TechnoLawyer: Online/Cloud

Coming today to Answers to Questions: John Heckman compares Worldox and Interwoven WorkSite for document management, Toby Brown reviews Casemaker for online legal research, and Paul Mansfield offers two tips for keeping your law firm's scanner running smoothly. Don't miss this issue.

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Originally published on August 24, 2009 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

I'm back again with five more technology hacks for small law firms. While technology is not necessarily a bastion of hope in these dark economic times, it can give the small firm practitioner a leg up on the competition and level the playing field for client service and communication compared to a larger outfit. If you missed my first five hacks, you can find them on TechnoLawyer Blog.

1. Track Your Time Writing Emails With MonetaMail

MonetaMail is an Outlook add-on that tracks the time you spend on email activities.

MonetaMail is inspired by the following facts:

Email is the most popular communication tool. Much email activity is of short duration (certainly under the 6 minutes for the 0.1 hour minimum time tranche). Many users do not actually know how much time they spend in email and usually grossly underestimate their email activity time. Moreover, users do not want to leave the workflow of reading and replying to email to track their time.

The solution, prior to MonetaMail was to either ignore or forget about billing for email time, make some wild guesses, or sift through your Sent folder and reconstruct what happened.

MonetaMail tags, tracks, and reports your email time by two different user-selected descriptors (you need set up a descriptor only once per email address). The basic idea is to track the time that slips through the cracks by seamlessly integrating into Outlook. The reporting function enables you to evaluate email productivity by client, project or time-period, on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. The captured time should eclipse the $99 price.

2. Send Video Emails With Eyejot

Even in the hands of a gifted writer, the written word can prove difficult to decipher. Enter video messaging service Eyejot.

Eyejot enables you to send video messages by simply signing up, logging in to your account, uploading or recording your video, and clicking "Send." There is no software to install or download. It works with all major browsers.

A free account enables you to send an unlimited number of 60 second email messages, and provides support for RSS feeds and iTunes, and a visual address book. Upgrading to the Pro version for $29.95 per year extends the video length to 5 minutes and provides an inbox perpetual in duration (the free account stores email for only 30 days).

For $99.95 per year, the Pro Plus version enables you to add your own logo and color scheme to Eyejot's notification elements, receive alerts when recipients view your video messages, and attach documents to your video messages.

3. Tweet From Outlook

Twinbox is a free Microsoft Outlook plugin that seamlessly integrates with Outlook to enable Twitter users to update, reply, archive, search, and receive their friends' tweets.

After download and installation, simply visit the "Options" menu and enter your Twitter username and password. What sets this app apart from stand-alone Adobe Air based Twitter applications such as TweetDeck is the ability to archive, manage, group, and search your tweets the same way you manage your email. You can also upload photos and Outlook attachments and automatically download all tweets matching the keywords you specify, similar to a supercharged Google Alerts for Outlook. Thus, Twinbox enables you to monitor what people are saying about you and your firm.

4. Backup Your Browser Settings With FavBackup

FavBackup is a free portable utility (meaning it does not have to be installed, just executed) that will backup your browser preferences, passwords, extensions, and sessions.

It works with all major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Google Chrome. Backing up is as simple as running the downloaded file and following the guided prompts.

5. Set Up Advanced Voicemail With YouMail

YouMail is a free voicemail service that will blow the pants off your cell phone carrier's default voicemail package. Think Google Voice without the extra phone number.

YouMail provides visual voicemail, personalized greetings based on the caller, voicemail sharing, caller blocking, and voicemail alerts by email and text. For a fee of $3.99/month, you can have voicemail messages transcribed and emailed to you. Another nifty feature is the ability to make folders to organize your voicemail messages as you would your email. You can also download your voice messages in .mp3 format.

What better way to organize client communications, send notes to yourself, and compartmentalize all communications? Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Written by Will Geer of JDhacker.

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Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers an online document and records management service (see article below), an Exchange alternative with over-the-air push email, an online court rules service, a dual LCD monitor system, and an iPhone credit card app. Don't miss the next issue.

From Paper to Pixels to Searchable Text

You buy a scanner intending to scan years worth of records. But regardless of the scanner's speed, you soon realize the enormity of the task at hand. Time for some outsourcing, but who can you trust with your firm's documents?

Pixily … in One Sentence
Pixily is an online document and records management service with document scanning included in its monthly fee.

The Killer Feature
Pixily provides you with postage paid, waterproof envelopes with which you can send documents for scanning. Pixily scans your documents and also makes the text searchable, and then mails the originals back to you. You can keep the documents in your online account and/or download them in PDF format to store locally. Pixily provides end-to-end 256-bit SSL encryption.

