TechnoLawyer: Online/Cloud

One of life's simple pleasures is discovering new functionality in something you already have.

Laser toner running low? Remove the cartridge and rock it gently side to side for a minute to two. You should get another 1,000 pages though your mileage may vary.

Looking for a quick and dirty way to track your time? Your iPod has a built-in stopwatch that records each entry. It's not the best way to track time, but can work in a pinch when the only alternative is your wristwatch.

Need to call someone in Sydney? Google provides time zone information with just one click. Just enter a city and state or a city and country plus the word "time."

Got any tips of your own?

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.

Coming February 20, 2007 to TechnoFeature: You may have heard of Wikipedia — an attempt to catalog all human knowledge in an enormous online encyclopedia, similar to the Galactic Encyclopedia in Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series. But you may not realize that the true excitement lies not just in the information itself, but in how it is collected and validated. In this article, technology consultant Seth Rowland discusses the power of wikis (both public and private) and the many ways they can serve the legal community. Wiki's aren't just for geeks and academics — they can provide a vital tool for lawyers to capture and organize knowledge. Read on to find out how.

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Published on Tuesdays, TechnoFeature is a weekly newsletter that contains in-depth articles written by leading legal technology and practice management experts. 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 FRCP-ready email archiving tool, a personalized news site that learns what you like, and a free suite of online services, including email at your own domain name. Don't miss the next issue.

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

Vault into Email Bliss
By Dennis Kennedy
Email is essential, but the way we now use it serves as a textbook example of the law of unintended consequences. Its growing volume has produced a number of pain points. For example, how do you manage all your messages? How do you archive and search old messages? How do you handle bulging PST files? Do you find yourself deleting messages and attachments because you've reached the storage quota for your inbox? And what about email in discovery?

Symantec's Enterprise Vault 7.0 aims to solve these problems by providing and archiving tool for managing organizational data, including email, instant messages, and other content. Enterprise Vault's intelligent classification engines help you bring order to the growing chaos with a suite of helpful tools. As a result, you gain better control of data in a simpler manner with reduced storage costs.

Enterprise Vault offers a variety of useful tools. Automated management tools help you avoid annoying mailbox storage and size limitations. You can better manage PST files, expedite backups, and improve disaster recovery with centralized email management, and improve your ability to archive data. Archiving features enable you to store and retrieve email and other data in ways that meet your compliance and electronic discovery requirements. Archiving files may reduce your local storage requirements by 50 to 75%.

These tools automate the archiving of data in a number of useful ways, including content-based archiving. You might use the fifty predefined rules, pop-up menus to require users to select among pre-defined categories, or work in connection with your content or document management system. As a result, you can manage data based on your unique retention, deletion and compliance policies based on content, not just by senders and receivers. As you would expect, administrators have a lot of granular control over application of policies to individual users.

Enterprise Vault 7.0, the newest version, also offers a module for electronic discovery needs called the Discovery Accelerator, designed to help you with the new amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The Discovery Accelerator has three components to help you with predisclosure meetings, legal holds, and native file presentation. Users of Symantec's Information Foundation 2007 will appreciate the integration of Enterprise Vault with this security tool to help manage enterprise information policies.

Enterprise Vault 7.0 integrates with Microsoft's latest applications, including Exchange Server 2007 and Windows Rights Management Services, and enable you to search encrypted email and view email natively without using Exchange. Enterprise Vault also handles data from a wide range of content management and other commonly-used document management systems.

Enterprise Vault starts at about $40 per user license per year for 25 users. Learn more about Enterprise Vault 7.0.

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 file sharing and backup service, a new cost recovery tool for legal research, and an online task manager. Don't miss the next issue.

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

No Problem, It's On My Other Drive
By Dennis Kennedy
The world has moved from file-storing to file-sharing. Even novice computer users have files on several computers, hard drives, USB drives, and, increasingly, online storage sites. Accessing, moving, and managing all of our files can become quite a chore. Plus we often want to send files too large for email inboxes. And let's not forget the importance of backing up all our files. What's a busy lawyer to do?

MyOtherDrive.com offers a suite of online file storage and sharing tools. It's a online storage site with a familiar Explorer-style interface, and a set of useful tools. If you have access to the Internet, you will have access to your files. Best of all, especially for lawyers, you can control who accesses your files — from the public to specific individuals.

MyOtherDrive.com began as a photo-sharing site, and offers a full set of photo-sharing tools. However, it handles all types of files — documents, PDFs, audio, and video. Simply join the service and upload your files. The site's viewers also let you preview files without downloading them.

