TechnoLawyer: Online/Cloud

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers a free remote access tool, document management software for small law firms, and a utility that converts PDF files into HTML and other formats. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

The Next Best Thing to a Transporter
By Dennis Kennedy

Lawyers increasingly work in settings away from the office, but need access to information on their office computers. Plus they occasionally need support or assistance from the IT department. Having access to all of your computer assets from wherever you are has become a priority for many lawyers. Since you can't have Scotty beam you back and forth as needed, the next best alternative is remote control software.

UltraVNC is a free software tool that enables you to display the screen of another computer on the screen of your computer over the Internet or a home of office network. You can then work on the other computer remotely, as if you were sitting in front of it.

You can use UltraVNC to access other computers, provide support and trouble-shooting, administer networks, give demos or presentations, and perform any number of other tasks remotely. You can also securely transfer files.

UltraVNC is an enhanced version of a popular open source program called VNC that has a long history. It runs on Windows systems. If you use its embedded Java viewer, you can use an Internet connection and a Web browser to view and transfer files from computers supporting Java (that means Mac OS and Linux). The Web browser capabilities also enable you to access a home or office computer from an Internet cafe or hotel room.

UltraVNC enhancements include a Video Mirror Driver to improve the speed and accuracy of screen updates and remote control. Although UltraVNC does not include encryption, plug-ins exist that can encrypt your communications. There is also a helpful text chat feature so you can communicate with the person at the other computer. UltraVNC is free.  Learn more about UltraVNC.

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.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers software that enhances and adds features to Outlook, integrated network security software, and an online client development application. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

Take Client Development to a Higher Level
By Dennis Kennedy

Lawyers often focus on cases and matters. But before a case or matter comes into existence, you must deal with people — both existing and prospective clients. The traditional address book doesn't give you enough horsepower for sales, and high-end customer relationship management software is overkill for most law firms. So where do you turn?

37 Signals designed Highrise as a new Web-based approach to capture the middle ground between address books and the big CRM packages. The focus lies in giving you just the tools you need to manage people and projects and nothing more. With Highrise, you can share contacts, assign tasks based on those contacts, maintain a contact history, and, most importantly, group together related people, companies, notes, and other information in a "case," a term that should appeal to lawyers.

You can use Highrise for your own contacts or search for contacts across your firm. Highrise also helps you move from contact list to action. You can act on your contacts by setting follow-ups, calls, meetings, thank you notes, reminders, and more. Highrise can even send reminders to your mobile phone. You can log calls, conversations, email, and other communications with your contacts. You log email by simply forwarding or copying Highrise.

You can also mine new information from your contact lists. See all communications with a group of people. Build a list of all the experts on a given issue. Generate a list of your clients with whom you have not had contact in the last year. Etc.

Highrise comes from the same company that produces Basecamp, a popular online project management tool that we use to write this newsletter. Highrise is available in a free version with limits on the number of cases and people you can set up, and in five other versions ranging from $12 to $149 per month. SSL security kicks in at $49/month, which most law firms would probably deem necessary. Learn more about Highrise.

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.

Not that anyone asked, but below I've placed my top five dos and don'ts for online legal video:

Do:

1. Write a screenplay or storyboard before you shoot any footage. It's no different from a deposition — you need to prepare.

2. Use quality microphones. Sound is more important than video quality, especially on YouTube, which uses an inferior Flash format that makes everything look blocky. If people cannot make out what you're saying, nothing else matters.

3. Shoot your footage in locations that have lots of light. Nothing looks worse than underexposed video. Better to use a cheap camcorder with lots of light than a high-end HD camera in low light conditions.

4. Hire a director/editor even if you're an avid hobbyist. A professional will provide insights that will improve the project.

5. Provide useful information or tell a good story. Otherwise, what's the point?

Don't:

1. Convert your PowerPoint presentations to video. They don't translate well. If you do, at least add a voiceover to discuss each slide. Remember, silent movies went out of vogue some 80 years ago.

2. Rely solely on your 30 second television commercials. If people fast forward through your commercials on TV, what makes you think they will watch them on YouTube? Instead, do upload them since it's free, but create companion videos with more information.

3. Use video just for the sake of using video. Use this medium only if the visual component will enhance your message. No brainer examples of when to use video: someone in your firm appeared on TV, you have a good-looking and media-savvy lawyer in your firm who can serve as your public face, you handle cases with lots of visual evidence, you have brand new office space to show off, etc.

