TechnoLawyer: Transactional Practice Areas

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a service designed to help you expand your practice by providing model forms, practice notes, checklists, etc. (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of software for managing and referencing exhibits, knowledge management software for mining your firm's work product, three practice management apps, a visual tool for identifying relevant case law faster, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

It's amusing when a relative expresses bemusement that you're not an expert in every area of the law. But when clients ask for help, you either figure out how to deliver or leave money on the table.

Lexis Practice Advisor … in One Sentence

Lexis Practice Advisor offers model forms, practice notes, checklists, articles and other materials for lawyers, and integrates with Lexis Advance and Lexis for Microsoft Office.

The Killer Feature

Mindful of the fact that winning the trust of lawyers like you requires high-quality and updated materials, LexisNexis put together a network of more than 500 practicing lawyers from more than 230 law firms. Each lawyer has years of experience with the legal issues that pertain to the documents they contribute. In addition to reviewing the credentials of these authors, you can email LexisNexis' internal author team with questions about their documents.

Other Notable Features

Lexis Practice Advisor groups its materials by practice areas, including bankruptcy, finance, intellectual property, real estate, etc. This coverage includes business and commercial transactions for four states — California, Florida, New York, and Texas — with more in the pipeline.

Browsing these topics reveals subtopics presented in a step format designed to match your tasks. For example, drilling down to Private Mergers presents you with "Structuring and Planning Private Mergers" and "Preliminary Agreements in Private M&A Deals." If you prefer, you can start with a global search and then filter your results by practice area.

Lexis Practice Advisor groups materials by Forms, Articles, Secondary Materials, Cases, and Statutes & Regulations. The primary and secondary legal research come from Lexis Advance while the rest derives from the authors noted above. Some forms are interactive, enabling you to draft documents in Lexis Practice Advisor. Icons alert you to alternate clauses you can review and add with a click. You can also add your own clauses.

If you use Lexis for Microsoft Office, you can access Lexis Practice Advisor from within Microsoft Word, including all forms. "The integration with Lexis for Microsoft Office gives legal practitioners instantaneous access to the full breadth of Lexis Practice Advisor's on-point content and tools inside the Microsoft applications they use every day," said Sean Fitzpatrick, Managing Director of North American Research Solutions at LexisNexis. "This is a crucial step in our overarching strategy to help customers produce higher quality work in less time."

Lexis Practice Advisor offers M&A lawyers a tool called Lexis Market Tracker based on EDGAR and related data. Using Consideration Type, Target Industry, Deal Amount, and other parameters, you can research "What's Market" on more than 450 deal points for credit agreements. Lexis Market Tracker isolates specific provisions such as Collars and Ticking Fees so you can quickly find what you need for the documents you're drafting.

What Else Should You Know?

You can share materials with colleagues by placing them in Shared Folders. These work across Lexis Advance so they can also contain legal research. You can also export blank and completed forms in Word or PDF format. Learn more about Lexis Practice Advisor.

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Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a Microsoft Word add-in with tools for analyzing, drafting, and proofreading contracts (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of cloud practice management software five years in the making, a legal ebook reader app, case analysis software, an add-on for document management systems, a project management app for law firms, a virtual desktop service, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

Contracts consist of structured data — sections, subsections, defined terms, etc. This means that software can save you time when drafting and also reduce errors through improved proofreading. Microsoft Word doesn't offer any specialized tools for contracts so you'll need an add-in.

Contract Tools … in One Sentence

Launched this month, Paper Software's Contract Tools is a Microsoft Word add-in with tools for drafting, analyzing, and proofreading agreements.

The Killer Feature

Traditional contract software has fallen into one of two camps — drafting or proofreading. This can result in having to purchase two or more products. By contrast, Contract Tools offers both drafting and proofreading tools, thus providing one-stop shopping.

"It's also fast and flexible," Paper Software co-founder Benjamin Whetsell told me when he visited our office recently. "To analyze contracts, Contract Tools uses a number of patent-pending technologies to analyze, say, 200 pages of dense legalese in a few seconds." Whetsell demonstrated Contract Tools' speed using a number of such agreements. It looked instantaneous.

Other Notable Features

Contract Tools resides in a panel adjacent to your document. A menu at the top enables you to navigate through the various tools. For example, the Provisions tool lists all the sections and subsections in the agreement. Click on any provision to jump there in the document. Similarly, the Defined Terms tool lists all defined terms, and the number of times each appears in the agreement. You can jump to a defined term's initial definition or to anywhere else in the document it resides.

