TechnoLawyer: Online/Cloud

Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers a video email service, and Outlook plug-in that makes your email messages more useful and easier to find (see article below), and a Web-based suite of tools to help you assess and improve the document review process. Don't miss the next issue.

Fall in Love With Email All Over Again
By Peter R. Olson

Email. You can't live without it, but living with it has become a challenge because email today doesn't look a whole lot different than email a decade ago. But you use it differently. And because it has become much more important, the volume of messages you need to process has ballooned. Time for an upgrade don't you think?

Xobni ("inbox" spelled backwards) is an Outlook plug-in that analyzes your email messages to supply you with the information you need. For example, Xobni offers "lightning fast search." Xobni begins to display results as you type and separates contacts, messages, and attachments. Xobni also groups your messages into threaded conversations — even if the subject of a related message has changed.

Xobni doesn't just search and group, however. It also transforms Outlook into a Facebook-like social network except with no setup required and no annoying email alerts informing you that a friend just ate a lightly-buttered English muffin.

Select a message and instantly see useful data such as past sent and received email involving that contact along with an email frequency ranking, and a time of day chart that tracks when the contact typically sends email. Xobni also provides a detailed view of all past document exchanges for each contact. You can even discover shared friends.

Tired of copying and pasting information from email signatures? Xobni extracts telephone numbers from messages and automatically displays them for each contact. With one click you can add phone numbers to your address book. Xobni also facilitates the scheduling of meetings. One click creates an email message listing your available times based on your Outlook calendar. You can of course edit the message before sending it out.

Xobni currently works with Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007. The company plans to integrate Xobni with other email clients in the future. For now, Xobni is free. Learn more about Xobni.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Wednesdays, TechnoLawyer NewsWire is a weekly newsletter that enables you to learn about new technology products and services of interest to legal professionals. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers legal forms that come bundled with automation software (see article below), contact and project management software for Mac users, and a Web application for managing your eDiscovery workflow, including legal holds. Don't miss the next issue.

Smart Legal Forms
By Peter R. Olson

Law students daydream about writing perfect legal documents. But real lawyers don't have time to daydream, and their clients don't want them to reinvent the wheel. Thus, while a law student may fret over some inconsequential detail, lawyers just want to know — Who's got the best legal form?

Masterform offers customizable legal forms for lawyers that come embedded in a document automation program that looks like a word processor. The automation features help you transform Masterform's document into your client's document. Plus, you need to make your changes only once and the form does the rest.

Masterform's documents provide standard word processing tools, but the automation tools make the documents much more flexible. For example, the forms contain blue hypertext links in nearly every paragraph. When you click, a pop-up window appears from which you can select options such as paragraph numbering or a particular clause. Click on green hypertext links for pop-up "information windows" with hints and legal references.

Masterform legal forms also save you time by automatically renumbering paragraphs, changing clause references throughout the form, inserting data such as your client's name, and matching all gender-specific words. When you're done modifying your legal form, a single click removes the embedded hyperlinks to save or print a clean, professional-looking document. You can save it in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF format, or leave it in Masterform.

Masterform currently offers the following forms: Distribution Agreement, Consulting or Services Agreements, Employee Non-Disclosure and Non-Compete, Employment Agreement, Equipment Purchase Agreement, Non-Disclosure Agreements, Web Site Development Agreement, and Work Order Agreement.

Masterform's legal forms are free for three months. After this free trial period ends, you can purchase a registration key for unlimited use for $95 per form. Learn more about Masterform.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Wednesdays, TechnoLawyer NewsWire is a weekly newsletter that enables you to learn about new technology products and services of interest to legal professionals. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Coming May 22, 2008 to Answers to Questions: John Starkweather reviews MasterFile litigation support software, Miriam Jacobson explains how she set up her scanner on a wireless network, Kendra Kleber shares the details of her office furniture setup and why it works for her, Douglas Folk provides a simple solution to keep power fluctuations from affecting legal software (and damaging hardware), and Andrew Willinger reviews Yahoo Calendar for law firms. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published Thursdays, Answers to Questions is a weekly newsletter in which TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers (including you if you join TechnoLawyer). Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Intervals, Wrike, and OnStage — Special Online Project Management Issue
By Neil J. Squillante

Choosing an online project management system is a lot like getting married. Realizing you made a terrible mistake carries a great cost. And unlike marriage, project management systems don't offer the safety net of a prenup.

