TechnoLawyer: Legal Research

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a large legal ebook library and reader app for web browsers, iPads, and Android tablets (see article below), a lead generation service that requires five years of experience to use, an enterprise communications service, and a new color laser printer. Don't miss the next issue.

Think of a legal reference you often use. You bookmark pages for later reference, highlight key passages, and jot down notes in the margin. Then the next edition replaces the current edition. What happens to your annotations?

Thomson Reuters ProView … in One Sentence

Thomson Reuters ProView is a growing library of legal ebooks that you can use in any desktop web browser as well as in native iPad and Android tablet apps.

The Killer Feature

ProView recently gained portable annotations. This means you can import your bookmarks, highlights, and notes to a new edition. If material in the new edition resides in a different location, ProView moves your corresponding annotations. When deletions occur, ProView gives you the option to move the annotation to a new related location or delete them if no longer relevant. You can continue to access all prior editions with your annotations intact.

ProView enables you to create Issue Labels and assign them to your annotations. Using the Filter Annotations tool, you can list all annotations pertaining to an issue. When you share a section or selected text with others, you can include your annotations. Two sharing options exist. With the Create a Link feature, you can send a pinpoint link to other ProView users. Alternatively, you can export your selection in PDF format.

Other Notable Features

With a web browser, you can access the entire ProView library. The tablet apps are limited to the ebooks you've downloaded, which you can read and annotate without a live Internet connection such as when you're in court.

You can filter available ebooks by author, publisher, title, jurisdiction, and subject. Or you can just enter a search. You can add your own custom categories to an ebook's metadata to create your own collection. The Recently Read tool lists all the ebooks you recently accessed.

The left side of each ebook contains a hyperlinked table of contents. Citations within ebooks contain a live Westlaw link for one-click access. ProView's settings enable you to adjust text size, line spacing, background and text color, highlight colors, and issue labels.

You can search within ebooks using the same Boolean syntax as Westlaw. A cheat sheet within the search tool lists all available search connectors. Your saved searches appear in both the web app and tablet apps. ProView also passively saves your activity, enabling you to jump back to a section, annotation, etc. (the tablet apps store two weeks of history while the web app stores your current session).

What Else Should You Know?

Solo and small law firms can buy ebooks individually as needed. Larger firms can choose from two licensing options (LMS eLibrary or IP eLibrary), both of which work with Westlaw OnePass for single sign-on. Learn more about Thomson Reuters ProView.

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Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a business intelligence tool for monitoring news and social media about your clients, competitors, practice areas, and more (see article below), a cloud accounting and practice management app with features for midsize law firms, and two marketing automation apps. Don't miss the next issue.

Media coverage has exploded. In theory, you now have greater insight into your clients, competitors, practice areas, key industries, and other news related to your work. In practice, finding this information would consume all your time, leaving you no time to work. This is a job for a media analysis tool.

LexisNexis Newsdesk … in One Sentence

LexisNexis Newsdesk is a business intelligence solution for monitoring and analyzing news and social media.

The Killer Feature

LexisNexis Newsdesk enables you to stay on top of relevant news through a web dashboard, email alerts, email newsletters, and SharePoint. The service gives you access to more than four million articles and posts daily, including LexisNexis exclusive sources such as Law360, The American Lawyer, The National Law Journal, and The Wall Street Journal.

In addition, LexisNexis Newsdesk includes prominent blogs such as Above the Law, social media services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, and popular website forums. You can add any RSS feed for personal blogs and other publications not in LexisNexis Newsdesk but which nevertheless publish important information.

"Current awareness and deep insights into facts and trends are essential as practitioners weigh risks and make decisions for their clients," LexisNexis Managing Director of the North American Research Solutions Sean Fitzpatrick tells us. "LexisNexis Newsdesk harnesses the power of big data analytics to create the most conclusive picture of your topic by delivering vital intelligence drawn from millions of news and social media sources, including top-tier legal media such as Law360."

Other Notable Features

Everyone in your firm can have their own customizable dashboard. Users can access multiple dashboards such as their own and one for their department. In addition to article links, a dashboard can also contain charts for analyzing media coverage. For example, you can show coverage of your firm by journalist and publication. In articles that mention your firm, LexisNexis Newsdesk can show you the "share of voice" — how much prominence your firm received in media coverage. Templates enable you to quickly create new charts.

