Who owns the data

Struggling with some issues about data ownership at work today.

Several of my clients sell SaaS (Software as a Service) products. Access to their software is entirely web-based. They process information provided by their customers. In the course of processing this information, they generate metadata and usage data. In some cases, for clients whose business is providing analytics, the metadata or usage data is the whole point of their service.

The question is, who owns that data, and what does ownership of that data mean? I think a reasonable way to look at it would be:

1. Customer owns any data they provide
2. Customer "owns" metadata in the sense that SaaS provider can only use it in the context of providing services to Customer; however:
• Customer has no right to actually get the data, except in a format that SaaS provider has agreed to provide. If Customer is paying for analytics, Customer and SaaS provider should work out in advance whether Customer can export the metadata after their access to the software is terminated; in the absence of any agreement, Customer has no right to access the metadata.
• SaaS provider can transform the data by anonymizing it and aggregating it with other data; Saas provider should have full ownership over this, including the right to sell it to third parties

If anyone bothered to read this, feel free to weigh in on whether you think this makes sense and conforms with what you would expect as an Internet user (of, say, Facebook). Just needed a space to think out loud. Now back to my regularly scheduled "cute thing my kid said today" / "blathering about biglaw" posts.

Kid art

I have to confess something.

When K brings home an art project from school, I talk with him about it. I keep it on the table. Then after he goes to bed I throw it away (or recycle it, if it's not covered with glitter or cereal or something).

Maybe I would feel differently if he expressed himself more through arts and crafts, but he's never been the least bit interested and doesn't even like drawing with crayons like a normal kid. So the stuff he brings home is generally part of a school activity and is indistinguishable from art any child this age would do, except sometimes it has his finger or hand prints.

I've kept a few things I like. I also kept a writing assignment where, after months of resisting writing at all, it was obvious he had worked hard and made real progress. That one is on the fridge. Sometimes I send it to the grandparents and great-grandparents. But mostly, it goes in the trash.

Do you think I'll regret it later? What do you do with little kid art?

Why I went to law school, and what happened next

Proto Attorney and Dinei both wrote these "should I go to law school / why I went to law school" posts, and suggested that others do it so applicants can see a range of experiences, so, okay.

First, this is what I tell aspiring law school applicants.
1. Do you really want to be a lawyer? How do you know? Have you talked to practicing lawyers? If the answer to any of these questions is "No" or "I don't know," stop there.
2. Is there anything else you want to be that doesn't require this much specialized education? Do that first.
3. What do you think you'll do after law school, realistically, given what you know about yourself, where you live, the level of law school you're likely to attend, and the job market?
 4. Can you afford to go to law school? What will be your return on investment? If you don't know what that is, go Google it now.

I have written about this in bits and pieces, but here was my decision process about law school. I had worked for six years as a software engineer, and had known for a while that it wasn't for me. I spent a long time, over a year, figuring out what I liked and didn't like about my past jobs, and what I wanted out of a job. Some of the things I was looking for were:
- Working with words. Reading and writing as an essential part of my job.
- Being an expert in something. Specifically, something that was a little difficult to become an expert in, something that not everybody knew, and something that many people would find useful and want to know about.
- Advising people.
- Financial security.
- Subject matter that I found interesting.
- Smart colleagues who I liked.
- Independent, respectful, flexible work environment.
- Feeling that my work served a worthwhile purpose.

I found myself reading Supreme Court decisions and volunteering to work with our IP lawyers on some DRM issues, and I started to consider law school. I wondered whether it was worth it to give up a stable, well-paid, intellectually challenging job for three years of very expensive graduate school followed by an uncertain job future. At the time I was applying to law school, I was married, owned a house, and was hoping to start a family soon. I decided that, for the sake of my future career and our family finances, I would only apply to top 30 schools, and if I didn't get in I would try to think about other career directions.  I applied to five schools and got into all of them without any scholarship money, so the choice was easy -- I went to Harvard Law, right down the street.

