July 7th, 2010

I Could Make A Fortune…

Lawyering isn’t where the money is…Some of you, I suspect, may have seen a scheme like this elsewhere…

A guest blog from Jason Paris, a trial attorney here in New York:
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I came up with an idea, a good business idea, which might need some fine tuning, but here it is. I am going to start a new business.

This is the model. I take money from people telling them that I will pay them when something happens. I want a lot of money, and therefore I need to find something that people use a lot – I need a mass market. People drink soda, eat food, drive cars and get haircuts. I will have too much opposition from the food and drink industry to screw with them, someone has already taken the car racket.

So I am left with the haircut. Everyone gets a haircut. I am thinking that I should collect money from anyone who is ever going to have a haircut, i.e., everyone. In return I will promise if a barber or a hairstylist cuts the person’s ear, I will pay him, make him or her whole, pay the medical bills, provide salon-side assistance, put him or her at rest, send flowers, make him or her feel special, protected, in peace so that he or she could continue to live their wholesome life in his or her special way.

I am insuring against the risk of being cut in the ear during a haircut. Starting investment in my venture, ground level, is 25 million, in return for 5% of the profits. This is the best business opportunity of your life, you just do not know it yet.

Now how do I sell this idea, millions of people going through life with thousands of haircuts without having anyone cutting their ears? To sell my product, I have to scare the people. I hire a number of scientists and advertising people and they come up with numbers and statistics. They show the carnage that could be caused by having one’s ear cut during a haircut, the irreparable trauma from which one could never recover, the instances where children were killed, the sharp edges of scissors, the slow motion of a scissor cutting through the layers of skin in an ear.

I advertise. I tell them that they could trust me. They are in good hands. Like a good neighbor, I’ll always be there. When they have my insurance card in their wallet, they would sleep better. I am always there for them in the time of the tragedy.

But the business is still not picking up speed the way I want it to. What should I do? I should pass a law. It should be mandatory for anyone who is ever going to have a haircut to have insurance for it. I agree that I will provide minimum protection under the law. To make sure that people do not evade the law (that they do not avoid paying me), the law provides penalties. Those who do not have an insurance card for a haircut cannot have one. If a salon gives a haircut to a patron who does not have a haircut insurance card, it will lose its license, pay a penalty not to exceed $250,000 and/or imprisonment of 5 years.

Now, finally, money starts flowing in. So I decide that who the hell are the people to see what my promise is in writing before they buy my insurance. I am not showing it to them. Anyway they have no option other than to buy it if they want to have a haircut. So I will give them a copy of my promise only after they buy the insurance.

Am I wrong? Of course not. There are some claims, here and there. Some butcher turned a hairstylist cutting someone’s ear, so I have to pay. I am paying, but it annoys me; I hate it.

Suddenly, one year the claims are a few too many. This really pisses me off. I hear that some poor schmuck in Brooklyn who couldn’t pay his rent and was about to be evicted from his apartment with his kids, you know the low class immigrant types, told his cousin barber to cut his ear so he could get the insurance payout. This drove me crazy. It is like cutting flesh out of me. I have to deal with this.

These staged ear cuttings must stop. I am going to raise my insurance rates on EVERYONE. I will tell everyone that since I have to pay an illegitimate claim, everyone has to bear the burden. I was pissed off when I said it, and never thought people could buy it. But they did.

They thought my raising the rates was justified. So I kind of like this staged ear cutting phenomena. Because the longer it is there, the more ammunition I have in my favor. How do I ensure that it is there for a long term?

I will assign people in my company just to find it. Then I have to make sure that the attorney general has an “ear cutting” unit, the district attorney has an ear cutting unit, the United States Attorney has an ear cutting unit, and the Insurance Department has such a unit. We will have a hotline for anonymous calls for staged ear cuttings, so all those people who hate their neighbors or relatives will report such claims, even it is not true. To justify these units’ existence and their paychecks, they have to find something, right? Even if they have to stage a staged ear cutting, catch the poor bastard and prosecute him or her, who deserves it anyway.

I will award the efforts of the ear cutting units, by publicity, photo shoots, awards for their dedication to public service, for their zealous efforts on behalf of the people of this great state. They are the people who fight to eradicate the fraud and criminal elements engaged in ear cuttings from our society.