Other Notable Features
You can upload Microsoft Office and PDF documents to Pixily as well as images in a variety of formats. You can also add documents to your account via email. If you snap a photo of a document and upload it, Pixily will make the text searchable.

Pixily offers a Google-like search tool. However, instead of listing your documents by title, Pixily also displays a thumbnail and the top of the first page, making it easier to find the document you seek. Once you find a document, you can view it within Pixily, and also email, print, or download it.

What Else Should You Know?
Pixily offers an iPhone-optimized version of its site for accessing your documents on the go. Pixily offers four plans — Free (1,000 pages), Value ($14.95/month; 1 envelope/ month, 3,000 pages), Value Plus ($29.95/month, 2 envelope/month, 6,000 pages), and Select ($59.95/month, 4 envelopes/month, 12,000 pages). Learn more about Pixily.

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So many products, so little time. In each issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The "In One Sentence" section describes each product in one sentence, and the "Killer Feature" section describes each product's most compelling feature. The TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers an online collaboration suite for law firms (see article below), an online legal research and practice management application, a 27 inch LCD widescreen monitor, a Windows utility for inventorying PCs, and a GPS-based navigation app for the iPhone 3G and 3GS. Don't miss the next issue.

Collaborate Online Just Like the Big Boys

In most industries, prices increase over time thanks to inflation and product improvements, cars being a prime example. But this law doesn't apply to technology. Prices tend to decrease even as functionality increases. As a result, large firms no longer have a monopoly on client-pleasing technologies — like online collaboration tools.

PBworks Legal Edition … in One Sentence
PBworks Legal Edition is an online collaboration suite for case management, client extranets, deal rooms, legal knowledgebases, and intranets.

The Killer Feature
You have probably experienced a visit from a consultant or sales representative who tries to persuade you to re-organize your firm's workflow to fit their product. While many law firms could benefit from fine-tuning, flexibility should go both ways.

While PBworks Legal Edition provides a general framework for online collaboration, the tools enable you to create your own custom workflows.

For example, suppose you store all of your notes and research in Microsoft Word files. PBworks Legal Edition enables you to import Word files into the Legal Knowledgebase. Once there, anyone in your firm can search them. On the other hand, if you prefer, you can place this information directly into the Legal Knowledgebase's wiki, which is also searchable.

PBworks Legal Edition also offers customizable templates. You can use these templates to ensure that everyone in your firm handles specific matters in a uniform manner. You can also create client-specific templates.

"Our goal for our legal customers is to help them get their work done more efficiently and effectively," PBworks CEO Jim Groff told us. "Enabling law firms to customize and standardize how they collaborate puts the focus on the work, rather than the technology."

Other Notable Features
The five components of PBworks Legal Edition — Legal Knowledgebase, Case Management, Client Extranet, Legal Intranet, and Electronic Deal Room — interconnect with one another when appropriate and offer full-text searching. Because PBworks Legal Edition resides on the Web, you use it within your Web browser and need not install software or buy servers.

As noted above, the Legal Knowledgebase offers a place to capture research. You can organize this information by client/matter if applicable. When you do so, you can access it from the Case Management component, which records all information related to a particular matter. This component also offers a Case Chronology, Tasks and Milestones, and automated email notifications for approaching deadlines.

The Legal Intranet serves as a storehouse for all internal records such as human resources. Similarly, the Client Extranet enables your clients to access key files and final deliverables. PBworks provides "enterprise-grade" security with the ability to restrict access to individual pages or files. You can also automatically remind clients of important dates such as depositions.

For matters that require collaboration with several parties, you can create an Electronic Deal Room, which differs from the Client Extranet by providing an Audit Log of all activity and even more granular control over who can access what.

What Else Should You Know?
You can use PBworks Legal Edition on a Mac or PC and also on a BlackBerry or iPhone. PBworks Legal Edition costs $50 per attorney per month with no minimum requirement (i.e., a solo would pay just $50 per month). Your assistants, paralegals, and other non-lawyer staff can use it for free. Learn more about PBworks Legal Edition.

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So many products, so little time. In each issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The "In One Sentence" section describes each product in one sentence, and the "Killer Feature" section describes each product's most compelling feature. The TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

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Coming today to TechnoFeature: Your latest case involves so much email and other electronic documents that you have decided to use a Web-based service for storing and reviewing them. Now what? How do you choose from the dozens of vendors? Which features do you need? How much should you pay? Litigator and electronic discovery consultant Bruce Olson answers these and other important questions in this TechnoFeature article. Don't choose a vendor until you arm yourself with Bruce's advice.