One of the most valuable things I did during law school was talk to lawyers, attend lots of career seminars, and in general give lots of thought to my career options. I didn't even know my current practice area -- advising technology startup companies -- existed. I didn't know any lawyers growing up, and before I started exploring law as a career I was only familiar with lawyers on TV.

I'm happy with how things turned out. Legal work suits my personality. I love finding a precise way to express a client's intentions, puzzling over which word is appropriate and how the different provisions of a contract interact with each other, parsing a statute to see exactly what it means. It's a lot like programming. I love it when clients call me for advice. I love learning about new technologies and helping my clients get their ideas out into the world. I also feel more secure being in a profession with a clear career path and possibilities. Frankly, I'm not that entrepreneurial. Since the role of a lawyer is well-defined, I have an idea of the range of things I can do and the places where I belong. If I were more entrepreneurial, I think I'd have been better off developing expertise in some field on my own, and then consulting or finding a position with someone who needed that expertise.

At the same time, the job market scares me. I'm at a large law firm and I have seen friends get laid off. I hope I would land on my feet, but I'm relatively new to the field and despite my talk about exploring career options, I'm not sure where I would end up next or whether I'd be able to find a job that suits me. While I'm grateful to have my current job, and like the work and the people (and the money and the office), I find the schedule, requirement of constant availability, and billable hours onerous and anxiety-inducing. As a field, law is also much more sexist than engineering, and large law firms in particular assume you will have a stay-at-home spouse so you can devote most of your energy to work.

I still have it in the back of my head that I gave up 3 years of salary, plus spent about $45K a year for 3 years, to go to law school, and I calculate when I'm going to break even. If I stay at my current job, it'll be in about a year. I've paid down most of my student loans, and may be able to pay them all off by the end of this year. We bought a new house (and our current outstanding principal on our mortgage is more than the entire value of our old house, which is a little terrifying). We replaced both our ancient cars. We had another baby. My husband was able to leave his job and pursue some less lucrative goals. But I'm one of the lucky ones. Most people don't get this kind of job out of law school.

Creature Report

Hello.

Here are some things I have been thinking about lately.

Octonauts. K has been watching this show on Disney. It's about a bunch of animals (plus some "vegimals," including a talking turnip, radish, and eggplant) who explore the sea and learn about different sea creatures in their octopus-shaped submarine. At the end of each segment there is a "creature report" with an infernally catchy song that has been stuck in my head for days now.

The Republican presidential candidates. Mitt Romney is smug and out of touch. Newt Gingrich wants to repeal child labor laws. Rick Santorum's name is synonymous in my mind with "animal sex." Ron Paul thinks Martin Luther King, Jr. Day should be renamed "Hate Whitey Day." Rick Perry... it's hard to believe that this ad is even real. (Recap: What kind of country do we live in where gays can serve openly in the military, but our children don't pray in public school because Barack Obama hates Christmas? I am not even exaggerating.) These people are running for PRESIDENT. Can't they find anybody remotely suitable?

The Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster. Mainly because this is all over the news, but also because I keep thinking about the recording of the phone call where the Italian Coast Guard keeps yelling at the captain to get back on board and see who needs to be rescued, and the captain just stammers and sounds confused. Then the captain said he diverted his route and went closer to shore to salute a retired admiral who he had been talking to on the phone at the time of the crash, and then he changed his story and said that it was because one of his waiters had grown up on that island. And then today he claimed he didn't abandon the ship, he FELL out of it. Much like the Republican presidential candidates, it keeps getting crazier.

Jorts. I lamented the ever-widening hole in the knee of my favorite jeans. JW suggested I turn them into cut-offs. "Do people still wear cut-offs?" I asked. "Sure," he said. "I think so. Yeah, people must still wear jean shorts. Jorts." "Jorts? That's not a real thing." "It is!" So we googled it (because that is how you settle a modern argument) and found an entire website, jorts.com, dedicated to making fun of people who wear jean shorts. Also, the Urban Dictionary's definition of "jorts" includes the following: "Jean shorts. Worn mostly by children and douchebags. Jorts are perhaps the easiest way to recognize people you will not like." So I will not be cutting off my jeans.