I want to make sure that the words “fraud,” “crime” and “staged” are always associated with this type of claim. When we take them down, we take down the people whose ears were cut, the hair salons, the barber shops, the medical facilities, and their attorneys – the whole conspiracy ring. We send the message!

I should not lose focus because I need these staged ear cuttings. Because while we are in the attack mode, the people are not going to look at me. I hate when people look at me. I have nothing in common with them. But there is something more that I do not like, it has been bothering me since the beginning-that I have to pay so much for this stupid injury.

Since it is now mandatory for everyone to pay me, I want to limit what I have to pay out. I will pay the poor schmucks’ EMS and ER and hospital treatment, but beyond that I will not pay, unless there is a serious ear cut. I looked at most of my claims and most fall into a simply cut with bandages. I do not want to pay for these claims anymore.

So we pass a law that I only pay for serious ear cuts, and we define it to mean only complete amputation of the ear, rupture of the ear drums (we make it plural so that only both ear drums ruptures fall into this category), disfigurement that you cannot cover (for most people it could always be covered with hair), permanent deafness (we leave it unclear so that in the future we will argue before a judge that it only applies to both ears, otherwise why did I (the legislature) say “permanent”, but I recognize that I might lose this battle.

Then we place the burden on the people whose ears have been cut to prove that the ear cut was serious. Let them prove it that it is serious. I have to be vigilant every step of the way, I have to always come up with more stuff for them to prove; I fight this battle in court. I really do not have to because I won this battle a long time ago, but it is just in my nature. I am a fighter, I fight against the adverse forces, the dark cloud, i.e., the injured people who are all out there to get my money.

We also make it difficult for the doctors and hospitals to collect. We, I, pass laws to make it so difficult for health care providers to get paid that no one will touch those whose ears have been cut. We put in the laws the words “fraud” and “staged” so those who doubt me have nothing more to doubt.

We forever stain those who in any way touch those whose ears have been cut. Let’s throw them a bone, give them something, I will ease the serious injury threshold a little bit, but not too much. I want to keep them in check. I love this country that let’s me get away with so much. We should cherish this opportunity to be free.

This investment opportunity is only open to a few like-minded leaders.

May 18th, 2010

LaGuardia, JetBlue, And the Impostor (Airline Security Fail)

I go off-topic today because of an extraordinary security failure at LaGuardia, that just so happens to involve a local personal injury attorney, Jason Paris. The version on NBC is titled Security Lapse at LaGuardia is Cause for Alarm, and it involves another passenger boarding the same flight, but with a duplicate boarding pass in Paris’s name.

And when the problem is discovered, do they pull the impostor off the flight? Get search warrants? Interrogate, water board or tase him?

Here is Paris’s first person account, as today’s guest blog:

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This was pretty scary in light of the recent events regarding the ability of the Times Square bomber to make it onto a plane:

On Thursday, May 13th, I was on the 6am flight on Jetblue from LaGuardia to Fort Lauderdale. I was seated in 11F. Someone else got on and sat in 11E (the middle seat). He was traveling with only a laptop. A few minutes later the person who was supposed to be in 11E came on (a pilot from another airline who was flying to Florida to meet up with his crew). The flight attendant told the guy who was sitting in 11E that he was in the wrong seat. He said he knew, that he was supposed to be in 11F but since I was in it already he was being nice and didn’t ask me to move.

He then produced a boarding pass for 11F. It had my name on it. My name, not his. I had checked in online and printed my boarding pass at home, a full day before my flight. And yet here was someone with a boarding pass with my name on it.

This person had somehow managed to get through three security checkpoints and onto a plane without an ID and boarding pass that matched. He did not have an ID with my name on it. He had a French passport that was issued in Paris (which is my last name).

So the gate agent comes onto the plane. My law partner (who was in 11D) and I, as well as the off-duty pilot and the people in the surrounding rows assumed that she was going to conduct an investigation to get to the bottom of this, and make sure that we were all safe. Not exactly…..

She does not ask to see any IDs. All she does is ask this man his last name so she can find his correct seat (which was 21D). She moved him to 21D and left the plane. No one asked him any questions or asked to see his ID, no one asked to see my ID. And when I started asking what’s going on and asking how it’s possible that this happened, and when my law partner started saying it was a security breach – the gate agent and flight attendant gave us dirty looks and made us feel as if we said anything that they would kick us off the plane.