4. Make your video public unless it's ready and you're ready. People like me regularly scour YouTube for legal videos. On several occasions, we have sent thousands of people to videos that the creators then pulled because they weren't ready for that large of an audience. You can keep your YouTube videos private for purposes of obtaining feedback from colleagues.

5. Rely solely on YouTube. If you regularly create videos, set up a podcast feed and make your videos available through iTunes. Also, post them on your own site.

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

As you know, we often point to and analyze YouTube videos related to law practice. That's because we believe YouTube provides law firms with an unprecedented marketing opportunity — the ability to reach millions of consumers without having to pay an advertising fee. You do, of course, have to create a video and promote it, but that's a small expense by comparison. In fact, promoting a video might entail emailing the link to your clients and asking them to pass it along (you should also email us as our coverage often causes significant spikes in viewership).

Now, I'll readily admit that most law firms have never dabbled in video — except perhaps depositions. However, every law firm has considerable expertise in another medium — the written word.

For this reason, newly launched Scribd might prove even more powerful and far cheaper than YouTube.

Scribd is YouTube for documents. You simply upload a document in one of the supported formats after which Scribd indexes it and makes it available in several versions — PDF, Word, Plain Text, Flashpaper (for browser viewing) and MP3 (for listening).

Okay, let's get the obvious out of the way first in case it's not so obvious:

• You can use Scribd as a free document conversion tool, albeit with a limited number of file formats right now.

• You can use Scribd to convert documents into MP3 files that you can listen to while commuting, which means you can drive and bill. Ka-ching!

• You can use Scribd as a quick and dirty extranet for clients.

• Someday, I suspect Scribd will also perform free OCR.

That's all great and yes you can keep your documents private, thus using Scribd solely as a technology tool.

But I think Scribd might even have greater utility as a marketing tool — both for you personally and your firm.

Scribd probably already has a larger audience than your Web site does, and that gulf will no doubt widen now that Scribd has taken its first dose of venture capital.

Why not try uploading an article you've written to see what happens? For maximum impact, place it on your firm's letterhead and create a complete Scribd profile including a link to your firm's site. Also, don't forget to tag it with keywords that people will likely use in their searches.

To get started, allow Dennis Kennedy to lead the way as he often does. Check out Dennis' first Scribd upload — a collection of seven of his articles on e-discovery.

Also, I've also uploaded an essay I wrote in July 2002 entitled Jar Jar's Law. It compares the technology in Star Wars to that of our own world.

Tip: Upload your documents in PDF format for best results in Flashpaper (the browser viewer).

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers an email archiving appliance, a Web-based time-billing solution, and a powerful desktop search tool. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

The Renaissance Man of Desktop Search Tools
By Dennis Kennedy

Lawyers spend an increasing amount of time searching. While cynics might quip that lawyers spend much of that time looking for misplaced files (both electronic and paper), even the most organized lawyers need to search their hard drives and networks as well as discovery documents — and the free desktop search tools often fall short.

ISYS Search Software's ISYS 8 moves law firms well beyond the realm of free desktop search tools into powerful and versatile search technology. ISYS 8 offers a wide array of tools that enable you to find the information you need fast whether it resides on your PC, a file server, or elsewhere on your local or wide area network.

ISYS 8 works with your unstructured data as it finds it, including email. In fact, it can index and search data in more than 200 file formats (including Office 2007) in 60 languages, and each index can accommodate up to 64 million documents. You do not have to prepare your data before indexing it. You can, however, select from a number of indexing options, and automate indexing with a scheduler. For example, you could have ISYS index your email and attachments every hour.

ISYS 8 gives you a wide range of search options from the familiar standard keyword search to Boolean operators to useful options like "Starts with" and "Sounds like." ISYS 8's "Intelligent Agent" can even automatically perform searches for you and notify you of new results. ISYS also uses "fuzzy logic" to help you find "mis-shaped" words from OCR scans and "Synonym Rings" enables you to engage in "concept searching" — finding documents that contain terms related to your search terms (e.g., nicknames, synonyms, etc.). For email and other structured files, you can search by fields such as TO, CC, and BCC.