You begin putting together your dashboard using LexisNexis Newsdesk's Smart Indexing technology, which enables you to drill down to a specific topic by entering terms of interest to you — a client, industry practice area, regulation, etc. This tool shows you related topics to help you pinpoint the exact topic of interest.

Along the right side of the screen, filters or "facets" enable you to fine-tune your dashboard feed. For example, you can include only articles that contain the terms of interest to you in the headline and lead paragraph or contain a minimum number of mentions, and exclude specific sources, industries, etc. You can adjust these settings anytime. For important news, you can create email alerts for instant notification.

LexisNexis Newsdesk has become popular among law librarians who use the Email Manager to create and send customized email newsletters to lawyers in the firm. You can add people to a newsletter one by one or create a group and then add everyone in the group to the newsletter. A newsletter can contain the same feeds as a dashboard. Alternatively, you can add Curated Feeds with handpicked articles. Any articles you choose will automatically be included in the next issue of the newsletter. You can schedule how often to send new issues of the newsletter.

What Else Should You Know?

The Android and iOS apps for LexisNexis Newsdesk enables you to access your dashboard on the go. Learn more about LexisNexis Newsdesk.

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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.

Coming today to SmallLaw: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 45 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 SmallLaw Pick of the Week.

Here's How You Compare to Your Competition

Let Colleagues Know You'll Accept Work on a Contract Basis

The Best Email Marketing Software of 2016

Squarespace vs WordPress for Your Law Firm Website

Congratulations to Kristin Piombino of Ragan on winning our SmallLaw Pick of the Week award: Do You Have These Bad Email Manners?

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Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 41 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.

Firm Central Offers Exclusive Integrations and New Billing Features

CosmoLex and Casemaker Integrate

Our iPad Pro Case Picks

Texting While Walking Isn't Funny Anymore

Congratulations to Susan Harkins of TechRepublic on winning our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award: How to Use Word Templates Effectively

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Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a curated collection of resources for transactional and in-house counsel (see article below), an app for notarizing documents, a cloud practice management system, and an ediscovery processing and review service for legal departments. Don't miss the next issue.

Your job as a transactional lawyer or in-house counsel is to complete projects and tasks as accurately and efficiently as possible. It makes sense then that your legal research service should organize the resources you need in a way that aligns with your todo list.

Practice Point … in One Sentence

Launched recently, Thomson Reuters' Practice Point organizes resources for transactional lawyers and in-house counsel by practice areas, projects, and tasks.

The Killer Feature

Practice Point offers a collection of Thomson Reuters' legal resources curated and organized by a team of experts in collaboration with practicing lawyers.

For example, let's say your client wants you to negotiate a joint venture. When you browse Practice Point by task, you can choose Joint Venture. From there you can choose subtasks such as Get Oriented, Structure & Considerations, Draft & Negotiate Joint Venture Agreements, etc. At every turn you'll find the resources you need for that particular task.

These resources include primary law, Reuters News, Practical Law (checklists, practice notes, standard documents, What's Market), Westlaw Forms, Business Law Center, Company Investigator, State and Country Q&A, and more. Practice Point also offers relevant Rulebooks such as the Securities Act. You can search for rules by their common names rather than their citations (e.g., Rule 144A).

Other Notable Features

Practice Point offers a number of productivity tools to save you time. You can "Favorite" projects, tasks, practice areas, and specific resources for one-click access in the future. You can also make any page your Start Page. The interactive breadcrumb tracks your path through Practice Point. One click takes you back to any page. Alerts keep you apprised via email about updated resources and related news.

The My Folders feature enables you save documents and selected text as you review various resources for the task at hand. These are the same folders that Westlaw uses so the folders you create and items you save become accessible from both services. The same goes for your History.

"Practice Point is designed to be the touch point for your practice or legal department, directing you to the precise resources needed," Thomson Reuters Vice President, Global Workflow Solutions Emily Colbert tells us. "The result is legal guidance, research, and know-how, plus time-saving tools — all conveniently integrated into one solution."

What Else Should You Know?

You log into Practice Point using your OnePass password. This ensures access to all the resources to which your organization subscribes. Practice Point works in all major web browsers on Macs and Windows PCs. Learn more about Practice Point.