We were on our way to a pretty important business meeting with a new client, so I did the stupid thing. I stayed on the plane. I whipped out my blackberry and wrote a text message to one of our associates, letting her know all of this in case something horrible happened. And even though the flight was at 6 a.m. and I was exhausted, I did not sleep at all on the plane. I had an eye towards row 21 the entire flight, freaking out about what might happen.

Clearly this breakdown needs to be addressed and something needs to be done – this could have been a story with a horrible, tragic ending.

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OK, ET again:

So the Transportation Security Administration will make us take off our shoes and belts, take your toothpaste, and go bonkers for smoking in the bathroom. In the near future, they will x-ray us up the wazoo.

But they will let a man pass multiple checkpoints without matching an ID to a boarding pass, and when the error is discovered, will simply put the imposter in a new seat without bothering with all of that icky security stuff.

Nice to see we are in safe hands.

February 11th, 2010

Michael Jackson and Prosecuting Doctors for Killing Patients

The day after Michael Jackson died I speculated about a very rare prosecution; that of a doctor for the death of a patient. I later explored two other risks that Dr. Conrad Murray faced, one for malpractice and one for his license (see: Michael Jackson: Malpractice or Manslaughter (Or Something Else?). Now Dr. Murray has been charged with involuntary manslaughter, clearly the most significant of the three risks.

With the concept of such rare criminal prosecutions firmly in mind, we re-visit the death of a patient 17 years ago at the hands of a New York doctor in this guest blog by Eric Rothstein. He was a young prosecutor in the office of the Queens District Attorney that charged Dr. David Benjamin with second degree murder.
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By Eric Rothstein

The news that the Los Angeles County District Attorney has charged Conrad Murray with Involuntary Manslaughter in connection with Michael Jackson’s death has people debating whether his actions warrant a criminal prosecution, in addition to a potential wrongful death suit by Jackson’s estate and possible revocation of his medical license. The decision to criminally charge Dr. Murray is rare, but not unprecedented.

In 1993, a grand jury in Queens County, New York, charged Dr. David Benjamin with Murder in the Second Degree after his 33 year old patient, Guadalupe Negron, died due to complications from a botched and illegal abortion that he performed in his storefront medical office. Dr. Benjamin was thought to be the first doctor charged with murder in New York State due to a patient’s death during a medical procedure. At the time of Mrs. Negron’s death, Dr. Benjamin’s license to practice medicine was in the process of being revoked for “gross incompetence and negligence” in five previous cases in which the women he treated suffered life-threatening perforations to their uteruses — the same injury that led to Mrs. Negron’s death.

Mrs. Negron learned of Dr. Benjamin’s clinic from a newspaper advertisement in a Spanish-language newspaper. She paid Dr. Benjamin $800 for the abortion because she needed to go to work to help support her four children, three of them living in Honduras.

The evidence at trial showed that Dr. Benjamin performed a second-trimester abortion; Mrs. Benjamin was likely between nineteen and twenty weeks pregnant at the time. The abortion procedure lasted between one hour and fifteen minutes and two hours. Because there are greater risks involved in performing an abortion on a woman who is between nineteen and twenty weeks pregnant than in one in the first trimester, heightened safety measures were required. However, Dr. Benjamin did not adjust his procedure to account for the increased risk. During the procedure, Dr. Benjamin caused a three-inch laceration, extending from Mrs. Negron’s vagina through her cervix, which perforated her uterus. The perforation of the uterus caused massive bleeding.

Following the abortion, Dr. Benjamin had Mrs. Negron wheeled into the recovery room while he performed another abortion even though she complained of feeling ill. Following such an abortion procedure, appropriate medical practice requires that the patient be monitored by trained medical personnel every five minutes for at least an hour. Dr. Benjamin ignored Mrs. Negron for at least one hour and there were no other trained medical personnel, no equipment to monitor her vital signs and no established emergency procedures.

After approximately one hour and ten minutes, Dr. Benjamin reexamined Mrs. Negron, who was cold. Dr. Benjamin’s receptionist called 911. In a panicked attempt to revive the victim, Dr. Benjamin inserted an air tube into her esophagus, rather than her trachea. When the paramedics arrived, Dr. Benjamin falsely informed them that the abortion was performed without complications. When Mrs. Negron was lifted off the examining table to be transported to the hospital, about a liter of her blood remained on the table. In the end, Dr. Benjamin compounded his botched abortion by misleading paramedics about what happened.

