TechnoLawyer: Practice Management/Calendars

Today's issue of TL Answers contains these articles:

Nicholas Bettinger, Review: PerfectLaw After 17 Years Of Use

Miriam Jacobson, Review Of MaxEmail And Number Garage; Telephone Number Porting

Charles Cork, Review Of PDF Xchange Viewer Plus How To Change The Default Typewriter Font

David Waddle, Multiple Monitors: Don't Forget About Your Laptop

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

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Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a practice management app store (see article below), a secure cloud storage service for iPad and iPhone, a secure mobile office suite, a document assembly add-on for Microsoft Word, and a social media management and marketing application. Don't miss the next issue.

The World's First Practice Management App Store

Lawyers often complain about the complexity of practice management systems. Ironically, this problem stems from software companies eager to accommodate requests from their customers. Accordingly, each new version of their software contains new features that only a few law firms want. With each new feature, the clutter increases and the learning curve steepens, resulting in complaints. A more modern approach to pleasing customers without this downside is to focus on core features that all law firms need, and build a platform on which other companies can offer optional specialized solutions — or "apps" as we now call them.

Total Attorneys App Store … in One Sentence
Launching today, Total Attorneys App Store enables you to add first- and third-party apps to Total Attorneys (a cloud practice management system), thus enhancing its functionality to suit your needs

The Killer Feature
Earlier this year we reported on Total Attorneys, which costs just $1 per user per month. This price point created quite a stir. Today, the company has dropped another disruptive shoe on the practice management world.

At launch, Total Attorneys App Store features a number of third-party apps with more en route. For example, you can set up a Fastcase account for legal research ($95 per month). Capital Payments enables your clients to pay you via ACH, check, or credit card. You can also schedule automatic recurring payments. All transactions occur through Total Attorneys' client portal.

Also available is LegalEase for outsourcing work to contract lawyers ($350 for 10 hours) and paralegals ($150 for 10 hours), Legal Web Experts for marketing services such as web site creation and search engine optimization, LawQA for client development (respond to inquiries from consumers seeking legal help), and Google Calendar Sync.

"We have worked very hard building the most comprehensive web-based practice management platform for small and solo firms," founder and chairman Ed Scanlan told us. "Total Apps Store is a huge step in accomplishing our goal of simplifying law practice management so that law firms can better serve their clients and achieve greater financial success."

Other Notable Features
Total Attorneys App Store contains first-party apps as well (apps created by Total Attorneys). Live Virtual Receptionist combines technology with a human touch. A live operator answers your phone, eliminating the need to add a receptionist to your payroll. Messages appear in your Total Attorneys account plus you can receive email alerts.

Legal Leads helps you grow your clientele. You receive your first 10 leads for free. When a lead becomes a client, you convert the lead into a client file in Total Attorneys.

What Else Should You Know?
Earlier this month, Total Attorneys released free iPad and iPhone apps. On other platforms, you access Total Attorneys from any web browser. The base price for the core practice management system remains $1 per user per month. Apps vary in price. Learn more about Total Attorneys App Store.

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.

Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 102 articles from the past week worthy of your attention. Below you'll find a sample article from each section of today's issue, including our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week.

Using Evernote as a Practice Management System

Choosing Flights With WiFi

Law Firm Offers Free Legal Forms to Tech Startups

Law Firms Start Using Social Media to Connect With Clients

Congratulations to Jeffrey Schoenberger of Macs in Law on winning our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award: Online Security So Simple Even Lawyers Can Use It

Today's issue also contains links to every article in the March 2012 issue of Law Practice Today. Don't miss today's issue or any future issues of BlawgWorld.

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Today's issue of TL Answers contains these articles:

David Hudgens, Review RingCentral's Extreme Fax Service

Jay Geary, A Report From the Trenches on Small Firms Moving to the Cloud

Bryan Sims, How I Added a Third Monitor and Why

Kathleen Hunt, Review: X1 for Desktop Search

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

How to Receive TL Answers
Do you believe in the wisdom of crowds? In TL Answers, TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers. This newsletter's popularity stems from the relevance of the questions and answers to virtually everyone in the legal profession. The TL Answers newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL Answers contains these articles:

Douglas Folk, Reviews Of IPad Note-Taking And Handwriting Recognition Apps

Ronald Siegel, LAWS/Pro: A Cloud Practice Management System With Confusing Pricing

William Ebben, Tip For Upgrading From Windows XP To Windows 7

Anthony Padilla, Review: Worldox Technical Support

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

How to Receive TL Answers
Do you believe in the wisdom of crowds? In TL Answers, TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers. This newsletter's popularity stems from the relevance of the questions and answers to virtually everyone in the legal profession. The TL Answers newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a practice management and client development system (see article below), an online marketing service for local listings, a wireless mobile scanner, a business intelligence service for law firms, and a free iPad magazine. Don't miss the next issue.

