Law Office Technology

Quick Hits: 4-11-2011

The Ernie Challenge

http://theerniechallenge.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/to-edna-and-beyond-the-ernie-challenge/

Silver in the Windy City – ABA TECHSHOW Turns 25 This Week!

http://www.legalitprofessionals.com/Christy-Burke/silver-in-the-windy-city-aba-techshow-turns-25-next-week.html

The Complete Guide to Backing up your Computer

http://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/2011/04/04/a-complete-guide-to-backing-up-your-computer/?awesm=tnw.to_17hCJ

IDC Forecasts Worldwide Smartphone Market to Grow by Nearly 50% in 2011

 http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS22762811

Top 10 Micro-Apps for Windows and Mac OS X

http://m.lifehacker.com/5790110/top-10-micro+apps-for-windows-and-mac-os-x

MiniTool Power Data Recovery Finds Your Lost and Deleted Files

http://m.lifehacker.com/5789376/minitool-power-data-recovery-finds-your-lost-and-deleted-files

DropTunes Is a Web Jukebox for Your Dropbox Music Stash

http://m.lifehacker.com/5788980/droptunes-is-a-web-jukebox-for-your-dropbox-music-stash

Focus on a List of Projects, Not Just To-Dos, to Relieve Productivity Stress

http://lifehacker.com/#!5788591/focus-on-a-list-of-projects-not-just-to+dos-to-relieve-productivity-stress

Virus and Porn

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/reporting.aspx

Lexis is Combining Client Development and U.S. Practice Management businesses

LexisNexis Combines Units to Service The Business of Law

LexisNexis is bringing its Client Development and U.S. Practice Management businesses together under a single leader, Phil Livingston. As you may know, Phil joined LexisNexis in May as Senior Vice President and head of our Practice Management business. Combining the teams under Phil’s leadership will enable us to better understand and address the business needs of our customers – the “Business of Law”. It will also allow us to create a center of excellence for the development of software within the LexisNexis organization.

“This combination of businesses demonstrates LexisNexis’s commitment to help solve the business challenges of law firms,” said Phil Livingston. “Customers want their problems to be solved in a holistic way and this move better positions us to do this by leveraging our market leading assets in each area. On the Client Development side, our Lawyers.com business is a leader in marketing services, website construction and lead generation for small law. In the Practice Management portfolio, PCLaw™ is the market leader in legal, accounting and billing applications.”

The Practice Management business will continue to serve its customer base and work with the CIC channel, with no changes to its management team. Our vision remains unchanged – to transform the business of law. By taking the headache out of the business of law, LexisNexis helps legal professionals focus practicing law. Customers are at the core of our strategy.  We are focused on gaining a deep understanding of customer needs and workflows and building world class products to address those needs in addition to continually developing products like PCLaw™, the award-winning, number one legal billing and accounting solution in North America, and Time Matters^®, our Client & Matter Management software which has won Legal Technology Awards year after year.
We look forward to continuing to work with you, our valued partners, in serving the needs of our mutual customers.

I do not have a lot of clients using PCLaw to track what aspects of their marketing is most effective, so maybe there will be some improvements in this area.  I will probably learn more as I head to Dallas on Monday for the LexisNexis Practice Management Conference.

New Practice Management Implementation Sheet

Created this Practice Management Implementation Sheet, that should be could for anyone implementing some practice management software, weather it is TimeMatters, Clio, Practicemaster, Amicus or anything else.

 

https://www.box.net/shared/static/9h06y5vhjc.pdf

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.

2nd Annual Louisiana Solo & Small Firm Conference

I have been honored to be invited to speak and the 2nd Annual Louisiana Solo and Small Firm Conference which will be March 26 & 27 at the Sheraton in New Orleans.  I will be speaking on the 27th at 8:30 am on Taking your Office with You Ethically and Professionally with James Province and Anthony Laverde.  I had the distinct pleasure of speaking with James a couple of months ago in Mississippi and James was such a good presenter that I went out and bought a tablet pc. 

Here is the information below:

· REGISTER NOW!! Advance Registration: $150 available through Feb. 20

· The dual-track program has been approved for 12.5 hours of CLE, including ethics, professionalism and law office management.

