So I jumped at the opportunity to write a green piece for Law Technology News on my decision-making process when I bought my Prius.  Thanks so much to Monica Bay at ALM for the idea and opportunity.  To be honest, I couldn’t have had worse timing with the publication date.  2010 Priuses were recalled the same week for brake issues.

Nonetheless, take a look at the article, and we hope you might consider buying a hybrid for your next car.   If nothing else than to save a little dough.

Reprinted with permission from the February 1 issue of Law Technology News. (c) 2010 ALM Media Properties, LLC. Further duplication without permission is prohibited. All rights reserved.

Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not what Fox News would exactly label a lefty, tree-hugging, egghead liberal. True, I did watch Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and drank the Kool-Aid a bit, but not so much to completely eliminate Styrofoam and incandescent light bulbs from my life.

But I wanted a hybrid car, a low-fuel consumption vehicle that alternates between gas and battery power. In one fell swoop, I’d not only be transferring less money to unsavory foreign petrostates, but I’d also be reducing my carbon footprint. Regardless of your politics, data is data, and there’s a correlation between increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and historically increasing global temperatures.

I didn’t want just any hybrid, I wanted the Toyota Prius, with its great mileage. My family wasn’t completely sold on the idea, and I was plagued with nagging doubts. Compared to our minivan, it seemed small and unsafe. I always assumed that our next sedan would be bigger and more comfortable than our 2004 Acura TSX.

Read the full article online.

Chicago law firms, like the rest of the country’s businesses, are hopping on the “green” bandwagon.  The benefits of an environmentally friendly business can be both altruistic and economical, allowing firms to practice corporate responsibility while focusing on waste reduction and efficiency.  Whether attorneys start a recycling policy, decide to go paperless, or institute energy savings with lights and other appliances, firms are taking steps to reduce their ecological impact.

However, examining a firm’s computing needs can take the green initiative a step further.   A new way of running law firm software has arrived with a profoundly positive effect on the environment.  While traditional, installed software requires hardware and headaches, Software as a Service (SaaS) and the Cloud help decrease electricity consumption and reduce landfill materials considerably.

The package contained my new Scansnap 300M and some blank DVDs. Keeping them all in place were not peanuts, bubble wrap, or air pockets, but an enormously long coiled sheet of recycled paper.

I was happy since there was nothing to clean up. The kids were happy that we received a 20 foot paper snake in the mail. And then this morning, I received an email from Newegg. They wanted my opinions on the giant paper packing snake:

We have started testing an environmentally responsible, renewable, reusable and recyclable paper packaging material from Ranpak Corp. called FILLPAK TT®. As part of our commitment to our customers, we would like to offer you the opportunity to help us evaluate this new material by completing the questions and comments below.

Wow. Not only is Newegg moving in an environmentally responsible direction, they want to know what I think about it. Add that to their quick service and low prices, and it adds up to a company that clearly cares. And that’s what keeps us coming back.

Want to reduce your toll on the environment even more?  Consider a Software as a Service (SaaS) application for your firm’s business needs. SaaS solutions are designed so that many companies are tenants on the same computers, a concept known as “multitenancy.”

Take legal practice management software as an example.  A five-person firm will often maintain a server for Time Matters or Amicus Attorney, plus another computer as a backup server, and yet one more as a shared document server.

With a well-designed SaaS application, 300 such firms could share an environment of three computers (with isolated and protected data, of course).  If you do the math, that’s a lot of savings.  If the firms in the scenario described above each ran their own non-SaaS software, 300 firms using three computers apiece = 900 computers.

Each year, the power needed for a running computer generates one ton of airborn carbon dioxide.  That’s 900 tons of CO2 emissions.  And when these machines reach their life expectancy, that’s a lot of landfill.