A Practice Management System That Costs Just One Dollar

After the initial breakthrough of organizing contacts and calendars by client and matter, practice management systems have experienced a number of major inflection points such as information sharing over a local network, integration of billing, and of course Internet connectivity and entirely cloud-based applications. But most practice management systems continue to have an inward focus. In other words, they help you manage all the work in your firm. But that work doesn't just appear out of thin air. A new practice management system has both an inward and outward focus with tools that help you attract new clients and better serve all your clients.

Total Attorneys Practice Management Platform … in One Sentence
Total Attorneys Practice Management Platform (Total Attorneys) is a cloud-based practice management and client development system.

The Killer Feature
Probably because I often find myself sitting in front of an $18 glass of barolo or franciacorta, I always marvel at how little tortilla chips cost. But even tortilla chips at $2 per bag at my local Trader Joe's can't beat Total Attorneys, which costs just $1 per user per month.

This price imposes no limits on any of the inward features, and even includes all of the outward features except for three — lead generation, payment processing, and virtual receptionist.

Other Notable Features
Those of you in consumer practice areas such as bankruptcy, criminal defense, divorce, personal injury, social security, and taxation can take advantage of Total Attorneys' lead generation service. You enter your practice areas and preferred zip codes, after which leads begin appearing in Total Attorneys under the Leads tab. You can adjust your settings anytime, and turn off this tool when you have enough business.

Total Attorneys also offers a secure client portal for agreements, communications, and document sharing. For example, you can have clients sign a retainer agreement. You can also provide clients with a collection of all the documents in their case that they can access anytime. The client portal doesn't require any plugins such as Flash so it also works on the iPad and smartphones. You can enable it on a client by client basis.

The calendar straddles the line between inward and outward features. It has all the functions you would expect, but you can also invite a client to a call or meeting via the calendar. And if you enable it, clients can schedule meetings with you. Similarly, Total Attorneys can log billable time and generate invoices, but it can also process online credit card payments that clients can initiate directly from your bills.

Regarding pure inward features, the Matter Overview Page serves as a dashboard for a specific matter, displaying all information such as open and close dates, lawyers, documents, billing records, etc. Contacts also serve as a dashboard. In addition to contact information, you'll see an activity log of appointments, documents, email, notes, etc.

Other features include bulk email and email templates for client alerts and newsletters (replies go to your regular email address), document management with access controls, and a tool for creating and tracking proposals (quotes).

What Else Should You Know?
Total Attorneys runs in any web browser. There's also an iPad and iPhone app. As noted above, you can use most functions for $1 per user per month. Leads cost $50 to $107 each, payment processing costs $35 per month, and a virtual receptionist costs $199 per 50 calls. Learn more about Total Attorneys Practice Management Platform.

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.

Originally published in our free TL NewsWire newsletter. Instead of reading TL NewsWire here, sign up now to receive future issues via email.

Prevent Inadvertent Disclosures and Other Email Mishaps

The early days of the web favored large firms. Tim Berners Lee gave the world HTML, and Marc Andreessen the web browser. But if you wanted a client portal — then known as an extranet — for secure communications and document sharing you had two expensive choices: build it yourself or use overpriced turnkey solutions. As a result, small law firms and even most large law firms still use plain old email for client communications. Now, email is fine for newsletters like TL NewsWire, but it's not ideal for confidential attorney-client communications or exchanging large files. Fortunately, even sole practitioners can now afford a client portal.

Privacy Data Systems All-in-One Privacy Suite … in One Sentence
Privacy Data Systems All-in-One Privacy Suite (PDS Professional) is web communications service that enables law firms to securely exchange messages and large files with clients.

