TechnoLawyer: Automation/Document Assembly/Macros

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a Microsoft Word add-in that enforces firm standards through automated document creation, including data connections to Outlook, document management systems, and other software (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of a legal research service that automatically locates statements of law in cases and directs you to the best authority for each of them, a specialized legal research service for trade secrets, including coverage of the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 and tools for comparing jurisdictions, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

The larger your firm, the more difficult it becomes to maintain efficiency and document quality. This relates both to the time it takes to create certain document types and the way they look. The secret is to enhance Microsoft Word and better integrate it with your other software.

Word LX Enterprise … in One Sentence

Infoware's Word LX Enterprise is a Microsoft Word add-in that automates document drafting tasks, and enforces your firm's work product guidelines.

The Killer Feature

When your firm pulls the trigger on Word LX, Infoware works closely with your implementation team to create all the document templates you'll need at the outset. Just as importantly, Infoware integrates Word LX with your existing software to further enhance document automation. For example, Word LX can retrieve contact information from practice management software and Document IDs from your document management system.

Out of the box integrations include Active Directory, Outlook (including Office 365 and Exchange), InterAction, iManage, OpenText, Amicus Attorney, PCLaw, and Time Matters. If you use products for which an integration doesn't exist, Infoware can build one using its API.

"Any law firm that wants to improve their document creation process should take a close look at Word LX," says Ivaylo Nikolov, Director, Information Technology at Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg. "For many years, we've relied on it for increasing the efficiency of our staff and lawyers, and maintaining the accuracy of our documents."

Other Notable Features

Word LX resides in Microsoft Word's Ribbon. Click the LX New Docs button to view a customized dialog box, the top left of which lists templates for the most common document types — typically Letter, Memo, Envelope, Labels, etc. Use one of these or search for more specific template such as one related to a practice area (Word LX calls these "precedents").

Selecting a template or precedent unfurls additional options. These variations can accommodate different practice groups, offices, languages, paper size requirements, etc. Thanks to the Active Directory integration, users can create documents on behalf of others such as their boss. Personal settings enable you to control the zoom level and other niceties.

Once you finalize these options, a custom form appears. Here you can import data from connected applications per the integrations noted above. You also choose from a number of predefined options. For example, the Letter template offers choices for delivery method, salutation, cc/bcc, closing, and more.

When you need to print a document, Word LX's MultiPrint tool incorporates all of your firm's idiosyncrasies. Examples include printing final versions from the letterhead tray, applying stamps such as Draft or Copy, outputting a corresponding envelope, and creating a PDF version simultaneously for emailing or filing.

Word LX seeks to end the heartbreak associated with paragraph numbering and styles with a range of prebuilt options designed to work reliably. Infoware can create customized versions for your firm. CEO Dan Sharp tells us that Word LX offers more customization options than any competing product.

Other Word LX tools similarly improve on Word's native functions, including page numbers, section breaks, tables of authorities and contents, exhibit indexes, signature lines, headers and footers, and more.

What Else Should You Know?

"Our goal is to make document creation faster and easier for the legal profession," says Sharp. "Our solutions optimize and extend Microsoft Word with tools that are easier to use and that are more specific to the task of creating legal documents." Learn more about Word LX Enterprise.

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So many products, so little time. In each issue of TL NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The newsletter's innovative articles enable lawyers and law office administrators to quickly understand the function of a product, and zero in on its most important features. The TL NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a customizable, multiuser text entry automation utility that runs in Windows, Mac, and iOS applications (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of a popular cloud practice management system that now offers a full-featured mobile app, a chat system, and payment processing, a service that enables you to analyze IP portfolios for M&A due diligence, litigation strategy, and prior art research, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

Legal drafting involves a constant battle between precision and time spent. While hard enough for one lawyer to balance, it becomes even more of a challenge to scale across a law firm. Automating boilerplate language enables everyone at your firm to use carefully crafted language in a few keystrokes, ensuring consistency across work product.

TextExpander … in One Sentence

Smile's TextExpander is an automation tool for quickly entering frequently-used text in any application on Windows, Mac, and iOS.

The Killer Feature

TextExpander offers cloud-based administration tools. This enables everyone in your law firm to benefit from centrally managed "Snippets" — Smile's term for TextExpander's text automations — on all their supported devices.

