If you are running ITunes on a windows machine, it is probably the biggest resource hog. Here are some tips to speed it up.
Delete the playlists above. Delete all Playlists that are in Purple. It takes ITunes a lot of resources to keep these up to date. So if you never use them, get rid of them.
Go to the preferences and uncheck everything. Don’t look for shared libraries.
Don’t look for Apple TV’s.
Don’t look for remote speakers.
Get the point, you don’t want ITunes to look for any of this stuff, it takes up memory. Uncheck it all.
For certain programs like Amicus Attorney Version Vyou have to shut off user account control to install programs. This has changed from Windows Vista. Here is how you do it.
Start –> Control Panel –> User Accounts
Move it to never notify. This will effectively shut off User Account Control. Install the program and then turn it back on.
Amicus Attorney makes it very easy to send an email to a specific group of people instead of selecting each one individually. You just need to go to create a new email. Change your option from All to Group Names
Now all the groups for your contacts appear
For this example we will chose Clients. Click OK
All of our clients name appear in To. Click Open
Besides sending group emails to our contacts, we can also use firm member groups.
Change My Contacts to Firm Member(s)
You can now select which firm members the email goes to. In this example, we will chose the Associates Group
This is the same principle as when we send the email to our clients
This email will go to everyone in our firm in the associates group.
The Quick Timer can also be accessed from the windows menu. You can open up the quick timer without opening PCLaw, but you still have to log in. To be honest the Quick Timer is quite pointless, and we usual deleting it from the menu. It is the same as the Time Sheet, except harder to use, you can only see one entry at a time and cannot easily jump back and forth between entries.
If you Delay Post in the Quick Timer:
It will show up in the Time Sheets as delayed post
It you have your Time Sheet opened when you delay post, you will have delay post your Time Sheet to see that entry.
Fee Sheets are just like the Time Sheet, except there is no place for Hours. There for, the Fee Sheet is perfect for contingency cases and anything with a fixed fee.
Time Sheet is one of the best features of PCLaw. You can use the Timer, to record the exact time of each entry or you can manually override them. When you click ok, the Time Entries are posted to the matter and ledger. You can edit and find your time entries by either going to the Matter Manager and clicking on the Time Tab or going to the Register and clicking on the Time Tab.
You might not be ready to post all your time entries yet. Delay Post, saves the Time Sheet so when you open it again, all the time entries are still there.
· Options –> System Settings –> Data Entry will give you options to set the firm wide minimum time entry. You can override this by typing your entry in. It will also give you the option to save time in minutes instead of 10ths of the hour.
· Options –> System Settings –> Data Entry will also allow you to Hold Charges. If you check this off, the next time you log into pclaw, your will have this at the end of your time sheets:
Default to will allow us to choose what Lawyer to automatically always default to. If we uncheck Allow only one timer. We can run multiple time entries in PCLaw. That may be a bad idea.
Uncheck Carry Matter Nickname Forward on Time Sheet is a good policy to set. When you create your next time Entry, the Matter Knick Name will be blank instead of being filled out.
If you check Automatic on OK then when you attempt to Post your time entries, PCLaw will spell check them. I would have this checked for all my users.
Calendar
Even if you are not using PCLaw for Practice Management, you still want to enable the Calendar. On TimeSheets, at the bottom, you click on Calendar.
Look at all the information you get
· Running Talley of Billable Work with a $ Value for the month
· Running Talley of Non Billable Work
· Days with no Time Highlighted in Red
· Easy way to see all the Time Entries
I read an article about iPhone Security on the blog Ride the Lightning, which decried the iPhone and suggested that it not be used because of security flaws. The main problem I have with articles like these is that my clients read them and immediately come after me for suggesting that they use an iPhone. Obviously I am not immune to this, as the firm Strong & Hanni immediately banned the use of iPhones after reading this blog.
In the post, there are some links to YouTube that show how easy it is to hack into an iPhone. Since the post did not suggest what phone was totally secure, I decided to search YouTube to find the un-hackable phone.
No Blackberry (except for the Blackberry, the NSA spent four months making hacker proof for the President.) So there you go, get elected president and you can use your Blackberry.
No Windows Mobile
No Palm Pre, plus read this article: http://www.precentral.net/secure-hand-pre-and-security
What about Desktops?
No Windows XP
No Mac
There are no videos on how to hack a legal pad or typewriter, so these might be the only options for a totally secure firm.
To put matters into perspective, any geek off the street can hack into an XP Machine. So if you have a desktop or laptop running XP, it is more unsecure then an iPhone or Blackberry. Download The Ultimate BootDisk, burn it to a CD and you can easily boot to an XP machine and change all the passwords. I used to have to do this all the time to help clients recover their data. I guess you have to ask yourself, if you lose your iPhone, is the next person that picks it up going to be able to:
“First off you “jailbreak” the phone by placing it into recovery mode and installing a custom RAM disk to the iPhone. Jonathan mentions that the tools are only available to law enforcement (nice thought, but not so); but also acknowledges that it is fairly simple to develop your own. Several products like Red Sn0w and Purple Ra1n are freely available to “jailbreak” the phone. You then install a Secure Shell (SSH) client to port the raw disk image onto your computer.”
If you have password protected your phone, the person that finds your iPhone also has to be able to:
“Jonathan has another demo where he replaces the passcode file with one that contains a blank password, effectively removing the unlock code.”
Now if you are attorney Michael Clayton and U-North has a crack team of ex CIA types bugging your law partners phones and killing them, you probably want to dump what ever mobile device you have and conduct all meetings in a shower with the water going full blast. For the rest of us, here are some steps to make your iPhone more secure:
1. Password lock your iPhone. Settings –> General –> Passcode Lock.
This will make you type in a 4 digit password every time you want to use your iPhone. After 10 failed attempts the phone will erase itself. I know there is a way to hack this, but the average joe six pack that finds your iPhone will probably not know this. One of the basic rules of security is to put in place obstacles that will make hackers look for an easier target. This is one of those obstacles.
2. Purchase an app like Lost n Found. These apps allow you to put some sort of contact information on the wallpaper of your iPhone. If someone finds your lost iPhone, they will see a contact number. If you have followed Step 1 and locked your phone, this is all they will see. I guess it all comes down to your view of people. Do you believe that most people are good and will attempt to return your phone, or are they NSA level hackers that will go through all your client data and sell it to opposing council and send an ethics complaint to the state bar? It is a sick world.
3. Sign up for MobileMe so you can locate your phone via a website or remote wipe it if you lose it. MobileMe will also allow you to send a text message to your lost phone and send out an annoying noise for two minutes so you can find it. Now, if you lose your device, and the next person that finds it happens to carry around the tool that allows you to yank out the iPhone sim card, this will not work.
If you follow these three steps, your iphone is going to be more secure then Windows XP, but not as secure as a typewriter.
