Law Office Technology

Speech Recognition comes built into Vista

I am using Windows Vista Speech Recognition to dictate this blog post in Windows Live Writer .  I think it will give Dragon Naturally Speaking a run for its money, since it comes built into Vista and does not require you to buy any additional software.  You still will need a good USB microphone.  The Speech Recognition takes only 30 minutes for the basic setup.  I still need to spend some time training my voice.   I believe that we will hear about more law firms beginning to dictate this way.

Besides Dictation, you can also use it to control windows.  When I say start calculator (had to type that) it actually opens the calculator.   If I say print, it prints the document and if say close, it will close it. 

Click here to view a Microsoft Demo

 On a side note I don't believe that this feature will work with WordPerfect.

Airtime for Windows Mobile

I read about the product Airtime around a year ago in Technolawyer.  I immediately asked my assistant to try and get me a copy.  She was unsuccessful because Airtime did not have a version that worked on Palm based Smart Phones.

One of the first things I did when got my Windows Treo 750 was to call Airtime and get a demo.   Airtime provides automated time-capturing solutions for Smart Phones.  Before Airtime, at the end of every month, I would print out a copy of my phone call log, and look for the long calls that I could bill for.  I really had no way of tracking emails.  This is not a very effective system and a lot of billable time and money was lost.  Airtime promised to solve this problem. 

The installation was fairly simple.  You have to download Microsoft SQL Version for mobile phones and then the product itself.  Once I set it up on my phone, I exported a client and matter list from PCLaw and imported it into Airtime.  (Expect a White Paper detailing this very soon.) 

It is a very easy product to use and their support team is more then willing to help train you on the product.  After a phone call or email, Airtime comes up and asks me to choose a Client, Matter, Explanation and Task Code for the phone call or email.  I can also type in a description.   This information is then sent to the Airtime server where you can export it into a CSV file and import it into PCLaw. 

Airtime has settings that allow you to specify thresholds that will open the billing screen if the phone call or email is a certain amount of minutes long.  It also has a stopwatch feature that allows you to track time that is not a phone call or email. 

PCLaw TE is not available for the Windows Smart Phone and frankly Airtime is a superior product.

Don't Paste Text into Time Entries

I have see this issue happen in Amicus Attorney when linked with both PCLaw and Quickbooks.  A User will copy some text from the Internet into a time entry.  They will then try posting the time entry and it is rejected.  The reason is that when you copy text from the Internet you inadvertently grab special characters that are not supported by Quickbooks, PCLaw, or another accounting program. 

The moral of the story is don't ever paste text from the Internet into time entries. 

Rounding Time Entries in Amicus 7

Technorati Tags: Amicus Attorney

I have had some questions about round time entries in Amicus.  To set the rounding correctly you will need to go to Preferences --> Time Formatting.  In the example above the minimum time entry is 0.25.  If I have a time entry for 0.30, it will round up to 0.50.  If I have a time entry for 0.60, it will round up to 0.75.  Pretty simple to setup, but again remember that you need to go to each user's preferences.

The iPhone

Personally, I have never gotten the hype over the iPhone.  It's a phone and a 6 Gigabyte MP3 player.  Great, I have an 80 gigabyte IPOD, so the 6 gigabyte MP3 player is not a good selling point.  If I took my iPhone running with me and it started ringing I would probably chunk it into the lake.  Anyway, I have been getting a lot of questions about the iPhone and Scott Basset, over at the Affinity Law Office Blog, has a pretty good post about why it is not a good choice for a law practice.

Here is the link:  http://intouchlegal.typepad.com/intouch_law_office_techno/2007/06/dont-get-caught.html

Rounding Time in PCLaw

Options --> System Settings --> Data Entry.

PCLaw does not have a Minimum Time Entry Setting like other programs.  It does have a Round Time Entries to feature.  In this example we will set it to 0.25.  If the Minimum Time entry at your firm is 0.25, all time entries below 0.25 will round up to 0.25.  Time entries over 0.25 will round up to 0.50.  Time entries over 0.50 will round up to 0.75 and time entries over 0.75 will round up to 1.00. 

Rounding will only occur if you use the timer to record the time entry.  If you manually type in 0.20, it will not round up to 0.25.

Technorati Tags: PCLaw