TextExpander computes statistics so that you can see which snippets have the highest usage, and how much time your staff saves en masse. Sales and Business Development Manager Mike Burda tells me that the average TextExpander user saves one hour per day on average assuming a typing speed of 60 words per minute.

"I use TextExpander for many things in my practice — including responding to discovery," says lawyer Stewart Albertson of Albertson & Davidson in a blog post. "I have over 60 objection "snippets," including attorney-client privilege, work product doctrine, calls for expert's opinion from a lay person, etc. Before TextExpander I used to cut and paste from a template of objections. While this works, in my experience it takes much longer and it is easy to get lost in a large response file. As you can imagine, using TextExpander speeds the process up for responding to written discovery. Give it a try."

Other Notable Features

At its most basic, TextExpander enables you to type a shortcut such as "sig" in conjunction with a hot key of your choosing to enter your email signature snippet at the end of a message in Outlook. Snippets can contain rich text formatting, hyperlinks, images, and even HTML. They can span many paragraphs such as an entire engagement letter. You need not memorize TextExpander shortcuts. Instead, you can use another hot key to view a list on the fly and search through them. Your firm's TextExpander administrators can organize snippets into folders to make it easier for users to find the one they need.

More advanced snippets can incorporate conditional text. Such text appears next to a checkbox that controls whether to include it or not. For example, you may not want to include your mobile number in your signature every time so you can omit it by default unless you check its box. Additionally, snippets can perform date and other calculations, prompt you to enter data or choose an option from a menu, remove formatting of text on the clipboard, complete forms, etc.

Snippets can incorporate other snippets. With these "Nested Snippets," your administrator could reference a marketing snippet within each user's signature snippet. This would enable your firm to consistently promote whatever it wants in everyone's signature without users having to do anything.

What Else Should You Know?

TextExpander Team costs $7.96 per user per month billed annually ($9.99 otherwise). The Life Hacker plan for single users costs $3.33 per month billed annually ($4.16 otherwise). You pay only for active users and can accrue credits. The administrator tools provide control over access rights. Learn more about TextExpander.

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So many products, so little time. In each issue of TL NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The newsletter's innovative articles enable lawyers and law office administrators to quickly understand the function of a product, and zero in on its most important features. The TL NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a practice management system with a large forms library that automatically captures the billable time you spend on document drafting and email (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of a cloud practice management and accounting system that now includes free credit card processing via LawPay, a cloud practice management system with a new document management component that works locally on PCs and Macs like a network drive, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

Accurate time tracking empowers law firms. Those that bill by the hour can maximize earnings while those that charge fixed fees can evaluate their profitability and staff efficiency. But how can you prevent lost billable time given human nature?

Smokeball … in One Sentence

Smokeball is a practice management and document assembly system that recently gained a new automatic time capture feature.

The Killer Feature

Attorney and Smokeball Legal Technology Content Manager Joshua Taylor walks me through a typical stretch of time in a law firm, drafting documents, sending and receiving email, etc. He then clicks on the AutoTime button in Smokeball's toolbar.

Not only does Smokeball capture the time spent on this work, but it creates nearly final time entries. Smokeball itemizes each task, connects it to the corresponding matter and creates a description of the work (e.g., Letter to Law Office of Arthur Kirkland). You review these entries, make any necessary edits, and post them if you bill by the hour. Every night, Smokeball emails you a report listing all your captured time for the previous day broken down by matter.

Early adopters of Smokeball's automatic legal time tracking software feature have captured 34% more time on average. "Smokeball has increased my law firm's profitability by over 30%," says Joshua Boehm, partner at Cottonwood Law Group, LC. Smokeball's Law Firm Insights report enables you to measure the impact of automatic time tracking at your firm, and prove time worked in the event a client transfers his case to another firm. The report breaks out time spent and cost for each employee.

Other Notable Features

Smokeball is a hybrid product, combining the capabilities of a native Windows client with the convenience of unlimited cloud data storage. This gives you the ability to work without an internet connection. The Windows client allows for tight integration with Microsoft Office. When you open a potential matter, choose from more than 250 Matter Types with all the information fields you're likely to need. Smokeball also runs a conflict check. Smokeball's mobile app gives you access to your practice on the go.

Smokeball's Legal Tasks and Workflows enable you to capture your firm's processes. A Workflow consists of a set of tasks, each of which is assigned to an attorney or staff member. You can create task dependencies, and generate due dates based on triggers.