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Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 65 articles from the past week worthy of your attention, including our Post of the Week. Here's a sample:

The State of the Blawgosphere (Podcast)

Private Equity Considers Investing in U.K. Law Firms

Don't Be a Stranger

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Originally published on August 3, 2009 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

The BigSolo trend continues to grow. More and more large firm emigrants and refugees have opted out of large firm practice (or have had that choice made for them). The "good old days" appear to have been little more than economic sleight-of-hand, akin to clever David Blaine-esque street magic. More and more large firm attorneys are hanging shingles, summoning their inner entrepreneur.

Some will succeed. Many will not. With the top-down, bottom-up shock that running a business may bring to lawyers whose mission in life involved warping the space-time continuum to pump out 2,500 billable hours per year, opportunities for failure abound.

While some SmallLaw readers have criticized my observations, my perspective stems from the crucible of in-the-trenches reality. Actively helping a number of BigSolos start their practices, I'm living the experience first-hand, not just theorizing from a safe distance. Today's column revisits this world to explore five ways BigSolos can ensure failure of their new practices. I've seen all five myself — they're not pretty.

1. Let Sexy Technology Seduce You

Spend weeks agonizing over apps to download for your shiny new iPhone 3GS instead of focusing on drab, mundane technology for critical functions like system backup, secure WiFi, tailoring a case management system to your practice, automating routine documents, picking anti-malware software that won't destabilize your legitimate software, setting up your email system so that it syncs all your calendar/docket entries to your smartphone, etc.

You can also torpedo your new firm by not bothering to ask an accountant to review your new Chart of Accounts, make a coordinated transition from your old firm's Interwoven document manager to your new practice's Worldox system, or deploy legal software applications that integrate well and share client information because God knows how much you enjoy time-sucking duplicative entry.

2. Go Ahead, Represent Yourself Pro Se

Because you've spent years pouring through technology ads in the Sunday paper, you're a 23rd Level Grand Wizard of Legal Technology. You should make your own decisions about what technology to use, and how to configure your practice/document management, billing, and financial systems.

Then hire the charming counter guy from the nearest Radio Shack (now just The Shack) to build your new server using parts you've frugally scrounged from Overstock.com. Yes, that's the ticket to a stable law practice technology platform to support your livelihood and entrust your confidential client work product.

3. You've Been Using Word for 15 Years — There's Nothing More to Learn

After all those years in a world-class AmLaw 250 law practice, there couldn't possibly be anything you could learn about using technology tools as pedestrian as Word, Outlook, or Acrobat. Or Summation, CaseMap, and Sanction for your trial practice? You're a fourth degree black belt, right? And if you know you're a master of those garden variety regulars, how tough could it be to climb to the top of the practice-management system ladder after clicking "install?"

So by all means, don't waste your time learning the "proper" way to use Styles in Word. Forget about using PDF Packages in Acrobat Professional — especially since Acrobat Standard is good enough. You know best after all.

4. Outsource Everything (The Four Non-Billable Hour Week)

Being a BigSolo is going to be just like your previous gig, but better, right? Your plan is ingenious — you'll create a one lawyer megafirm. You loved the "do anything to keep the lawyers billing time" model that worked so well for you at your old firm.

You can't bear the thought of subsidizing all that administrative staff. So go ahead and outsource everything. Practice law and don't waste otherwise billable time running a business. Entrust everything to outsiders — people you barely know here and overseas who will most certainly have your best interests in mind.

5. Clients Want Old-Fashioned Substance and Web 2.0 Fluff

Return to your roots and use Courier 10 point type for all your documents. That will set you apart from your competitors.

Also, what's the matter with a Blogger.com site for your new practice? And why can't it contain some of your vacation photos? You clients will love the "personal touch." Why shell out one cent for a marketing and branding guru? Who knows you better than you?

Conclusion

If you take my counter-advice above, the odds of abject failure are certain. Want to succeed as a BigSolo and achieve more than you hoped for in law practice? Then run, don't walk, from the above suggestions and do the precise opposite of everything I've suggested.

Written by Ross Kodner of MicroLaw.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to Fat Friday: Diana Brodman Summers shares her secrets to being a happy and successful solo, Douglas Simpson compares GoToMeeting with LogMeIn Rescue for remote access, Lawrence Husick discusses Macs in the law office, Michael Jones reviews Acrobat Pro's Portfolio feature, and George Vie explains why his backup software failed to save the day. Don't miss this issue.

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Coming today to Fat Friday: Gary Garland shares the details of his comprehensive backup system, Bryan Morin discusses local versus big box PC vendors, Craig Humphrey discusses Adobe's ConnectNow, Ronald Cappuccio explains why legal vendors should list their prices online, and Mark Sullivan responds to a recent Question of the Week about background checks. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive Fat Friday
Our most serendipitous offering, Fat Friday consists of unsolicited contributions by TechnoLawyer members. 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 Fat Friday newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.