a good way to spur them on.

Before I lose too many readers, I will explain some of the basic terms, since I often find people don’t understand what the Internet is and what exactly is meant by electronic mail. The Internet today is primarily composed of the World Wide Web. There are other functions such as FTP, which is used for transferring files from one computer to another, but the tools for this have been built into browser software, enabling users to view material on the web. Most people don’t even realize they’re performing a separate function.

The Internet is the outgrowth of a computer network jointly used by the military and many universities doing research for the government. One component of the early system, ARPAnet, allowed people connected to the network to send messages to others on the network. The other aspect of this was the ability to view research papers and send documents to one another. In the early 1990s, several college students designed programs like Mosaic to make it easier for people to locate the information they needed. Many colleges began designing early search tools that became commercial products like Mosaic and Netscape Navigator. These, in combination with the move to Windows, made information on the web more accessible.

The introduction of Netscape Navigator and the U.S. government’s decision to allow individuals and commercial entities to obtain domain names or web addresses began the rush to the Internet. Browser software allowed computer novices to locate web pages. This was followed by search engines such as Digital’s Alta Vista and Yahoo, which allowed users to enter a few words related to a search and find many websites that included that word or words.

E-mail refers to the ability to send a message directly from a computer with or without attached files. Messages can be sent within a firm (internal e-mail) or to people anywhere in the world (external e-mail) or a combination of both with a single transmission.

If your firm doesn’t yet have access to e-mail (and there are more than you think), you should budget some time and money to implement the best infrastructure to handle your firm’s needs. To get started with e-mail, you need an Internet service provider, a web browser program and a connection to reach your service provider. The simplest way to connect to the Internet is an account with one of the more popular services such as America Online, AT&T WorldNet or Earthlink. These services cost about $20 a month.

There are benefits and tradeoffs with this route. The most popular e-mail providers usually include a specially designed system, used by millions of people, with access to technical support. The downside is you often have trouble getting connected because of the many people in your area dialling in at the same time. You also may end up with a cryptic e-mail address because preferred names were taken years ago. The other option is a local service provider, which often provides friendlier and more accessible technical support.

Larger firms have opted for partial or full T-1 connections to the Internet. These are both the fastest and most expensive. However, if you can amortize it over a large user base, it is the best choice. In the past few years, two other higher speed options have been making their way into small- and medium-sized law firms and home offices. A high-speed connection will dramatically change how you use the Internet. You may check your e-mail more frequently and do research on items you might not have bothered with on a slower connection. I often look at websites for product information or troubleshoot an issue while I’m on the phone with clients. With a dial-up connection, I listen to the client’s problem, hang up, do the research, call the client back and hope I found the right answer. With a high-speed connection, I can continue to do research on the problem while the client is on the phone.

In the past few years, two higher speed options have become available to home and small business users. DSL or digital subscriber lines can use existing telephone lines, but require a special setup from the telephone company along with a DSL modem. There are a number of issues to be aware of when considering DSL for either home or office. The most important issue is that to get the service at all, you must be physically near a phone company switching station. You also want to be aware there are different plans available with faster and slower speed connections.

Finally, even though you may be dealing with a salesperson from a DSL provider, in fact, there are three players involved who often give conflicting information. In addition to the DSL provider, there is a middle-level distributor, either Northpoint or Covad, and then the local telephone company. Even if you think you’re dealing directly with the local phone company, it still uses subcontractors in the process. As a result, DSL installations often are fraught with horror stories. For reasons I cannot understand, some of the sales and distributors of DSL services recently went out of business or are on the verge of declaring bankruptcy. Be sure to check the financial health of the company you’re considering using to set up and maintain your DSL service.

While writing this column, a client told me her firm’s DSL horror story. It prepaid its DSL provider for one year of service. When the law firm recently encountered access problems, it discovered the provider went out of business. To make matters worse, the provider had not paid the distributor or ultimate DSL provider. As a result, the firm was given the choice of paying again for a year’s worth of service or starting again with a new contract and all the problems associated with an initial setup. Other clients have had difficulty getting the various players on the same page to coordinate transferring their existing dial-up e-mail account to their new domain name account through a new service. This seems to be a bigger issue with transitions to DSL because of the number of companies involved in a single transaction and the financial condition of many of these companies.

The other high-speed, lower cost option is cable. Using the coaxial wires that connect to cable television services, local cable providers can connect customers to the Internet at substantially higher speeds than the dial-up connection and modem. The cost is about $40 monthly, but if you are getting research questions and e-mail answered twice as fast, it may be well worth the difference. Again, as with DSL, Internet cable access may not be available in your area. The main drawback of cable is you share a connection with neighbors or others in your office vicinity. As a result, the more people using the service, the slower the connection speed.

I have had a cable modem for about two years. The only time I notice a slight slowdown in accessing web pages or downloading e-mail or files is mid-afternoon when students come home from school. Even then, it is more than acceptable. In contrast to horror stories I read in the trade press and hear from clients, my service has rarely, if ever, been unavailable.

The last components are software to browse websites and a program to manage electronic mail messages. Many Internet service providers include these as part of their subscription. The two most popular browsers are Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Netscape’s Navigator (sometimes called Communicator in more recent versions). Both can be downloaded free (copied from their website to your computer’s hard drive). Of course, this may seem like a Catch-22 in that you need an Internet connection to get the software to access websites. Fortunately, most new computers come with Internet Explorer installed.

There are a number of choices for managing e-mail messages. Browsers have that capability, although they lack some of the helpful tools, such as rules found in programs designed specifically for e-mail. Rules let you tell your e-mail program how to handle specific messages before they clutter your In Box. For example, if you participate in a Listserv (a shared list based on a common interest such as intellectual property issues in New Jersey), you could set up a rule to move all messages from the list to a specific folder to review after dealing with client-related messages.

Probably the most popular e-mail program is Microsoft’s Outlook Express. Again, this often is pre-installed on newer computers and is relatively easy to learn and use. Eudora from Qualcomm, another popular option for smaller firms and home offices, has a few tools to enable you to automatically manage e-mail better than Outlook Express, but it is not free. Larger organizations may purchase programs like Outlook (sort of the older, more mature sibling of Outlook Express), Lotus Notes or Novell’s GroupWise.

Once you have the basic tools, consider how you are using them and how you might want to improve your use of them as you become more proficient. There are many resources available at the tip of your fingers if you know how to look for information on the web. The first step is to find a few search engines you like. A search engine is a site that regularly combs the Internet and essentially serves as an index of the words it finds on each site. Each search engine uses different criteria to determine which sites to include in the lists it creates in response to searches. You can type a word or phrase into the search field of the search engine and get a series of listings that include that word or words in relevance order with the sites that are most likely to match your needs at the top of the list.

Spend a little time looking at the helpful tips about how to phrase a search on the engines you regularly use. If you received training in law school on either Lexis or Westlaw, remember some of the tips you learned and use them wisely on the web. If you’re looking for recent case law concerning automobile accidents, remember the judge may have used the word car or auto rather than automobile.

Many sites that include court opinions will not show up in a search for auto accidents. Consider using your search engine to locate New Jersey case law and search within some of those sites. Additionally, one of the best-kept secrets about the Internet is that some of the best information costs money. This probably will be even truer in the coming years as we start to transition from first-generation dot-com companies, whose business models were never intended to make a profit, to the second generation, where they will not get investment funding without a sound business plan to make money.