This Is Our “17 Seconds” Newsletter #142: 17 Seconds = Useful Info Quickly.
I am bad with dates. Which is not good for one who practices patent and trademark law, since IP law is a deadline-driven practice.
I am bad with dates because I have lived and worked in the United States (which does dates one way), lived and worked in Europe (which does dates another way), and served on active duty in the military (which does dates yet another way). Forget electrical outlets, can we all just agree on date formats, please?
To combat my being bad with dates, Clocktower adopted the practice of prepending “YYYY-MM-DD” to all filenames. So the name of this draft article is “2023-11-13-newsletter-17-seconds-draft.txt,” for example. Clocktower adopted the “YYYY-MM-DD” practice circa 2002, shortly after Josh, our first employee, started. It was Josh who came up with the idea to also prepend “YYYY-MM-DD” to folder names. This way, in whatever file system you use, sort-by-name equals sort-by-date. Which is rather handy.
The “YYYY-MM-DD” naming convention also avoids the “document-final.doc” and “document-final-FINAL.doc” naming convention that is popular elsewhere.
We also have each other’s backs at Clocktower, and everyone checks and double-checks everything. Will we make mistakes? Of course. No law firm is perfect (but if you do find the perfect law firm, then you should hire them). Which is why we also put our mistakes policy in our engagement letter:
We will fix mistakes. No law firm is perfect. When we make a mistake, we will admit it, fix it as soon as reasonably possible, to the best of our ability, to the extent possible, and at no cost to you.
And now you also know that I generally write “17 Seconds” on the 13th! Unless I’m confused about the date, in which case Mike or Mary will remind me.
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