In addition to fast and powerful search, ISYS enables you to navigate and work with your results in many helpful ways. You can search within your initial results, filter or automatically categorize results, highlight, group, or cluster hits, set views or previews, and hide results that do not matter to you. ISYS 8 has a "Did You Mean?" feature to suggest alternative search terms for you. You can annotate your results, print or extract them to a file, and even search metadata.

ISYS 8 boasts a number of new features that should prove quite helpful with many legal tasks. Regarding electronic discovery, the "Entities" feature can identify people, organizations, email addresses, and similar information in your search results and group the documents you find accordingly. For knowledge management, ISYS 8's new "Best Bets" feature enables you to designate model documents for certain search terms. And for large firms, "ISYS Federator" can synchronize indexes across the network and even across the globe so that everyone in the firm obtains the same search results.

ISYS 8 costs $1,000 for a network license plus $100 per seat with volume discounts available. Learn more about ISYS 8.

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.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers the new version of a popular e-discovery program, a Web site monitoring service, and an online court rules service. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

Bring Order to the E-Discovery Chaos
By Dennis Kennedy

Ask any member of a corporate legal team, IT department, law firm, or legal service provider how they would describe e-discovery — "chaotic" and "expensive" would likely emerge from their mouths. E-discovery usually involves many steps, short response times, and too many cooks in the kitchen. Sensitive corporate data ends up in too many places, costs continue to grow and legal teams tire of the constant fire drill.

Attenex Patterns e-discovery software was designed to bring order to this chaos, enabling legal teams to develop standardized, repeatable processes that reduce the risk, cost, and time associated with e-discovery. The latest version of Attenex Patterns — version 4.0 — includes more than 50 new features and enhancements in the areas of e-discovery data processing, review, and project management.

Some of the key new features include the re-use of documents previously processed and reviewed — including valuable work product such as document marks and annotations. For large enterprises and firms, this re-use can eliminate costs associated with the same documents being examined multiple times to fulfill similar requests.

New project management capabilities and reporting options provide customers with improved insight into reviewer productivity rates and project status. Because Attenex Patterns clusters similar documents together, the new reporting tools enable a manager to verify that all similar documents were marked the same. These reporting tools also provide transparency to project managers who need to know the progress of a matter. Attenex Patterns also now supports the clustering and review of both electronic files and scanned OCR and TIFF documents in 23 languages.

Attenex Patterns' patented email suppression function enables reviewers to de-dupe or eliminate duplicate email messages in a string, dramatically reducing the number of emails to review. Users can also now extract embedded Microsoft Office and PDF files from email messages, ensuring the review of all documents and reducing the risk of disclosing sensitive data embedded in an Excel spreadsheet.

Attenex Patterns provides flexible deployment options unique in the industry.  You can deploy the software on-premise, in a hosted environment managed by an "Attenex Advantage" partner, or in a customized combination tailored to the demands of the customer's environment.

Additionally, Attenex Patterns can integrate with virtually any litigation support software thanks to the new Attenex Patterns Software Development Kit (SDK). Thus, once you complete a review, you can easily export your work product and your final document set to case analysis software, trial presentation software, etc. Learn more about Attenex Patterns 4.0.

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.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers an online service for staying on top of court filings involving your clients, a free tool for clipping anything on any Web page, and timeline creation software for Mac users. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

Your Link to Electronic Litigation
By Dennis Kennedy

We have moved past the days of sending associates down to the court house to check the latest pleadings. Electronic filing and access to court records over the Internet have changed the way we access and manage court records. Access to court dockets is only step one. We can now do much more than ever before with court information, moving from access to action.

LexisNexis' CourtLink service takes us further down the road of electronic litigation. It starts with access to court dockets, but adds a set of powerful tools to improve support functions and provide information to lawyers, litigation support personnel, clients, and other members of today's expanding litigation team. You can quickly retrieve the dockets and documents you need, but that's just the starting point.

CourtLink gives you a broad range of information tools. It enables you to stay up-to-date with your cases, access the court docket, and receive alerts about events in your cases. You can also monitor courts with other actions involving your clients. For example, you can learn about a new suit as soon as it's filed.

Using CourtLink's Strategic Profiles, you can obtain insight into trends, patterns, tactics, risks, and new opportunities. You can also review litigation history to learn about a judge's experience in a certain type of case and history of applicable decisions, the experience, success rate, strategies, and resolution history of opposing counsel, and much more.  In short, CourtLink doubles as a strategic litigation tool as well as business development tool.