Many law firm tasks involve document automation. Smokeball offers more than 14,000 legal forms and can help add your own during the onboarding process. Smokeball automatically enters information from the extensive set of matter fields. You can email completed documents directly from Smokeball and generate a PDF with one click. A clever feature lists the contacts associated with the matter, which saves time and prevents misaddressed messages. Alternatively, you can attach documents in Smokeball from Outlook. Either way, Smokeball saves all email in the matter, including replies.

What Else Should You Know?

"Smokeball helps small law firms increase the profitability of their matters," said Jane Oxley, Smokeball's President. "By providing our clients with features like full visibility into matter profitability and the most robust Microsoft Outlook and Word integrations in the industry, we help attorneys spend less time on administrative tasks, and get back to practicing law." Learn more about Smokeball.

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So many products, so little time. In each issue of TL NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The newsletter's innovative articles enable lawyers and law office administrators to quickly understand the function of a product, and zero in on its most important features. The TL NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a Microsoft Word add-in for drafting litigation and transactional documents with a new document assembly engine, forms library, and machine-learning tools (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of a new legal research service that use artificial intelligence to keep you apprised of new federal legislation and regulations, an AI-powered legal research technology that provides fast answers to common legal questions, including definitions, elements of a claim, and standards of proof, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

The briefs and contracts you draft often break new ground and benefit from your legal expertise. But just as often they incorporate material that already exists. And they always contain precise syntax that is time consuming to manually proofread. As a result, drafting benefits from automation — ideally a suite of tools within Microsoft Word.

Drafting Assistant … in One Sentence

Thomson Reuters' Drafting Assistant adds document assembly, reference, and proofreading tools to Microsoft Word (there's also a Drafting Assistant web app).

The Killer Feature

The new Build Document feature offers document assembly technology and a library of expert templates via integrations with Contract Express and Practical Law respectively. You start by selecting one of your own templates or a Practical Law template. Either way, you then use Contract Express' technology to enter data into the form fields to build your document.

Drafting Assistant can save your work at any point in case you need to hunt down some information or conduct research. Click the My Projects button to view recent documents, both completed and in progress. The Practical Law template library encompasses 12 practice areas, including antitrust, bankruptcy, commercial transactions, intellectual property, litigation, and real estate.

Other Notable Features

Drafting Assistant resides in a tab in Microsoft Word's Ribbon. Clicking the Drafting button opens a panel alongside your Word document that contains Build Document and other tools. Among these is the new Locate Precedent tool. Powered by machine learning, Locate Precedent enables you to compare a provision drafted by you or opposing counsel against publicly filed agreements in EDGAR. If you find a phrasing you prefer, you can add it to the document.

Also in the Drafting Assistant panel are a variety of tools for litigators, including the Locate Authority tool, which uses machine-learning technology similar to that of Locate Precedent. Select an argument in your brief and Locate Authority finds a supporting citation that you can add in your preferred style with a click. Flags & Links enables you to spot negative KeyCite signals for authorities you're citing. Alternatively, WestCheck creates a KeyCite report of all authorities in a separate document.

Other litigation tools include TOA Builder to build a table of authorities and Authority Compiler to a create PDF ebrief. "Drafting Assistant makes creating tables of authorities quick and easy," said Sarah Mauldin, Director of Library Services at Smith, Gambrell & Russell. "I like getting to look a bit like a magician by using a tool that transforms a painful process into one that is much less onerous."

Rounding out the suite of tools is Deal Proof, which has its own dedicated button in the Drafting Assistant ribbon tab. Deal Proof finds potential errors in your document such as undefined terms, unused terms, inconsistent paragraph numbering, punctuation errors, etc. Like a spell checker, Deal Proof now updates in real time as you make corrections.

What Else Should You Know?

Until this year Drafting Assistant required Windows. The Mac version will launch later this year, initially with Flags & Links and WestCheck followed by more tools in the future. "Mac users will have access to two of the most used features from Drafting Assistant," said Craig Larson, Vice President, Productivity Solution at Thomson Reuters. "Drafting Assistant provides a full range of solutions that improve efficiency and streamline document drafting workflows, validate citations, and perform other critical drafting tasks no matter where users are or what computing platform they are using." Learn more about Drafting Assistant.