MyOtherDrive.com sets itself apart from similar services in the ways you specify who can access your files. You can make files fully public or accessible only by you for backup purposes. You can share with specific individuals or groups, such as family, friends, colleagues, or clients. As you invite people to access your files, MyOtherDrive.com helps you build a "social network" with other members of MyOtherDrive.com. You can email hyperlinks to non-members so they can access your files.

The free version gives you 5GB of storage and 10GB/month of bandwidth. The "Pro" versions offer unlimited bandwidth and from 25GB to 200GB of storage at annual costs ranging from $19.99 to $99.99. Learn more about MyOtherDrive.

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 February 8, 2007 to Answers to Questions: Winlock Brown offers up some helpful suggestions for finding and displaying GIS data for trial, Mark Sargis reviews the HP 4345 and provides some tips for everyday use, Michael Mulchay reviews Tabs3 for time and billing, August Landi explains which word processor finally persuaded him to "upgrade" (if you can call it that) from his 26 year old IBM Displaywriter, and Jim Grennan reviews Send2Fax for online faxing. 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 February 1, 2007 to Answers to Questions: Karl M. Rowe shares his thoughts on the Word v. WordPerfect debate (you thought it was over?), Harold Goldner shares some iPod cassette adaptor tips plus he unknowingly sparks a debate on iPod sound quality with our publisher, Ronald Gossett offers advice for configuring your imageRUNNER 5000 to work with Adobe Acrobat, Brett Burney reviews his experience with Bluehost and lists a few other Web hosting options, and Bobby Abrams reviews his HP LaserJet 4 and offers up a first look at Windows Vista 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.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers new e-discovery review tool, an online backup service, and a free blog hosting service. Don't miss the next issue.

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

E-Discovery Goes Native
By Dennis Kennedy

The new electronic discovery amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures sounded the alarm for many lawyers. Among other things, the new rules place a strong emphasis on review of files in their native formats. In other words, Word documents should be reviewable as .doc files, not scanned and produced as .pdf or .tiff images. Native file format is uncharted territory for many litigators.

ACCESS Litigation Support Services' NatiVIEW Analytics 2.0 seeks to provide you with a toolbox for handling native file review. In doing so, it addresses the criticism about native file review not being practical. Indeed, ACCESS claims that NatiVIEW Analytics 2.0 costs less than traditional image-scanning in cases of all sizes, including those involving a massive number of documents.

NatiVIEW Analytics 2.0 grew out of ACCESS's experience handling hundreds of millions of pages of data in large litigation matters. Built on .NET and SQL and housed in a data facility with multiple redundancies and virtually unlimited bandwidth, NatiVIEW Analytics 2.0 is a secure, Web-based tool with review, search, annotation, and categorization tools designed for the average lawyer, not just power users. At its heart lies a native file review platform for large collections of documents.

Features include a centrally-managed rules-based workflow system with complete control over access rights, "smart auto-tagging" that groups related documents, customizable workspaces that enable you to view everything you need for a given task, the ability to search specific metadata fields, one-click translators for more than fifty languages, and the ability to append comments to documents in a thread-like manner and receive alerts when someone else adds to the thread.

NatiVIEW Analytics 2.0 works like an electronic container for your documents and corresponding metadata. You can even customize a view to display a document with the relevant metadata, tags, and comments, or search specific metadata fields. Language translations are stored as comments that you can easily compare to the original text.

Administrative features enable you to set up roles and permissions to control a user's rights to work with documents, monitor workflow, and provide a secure way for multiple parties to review the data collection. Reporting and audit tools facilitate project management and tracking.

For more information about pricing, including data hosting options, contact ACCESS Litigation Support Services. Learn more about NatiView Analytics 2.0.

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.

Coming January 25, 2006 to Answers to Questions: Sharon Kirts reviews her experience using two HP LaserJet 3015s in her solo office (and why she's considering an HP LaserJet 3050), Angelika Hunt reviews GoDaddy and Tripod for Web hosting, Madison Jones reviews Timeslips from Version 5 to the present, Kathleen Slaydon offers up her workaround for entering deposits to trust accounts in QuickBooks, and John Ahern suggests a way to use WordPerfect on dual monitors. 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 January 18, 2007 to Answers to Questions: Susi Santa Maria, a former Timeslips Certified Consultant, shares her tips for getting the most out of this often misunderstood and improperly installed program, Brent Blanchard offers his take on the Word v. WordPerfect debate (our version of the Energizer bunny), Eugenie Rivers reviews a utility for archiving your Outlook email (and our publisher points to an alternative utility), Martin Dean explains why technology won't solve a general counsel's contract management needs (but our publisher points to an online service that might help), and Michael Burn reviews his experience using Microsoft Access to manage litigation documents. 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.

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