· Keynote Speaker Ari Kaplan’s presentation on How to Stand Out in a Stagnant Economy will be featured on Thursday, March 26. He is the author of The Opportunity Maker: Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business De­velopment (Thomson-West, 2008), a book advising lawyers about standing out in today’s stagnant economy. As the principal of Ari Kaplan Advi­sors, Kaplan addresses professionals internationally about the mechanics of getting published and dynamic networking.

· Registration includes electronic version of the conference materials for attendees to download, conference attendance, and coffee/refreshment breaks.

· To review the conference schedule, register online or download a mail-in registration form, go to: http://www.lsba.org/2007cle/seminardetail.asp?CLEID=111

· For further information or questions, please contact Eric Barefield at (504) 619-0122, toll free (800) 421-5722 ext. 122, or ebarefield@lsba.org

ThompsonWest Webinar Series

 Tom O’Conner, Browning.Marean and I have been doing some Webinar’s on legal technology for ThompsonWest.  We did one on Basic Law Firm Technology yesterday and we are doing one on 1/21/2008 on disaster recovery.  Certain states will give CLE Credit. 

Here is the description:

Disasters come in many forms -- hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, power outages even terrorist attacks.  The best disaster recovery plan is a disaster preparation plan so that your practice can be back in business as soon as possible. Technology can assist this process but there are other important business decisions to consider as well: availability of equipment, access to data, staffing issues .....all these are supported by technology in today's law firm and this session will show you how to put the the right technology system in place before disaster strikes.

http://westlegaledcenter.com/program_guide/course_detail.jsf?videoCourseId=18196558

 

 

On Patching

Recently there has been a lot of chatter going back and forth about patches that cause more problems then they fix.  A couple of vendors have released some patches and service packs and have quickly pulled them when they realized that they caused problems.  A lot of my fellow brethren have been up in arms over this situation.  Here is a little secret that I have used to keep me sane:

I NEVER RUN ANYWAY UPDATE OR PATCH UNTIL IT HAS BEEN OUT FOR AT LEAST 2 MONTHS 

I NEVER INSTALL A NEW VERSION UNTIL IT HAS BEEN OUT 3-6 MONTHS

Microsoft spends billions on research and they still release service packs that cause issues.  Vendors in the Legal Market do not have billions to spend and their products are often buggy when first released.  That is the reason I  shut off all the automatic updates (for legal software) at my client’s offices.   

There is a saying in war that “The best-laid plans work well until the first bullet is fired.”  Well in the software world, “The most carefully researched and studied upgrades work will until the first piece of software is installed at your client’s office.”

Don’t be a Guiney Pig!

Microsoft Across America CLE

On August 1st, Law Office Technology along with Tom O' Conner from the Gulf Coast Technology Center, Digital Legal, and the Louisiana State Bar Association put on a seminar on how Law Firms could use Microsoft products in their practice.  Law Office Technology was able to get Microsoft to send down the Microsoft Across America Truck which was full of Microsoft Technology.  Attendees listened to three presentations and received CLE credit.  The first presentation dealt with Essential Technology a new firm would need to purchase.  The second, which in my opinion stole the show, was attorney Hector Lopez who described how his firm used Microsoft Hosted SharePoint and Hosted Exchange, along with a VOIP system to create a virtual office with none of the  limitations of a traditional brick and mortars Law Firm.  In my opinion, this is the future, today.  The last presentation, by me, described how Outlook with Business Contact Manager could be turned into a Case Management System. 

 

The Microsoft truck was filled with Smartphones, Servers, Tablet PCs, Projectors, Conferencing equipment, and an Xbox with Halo.  After each presentation Attorneys were able to file into the truck and see the technology in action.  With the success of this event, we hope to have the truck back in the spring.    

1st Annual Solo and Small Firm Conference

I will be speaking with along with Thomas J. O'Connor at  the Louisiana State Bar Association's 1st Annual Solo and Small Firm Conference which will be held in New Orleans on May 8th and 9th.  There a lot of national speakers coming to this event so I think it would be a great ideal to attend.  It will  in New Orleans at the Hilton Riverside Hotel.  Tom and I will be speaking on Low Cost Office Tech Essentials on Friday at 2:30.