The Killer Feature
Under immense pressure, many bar associations have given their blessing to email for client communications. So you need not worry about being disbarred if you misaddress an email message, just fired and maybe sued — with perhaps negative reviews on Avvo, Google Places, Yelp, and elsewhere too. Not good. A lesser problem but still a problem occurs when you correctly send an email message but it ends up unread in your client's spam folder.

PDS Professional eliminates email mishaps. For example, if you misaddress an email message, the unintended recipient won't be able to read it because they won't have the access code. When you correctly send a message, PDS Professional provides "immediate and irrefutable" proof of delivery.

"Lawyers and their clients need to communicate quickly, and share documents with each other, but standard email systems are not secure enough to maintain privacy," Privacy Data Systems Vice President of Operations Ray Blackburn told us. "We have put together an affordable suite of privacy tools that combines security with the ease-of-use of email."

Other Notable Features
PDS Professional provides your firm with a Secure Inbox — an encrypted web page branded with your logo — that you can provide to your clients. As a result, unlike other services, your clients need not register to send you secure messages and documents. Likewise, they don't need an account or any plugins to receive messages and documents from you.

PDS Professional includes a number of bank-grade security features, including view-only documents, watermarked documents, electronic signatures, rights management settings, message recall, and biometric authentication.

For example, the eSignature technology enables your clients to sign documents electronically using a process approved by the ESIGN Act. Rights management enables you to impose controls on messages such as preventing printing, downloading, forwarding, etc. With Message Recall, you can prevent delivery of a message you have already sent. If your client has already read the message, you can prevent it from being opened again.

What Else Should You Know?
In addition to all this security, PDS Professional enables you to send large files. Each licensee receives 2 GB of storage space, which you can increase if needed. PDS Professional works in all modern web browsers. It costs either $14.50 per month, or $145 per year. You can try it for free. Learn more about PDS Professional.

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 NewsWire covers a new practice management system (see article below), and a new mobile scanner (article available to TL NewsWire subscribers only). Don't miss the next issue.

Practice Management Meets Document Management

Is January just another month or does the beginning of a new year deserve all the hype? While gym check-ins plummet after a few weeks, a new year can bring about lasting improvements at law firms. Most law firm fiscal years match the calendar year so there's no better time to start using a new practice management system. Without having to retroactively enter data, you'll have an entire fiscal year's worth of appointments, billed activities, documents, tasks, and everything else a practice management system organizes. One legal vendor recognizes the special nature of January. Like clockwork, it ships a new version of its popular practice management system shortly after the ball drops in Times Square.

Amicus Attorney Premium Edition 2012 … in One Sentence
Released on January 3, 2012, Gavel & Gown's Amicus Attorney Premium Edition 2012 is a practice management system with integrated document management.

The Killer Feature
Law firm workflow revolves around email and documents. While Outlook has a lock on email, there's no similarly dominant product for document management despite a deep hunger among law firms for a simple yet powerful solution.

Amicus Attorney Premium Edition 2012 offers integrated document management via its new Documents module. Thus, you can quickly see a list of all documents associated with a client or file, and filter and sort the list based on various criteria.

Even better, you can run full-text searches for documents. Amicus Attorney uses Microsoft's Indexing Server engine, which handles all popular file formats, including of course DOC, DOCX, and PDF.

Other Notable Features
We only have one killer feature section in TL NewsWire articles, but vying for contention is the fact that Gavel & Gown has baked Google Sync into Amicus Attorney. With a free Google account, you can sync appointments and contacts in Amicus Attorney with Android smartphones and tablets, Apple's iPad and iPhone, BlackBerrys, and other mobile devices compatible with Google Sync.

In keeping with the focus on mobile, Amicus Attorney can email you your agenda every day, including phone numbers for contacts assigned to your daily events. Your agenda can take advantage of another new feature — Referrals, which enable you to see who sends you work. You can view and sort all client matter files referred by your contacts. If you also use Amicus Premium Billing (part of Amicus Attorney once you turn it on with a license), you'll also see the fees they helped you generate. You'll know for sure who merits some wining and dining at the best restaurant in town.

Other new features include the ability to output formatted information from unlimited custom fields and records, hyperlinks to files from appointments and tasks, email alerts when your assistant creates a phone message, and automated notation of returned phone messages on your phone records.