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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.

Below you'll find the TL NewsWire Top 10 and Top 25 Products of 2015 Awards — chosen by TL NewsWire subscribers.

When TL NewsWire subscribers read about a product of interest this year and clicked for more details, they passively casted a vote. Passive voting is the most meaningful type of voting for awards. The winners below genuinely attracted the most interest.

As you read about the winning products, you'll notice many that help lawyers create, annotate, and manage documents. Other hot product areas include email, law firm finances, litigation, and PDF. Finally, most of the products offer one or more key integrations, which enables law firms to combine previously siloed products into a cohesive system.

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 2015 AWARD

Congratulations to the 10 hottest products of 2015 ranked in order by most clicks!

1. Matter Center for Office 365

Microsoft first previewed Matter Center at the ILTA Conference in August 2014. When Matter Center launched in September 2015 and we reported on it, TL NewsWire subscribers went bananas, vaulting it to a first place finish. Matter Center underscores the enduring popularity of both Microsoft Office and document management in the legal industry.

2. American Legal Style for PerfectIt 3

Fittingly in the year that gave us Ex Machina, American Legal Style for PerfectIt 3 proofreads your Word documents for incorrect citations and other style problems. It's like having Bryan Garner in your computer. Indeed, Garner's "The Red Book" is among the references American Legal Style for PerfectIt 3 can check your documents against.

3. Synergy Tools 1.0

Perhaps no legal software entrepreneur understands the pain of small law firms like Legal Matters Software founder John Ryan. Pretty much a gift to small firms given its $59.95 price, Synergy Tools 1.0 addresses nine pain points encountered daily by legal professionals who live in Windows Explorer.

4. Spark

It takes courage to build an iPhone email app given Apple's not-too-shabby Mail app. However, Readdle's Spark addresses Mail's biggest shortcoming — attachment handling. Spark enables you to attach documents from Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, and other cloud services the way your brain works — while writing your message.

5. LiquidText

LiquidText challenges you to use an iPad to annotate documents with interactions that don't exist on a PC but which hail from the world of pen and paper. Unlike Microsoft Word, Acrobat, etc., LiquidText gives your comments just as much of the spotlight as the document on which you're commenting. Apple named LiquidText the Most Innovative iPad App of 2015.

6. Capture.it Time Capture

Passive time capture apps like Capture.it capture the imagination of lawyers because let's face it — tracking your time stinks. Capture.it takes automatic time-tracking to new heights by periodically prompting you to assign captured time to matters, eliminating the need to open Capture.it for a dedicated billing session at the last minute each month.

7. Smokeball

Smokeball burst on the scene this year with a document-centric approach to practice management. Integrations with Word and Outlook and a document assembly engine keep all communications with clients and work product centrally organized. Smokeball also handles the yeoman's chores of practice management such as contacts and calendars.

8. LegalWorks

Uptime Legal merits a tip of our hat as the only company in 2015 that won two TL NewsWire Top Products awards. First up, LegalWorks is a cloud document management system. At many firms, Outlook is the hub through which documents usually arrive and leave. LegalWorks' Outlook integration enables you to save and retrieve documents from within Outlook.

9. iPad Pro

The long rumored iPad Pro arrived along with a first-party keyboard case and digital pencil. Like virtually all Apple products, the iPad Pro resulted in fierce online debates and vitriole among geeks. Meanwhile, lawyers and others who have long craved an iPad with a display the size of a sheet of paper are buying them like hotcakes.

10. LegalNature Pro

Launched in 2011 to offer complex legal documents to people whom LegalZoom doesn't serve, LegalNature found that it had many lawyers among its customers. Enter LegalNature Pro, which enables lawyers to automate their own documents while continuing to use LegalNature's forms.

WINNERS OF THE TL NEWSWIRE TOP 25 PRODUCTS OF 2015 AWARD

Congratulations to the next 15 hottest products of 2015 ranked in order by most clicks!

11. Dragon Professional Individual 14

After fits and starts over the past few years, Nuance has integrated its iconic Dragon Professional desktop software with your iPhone via Dragon Anywhere. Start dictating in your office and continue in your car. Dragon Professional also offers a new help system driven by — what else? — voice commands.

