[keernan]

Back in 1977 I worked as a young lawyer in a firm of 10 which used a mimeograph machine in the basement to print (smelly) blue printed sheets of paper used for timesheets to record billing information. Case information was stored on index cards in different metal containers: one kept by file number; another kept alphabetically with multiple cards for every party to a case.

In 1978 I bought a Tandy Model I. In 1979 I joined a friend and we started our own firm. Before the end of 1980 our firm was using my Model I to track attorney time and send detailed billing statements to business clients. By 1984 Compaq computers had replaced every electric typewriter in my firm and were running billing software I had written together with detailed Wordperfect scripts I wrote that automated combining database lookups into legal forms.

No other firms had anything like it. Of course, that changed very rapidly. I have always regretted not having the balls to leave my law practice to commercialize my software - but I had to put food on the table. Nevertheless, computing has been the love of my life to this very day where, in retirement, all I do is tinker with my home network playing around with linux.