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So many products, so little time. In each issue of TL NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The newsletter's innovative articles enable lawyers and law office administrators to quickly understand the function of a product, and zero in on its most important features. The TL NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers cloud practice management software with a growing library of forms and templates, and built-in document assembly and e-filing (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of an Outlook add-in that addresses attachment headaches and reduces the risk of career-threatening errors, a due diligence and business intelligence research service with a new approach to presenting data from public filings, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

Once a luxury, document automation has become essential in law firms. Consumers of legal services want to pay for your expertise, not for you to noodle around in Microsoft Word formatting a scanned form and manually entering data.

LEAP … in One Sentence

LEAP is a cloud practice management system with built-in document assembly and a growing library of forms and document templates.

The Killer Feature

The creators of LEAP identified an unmet need in the legal industry several years ago. Law firms store client and matter information in a practice management system, but cannot use this data to create documents without a significant investment in document assembly software. And even after such an investment, law firms still need to download forms from various courts and agencies, and buy templates from various providers.

LEAP provides all three of these components in one product — practice management, forms and templates ("forms"), and document assembly. LEAP currently contains more than 2,000 forms in more than a dozen practice areas ranging from bankruptcy to estate planning to family to real estate. "Since the start of 2017, LEAP Content has added over 600 new forms across the various states and areas of law," says Kelly Clifford, President of Content. The LEAP Forms Blog, to which you can subscribe, keeps you apprised of new additions by practice area and by jurisdiction.

In addition, LEAP recently unveiled built-in e-filing. You enter your court login credentials, choose the case file, and select the documents you want to e-file. LEAP currently supports e-filing in bankruptcy courts, USCIS (immigration), and New York and New Jersey state courts.

Other Notable Features

You can search LEAP for a form or browse by jurisdiction and practice area. Forms run in Microsoft Word, both the Windows and Online versions. Fields within forms auto-populate with data from LEAP. The form wizard identifies missing data. Once you add missing data to a case file, you can rerun the form with one click.

Customize LEAP's forms and create your own document templates using more than 25,000 fields. LEAP stores your custom templates so that you need not reinvent the wheel in the future. Without any programming, your templates can include questionnaires, calculations, Ask/Result (multiple-choice answers), and If/Then/Else statements (e.g., if a female, use female pronouns throughout the document). LEAP's content team can assist you in creating your first five templates at no charge.

You can save completed documents in Word or PDF format. If you're creating several documents, LEAP can combine them into a single PDF file. LEAP saves all versions of the documents you generate in the corresponding matter. The History of Changes provides an audit trail, while the Compare tool generates a redline of two versions.

LEAP automatically captures the time you spend creating a document for billing purposes. As we've reported previously, LEAP includes billing, document management, and practice management in addition to the document automation tools discussed above. LEAP also includes a modern, mobile-friendly website and blog for your firm.

What Else Should You Know?

LEAP runs in a dedicated native app for Windows, iOS, and Android, as well as in a web browser. The monthly subscription includes technical support and software updates. Learn more about LEAP.

How to Receive TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TL NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The newsletter's innovative articles enable lawyers and law office administrators to quickly understand the function of a product, and zero in on its most important features. The TL NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

It's time for the TL NewsWire Top 25 Products of 2016 Awards. TL NewsWire subscribers chose the winners of these awards. When subscribers clicked for more details about a product we reported on, they passively cast a vote. Passive voting is the most meaningful type of voting for awards. The winners below genuinely attracted the most interest from TL NewsWire subscribers.

This year a word processor earned the top spot! Major themes among the winners — practice management (8 products), litigation (5 products), legal research (3 products), time capture and billing (3 products), and add-ins for Microsoft Office (3 products). Also among the winners — a smartpen and accompanying app and notebook, a project management app, a virtual desktop service, and a marketing automation app.

TL NewsWire is free — sign up now so you can choose next year's winners.

Congratulations to all the winners! Without further ado …

WINNERS OF THE TL NEWSWIRE TOP 10 PRODUCTS OF 2016 AWARD

Congratulations to the 10 hottest products of 2016!

1. WordPerfect Office X8

This first place finish may surprise some, but not longtime fans who have vowed never to use that other word processor. These fans told Corel they wanted advanced PDF tools, and Corel delivered in WordPerfect Office X8. You can now convert PDF image scans into WPD files, and use Reveal Codes to search and destroy formatting problems. Additionally, you can create your own PDF forms, including digital signatures.