While the companies behind these services may promise that you can extract your data, you'll probably need to hire someone to use what you extract. In other words, choose your project management system even more carefully than you choose your spouse.

Previously in this newsletter, we covered the two heavyweights in this nascent category — Basecamp (see What's a Matter? in the 02-09-05 issue) and CentralDesktop (see Report to Desktop Central in the 09-18-06 issue).

Today, we cover three new contenders — Intervals, OnStage, and Wrike. What do they have that their predecessors lack? Find out in this special edition of TechnoLawyer NewsWire.

INTERVALS: MEDIUM WEIGHT ONLINE PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Intervals attempts to fill a void between lightweight project management applications that don't contain any analytical tools and complex applications that use Gantt charts and the like. With Intervals, you can enter predictions for the time and cost of a project, track both of these metrics, and then analyze how well your predictions fared when you complete the project.

Of importance to lawyers, the time tracking tool features timers, weekly timesheet submissions and approvals, reminders (nags) for those who do not submit their timesheets, and reports that present information in charts. You can also use Intervals to create and track bills. Intervals can even email clients automatically about overdue bills.

Intervals can track your tasks in addition to your time. You can receive email alerts every day listing what's due. If you assign tasks to someone else, you can receive an email alert when a status changes.

Most projects at law firms involve documents. Intervals offers document storage and sharing within projects. You can even associate a document with a task. Intervals supports versioning for revisions of the same document. You can share other file types as well such as photos and videos.

Intervals provides a number of useful reports that you can export in .csv format. For example, you can compare billable versus unbillable time, analyze employee productivity, compare actual hours billed versus your goals, and more.

Intervals offers four different plans that range in price from $20 to $175 per month. The difference among the plans concerns the number of projects and the amount of storage space — plus the two higher-priced plans offer encryption. A free plan also exists that limits you to one project and provides no storage space. Learn more about Intervals.

WRIKE: EMAIL'S LITTLE HELPER

According to Wrike, the world revolves around email. So rather than try to teach old dogs (you) new tricks, it has created an online project management system that integrates with plain old email.

For example, to create a task, you don't have to login. Instead, you can email Wrike directly or if you're assigning the task to someone you can email that person and cc Wrike. Wrike automatically creates a task. If you include a due date in your email message, Wrike can send a reminder to the person responsible for the task as the deadline approaches. At any time, you can log into your Wrike dashboard to see and manage all tasks.

In addition to creating tasks, Wrike transforms email messages about a topic into a Gantt timeline. It also stores your email messages so that you can easily find and search them. Wrike's "Flexible Structures" doesn't force you into the project paradigm. While you can group tasks by project, you can also group them by people, process, or any other system of your choosing — and you can apply multiple types.

Within Wrike itself, you can track time, share files, engage in threaded discussions, and view reports. The reports enable you to drill down to specific data points like a time entry.

Wrike works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari and includes free email support. Wrike costs $3.99 per user per month if you commit to the annual plan. The monthly plan costs $4.99 per user per month. Learn more about Wrike.

ONSTAGE: IT'S THE CALENDAR, STUPID

Chmura believes that project management requires a shared calendar. As a result, its OnStage online project management offering features a calendar at its heart. On the main calendar, you can create and view events, milestones, and tasks for all projects. When you enter a project, you see only the items related to that project.

In addition to the calendar, OnStage offers two other ways to view information — dashboards and reports. And within a project, you can share files, exchange messages, and create and manage contacts and tasks. File sharing includes versioning. You can assign tasks and create email alerts when the status changes. You receive messages via email, but they also remain in OnStage grouped in threads and fully searchable.

