Managing the Year 2000

by David J Bilinsky

Here we stand or here we fall
History won’t care at all...
It comes to you as to us all
We’re just waiting
For the hammer to fall

Words and Music Brian May
Recorded by Queen

You had to climb the stairs as the elevators stopped working. The office alarm system had to have the power turned off, since it would not respond to commands. Your limitation, BF and accounting systems are down. Your voice mail system is not working properly. The fax machine is working but dating everything Jan. 4, 1900. The photocopier refuses to recognize any account numbers. And the day is just starting.

Sound far-fetched? According to the Y2K gurus, this could just be the beginning. Courtesy of embedded chips in everything from coffee makers to cars, elevators and utility delivery systems (electricity, gas, water), January 2000 could be everything from a mild annoyance to a complete breakdown of life as we know it, at least for a while. So what can we do about it? Here is a selection of Y2K tips and web sites to help us through the millennium.

The first thing is that it is not one date but three dates that could cause problems. Sept. 9, 1999, Jan. 1, 2000 and Feb. 28, 2000. Each represents a special problem and has to be dealt with separately.

Sept. 9, 1999: Engineers and computer programmers used this date to represent errors or as a commonly used testing date–since it was all 9’s (9/9/99). In the circumstances, systems may not respond normally to this otherwise normal date or may take this date as a signal to shut down.

Jan 1, 2000: This is the commonly known Y2K bug. Here the difficulty is that some computers/chips may interpret dates on or after 1/1/00 as being in January 1900 instead of January 2000. This could cause programs to reject legitimate dates as being data out of range. Hence the shut-down or unpredictable performance of machines and software. Imagine calculating wages for someone who just worked from Dec. 15, 1999 to Jan. 1, 1900!

Feb. 28, 2000: The year 2000 is a leap year. Problem is, most computer programs were not designed to handle leap years that were also century years. How systems will respond to this date is unknown. Interest calculation programs, wage calculations–even heating and air conditioning systems are all subject to this bug.

Expert analysis indicate that 90 per cent of all pre-1997 and even 47 per cent of 1998 PC’s are not Y2K compliant. Many software programs are only partially Y2K compliant, if that. How do you know? Go to the web page for your software–the manufacturer should list on their home page the Y2K compliant versions. Want to see something really scary? Visit www.microsoft.com/technet/topics/year2k/default.html and see the number of Microsoft programs that are “compliant with minor issues” including Windows NT server 4.0. Windows 98 requires a download from the same site to be compliant (and this software was just released!).

OK, so the office won’t be working right for a little while. Need you be worried? Life will go on, won’t it? Law firms have special concerns – especially those that advise clients regarding contract performance past Jan. 1, 2000, or doing business purchases or loan agreements. What happens if your business purchase agreement does not specify any warranties for Y2K compliance or worse, who is to bear the costs to cure such problems (especially if the business is unable to carry out their contractual duties)? Who will a lender sue if the borrower is unable to meet their loan obligations because of its Y2K breakdowns and there is no provision in the loan agreement for default due to Y2K problems? For law firms the problems go far beyond just a pesky computer shut down. So what do we do?

The four steps of Y2K management have been identified as: awareness, assessment, renovation and validation.

Awareness: Visit http://www.Year2000.com. Read articles about Y2K. Become attuned to how these computer problems will affect you even if you abhor computers and all things silicon. Go to a Y2K course. Appoint someone in your office as Chair to head off your Y2K problems. Provide them with resources, time, personnel, and the authority and cooperation of the partners and staff. Make it part of their career assessment to get the job done right.

Pick up the course materials from the CLE course: Preparing for the Year 2000 Computer Bug - Legal Issues and Liabilities. This is a nice summary of the issues facing law firms. www.cle.bc.ca/bookstore/index.html.

Assessment: Take an audit of the software and hardware in your office and check it as being Y2K compliant. IBM has created a free evaluation tool. Visit their website and follow the download instructions at: www.pc.ibm.com/year2000/evaluation.html. Create the diskette and use it to check your PC systems, one at a time. Another free testing tool available is: www.nstl.com/html/nstl ymark2000.html. NSTL is the world’s leading independent testing organization who does the testing for Microsoft 95 and NT compliance, as well as for many other major companies.

Go through a Y2K checklist. Purchase The Year 2000 Problem and the Legal Profession: Managing the Risks from the American Bar Association www.abanet.org/lpm/catalog.

List problem areas in your office and identify how you are going to handle them. Contingency plans are good. So are backups. Recall that you will need plans for things as diverse as your bank going down, your elevators being non-functional and your phone system going down.

Renovation: Now that you are aware of the systems that need replacement, start a plan for replacing them. Now. Not in December. Now. I can just imagine all those people who will be trying to upgrade equipment near the end of the year. Human nature, I guess.

How much will this cost you? Certainly this will not be cheap, but it is an excellent reason to upgrade and replace older systems. For small to medium sized businesses, Revenue Canada has provided a 100 per cent write-off of software and hardware purchased from Jan. 1, 1998 to June 30, 1999 for the purposes of replacement of systems that have a material risk of malfunctioning due to Y2K. There are hoops to jump through–check with your CA to avail yourself of this unique tax opportunity.

Validate: Check your systems for Y2K compliance after you have done all the checking, replacing and renovating. Why? Remember the tape backup that was supposed to restore everything after the disk crash? I still wince with the memory of that one. Check all three critical dates. Macros and spreadsheets may hold hidden problems (even if the software is Y2K compliant, your custom macros may contain hidden time bombs).

Forewarned is forearmed. With diligence and preparation, we can anticipate enjoying the champagne pop and the celebration of a whole new millennium rather than dreading the passing of the old while waiting for the hammer to fall.

David J Bilinsky is a partner at Lakes Straith & Bilinsky and a principal of Integral Management Inc. He can be reached on the Internet at mobius@axion.net.

This article originally appeared in the February 1999 issue of BarTalk and is reproduced here with permission of both the author and the Canadian Bar Association, British Columbia Branch.