Ernest Svenson aka "Ernie the Attorney": LexBlog Interviews
Business litigator Ernest Svenson of Svenson Law Firm has practiced law for more than 20 years and started blogging as Ernie the Attorney in 2002. Ernest presented two sessions at TechShow, including “Digital Workflow: Developing the Paperless Habit” and a session on Acrobat.
Kelliann Blazek: What is your interest in TechShow?
Ernest Svenson: I’ve been practicing law for 20 plus years. I’ve always liked technology. I wasn’t a techie in college. I was a philosophy major. But I just thought computers were kind of cool and had the potential to change the way we looked at things and worked, so I was always playing with them. I got a Mac in law school, the first one that came out in ’84...Now the problem is which tool do you use and how quickly will it grow. That’s a good problem to have.
KB: Can you talk a little about your blog?
ES: I started this blog in 2002. There wasn’t anyone I particularly wanted to talk to but I was interested in technology so I said, “Okay, I’ll try it.” And I did. There was a magistrate in federal court where I worked when I got out of law school that used to call me Ernie the Attorney and I always liked that because, even though I didn’t call myself Ernie, I just thought it was a good way of confusing and lowering that barrier that lawyers have when encountering people. If you tell them that you’re Ernie the Attorney they immediately kind of laugh and say, “You must be a cool guy.”
KB: What do you think is the next big thing, akin to blogging?
ES: The latest one is Foursquare. I’m on a podcast called This Week in Law with Denise Howell. One of the topics that keeps coming up are social media gaps and the fear people have of doing things. There’s a lot of fear about releasing too much information. When people first hear about Foursquare, they say, “Well, I don’t want people knowing where I am!” And you don’t have to. Then don’t say where you are and nobody will know. All these things are just tools and they’re all configurable. We have to get over some our social habits and one of the habits is that we’re afraid of new things because the first thing we think about it is what could go wrong.
KB: How do we get over that?
ES: Be like a kid. Just be exploratory. Try things out. If you play with some of these things, you’ll find they’re pretty cool. All these things are inevitable. You watch kids. If kids use them, it’s inevitable that other people will use them, too. Not in the same way, because kids use them in what adults regard as frivolous ways. It’s a tool. Taylor it and use it the way you want to use it. Why wouldn’t you try them? But I’m not a special person. I don’t have any super human powers. I was a philosophy major.