What Else Should You Know?
Gavel & Gown also shipped Amicus Attorney Small Firm Edition 2012 last week — a less expensive alternative for law firms with 1-10 users. The web site provides a feature comparison chart. Both the Premium and Small Firm Editions run on Windows PCs. Learn more about Amicus Attorney Premium Edition 2012.

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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.

Originally published on August 30, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

With Hurricane Irene just recently having rumbled her way through my adopted home state of North Carolina — including making a mess of our beautiful Outer Banks and eastern regions — disaster preparedness (or business continuity to use a popular euphemism) is on my mind. Watching Irene's progression up the east coast and the trouble she wrought en route, I imagine it must be on some of your minds too.

When we talk about technology, we often engage in a facile and glib debate over operating systems, Angry Birds, and coolness. God knows, I'm a card-carrying member of that club — new and cool is my red meat as regular readers of my SmallLaw columns well know.

But in deference to all the law firms who are digging out from Irene, I want to use this issue of SmallLaw to address how to get your firm as ready as possible for the next Irene Mother Nature throws your way. Below you'll find my top five tips.

1. Go Paperless

The discussion over going paperless in a small law firm often centers on efficiency, collaboration, ethics and mobility, all of which are important facets of the decision.

However, it's not until you wake up one day, however, and your entire office suite is under six feet of water and your paper files have turned to pulp that paperless' importance as a disaster preparedness measure become clear.

Sure, you may only need offsite digital copies of everything once in a career — but the day you need it, you really need it. Offsite backup is a good start, but if only 25% of your key data is digital, you are still sunk when the high waters arrive.

2. Sever Your Servers With Hosted Communications

Floods and natural disasters are good reasons to consider embracing hosted communications — meaning both your email and your phone system. If your communication hubs run out of server boxes in your office and they're under water, they're useless. Sure, some backup strategies can help mitigate this porblem, but if I were running a small firm today, I'd get rid of all my servers — applications, email, documents, telephone — the whole shebang. With Hosted Exchange, Google Apps, and VoIP phone systems, it has never been easier.

3. Centralized Document and Practice Management

According to the ABA's 2011 Legal Technology Survey, the adoption rate of document and practice management software in small law offices remains dismal.

Anecdotally, in my work, I find that law firms regard this software as somewhere between an unnecessary expense and a "nice to have." Much like the decision to go paperless and host your communications, if you imagine having to run your firm the day after a disaster (with all of your employees working remotely from their homes), the decision to centralize document and practice management is not a luxury, but a necessity.

Frequency of need is not the same as degree. You only need an emergency room once in a while, too, but if you didn't have one nearby the day you needed it, you'd be in big trouble.

4. Laptops Over Desktops Plus Smartphones and iPads

I frequently talk with lawyers who debate whether to buy their staff laptop or desktop computers, citing that desktops are cheaper and more powerful. A disaster should convince you that mobility trumps the marginal cost savings and power of desktops.

Laptops have another advantage. When the power goes out, they continue running for a few hours. But even laptops have their limits. Smartphones (and 3G iPads) tend to have a much longer battery life, and can access the Internet via your carrier. Some smartphones can even serve as a mobile hotspot. Law firms have issued smartphones to their lawyers for many years. Some have begun to issue iPads as well.

5. Home Office Essentials

For your lawyers and staff to be productive working from home while your office is underwater, in addition to a laptop they will need an internet connection robust enough to run their VoIP phones, a headset with a microphone, a printer, and a scanner.

Whether you provide this equipment for your staff or require that they provide it for themselves is a matter of your compensation and training systems. Either way, if you want your staff to work rather than just watch Sports Center until your office reopens, they will need the tools to perform their work.

Conclusion

I hope you and your firm survived Hurricane Irene with nary a puddle. But I also hope this article prompts you to prepare for the unthinkable.

Written by Erik Mazzone of Law Practice Matters.

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This special edition of TL NewsWire was originally published on December 15, 2011.

In 2011, we reported on 212 new products in TL NewsWire — far more products than any other legal publisher to my knowledge (TL NewsWire is one of nine TechnoLawyer publications).

For each product we cover, we track the number of clicks. Not for nefarious reasons mind you. We track clicks in the aggregate so that we can see which products you and your fellow subscribers find most and least interesting to help guide our future coverage. We also track clicks so that we can engage in one of publishing's most enduring cliches — the annual top 10 list.

