Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers a Web-based project management system for law firms (see article below), an online expense tracking service, a time-tracking application, a Web-based managerial feedback tool, and a Flash-capable Web browser for Android and iPhone. Don't miss the next issue.
Conquer Your Legal Project Management Demons
Lawyers have traditionally broken into a cold sweat when presented with a math problem. Nowadays, they're just as likely to start mopping their foreheads when someone mentions project management. With corporate counsel holding lawyers more accountable for their fees, it's no longer sufficient to use a court docket as a project plan and then scramble to meet each deadline. But lawyers have good reason to sweat because most project management software is as nonintuitive and joyless as a triple integral, and not designed for their needs.
OnIt … in One Sentence
OnIt is an online project management system for law firms.
The Killer Feature
Social networks excel at bringing out everyone's inner narcissist, resulting in a cacophony of status updates largely consisting of observations that no one would have the temerity to say face to face.
By contrast, OnIt borrows the tools of social media for a useful purpose — moving a project forward. For example, instead of emailing everyone on your team to let them know you've finished a task, you can instead use OnIt's status update function. Onit emails your update to your team and also updates the project plan.
And if you forget to complete a task, the project manager on your team can use OnIt's Nudge feature to remind you of your upcoming deadline.
Other Notable Features
Onit's Project plans consist of tasks and milestones that you can delegate. A budgeting tool enables you to track the costs of projects.
When you receive email related to a case you're managing with OnIt, you can forward the message to OnIt using a special email address. You can also cc OnIt on outgoing messages. Onit stores these messages within a project. Similarly, OnIt offers document management with versioning for sharing documents with your team.
Even small cases require organization. OnIt offers tagging for this purpose. For example, you could create a "Testimony" tag for all the deposition transcripts you upload and further categorize them with a tag for each deponent. You can also tag tasks and milestones so that you can see everything related to a tag in one place.
What Else Should You Know?
Onit is currently free, but the company will soon begin charging a monthly fee. OnIt works in all modern Web browsers on Macs, PCs, and smartphones. Learn more about OnIt.
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