My Kindle (and the books I have been reading on it). It is amazing how much I've been reading since getting the Kindle. Recently I've also been emailing long-form articles to my Kindle so I can read them when I have time. I read the Democracy 21 report on Super PACs and how the existing ones are basically illegal. I read a This American Life transcript about how homosexuality was redefined in the DSM in the 1970s so it was no longer classified as a pathology. I've been buying way more books than usual, too. I used to buy a book maybe once every few months. I'm a library person. But now books seem so bulky. I have to lug them around with me and remember what page I was on and put something on top of  them to keep them open when I'm trying to read and do something else at the same time. I wasn't sure I would like an e-reader, but I'm a reluctant convert. (Reluctant because I'm not crazy about being tied to Amazon, and I dislike the DRM restrictions on the books I buy.)

The end.

Mom of the future

I waited a little while before changing X this morning, due to his new habit that requires two diaper changes within the first half hour of waking. After seeing him make the face and freeze for a moment before returning to crawling around, I checked his diaper. Sure enough, it was time for a change. I unzipped him and broke out into a little song of "Poop, There It Is." X gave me his trademarked scowly face. "You're right, I'm dating myself," I said. "You'll hear this song on the oldies sta..."

Then it hit me that nearly all my cultural references will be incomprehensible to my kids. What's a tape? What's a station? What's a dial?

This must be payback from all those times I made fun of my mom for not being able to program the VCR. (The what?)

Working moms group

I started a working moms group in my town. I thought it would be a good way to get to know other working moms in town and share advice. So far we've met twice and have had 6-8 people each time. I have about 20 people on my list.

Most of the women work full time. The ones with part-time or flexible schedules negotiated them up front when they started their job, and said their companies were fine with it. Only one woman said that she negotiated a flexible arrangement after being on the job for a while, and she worked from home one day a week. The consensus was that it's best to raise this once you're fairly certain you've got the job, or after you've established yourself (meaning the worst time to ask is within the first two years or so after you start). One person told a story about how her boss didn't hire a woman everyone else loved because her request that she work from home made her seem less committed, but she thought he actually didn't like the applicant and was using her request as an excuse.

Most of the women have babies. So far I've only met two with school-age kids, and have pumped them for information about the public schools.

ALL of the women outsource house-cleaning. And we all agreed that it preserves our sanity that the two days a week we have to spend entirely with our kids aren't taken up by vacuuming and scrubbing toilets. (Besides, we're stimulating the economy.)

I'm hoping that as we continue meeting and people get to know each other, we can develop a real network where people feel comfortable reaching out to the group with questions. Meanwhile, I feel like it's my responsibility to keep it from fizzling out. Do any of you have a group like this, formally or informally? So far it's been free-form, with everyone discussing whatever topic comes up, but I'd love to hear ideas about how and whether to focus meetings or have certain activities or discussion topics.

Part-time

Recently I talked to some women at The Firm who work part-time, 4 days a week. My biggest concern about working part-time is that you'd end up working the same hours but getting paid less. But they all said that they have been having a much easier time setting boundaries -- not only because they feel they entitled to do so, but also because other people expect it. In contrast, a full-time associate is expected to have zero boundaries. A more experienced attorney who worked part-time pointed out that in her experience, if you're part-time and the people looking at your hours notice you're working closer to full-time, they'll view it as a problem and will work with you on strategies for reducing your hours. But if you're full-time and exceeding the billable target by several hundred hours, they just give you a bonus.

My other big concern is that in my department, there are very few female partners and I have heard several of the male partners express negativity toward scheduling flexibility for family obligations. One woman who has always been very gung-ho about her work recently went part-time, and she said so far it's been going well, she's happy, and she hasn't gotten the sense that people are less willing to work with her. (I have heard from others that some partners have been less willing to work with them. I think it depends a lot on who you usually work with.)

It all sounds tempting, leaving aside my feelings about part-time as a female ghetto. In law school I remember thinking it seemed like a no-brainer to buy back some of your time each week. Now it seems more complicated.