Law Office Technology

2nd Annual Louisiana Solo and Small Firm Conference

Many thanks to Adriana Linares who took these pictures of Tom O’Conner and I goofing off in the Amicus Booth.  New Orleans attorney Doug Goff pretended to be interested in Amicus (He has had Amicus for years).  I was lucky to have the wall to projected on, which during the breaks all the exhibitors and I watched march madness.

 

PRE ABA TECHSHOW REPORT: SCANSNAP S1500

As we gear up for the ABA TechShow this week, I thought I would write about a couple of things that I am looking forward to, besides Kitty O’Sheas, the Irish Pub in the Hilton.   Last week Fujitsu released the ScanSnap S1500, its replacement for the popular S510.  If you are wondering why you can’t seem to implement a paperless office at your firm, you probably don’t have a Fujitsu ScanSnap.  The beauty of the entire ScanSnap line is the one touch scanning, which allows you to scan documents with the click of a button and a moment later Adobe Acrobat pops opens with the documents you just scanned .  I have been pushing the S510 line for sometime and have gotten rave reviews from my clients.  The General rule of thumb is after one ScanSnap is placed in an office, 1-3 months later there is a ScanSnap on everyone’s desk. 

Here are some of the details on the S1500:

•Color, Grayscale, and Black & White
•Double-sided Scanning
•Superior CCD Optics
•Optical Resolution up to 600 dpi
•Feeds up to 20 Pages Per Minute (40 ipm)
•Fast High Resolution Scanning (20 ppm @ 300 dpi Color)
•Holds 50 Pages in the Automatic Document Feeder
•One Button Scan Operation (PDF, S-PDF, JPEG)
•Compact Design with Footprint Smaller than an A4 Laptop
•Advanced Multi-feed Detection (Ultrasonic)
•Feeds Sizes from Business Card to A3 (Double Letter)
•Long Document Scanning up to 34 inches
•Carrier Sheet Scanning

 

And here is the Gravy:

It comes with Adobe 9.0 Standard which costs $299.99.  The retail cost for the S1500 is $495.00.

Here is the bonus gravy, Intelligent Image Correction which allows: 

• Automatic cropping ensures images don’t contain unnecessary over-scan.
• Automatic content-based rotation helps keep images right-side-up even if you put them in upside-down.
• Automatic de-skew keeps images straight even if they go in a little crooked.
• Automatic blank-page removal eliminates unnecessary blank sides and file size.

I will have one of these soon, so I will give an official review in a couple of weeks.

2 CLEs a CRM Conference and an ABA TECHSHOW

This past Wednesday I had the honor of speaking at an ABA Techshow on the Road  in Gulfport with Adriana Linares and James Province.  I learned a lot of practical information from James and Adriana on OneNote and Outlook so it was totally worth it for me.  The next two days, I worked the Amicus Booth at the Louisiana State Bar Solo and Small Firm Conference as well as speaking with my fellow Law Office Technology consultant Garrett Laborde and LSBA’s Tony Verde on how to take your office with you Ethically and Professionally.  I am now off to Memphis for the AutoTask convention.  AutoTask is like Amicus or TimeMatters, but made for Technology Consultants.  After the conference ends Tuesday Night I will be heading up to Chicago for the ABA TechShow where I will be working the Amicus Booth Thursday and Friday Morning and meeting with Vendors each afternoon. 

Synergy – The Virtual KVM Switch

Besides using dual monitors, I also use dual laptops, a dell latitude and IBM Tablet X60.  The problem I have whether at home, on the road, or the office is that I just want to use one keyboard/mouse for both computers.  I finally found the solution in Synergy which is basically a virtual KVM Switch.  I installed Synergy on both laptops and when the laptops are connected to the same network, I only need need one keyboard and mouse.  It works across platforms so if you have a Mac and a PC you could share it on both computers. 

This article will help you set it up: http://www.engadget.com/2005/08/09/how-to-share-your-keyboard-and-mouse-in-realtime-with-synergy/

Mardi Gras caused me to Flash my Phone again

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=428261

I am now running Windows Mobile 6.5 on AT&T Tilt using the PDACornerUltimate Rom.  I am also using SPB Mobile Shell Again.  I am having no problems except some GPS issues.  Airtime works great and the battery life seems to be much improved.  I might need to change the radio as I have had a couple of dropped calls.  Hopefully I can stay with this version for awhile. 

 

Bye Bye Matter Manager, Hello Matter List….

In one of the newest releases of PCLaw (9.20), a new feature called Matter List appeared.  Lets face it, the Matter Manager in PCLaw leaves a little more to be desired.  It has a narrow view and is not that customizable.  The Matter List solves all these problems and gives you the ability to customize your Matter view like you can in TimeMatter and Amicus Attorney.  To get to it, you need to open PCLaw and go to File –> Matter List. 

Here is the default matter view which shows all your active matters.  You have the option to Add Tabs…

Below is the customized matter list that I install for most of my clients.  The first three tabs are for Active, Inactive and Archived Matters.  The next three are Tabs I create are for the Attorney’s in the firm.   After Responsible Attorney Tabs, I list matters by year opened.  I usually do 2000 -  2007, 2008 and 2009.  After that I create Matter Tabs by types of Law.

Besides looking at a lists of matters I can easily select a matter or group of tagged matters and create a prebill, add a Note or change the matter.  I have stopped using the Matter Manager all together now that I have the Matter List. 

PCLaw: A newer version of the software is required to access the data.

 

When PCLaw is updated on one machine, all users will get the following message.  The correct answer is Yes.

 

PCLaw is now trying to install the PCLaw Print Driver.  Click Continue anyway.