2. Zola Suite

Five years ago, Fred Cohen and his team of designers and engineers set out to build cloud practice management software without compromise. In 2016, this hard work paid off with the launch heard round the legal web. Zola Suite's web, Android, and iOS apps have feature parity. With advanced technologies such as Gmail and Office 365 email integration, telephone call tracking, and a OneNote replacement, maybe you can have it all.

3. Smart Writing Set

Want to get a lawyer's attention? Develop a replacement for the yellow legal pad, which lawyers love to hate. Moleskine's Smart Writing Set consists of a pen with a tiny camera that digitizes your notes. This being Moleskine, the special paper notebooks that work with the pen look as sharp as you in your best suit. The free Android and iOS app stores your notes and can make them editable with its built-in OCR.

4. Contract Tools

Paper Software knows contracts. One co-founder served time in big law, the other is a programmer with machine learning expertise. The result of this dynamic duo is Contract Tools, which adds a suite of tools to Microsoft Word for use with complex contracts. Click a defined term for its definition, find all references to a specific section, locate and finalize all placeholders, and correct inconsistencies, incorrect formatting, and other errors difficult for human proofreaders to spot.

5. Exterro Project Management for Law Firms

Until you can replace your staff with robots, Exterro Project Management for Law Firms might be the next best thing. This project management and process automation software enables you to automate your workflows. When someone completes a task, the person responsible for the next task in the workflow receives a notification. Extensive reporting gives you a God-like view of all your firm's activity, which you can monitor from your beach bungalow.

6. LEAP 365

LEAP 365 easily wins the most impressive product launch of the year as it took place in a (sweet!) suite at Yankee Stadium. This largess underscored the company's significant achievement — cloud practice management software with apps for Windows, web, iPad, iPhone, and Android. During the press conference, four product specialists used LEAP on a different platform while seamlessly collaborating on document assembly and other law firm tasks. Clearly, LEAP had a much better year than the Yankees.

7. ExhibitManager 5

Given how many features Microsoft Word has, it's amazing how many it lacks. ExhibitManager fills one such gap by automatically generating a table of exhibits in a Microsoft Word document based on simple references that you insert while drafting. The software keeps this table updated when you edit your brief. ExhibitManager also manages exhibits using a spreadsheet-like interface, and can create PDF exhibit binders or ebriefs with one click.

8. LexRex

It's hard to believe but the cloud practice management pioneers are nearing their tenth birthday. This means they were originally designed for a desktop web browser. By contrast, LexRex launched this year built for a mobile world with a design that minimizes the number of different screens. The app's Case Categories offer workflow automation, while the Case Summary lists all activity for each matter in a tickler-like manner.

9. LawBase

Many software products require your firm to adapt because of their rigidity. By contrast, LawBase adapts to your law firm. This practice management software ships with templates for practice areas ranging from insurance defense to mortgage refinancing to mass tort. If one of these doesn't apply, the company can work to create a custom template that'll fit your law firm like a glove.

10. Concordance Desktop

Designed for the do-it-yourself law firm, Concordance Desktop added processing to its suite of tools this year. Now for cases involving custodians with mainstream data sources such as Outlook, Windows Explorer, and file cabinets, you can import PST files, scans, and more without a consultant or a dedicated processor like LAW PreDiscovery. You can then use Concordance Desktop's popular document review tools to find relevant documents, apply Bates numbers, and produce them in native, PDF, or TIFF formats.

WINNERS OF THE TL NEWSWIRE TOP 25 PRODUCTS OF 2016 AWARD

Congratulations to the next 15 hottest products of 2016!

11. Firm Manager 2.0

Sometimes software developers focus on user-facing features, while other times they focus on under-the-hood improvements. Firm Manager took both paths this year. Crowd pleasers such as the new templates automate client intake and other routine tasks. Meanwhile, role-based permissions, integration with the online and desktop versions of QuickBooks, and extensive data import tools help law firms switch to Firm Manager in the first place.

12. BlueStylus Time and Billing

It seems like virtually all cloud billing apps cost the same, almost as if they colluded on price. This is of course apocryphal, but if a cartel did exist BlueStylus wouldn't join. At just $7 per user per month, BlueStylus broke the price barrier this year while offering breakthrough features such as automated filing of email messages from clients. Not too long ago, only large firms could afford such technology. Now it costs less than Netflix.