After being convicted by a jury, the Judge sentenced Dr. Benjamin to 25 years to life in jail. Having exhausted his appellate rights, he remains incarcerated in a New York State penitentiary.

As part of the District Attorney’s investigation, the Office executed a search warrant at Dr. Benjamin’s office. I was a young Assistant District Attorney at the time and was present when the warrant was served. While I do not remember everything, I do recall the blood stained couch where Mrs. Negron rested following the procedure and seeing what appeared to be dirty instruments strewn about in various places in Dr. Benjamin’s facility. I definitely remember feeling sorry for the people who had no other options but to turn to this storefront abortion clinic.

Though rare, prosecution of physicians is sometime appropriate. Dr. Benjamin’s actions showed depraved indifference to human life and thus warranted the murder charge. It is probably safe to say that we have yet to learn all the facts in Dr. Murray’s case. However, Dr. Murray allegedly gave Mr. Jackson propofol, a powerful sedative that is not supposed to be used outside of a hospital setting and needs careful monitoring, which a coroner determined caused Jackson’s death with other drugs as contributing factors. Legally, Dr. Murray’s alleged degree of culpability appears much less than Dr. Benjamin’s. Hence, the lesser charge. Nevertheless, if Dr. Murray prescribed Mr. Jackson a powerful sedative that is not supposed to be used outside of a hospital and then failed to adequately monitor his condition, the prosecution appears warranted. If convicted, Dr. Murray faces a possible maximum four-year state prison term.

January 13th, 2010

FindLaw – How To Leave and Save Your Reputation (and Money)

Today I have a guest blogger that shows you how to save thousands of dollars a year. Those savings take place if you made the mistake of hiring FindLaw as your law firm’s marketing company (or are contemplating doing so).

The company hit my radar big time, of course, when FindLaw decided it would be fun to rip-off my blog name. A deeper look discussed how FindLaw‘s “Blogs” were tainting not only its clients, but its professor-commentators and the profession of law as a whole.

Today’s guest is a former sales rep that left on less than amicable terms because he couldn’t make an absurd sales quota selling a product that was so heavily over-priced. Today he has his own company. The financial analysis of FindLaw‘s offerings now follows:
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By James Eichenberger
(co-owner of Swell Sites, a small, Minnesota web design company)

There’s been a lot of chatter, mostly disgust, around the ethics and quality of FindLaw‘s blogs as well as what I’ll considerately call a lack of creativity in naming them. I’m sure that this, like the linking scandal of 2008*, will evoke a variety of reactions from people involved in the legal marketing community. The great majority of lawyers will read these posts and feel self-assured in the fact that they don’t do business with FindLaw.

However, I’m afraid that current FindLaw customers will have one of two reactions. Some will look at it as an issue that is isolated to the blogosphere, and therefore doesn’t effect them and their products with FindLaw. The second group will realize that, whether or not they have their names posted on these blogs, this is yet another incarnation of FindLaw‘s questionable ethics, and it’s time to move.

So the question for current FindLaw customers (the group that is willing to acknowledge that their reputations are at stake) becomes how do you transition out of your current site and retain some of what you’ve already paid for? To that end, I’ve put together a group of questions that can jump-start the idea that you can indeed rescue your website from being held hostage and save thousands of dollars a year.

1. What am I really getting from the FindLaw Directory?

In reviewing traffic reports with your sales rep or account manager, it’s common to see the traffic delivered by FindLaw rolled into one big number. To be clear, there are two distinct elements that bring traffic to your website from FindLaw. First, your FindLaw profile, (which will typically include “pview” in the URL on your traffic report) and then any directory placements, which can run from $30 to upwards of $1,000 per month. [Ed. note, FindLaw links coded as “nofollow” to avoid giving link juice.]

It’s important to understand the average price per click that you are paying for traffic from FindLaw‘s top listings. In many cases, those coveted clicks from FindLaw cost well beyond $100 each. Tracking how many of these clicks actually convert to contacts by following the pages they access on your site is a very easy task with many common (and free) traffic programs. It’s troubling that FindLaw‘s traffic reporting is unable to follow these users and show conversion for this extremely expensive traffic.

2. Why am I paying monthly for my website?

There are really two answers to this question, depending on where you are in the life of your website with FindLaw. FindLaw websites are billed monthly, so the idea is that they take the cost of a website and prorate it over 12 monthly payments. So if you are in the first 12 months of your contract, it can be argued that you are still paying for the creation of your website.