12. Pathagoras On Cloud

Research and development is a way of life at ISPV, which ships a new version of its Microsoft Word add-in Pathagoras every year. In 2015, the company launched Pathagoras On Cloud, which brings the Pathagoras' document assembly tools to a web word processor. This enables you to create documents on any device as there's no need for Microsoft Word.

13. TrustBooks

Trust accounting can seem like more trouble than it's worth — until a client fails to pay a large bill. Unlike other products, TrustBooks focuses exclusively on trust accounts. It offers three-way reconciliation, warns you about low balances, and generates statements for your clients.

14. Lexis for Microsoft Office 5.2

The only product to win two consecutive years, Lexis for Microsoft Office added proofreading tools in 2015. You can find undefined terms and inconsistent phrases. Also new, integration with Lexis Advance brings your research into Microsoft Word for instant access while you're writing.

15. Summation 6

Many litigators don't always have matters in the discovery phase. Summation 6 enables you to use the software as needed rather than commit to a traditional license. It also offers one-stop-shopping as it handles case analysis and transcript management in addition to document review and production.

16. EstateExec

No one likes to plan for their death. EstateExec makes estate planning an easier sell for lawyers as it enables your clients to manage and designate all their assets using their web browser. If you don't like serving as an executor or trustee, EstateExec may help persuade someone else to take on that role.

17. FactBox

Small law firms in particular have embraced web apps for billing, practice management, and more. It stands to reason that these law firms will continue this migration. FactBox brings case analysis to your web browser with all data stored in U.S.-based datacenters.

18. Xero

Hoping to capture QuickBooks users who want a cloud accounting system, Xero rolled out QuickBooks migration this year. The process takes about three hours after which you and others can manage your firm's accounting from anywhere.

19. Worldox GX4

This release of the popular document management system focuses on saving you time through automation. For example, Follow Me Favorites shortens the process of creating a document profile to just naming the document — the same amount of effort as Windows Explorer.

20. SWING Porter for Outlook

Many lawyers view Outlook as a silo as it keeps a matter's email apart from all the other documents. SWING Porter for Outlook exports email in PDF format using your firm's naming convention. You can manually export email or use a timed schedule to automate the process.

21. Uptime Practice

The second winner from Uptime Legal, Uptime Practice enables law firms to move to the cloud without giving up their robust desktop apps such as Amicus Attorney, Needles, PCLaw, PracticeMaster, ProLaw, Tabs3, Time Matters, and WorldDox.

22. Inbox by Gmail

Google reinvented email with Gmail so who better to reinvent it again? Inbox by Gmail surfaces information from email messages so you don't need to open them. A built-in task manager and integrations with Google Keep and Google Now seek to provide missing links for email productivity.

23. Adobe Acrobat DC

After years of not getting the Internet, Adobe leapt ahead with Acrobat DC. The PDF documents you open on your desktop become available on your smartphone and tablet (and vice versa) instantly without the need to move the documents anywhere. The recent integration with Dropbox added more icing to this tempting cake.

24. Soda PDF 7

Soda PDF poses a greater threat to Nitro Pro than to Acrobat as both products compete for price-sensitive law firms that find Acrobat too expensive (especially with Adobe now pushing subscriptions). On this front, Soda PDF costs less than Nitro Pro while providing the features lawyers need such as Bates stamping, PDF-to-Word conversion, integration with scanners, built-in OCR, and more.

25. Amicus Premium 2015

You can set your clock by the annual releases of popular practice management system Amicus Premium. This year brought the Amicus Client Portal for secure communications and file sharing with clients. Unlike standalone portals, the Amicus Client Portal prompts you to bill the time you spend communicating with your clients.

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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 Answers contains these articles:

Dave Migliaccio, The Good Old Bad Days of Law Practice

Birney Bull, Review: ActiveWords v. Windows Jump Lists

Burton Bruggeman, Review: Windows 10

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

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Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers an software that adds legal proofreading and research tools to Microsoft Outlook and Word (see article below), case analysis software that integrates with a legal research service, and two applications that enable you to run virtual OS X and Windows machines on a Mac. Don't miss the next issue.

ADD PROOFREADING TOOLS AND MORE TO MICROSOFT OFFICE

All legal documents inevitably contain errors. As a lawyer, you're responsible for getting the law right. But you should not have to shoulder the burden of finding inconsistencies, undefined terms, and other common issues — especially because they're easy to miss. These mundane but critically important tasks are best handled by software.