CourtLink enables you to search by parties, types of cases, key words, docket numbers, patent numbers, and much more. You can search many courts in a single search. You can also set alerts to let you know about developments that interest you. Once you identify suits that interest you, you can use the tracking service to send you regularly-scheduled updates by email.

CourtLink enables you to see information visually using graphics and charts. In fact, because much of the information in CourtLink is timeline-oriented, you can import CourtLink data into LexisNexis' TimeMap 4.1 so that you can better visualize trends and create demonstrative evidence for settlement meetings and other purposes. CourtLink also seamlessly links to CaseMap to help you to build a successful case strategy.

LexisNexis offers CourtLink on a subscription or transactional basis. You choose the options you want to use. Contact LexisNexis for details on options and pricing. Learn more about CourtLink.

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 March 16, 2007 to Fat Friday: Barron Henley explains the dangers of relying on "date modified" in your document management system, Joe Hartley shares his top two legal technology innovations, Carroll Straus reviews Mozy for online backup (and shares what the company had to say about rival Carbonite), Peter Summerill discusses why the legal market could never be "friction free," and Chris Shows responds to Ross Kodner's renowned "Paper LESS" system. Don't miss this issue.

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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.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers the latest version of a popular litigation support solution, a Web conferencing service that works with Macs and PCs, and a Web-based contact manager. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

Litigate. Integrate. And Disintegrate the Competition.
By Dennis Kennedy

Litigators today face a bewildering set of choices among hundreds of litigation software packages and electronic discovery tools. At the very least, you want programs that link to and work well with your other programs. Even better, you'd like to find a home base, starting point, or "dashboard" for all of your litigation work.

LexisNexis CaseMap has released the newest version of CaseMap, its popular case analysis tool. CaseMap 7 focuses on integration and clearly embraces the concept of a litigation dashboard.

Since its introduction, CaseMap has made it easy for litigators, paralegals, and even expert witnesses to organize, analyze and take control of their cases. Each new version has added new features attuned to the needs of litigation teams, and the new CaseMap 7 continues that tradition. Both new users and existing users will find much to recommend in CaseMap 7.

Not surprisingly, CaseMap 7 features tighter integration with LexisNexis' growing collection of litigation tools, especially LexisNexis Total Litigator. This particular integration enables you to work with the facts in your case in new, helpful ways.

For example, you can select a fact like a company name in CaseMap and send it to Total Litigator to find background information, similar cases, and relevant business intelligence about opposing counsel or the judge handling your case. Equally helpful, right-click a case citation to get a copy of the case or Shepardize it. For those who use CourtLink, CaseMap 7 makes it easy to work with pleadings and docket information. CaseMap 7 also offers an integrated menu that enables you to use other LexisNexis litigation tools.

CaseMap 7 doesn't just integrate with LexisNexis products. It has also taken its Adobe Acrobat integration even further. Enhancements in Adobe Acrobat 8 are compatible with CaseMap 7. For example, CaseMap's Acrobat PLUS plug-in facilitates the use of Acrobat 8's new  Bates Stamps tool.

Litigators can't get enough of Bates stamping so CaseMap 7 features improvements to its own PDF Bates stamping capabilities with a new set of power tools, including analysis, finding and filtering, and synchronization. The Bates Analyzer looks at your Bates numbers and checks for inconsistencies, duplicates, and anomalies. The Bates Find and Filter utility helps you find and view only the documents you need. The Bates End/Pages Synchronization tool can adjust your Bates numbers during the production process, keeping everything synchronized.

CaseMap's "Send to" feature has become a popular way to get information to and from other litigation programs. In CaseMap 7, this tool has become more powerful with a bulk send capability, complete with a wizard to help you define what you want to send.

You can download a free 30-day trial version of CaseMap 7.  Learn more about CaseMap 7.

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 March 8, 2007 to Answers to Questions: Diane Sherman reviews two Internet fax services (and why she uses one for incoming and one for outgoing faxes), Martin Dean discusses a new ISO standard PDF format called PDF/A, and why it's important for law firms to know about, Jason Havens shares his thoughts on enterprise search tools from Google and Microsoft, Sandor Boxer reviews his Philips 9350 Pocket Memo digital recorder, and Marc Martin explains how to make electronic Bates stamping easier. Don't miss this issue.

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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.