Outside of those 12 months is where the math gets blurry. The monthly rates don’t change (significantly, anyway) based on the length of the contract, and what you get in terms of content or SEO doesn’t really either. Unless you are engaged with your website to the point of calling to ask what you are eligible for on a quarterly basis, your website just gets more and more expensive the longer you keep it with FindLaw. A former FindLaw General Manager said on his way out (before having moved back over to West) that the best way to get real value from a FindLaw website is to buy one and then cancel it as soon as possible.

3. What do you get beyond the initial development of your site?

That’s a question that FindLaw was trying to answer the entire 5 years that I worked there, and to my knowledge, they still haven’t figured it out. If anyone reading this can tell me of an experience where they received real value outside of the initial development of a new project I’d be interested in hearing about it. My guess is that most FindLaw customers will struggle to recall ever being proactively helped with their sites. They will tell you about “refreshes” which are additional content opportunities, but they are not easy to set up or completely clear on who is eligible.

The service is supposed to include additional search engine optimization (SEO) work, but at the time I left, they could also just have someone from the SEO team “audit” the site, and then determine whether or not they wanted to work on it. Same thing with content; unless you ask about the schedule, and then give specific direction on what content you’d like written, you likely will not get any. I’d liken the whole situation to trying to write step by step instructions on how to tie a shoe. Tying a shoe is easy, but when you try to tell someone else how to do it, it becomes infinitely more difficult than if you had done it yourself.

4. What elements of my FindLaw website do I actually own?

Here’s where there is actually some good news for FindLaw clients. There are three basic elements to your site:

Domain Name
This is the the name that brings up your site. Regardless of whether you owned that domain name before you purchased your site, it IS yours. At any time, for any reason, you can request that the ownership of your domain name be transferred to an account under your name. That gives you the ability to keep a site up and running should you decide to move away from FindLaw in the future. It also protects you from them holding on to it should you get into any type of a dispute over your contract term, cancellation date or total amount owed to the company. Your domain name is the online version of the front door to your law firm…your law firm should be the sole owner and controller of that domain name.

Content
The content on your site that was “custom written” is yours to keep. Because you directed the writing of this content, and it was written about your firm, it is yours. The content includes the meta data which is a large part of their search engine placement strategy. Transferring your content, as well as the 3 or 4 lines of coding aimed at search engine placement, onto a new server space will typically yield the same, if not better, results on Google.

Not ALL of the content belongs to you. If you have any FAQs, eNewsletters, Practice pages or practice centers, those are actually leased from FindLaw. Re-publishing that content on to a new hosting space is a violation of the contract and licensing of the content.

Design
The design is owned by FindLaw, but can be purchased for a fee defined as 4% of the annual value of the website. So if you were paying $12,000 a year for your site, buying the design and all images used would typically cost about $500. For that cost, you get a disc or a link to download all of the HTML files and graphics that made up your site. What you get isn’t going to be easily rebuilt by a novice, but someone with a general knowledge of websites could reconstruct it in 2 to 6 hours, depending on the complexity of the design and number of pages.

5. How much should I expect to pay for a website from FindLaw?

There are hundreds of variations, but a template, 8 page site tends to run about $500 a month on a 12 month contract. So at a minimum, the site is about $6,000.* The second year monthly fees typically drop to about $350, so a 24 month stint with FindLaw with an 8 page website will cost right around $10,000.

This price increasing over time with the relatively low service level in the second year and beyond, is really where the opportunity to save some real money comes in to play. If you already have a FindLaw website, there are several ways to get it set up on your own hosting space. Attorneys who are very web savvy may be able to handle the migration themselves. If you are not very comfortable with web development it may be far more efficient to hire someone to do it for you.

6. How much does it cost to get my FindLaw site rebuilt on another platform?

There is no perfect answer for this, but you should expect to pay somewhere in the range between $1,000 and $4,000 depending on the size and complexity of your website. Whether you are setting up a new website or working to get your FindLaw site migrated, here are a few things you’re going to want to make sure have been taken care of (in no particular order):

a. XML Sitemap Submission
b. Traffic Reporting that shows where people are coming from (a counter is not enough)
c. Domain validation through Google (available in their Webmaster Tools)
d. Meta Data on each page of your site that you would like included on Google
e. Keyword rich content that reflects the approach and feel, not just the practice area, of your law firm.