Lexis for Microsoft Office 5.2 … in One Sentence

Launching this week, Lexis for Microsoft Office 5.2 brings proofreading, legal research, and drafting tools to Microsoft Word and Outlook.

The Killer Feature

The new version of Lexis for Microsoft Office includes proofreading tools for drafting and review powered by Microsystems' well-regarded EagleEye technology.

From the Microsoft Word ribbon, you can use the Terms & Phrases tool to find undefined terms and inconsistent phrases in your document. The Definitions List ensures that you don't miss any defined terms or use inconsistent definitions for the same term.

Lexis for Microsoft Office also checks your document for accuracy and completeness. Regarding the former, it finds missing quotation marks and parenthesis, inconsistent numbering, and incorrect references. Regarding the latter, you can mark items as incomplete using your own custom term such as "Review." Later, you can locate all of these items for removal/replacement before you share the document.

"Effective and efficient document review is vital to the success of litigation and transactional practitioners alike," LexisNexis vice president, Lexis Advance Jeff Pfeifer tells us. "With the integration of EagleEye tools, we are giving Lexis for Microsoft Office users powerful means to automatically scan for consistency and errors, enabling them to deliver more precise, accurate, and complete agreements, briefs, pleadings and other documents."

Other Notable Features

In addition to the EagleEye integration, Lexis for Microsoft Office now integrates with document management systems through Lexis Search Advantage. From one search box, you can search Lexis Advance, your firm's documents, and/or the open web.

The integration with Lexis Advance has grown deeper too. Most notably, your Lexis Advance Work Folders now appear within Word and Outlook so that you can save, search, and download source materials without leaving these programs. Using drag and drop, you can insert quotations from cases, phrases from Matthew Bender forms, etc. into your Word documents and email messages.

The new version of Lexis for Microsoft Office also includes enhancements to the litigation tools. When creating a table of authorities with Lexis for Microsoft Office, you can now use "passim" in place of the page numbers cited. Settings enable you to adjust when it should appear. The page numbers remain intact below the surface so you can still click for a pinpoint preview of the source. Lexis for Microsoft Office supports the 20th edition of The Bluebook.

Also new, Get Cited Documents now exists in both Word and Outlook since email messages often include citations. As its name suggests, this tool retrieves from Lexis Advance source materials cited in a Word document or email message.

What Else Should You Know?

Lexis for Microsoft Office works with Windows 7, 8.1, and 10. It requires Microsoft Office 2007 or later and a Lexis Advance subscription. Learn more about Lexis for Microsoft Office 5.2.

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 online tax research service with flat pricing for full access (see article below), a foldable Bluetooth keyboard, a wireless flash drive, and a mobile app for capturing your billable time on the go. Don't miss the next issue.

START AND FINISH YOUR TAX RESEARCH HERE

When conducting tax research, sometimes you want a simple search box while other times you want a helping hand. Most importantly, you want peace of mind that you're searching all the relevant sources you could possibly need. A new online tax research service aims to offer this at a flat, all-inclusive price.

Lexis Advance Tax … in One Sentence

Launched recently, Lexis Advance Tax is an online tax research service for tax lawyers and other tax professionals.

The Killer Feature

Lexis Advance Tax consists of nearly 1,400 sources, including primary law, treatises, and news. Regarding the latter, the service includes exclusive access to tax news and analysis from Tax Analysts. You can create customized email alerts for tax issues of interest to you. For example, you can create an alert for a section of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), a client, etc.

Three daily publications — Tax Notes Today, State Tax Today, and Worldwide Tax Daily — enable you to monitor developments in federal, state and local, and international tax law respectively. Each publication has a corresponding daily email alert that you can elect to receive with headlines and live links to the most notable 6-8 stories.

Other Notable Features

Lexis Advance Tax enables you to search the Lexis Tax Advisor — Federal Code Reporter by IRC section. The text of the code section occupies most of the screen, while a vertical navigation bar on the left provides immediate access to key related content (both primary law and analytical sources). Related content includes proposed, temporary and final Treasury regulations, legislative history back to 1954 (including excerpts from key Congressional committee reports explaining each change), explanations of each subsection and tax-planning tips written by Matthew Bender authors, case annotations, and more.