Wait. Did I say top 10? Silly me. At TechnoLawyer, we always give you more for your money (even though TL NewsWire is free). Below you'll find the TL NewsWire Top 15 Products of 2011.

1. TrialPad

In the year of the iPad, it seems fitting that an iPad app tops the list. TrialPad replaces an ELMO for displaying documents. Lit Software recently released version 2, which contains more advanced trial presentation features. Will TrialPad disrupt incumbents Sanction and TrialDirector? Only time will tell, but Lit Software appears to be the leader among companies developing legal-specific iPad apps.

2. Workshare PDF Professional

You have to give Workshare a lot of credit for its insane pace of software development. It's the Adobe Systems of the legal industry. Speaking of which, Workshare PDF Professional takes aim at Adobe's Acrobat with a low price of $79.

3. Canon imageFORMULA DR-C125 Scanner

As someone who appreciates elegant design and feels there's too little of it in our industry, the imageFORMULA DR-C125 captured my attention because of its space-saving upright design and U-turn paper path. Apparently, many of you agreed by ranking it third.

4. LexisNexis Firm Manager

SmallLaw columnist emeritus Mazy Hedayat (Crazy Mazy) is a tough lawyer to please. So imagine our surprise when he praised Firm Manager, LexisNexis' cloud practice management system. Thanks in part to Firm Manager, 2011 marked the turning point for cloud applications in the legal industry.

5. Workshare Point

Document management remains the most popular topic among TechnoLawyer members, but I didn't realize how many of you have an interest in Microsoft SharePoint until we covered Workshare Point, which transforms SharePoint into a legal-specific document management system. Kudos to Workshare for having two products in the top five.

6. MyCase V2.0

The second cloud practice management system on the list, MyCase uses Facebook-like technologies for interacting with your clients, including billing, communications, and document sharing. Perhaps the more apt comparison is Salesforce.com's Chatter.

7. Smartsheet

Another hot area — project management, especially for law firms charging flat fees or under pressure from clients not to exceed engagement letter estimates. Traditionally, you practically needed the equivalent of a medical residency to use project management software. Smartsheet is a cloud application that attempts to simplify this once obscure (for law firms) discipline.

8. Kodak SCANMATE I920 Scanner

Too little too late for this troubled American icon? Well, many of you found Kodak's entry into the sheetfed scanner market of interest. Like Canon's scanners, the SCANMATE i920 supports supports TWAIN and ISIS applications.

9. Nylon Sleeve With Handles

Easily the biggest surprise on the list. Why? Because it's the only product among the top 15 that we covered in a roundup article as opposed to a feature article (roundup articles appear below the feature article in each issue of TL NewsWire so they're not as prominently, um, featured). Incidentally, I have two of these sleeves — one for my iPad 2 and one for my MacBook Air. It was my search for a sleeve with handles that led to our coverage of this product.

10. RogueTime Version 1.1

RogueTime ties into your iPhone's Phone app so that you can convert phone calls into time entries (iPhones capture the time of each call). Apps like RogueTime could persuade lawyers to use their iPhone as their only phone.

11. KnowledgeTree

KnowledgeTree is a cloud document management system. In our coverage, we focused on the new KnowledgeTree ExplorerCP, a desktop application that connects to the mothership.

12. Doxie Go

I think we covered this portable scanner before any other legal publisher. Its cable-free and PC-free design seems liberating. Doxie Go will soon have some competition. We received a pre-release demo this week, but I can't tell you about it yet. Stay tuned to TL NewsWire.

13. Sohodox

Cloud skeptics at small law firms rejoice — a document management system for 1-20 users that runs on your own damn hardware.

14. NetDocuments R1-2011

Yes folks, another document management system. And none other than the undisputed champion of cloud document management systems. NetDocuments redesigned its user interface this year.

15. ClearContext Professional 5

This Outlook add-on learns your habits so that it can start taking care of tasks for you. It can even make email messages disappear for a specified period of time so that you can fool yourself into thinking you've achieved zero inbox.

You Want More?

So there you go. The top 15. What's that? You want a top 20? Okay, okay. I won't write about them, but numbers 16-20 were (drumroll please):

16. AdvologixPM

17. ActionStep

18. Pathagoras 2011

19. Credenza Pro

20. Chrometa

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.