I hope this information is helpful to people who are looking to gain a better understanding of exactly what they purchased from FindLaw, or looking to start up or advance their web marketing. I hope none of this came across as “axe-grinding” but at the same time, the reason that FindLaw can continue to get away with these other questionable projects is because there are thousands of lawyers who are paying thousands of dollars for what’s basically a trumped up web hosting plan.
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*Ed. notes:

1. For more info on the prior scandal with FindLaw selling links, see FindLaw gaming Google, and possibly scamming lawyer customers? Also see: Is the FindLaw Story Getting Distorted? where former FindLaw reps out the company’s disreputable policies in the comments.

2. This blog and my firm’s website were built by a small provider for a fraction of the cost of FindLaw’s services. The idea that lawyers would pay such ridiculously high rates to build a website, and then pay hundreds of dollars more per month to host it, is bizarre.

All the content on my two sites (for better or worse) comes off my keyboard.

October 22nd, 2009

Virginia Bar Exam Foul Up? (Can the Bar Examiners Be Beaten in Court?)

Last week Virginia posted the results of its July 2009 bar exam. But are the results accurate? It seems that New York is not the only state that can foul up a test (as I know from my own experience as well as others), Virginia apparently fouled up the July 2008 exam.

The problem is simple:

There was a software glitch during the test regarding the essays that were typed on laptops; and
Virginia doesn’t permit test-takers to see their essays.

What follows is an affidavit from Jon Bolls, who is chronicling his fight through the courts to see his essay answers after he and others were victims of a software problem. The affidavit below describes the problem. (And if you think bar examiners can’t be beat, read this.)

According to Bolls, 43 states allow for some form of transparency. Virginia is not one of them. And over half now allow typing essays on laptops.

And the question for bar takers in the face of multiple technology problems comes down to this: Is pen and paper better than the keyboard? Proceed at your own risk…

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I, Jonathan Bolls, “Declarant,” am a resident of Springfield, County of Fairfax, Commonwealth of Virginia, and do hereby certify, swear, affirm, and declare, that I am competent to give the following declaration based upon my personal knowledge, unless otherwise stated, and that the following facts and things are true and correct to the best of my knowledge:

1. On July 29, 2008 I took the Virginia Bar Exam essay section on laptop.

2. During the afternoon session of the Essay/Short Answer portion, an announcement was made by microphone that there were approximately 24 students who had answers that were misplaced in the system from the morning session. These students did not know who they were and would find out how to correct the problem through special instructions enclosed in their afternoon test booklets. I am not one of the 24.

3. During the saving stage of both the morning and afternoon sessions, my Exam4 software, administered by Extegrity, halted and displayed a dialogue box wherein the program refused to proceed despite my following the instructions exactly. On each separate occasion, I had to call a technician over who handled my computer to circumnavigate the dialogue box. On at least one of these occurrences, I was instructed to reboot my computer and resubmit the essays. After both occurrences I was instructed to transfer the data from the laptop to the USB drive and hand it in.

4. Both of these instances were very similar but were handled by two different technicians. Neither of these technicians said that I had done anything wrong or offered any explanation as to what happened.

5. Both instances took place about midway through the crucial saving stage of the exam, an approximately ten-step process that was delivered orally by microphone. These approximately ten steps pertained entirely to saving the data to the personal laptop. The last remaining two or three steps were very straightforward and consisted of inserting the USB drive into the laptop and clicking on the icon that says “Save to USB Drive.”

6. While applicants had many opportunities to take practice exams on their own time prior to the exam, the saving stage consisted only of a simple step of clicking on the icon that said save. The approximately ten steps given orally at the exam were entirely new to every applicant and were read as if they were written down for the proctor. On the other hand, setup instructions for a procedure we had already practiced on our own time, were written down for the applicants.

7. I was instructed to reboot my computer on at least one of these two instances. In the sequence of instructions, this took place prior to the step where the USB drive is to be inserted.

8. Both of the Exam4 glitches took place even before the USB drive was supposed to be inserted into the laptop.

9. After the oral instructions were read at the saving stage, a proctor then asked for a show of hands if there were any problems. There were quite a few hands that immediately went up in both sessions of the test, which visibly overwhelmed a full team of technicians on standby. My hand was raised for ten to fifteen minutes both times before someone could come to my aid.

10. I was so delayed during the afternoon session because of this that I was the last applicant to leave the room.

/s Jonathan Bolls