OnStage works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. The five different plans range in price from $10 to $135 per month. All of them provide SSL encryption so they differ only with regard to the number of projects and storage. A free ad-supported plan provides as many projects (20) and storage (750 MB) as the $20/month plan. Learn more about OnStage.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Wednesdays, TechnoLawyer NewsWire is a weekly newsletter that enables you to learn about new technology products and services of interest to legal professionals. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Coming May 8, 2008 to Answers to Questions: Ed Detlie suggests a few case management software options for a workers compensation practice plus he reviews the ScanSnap s510, David Adamski reviews Loislaw for legal research and comments on adhesion contracts, Edward Zohn explains how his firm archives its Exchange/Outlook-based email, Harry Steinmetz reviews Amicus Attorney Small Firm Edition and Amicus Accounting, and Thomas Hutto reviews Backpack and Google calendar for shared calendaring. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published Thursdays, Answers to Questions is a weekly newsletter in which TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers (including you if you join TechnoLawyer). Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Coming May 2, 2008 to Fat Friday: David Giuffrida reviews Carbonite in conjunction with WinZip Pro for comprehensive online backup, Thomas Parker discusses where small firms fit in a general counsel's outside counsel strategy, David Long suggests a more accurate way to open WordPerfect documents in Word, Hugh Roberts reviews Wrike for email-related task management, and Ido Ilan reviews his Treo 680 and Agendus. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Fridays, Fat Friday is a weekly newsletter that features a grab bag full of genuinely useful product reviews and tips on a wide variety of topics. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Coming May 1, 2008 to Answers to Questions: Tim Hughes reviews Westlaw and LexisNexis for legal research plus adds his two cents on adhesion contracts, Thomas Collon reviews Google calendar and Mozilla Thunderbird for shared calendars, John Kaurloto explains how to use subforms to automatically link to documents in Microsoft Access, Ryan Opria reviews IOGEAR's USB 2.0 External Video Card for using multiple monitors with a laptop, and Steven Schwaber responds to a previous Post that criticized WordPerfect. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published Thursdays, Answers to Questions is a weekly newsletter in which TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers (including you if you join TechnoLawyer). Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers dictation software for your BlackBerry and an accompanying online dictation service, an online service for retrieving medical records, and new electronic discovery software designed for in-house counsel in the early stages of a case or investigation (see article below). Don't miss the next issue.

Put the Cushy Back Into Corporate Counsel
By Neil J. Squillante

Being a corporate counsel used to be a cushy job. When litigation arose, you could have your outside counsel swing by to collect documents. Those days have ended. It's one thing to let your outside counsel rummage through file cabinets, but it's not advisable to have them rummage through your computers. Increasingly, that task belongs to you.

DigIT Technologies' DigIT Enterprise 2.5 enables your legal department to access to all electronically stored information throughout the enterprise, enabling you to quickly search for, find, and preserve data that may prove relevant to an investigation or litigation.

DigIT Technologies customizes every installation of DigIT Enterprise based on your specific needs. Once configured, it performs three core functions — Early Case Assessment, Custodian Mapping, and Full Custodian Capture.

Regarding Early Case Assessment, digIT Enterprise enables you to make decisions before you spend any money processing data. By running a few quick searches, you will know how much evidentiary data exists so that you can establish a case budget and strategy. digIT Enterprise also provides the requisite information necessary for the Meet & Confer requirement of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure such as the number of custodians, how much data each custodian has, and where that data resides.

While some software uses a single method for identifying custodians, digIT Enterprise employs a variety of methods for Custodian Mapping, including address, machine name, and integration with Microsoft Active Directory. You can also map email using particular fields such as the sender and the name of the mailbox.

Full Custodian Capture facilitates the preservation of all potential evidence belonging to one custodian in a single search. digIT Enterprise places all available information for each custodian into a "repository." You then apply search terms against each custodian's collection, and then export potentially relevant files to your review platform of choice for further analysis, tagging, and categorization. This approach ensures that no file is altered or deleted during discovery by any key custodians.

Learn more about digIT Enterprise 2.5.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Wednesdays, TechnoLawyer NewsWire is a weekly newsletter that enables you to learn about new technology products and services of interest to legal professionals. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Coming April 24, 2008 to Answers to Questions: Mark Manoukian discusses the benefits of open source software (and how you might use it every day and not know), Brad Jensen explores whether reformatting your hard drive provides enough protection from snoops, Craig S. Clark reviews Passwords Plus as well as the Treo 700wx, Daniel Fennick reviews his experience using PracticeMaster and Tabs3 together, and Theo Yates reviews PDF995 PDF converter plus the Wayback Machine. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published Thursdays, Answers to Questions is a weekly newsletter in which TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers (including you if you join TechnoLawyer). Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Coming April 25, 2008 to Fat Friday: Richard Hackerd reviews his Treo 755p and its syncing abilities with Amicus Attorney, Elaine Dowling shares her thoughts on finding relevant CLE courses, Brian Sherwood Jones reviews Tiddlywiki for personal task and information management, Meredith Hamilton reviews EMC's online backup solution MozyPro, and John Starkweather points to an innovative computer desk option from Steelcase. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Fridays, Fat Friday is a weekly newsletter that features a grab bag full of genuinely useful product reviews and tips on a wide variety of topics. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.