Black '95 Focuses on Intersection of Law with Technology

Nicole Black ‘95 has embraced the rising tide of technology in the legal field and positioned herself as a leading legal technology author and speaker, with forthcoming books on social media and cloud computing for attorneys.

"I've always enjoyed writing and love that my days are spent mulling over and writing about issues that fascinate me," said Black. "The legal technology issues that I tend to focus on will, in my opinion, dramatically affect the legal profession in the years to come and for that reason members of our profession must, at the very least, understand these emerging technologies even if they choose not to use them in their law practices."

Black co-authored Social Media for Lawyers: The Next Frontier with Carolyn Elefant, which will be published by the American Bar Association in May 2010, and she is in the process of writing a book about cloud computing for lawyers, which will be published by the ABA in early 2011. She also co-authored Criminal Law in New York, a Thomson-West treatise, with Judge Karen Morris, and writes a weekly column for the Daily Record that is distributed nationally on a news wire.

Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand, like the electricity grid, as opposed to keeping the resources, software and information resident on a single hard drive or mainframe.

Over the past year, Black has presented on cloud computing for lawyers, creating and managing an effective online presence, and social media for lawyers at a number of events for the American Bar Association, Chicago Bar Association, Rochester Institute of Technology, and others.

"Technology is certainly a passion of mine," she said, noting that "currently I spend a lot of time with my latest technology toy, an iPad, which I fondly refer to as 'Alice.'"

Black maintains four legal blogs: Practicing Law in the 21 ^st Century, Sui Generis, Legal Antics and Legal Tweets. She is also a contributing legal blogger at Lawyerist.

She is also of counsel to the Rochester, N.Y., law firm Fiandach & Fiandach. Previously, Black worked as a litigation associate at Trevett, Cristo, Salzer, & Andolina P.C., and as an Assistant Public Defender. She has conducted many hearings, jury trials, bench trials and depositions and has also handled all aspects of both civil and criminal appeals, from drafting the appellate briefs to arguing the appeals before the Appellate Division, Fourth Department.