13. ReplyToSome

A few years ago, Peter Norman was holed up in his office at the Singapore outpost of a large law firm where he spent many billable hours negotiating multiparty deals via email with disparate teams of opposing counsel. One misaddressed message could imperil his career. Once stateside again, he spearheaded the creation of ReplyToSome, which adds a suite of tools to Outlook that prevents such mishaps. Even if you don't need to manage large distribution lists, ReplyToSome offers other helpful tools such as SendCheck, which warns you about replying as a BCC and when you forget an attachment.

14. TimesManager Legal

James DeRosa knows a market opportunity when he sees one. With an increasing number of law firms using ClaimsManager despite it being designed for insurance companies, he and his team developed TimesManager Legal to better serve the legal industry. If you can think of a billing arrangement with your clients or partners, TimesManager can handle it — split, blended, fixed, ABA, LEDES, UTBMS, etc. TimesManager can also manage complex approval workflows, and integrates with Tabs3, QuickBooks, Legal Tracker, and TyMetrix among others.

15. CaseFleet

A mashup of client relationship management and litigation management that runs in your web browser, CaseFleet automatically builds a timeline of your cases as you enter facts, issues, witnesses, and legal research. Filters enable you to spot critical connections and build your narrative. Meanwhile, CaseFleet's Legal Calendar color codes all the critical deadlines on your cases and syncs with GCal and Outlook, while the Leads Pipeline helps you capture and convert prospects into new clients.

16. Ulysses 2.5

Designed for writing long, structured documents on your Mac or iPad, Ulysses collects all your notes, research, etc. in one place. You write in chunks (such as different sections of a brief or chapters of your great American novel). When you complete a project, you can combine these disparate elements into a single document in Word, PDF, or ePub format. iCloud sync automatically makes your work available on all your devices, including the iPhone.

17. Digital WarRoom Private Cloud 8.8

Ediscovery software seems immune to the all-you-can-eat pricing revolution underway in other software markets. Digital WarRoom Private Cloud wants to change the game with its all-inclusive price of $1,995 per month. Designed for large projects, Digital WarRoom Private Cloud spans the EDRM gamut, offering tools for processing, review, and production. Advanced technologies include data visualization tools to make email easier to analyze and predictive coding.

18. Nutshell

Peter Drucker advised law firms to understand clients so well that their service sells itself. However, you still need software for the nuts and bolts of online marketing. Enter Nutshell, which captures leads from your website and routes them to your intake team, tracks telephone consultations, and enables you to send personalized email messages to hot prospects. Extensive reporting helps you analyze your marketing campaigns.

19. Amicus Attorney Premium 2016

Now part of the Abacus Next family of products as a result of the merger of the year, Amicus Attorney added enterprise-grade document management features, including check in/out and versioning to prevent lost work or duplicative effort. Also new, client-related email appears alongside documents thanks to integration with Exchange and Office 365. Amicus Attorney's client portal facilitates secure document sharing and communications with clients. You can even have clients complete forms through the portal.

19. Thomson Reuters ProView

The future of the law library finally arrived in 2016 thanks to ProView. Both an ebookstore and ebook reader, ProView is the Amazon Kindle of legal references. You can purchase and read ProView ebooks in a web browser or in the dedicated apps for Windows, Mac, iPad, and Android tablets. New editions of an ebook can import your bookmarks and highlights from the previous edition even if the location has changed. Sharing tools enable you to send a relevant section to colleagues or export it to PDF to send to a client.

20. Firm Central

Firm Central recently earned a TechnoScore of A from our SmallLaw newsletter in part because of its exclusive first-party integrations with other Thomson Reuters Legal's services such as Westlaw, Deadline Assistant, Doc & Form Builder, Case Notebook, CaseLogistix, and Practical Law. Among third-party products, Firm Central integrates with Outlook and QuickBooks. The addition of Time & Billing to Firm Central earlier this year, including trust accounting and three-way reconciliation and reporting, checks an important box on the requirements list of many small law firms.

20. Tabs3 Version 18

There's no better way to get paid than from a trust account. This year Tabs3 kicked trust accounts up a notch by automating payments. Once you create a rule in compliance with your jurisdiction, Tabs3 can apply payments to new bills or accounts receivable or both. Support for electronic funds transfer and credit card processing via ProPay further grease the wheels of commerce. The new three-way reconciliation reports provide your clients with transparency into these automated payments.