Among the content highlights, Lexis Advance Tax includes administrative decisions and case law, Lexis Tax Advisor — Federal Topical (a 550-chapter treatise on federal taxation), Shepard's Citations Service, and a forms library with sample documents for use in estate planning, probate, and estate administration. It also includes more than 80 treatises from Matthew Bender and others covering specific areas of tax law such as Rhoades & Langer, U.S. International Tax; Federal Income Taxation of Corporations Filing Consolidated Returns; and Federal Taxation of Inventories. If needed, you can add CCH tax materials and Law360 to your Lexis Advance Tax plan.

When you conduct a search, you can restrict the results to one or more sources or search the entire federal, state and local, or international databases. Designed with the help of a committee of leading tax lawyers and beta tested by a team of 15 tax lawyers, Lexis Advance Tax works in all major desktop and mobile web browsers. Additionally, you can access it through the Lexis Advance iPad app if you prefer. Lexis Advance Tax uses the same login credentials as Lexis Advance, enabling you to seamlessly switch between the two services.

What Else Should You Know?

"Getting tax ramifications right every time is absolutely vital for a tax practitioner's success," LexisNexis Managing Director of North American Research Solutions Sean Fitzpatrick tells us. "Lexis Advance Tax gives them the confidence to deliver advice thanks to its current industry news and vast collection of federal, state, and international authorities in one convenient platform — a combination you can't find anywhere else." Learn more about Lexis Advance Tax.

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 an Outlook add-on that exports messages and attachments into PDF format for document management and other purposes (see article below), a legal research service with a new online publishing tool for showcasing your legal expertise, an e-ink reader with a high-resolution display, and a WiFi security camera. Don't miss the next issue.

AN ADD-ON FOR OUTLOOK'S MISSING PDF EXPORT

Many of email's pain points no longer exist thanks to accounts accessible from multiple devices, push notifications, robust searching, and effective spam filters. However, one pain point remains for lawyers in particular -- getting email messages and attachments out of Outlook and into PDF format for archiving purposes, ediscovery, and sharing with clients.

SWING Porter for Outlook … in One Sentence

Launched recently, SWING Porter for Outlook is an add-on that automates exporting email from Outlook and converting it into PDF format.

The Killer Feature

SWING Porter for Outlook resides on the Outlook Ribbon after installation. If you have many users, you can also perform a network installation of the software. Once installed, you can export one or more messages, folders, etc. In addition to exporting email messages and their attachments to multiple PDF files, you can also export to PDF Binders or PDF Packages.

When you create a PDF Binder, SWING Porter for Outlook converts all the email messages or folders you select into a single PDF file. Inside, a table of contents mimics your organizational structure in Outlook's Navigation Pane. "In this way, you can conveniently create an electronic closing binder with just one click on the SWING Porter for Outlook export button," SWING CEO David Jakelic tells us.

A PDF Package provides an alternative method of saving multiple email messages and attachments in a single PDF file. Each message exists as an attachment within a PDF Package. A built-in navigation pane enables you to browse, search, and sort these messages by date, sender, etc. "Coupled with the ability to import Office and other types of documents, a PDF Package provides an ideal way to save your client matter data all in one place," says Jakelic.

Other Notable Features

Dynamic Conversion Profiles enable you to apply different conversion settings to each PDF export. The default profiles should cover "90% of use cases" according to Jakelic, but you can customize these defaults or create entirely new profiles. Settings include the context in which a profile should appear (e.g., single message selected, folder selected, etc.), the format of the export (multiple PDF files, Binder, or Package), the file naming convention, and the destination for the file.

File names can match whatever system your firm uses thanks to the ability to create a formula from all the data fields available in Outlook. For example, you can use date and time sent or received, the sender and/or recipient's name, the name of the folder in which the message resides, etc.

Instead of manually invoking SWING Porter for Outlook, you can automate exports by setting up a rule on a timed schedule.

What Else Should You Know?

SWING Porter for Outlook starts at $99 per user. Volume discounts exist. For example a 5-user pack costs $420. A license includes all updates for the current version and email support. You can try the software for free. Learn more about SWING Porter for Outlook.

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.