Law Office Technology

Amicus 7, HotDocs 6.2 and Check line 59

I recently put in Amicus 7 at a firm in Jackson, MS that had been using Amicus 5.5.   After the install I went to test out their HotDocs documents which started causing all sorts of problems.  I Called Amicus TechSupport and found that there was a patch for Amicus that solved some HotDocs 6.2 issues.  After installing the patch I started getting the error message below: 

Working with Jeff (who was great, I am saving his email and extension for future use) from Amicus TechSupport, we discovered that although the firm was using HotDocs 6.2, some of their documents had been coded in a previous version.  This did not cause a problem with Amicus 5, but does with Amicus 7.  We added all the HotDocs Documents from Amicus into a template library and converted them all to work with HotDocs 6.2.  This solved the problem. 

HotDocs and Groove

As I wait in the airport to fly to ABA Tech show I thought I would write about a great new collaborative product I discovered a couple of days ago.  Our firm uses HotDocs to generate all of our documents.  That includes proposals, engagement letters,  fax cover sheets, and technology audits.  I am the HotDocs CIC in our office, so it is my job to create and maintain these templates which our consultants keep on their laptops in the field and also desktops in the office.  The big problem we had in the past is that as I update the templates, they rarely get pushed out to all of our consultants and pretty soon everyone had different template sets. 

I just got a copy of Microsoft Groove which has solved this problem and made us way more efficient.  Basically I install Groove on everyone's laptops, desktops and our file server.  On my computer I choose to share certain files and folders.  Whenever I am connected to the internet, Groove automatically syncs my files with all of my other teammates so everyone has the same templates.

Another good example on how our office has gotten more productive is that every Tuesday our firm has a weekly meeting.  We have an agenda that we used to email around the prior week to come up with topics to discuss.  Now everyone can just edit the agenda on their workstations and it will update the changes to everyone else.  Groove really brings collaboration to another level.

Since I am a HotDocs CIC now, I decided that I am going to post some basic coding. 

Here is the scenario I had yesterday.  I was working on a succession for an estate planning attorney.  In the succession we ask for all the list of children from all marriages.  Further down the document, there is a place for all of the heirs.  I know a lot of the heirs are going to be the  children, and I don't want my user to type in all of the children's names again.  Here is the coding that I used:

I Created a Multiple Choice Variable Called Child Heir MC.  The first option was none of the above.  There were no other options.

I created a computation variable called Child Heir CO

REPEAT Child DI
ADD Child name Name CO TO Child Heir MC
END REPEAT

I inputed this CO into the document.

Here is what it looks like finished:

You can either choose from the list of children, or select, None of the Above, and type in the Heir information.  This keeps the document consistent and makes it very easy on your end user.

To make this work properly in the document, I had to change my Heir Name CO to this:

IF Child Heir MC = "None"
""
"«Heir First Name TE»"
IF ANSWERED( Heir Middle Name TE)
    RESULT + " «Heir Middle Name TE»"
END IF
RESULT + " «Heir Last Name TE»"
IF ANSWERED( Heir Name Suffix TE)
    RESULT + " «Heir Name Suffix TE»"
    END IF
ELSE
Child Heir MC
END IF

HotDocs CIC

Sorry for the lack of updates this past couple of weeks.  Besides being very sick and having a major crisis at a firm, we have also managed to become HotDocs CIC's.  The LexisNexis tests are usually difficult.This is to make sure the CIC knows what they are doing, and this is the hardest test.  It does not help that I took the training class two weeks after Katrina damaged my house, and finished on the same day Rita flooded it.  I have to say that the HotDocs staff was pretty accommodating to my needs and I really have to thank them.  Needless to say, Law Office Technology is now fully certified in all three areas of LexisNexis Legal Software: Accounting and Billing, Practice Management, and Document Generation.  I like to tell people we have achieved LexisNexis Holy Trinity status.  Anyway, updates will continue on Monday.

Billing per hour and document generation

I have always been convinced that if firms start using document generation software, they will become more efficient and it will take less time for them to create documents.  Since they can not make as much money by the billable hour, they should start moving to a flat fee model.  They should start making more money because they are producing so many documents.  Here is an article that discusses this ideal:  http://ijlit.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/eal019v1

HotDocs Updates

HotDocs has two hotfixes out for HotDocs 2006:

HotFix 1 Released on 07/05/2006
HotFix 2 Released on 08/02/2006

and a new Service Pack 4 for HotDocs 2005 which includes HotFix 1.

HotFix 1 and Service Pack 4

Recently Microsoft issued security updates for Word 2003, 2002, and 2000. Once you have applied this security update and you edit your templates in Word, Word may insert “Smart Tags” in HotDocs variable fields. When you attempt to assemble the document, these tags may be converted to colorized spaces in the assembled document. In other cases, you may receive syntax errors that HotDocs found unrecognized text when expecting a variable.

HotFix 2 for HotDocs 2006

• HotDocs reports missing END IF instruction when it is not missing. When assembling a template that contains INSERT instructions, HotDocs sometimes erroneously reported that an END IF instruction was missing. This error began with HotFix 1 and it is fixed in HotFix 2.
• Chevron characters in Computation script causes error. When a Computation script included a left chevron («) within quotation marks, HotDocs would mark the script as invalid because there was no closing chevron (»). This is fixed in HotFix 2.

HotDocs 2006 was released in June.  At Law Office Technology , we are still on 2005 and will upgrade shortly.

To be absolutley clear, HotFix 2 is only for 2006.

Dual Screen Trouble

I have a laptop that I use as my primary computer.  I also have a extra monitor hooked up to it to use as a duel monitor when I am at the office..  This really helps in coding as I can move the Component Manger to the other screen and always keep it open.  However, when I undock this causes problems.  My component manager will still be on the second screen except there is no second screen.  I have to redock, use the second monitor and then move the component manger back to my primary screen.  Then  I can undock and use HotDocs.