21. Boxtop

Our ace product reviewer Ed Zohn runs the products he evaluates in Boxtop to ensure fairness. "Sure beats the old Citrix I used a decade ago," he quipped in a recent email message. Boxtop provides everyone in your firm with a virtual Windows desktop. The wizards at Tabush Group help get all your legal and other software installed in this virtual environment, and can even provide you with thin client hardware that supports two monitors. Boxtop, which also runs on Macs and Windows PCs, supports Microsoft Office, PCLaw, Tabs3, Time Matters, Worldox, and other popular apps.

21. MedMal Navigator

Mention the name Frank Netter to doctors, and they'll wax poetic about his iconic medical illustrations. Now that more than 10,000 of these images reside in LexisNexis MedMal Navigator, you can use them in depositions, settlement conferences, and at trial without any copyright hassles. MedMal Navigator also offers tools for assessing the value of claims, finding expert witnesses, researching illnesses and injuries and applicable standards of care, and of course finding relevant case law in Lexis Advance.

21. MyCase

Proving that technology can save time and money, MyCase's new QuickBooks Online integration enables you to set everything up in a few minutes on your own for free versus the previous implementation that cost $99 and required a one-hour consultation. This integration somehow manages to create QuickBooks invoices that mirror those you create in MyCase right down to every time entry and description — a technological tour de force.

21. Practice Point

Thomson Reuters Legal offers a cornucopia of information services — Westlaw of course but also Reuters News, Practical Law, Westlaw Forms, Business Law Center, and Company Investigator to name just a few. Practice Point serves as your gateway to these services. Need to negotiate a joint venture? Just navigate to that section and you'll find all the resources you need from initial conversation to final agreement. If only Practice Point existed for everything in life.

How to Receive TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TL NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The newsletter's innovative articles enable lawyers and law office administrators to quickly understand the function of a product, and zero in on its most important features. The TL NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL Serendipity contains these articles:

Edward Zohn, The Best References On Legal Writing Best Practices

Ben Ballard, Review Of Amicus Cloud By A Former Credenza User

Neal Frishberg, Tip: CiteAdvisor For Creating Tables Of Authorities In Word

Caren Schwartz, Suddenly Seeking New Document Assembly And Practice Management Software

Don't miss this issue — or any future issues.

How to Receive TL Serendipity
Our most serendipitous offering (hence its name), TL Serendipity consists of contributions by TechnoLawyer members who have important information to share. You'll no doubt enjoy it because of its mix of interesting topics and genuinely useful knowledge, including brutally honest product reviews and informative how-tos. The TL Serendipity newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a service designed to help you expand your practice by providing model forms, practice notes, checklists, etc. (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of software for managing and referencing exhibits, knowledge management software for mining your firm's work product, three practice management apps, a visual tool for identifying relevant case law faster, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

It's amusing when a relative expresses bemusement that you're not an expert in every area of the law. But when clients ask for help, you either figure out how to deliver or leave money on the table.

Lexis Practice Advisor … in One Sentence

Lexis Practice Advisor offers model forms, practice notes, checklists, articles and other materials for lawyers, and integrates with Lexis Advance and Lexis for Microsoft Office.

The Killer Feature

Mindful of the fact that winning the trust of lawyers like you requires high-quality and updated materials, LexisNexis put together a network of more than 500 practicing lawyers from more than 230 law firms. Each lawyer has years of experience with the legal issues that pertain to the documents they contribute. In addition to reviewing the credentials of these authors, you can email LexisNexis' internal author team with questions about their documents.

Other Notable Features

Lexis Practice Advisor groups its materials by practice areas, including bankruptcy, finance, intellectual property, real estate, etc. This coverage includes business and commercial transactions for four states — California, Florida, New York, and Texas — with more in the pipeline.

Browsing these topics reveals subtopics presented in a step format designed to match your tasks. For example, drilling down to Private Mergers presents you with "Structuring and Planning Private Mergers" and "Preliminary Agreements in Private M&A Deals." If you prefer, you can start with a global search and then filter your results by practice area.

Lexis Practice Advisor groups materials by Forms, Articles, Secondary Materials, Cases, and Statutes & Regulations. The primary and secondary legal research come from Lexis Advance while the rest derives from the authors noted above. Some forms are interactive, enabling you to draft documents in Lexis Practice Advisor. Icons alert you to alternate clauses you can review and add with a click. You can also add your own clauses.

If you use Lexis for Microsoft Office, you can access Lexis Practice Advisor from within Microsoft Word, including all forms. "The integration with Lexis for Microsoft Office gives legal practitioners instantaneous access to the full breadth of Lexis Practice Advisor's on-point content and tools inside the Microsoft applications they use every day," said Sean Fitzpatrick, Managing Director of North American Research Solutions at LexisNexis. "This is a crucial step in our overarching strategy to help customers produce higher quality work in less time."

Lexis Practice Advisor offers M&A lawyers a tool called Lexis Market Tracker based on EDGAR and related data. Using Consideration Type, Target Industry, Deal Amount, and other parameters, you can research "What's Market" on more than 450 deal points for credit agreements. Lexis Market Tracker isolates specific provisions such as Collars and Ticking Fees so you can quickly find what you need for the documents you're drafting.

What Else Should You Know?

You can share materials with colleagues by placing them in Shared Folders. These work across Lexis Advance so they can also contain legal research. You can also export blank and completed forms in Word or PDF format. Learn more about Lexis Practice Advisor.

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Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers litigation software for organizing exhibits, automating exhibit references in documents, and creating ebriefs (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of software for mining your firm's work product, a practice management app for Android and iOS, a legal research service that makes it faster to find relevant cases, a Word add-in for finding common errors in the contracts you draft, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

Lots of software exists for managing citations and creating a table of authorities. But what about exhibits? In fact-intensive documents, they become just as numerous and therefore tedious to manage. This problem begs for automation.

ExhibitManager … in One Sentence

Launched recently, Causasoft's ExhibitManager 5 is litigation software that integrates with Microsoft Word for organizing, reviewing, and referencing exhibits in briefs and other documents.

The Killer Feature

ExhibitManager provides a spreadsheet-like view of the exhibits you import. With a click, you insert a reference to an exhibit in one or more Word documents as you draft. At any point, another click automatically updates the exhibit numbers across all documents so that they're in numerical or chronological order within each document. You can update exhibit numbering as often as you want.

ExhibitManager can also generate a table of exhibits that likewise gets updated to match the exhibit numbering in the document. You can customize ExhibitManager to display exhibit references to comply with the style requirements of a particular jurisdiction.

"Exhibits often have to be numbered in multiple documents such as with a brief accompanied by witness statements and/or expert reports that all refer to the same exhibits," Managing Director Simone Pestalozzi told me during an online demo. "With ExhibitManager's automation technology, lawyers have more time to concentrate on case strategy instead of time-consuming administrative work."

Other Notable Features

ExhibitManager offers bulk importing of exhibits in many common formats such as PDF, Word, Excel, etc., including OCR processing if necessary. You can also import email messages and attachments. If you know an exhibit exists but you don't have a copy yet, ExhibitManager enables you to create a placeholder that you can reference in the meantime.

The main table in ExhibitManager features sortable columns that each user can move. Columns include metadata such as the exhibit number, type description, ID, date, etc. You can also apply tags to and annotate exhibits, both of which then become visible in their own respective columns. To the right of this table is the Preview area for viewing any exhibit you select.

When you need to use exhibits at a deposition or in court or share them with a client, expert, opposing counsel, etc., ExhibitManager can export a Bundle. The Bundle Assistant walks you through the process, enabling you to select the exhibits to include, apply a stamp with the exhibit number to the first page, apply Bates stamps to every page, add pagination, etc. ExhibitManager outputs all the selected exhibits to a folder, also creates a hyperlinked reference document.

ExhibitManager also automates the creation of ebriefs, obviating the need for a service provider. The eBrief Assistant offers options such as adding hyperlinks from the exhibit references in your brief to the exhibit. If you're sending an ebrief to a client or expert for review, you can include your exhibit annotations. You can efile an ebrief as a ZIP file or submit it on a CD or flash drive depending on your jurisdiction.

What Else Should You Know?

ExhibitManager works with Word 2007 and later and runs on Windows 7 or later. It costs $295 per user per year with volume discounts available. This includes all software updates and telephone support. There's an additional one-time cost for setup. Learn more about ExhibitManager.

How to Receive TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TL NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The newsletter's innovative articles enable lawyers and law office administrators to quickly understand the function of a product, and zero in on its most important features. The TL NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.