Contract Tools doesn't just analyze your agreements. It also makes them interactive. Double-click a defined term for its definition, double-click a cross reference to view it, etc. The Back button brings you back to where you started. When you scroll through a document, Contract Tools displays the names of sections in large type as you reach them.

Virtually every contract contains sections that refer to other sections. The Related Items tool gives you omniscience beyond the human brain. For example, let's say you're reviewing Section 7. Contract Tools displays all the other sections that Section 7 references, all the sections that reference Section 7, and all the defined terms in Section 7. And of course you can jump to any of these with a click.

It's common practice to add placeholders, bracketed text, highlighted text, and comments to agreements while drafting to avoid losing your train of thought. The To-Dos tool in Contract Tools automatically finds these unfinished items so you won't forget to circle back. Also, Contract Tools' Autocomplete suggests defined terms as you type, reducing the number of placeholders you'll need in the first place.

For proofreading, the Drafting Errors tool lists problems such as undefined and duplicate defined terms, inconsistent formatting, unmatched punctuation, and list order errors. This list updates when you save your work. You can also ignore and hide problems that Contract Tools flags.

Microsoft Word's simplistic search tools don't cut it with lengthy agreements. Contract Tools enables you to search by number, date, time of day, unit of time, and money in addition to word searches. Thus, you can quickly find the termination date, the purchase price, interest rate, etc.

What Else Should You Know?

Contract Tools works with Word 2007 or later on Windows 7 or later. It costs $10 per month per user or $100 per year per user ($8.33 per month). Learn more about Contract Tools.

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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 NewsWire covers contract lifecycle management software (see article below), a word processor designed for complex documents, cloud ediscovery document review software, and a business card scanner for your smartphone. Don't miss the next issue.

Working in a legal department can feel like being in a bumper car as you're bombarded daily with requests to review new contracts and stay on top of leases, software licenses, and other agreements with important date-related terms. Manual systems comprised of email and spreadsheets can seem like chewing gum and bailing wire, inadequate to the task.

Onit's Contract Management Suite … in One Sentence

Onit's Contract Management Suite (Onit) is contract lifecycle management software for corporate legal departments.

The Killer Feature

Onit features a Contract Review & Approval portal through which managers and salespeople can submit contracts to the legal department. You can configure the intake form for each type of contract routinely submitted. Based on preset rules, Onit routes each submitted agreement to a designated lawyer for review. Designated lawyers receive an email notification, and also see the contract on their dashboard.

Each contract has a "Phased Workflow" feature to ensure compliance with your company's policies and to ensure a timely review. These workflows accommodate parallel or serial processes and conditional logic. For example, contracts involving more than $1M can require an extra approval from your general counsel. Lifecycle metrics can be added to track the number of days it takes to approve and finalize the contract.

Tools within the Phased Workflow environment enable you to communicate with the business team and attach markups and supporting materials. Onit also provides a unique email address for each contract so that any email you need to send automatically gets filed in that contract's workflow.

Other Notable Features

Onit's Contract Administration solution facilitates the management of contracts with auto-renewals and other important date-related terms. For example, Onit can alert you whenever a contract's notice date approaches in case you want to take action. Each contract has its own timeline with key milestones to assist your review of its salient provisions.

As noted above, each lawyer in your department has a personalized dashboard with charts and tables showing contracts pending approval, contracts per phase, contracts by type and value, etc. From your dashboard, you can apply filters to find a specific contract as well as run and save reports or export them in Excel format.

In addition to reviewing and administering contracts, you can also use Onit to offer pre-approved contracts such as NDAs that managers in your company can use without any delay.

What Else Should You Know?

Onit integrates with Adobe Sign (formerly EchoSign) and DocuSign for digital signatures. Onit logs these digital signatures within each contract's Phased Workflow for audit trail purposes. Onit runs in all web browsers. Learn more about Onit's Contract Management Suite.

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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 BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected the 61 best legal technology articles, podcasts, and videos from the past week. Below you'll find a sampling from today's issue, including our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week. BlawgWorld is free so don't miss the next issue — sign up now.

Congratulations to Seamus Bellamy of PCWorld on winning our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award: The Best Folding Bluetooth Keyboards

Tips for Choosing Practice Management Software

Amicus Cloud Adds a Client Portal

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The Future of Company Devices May Be as a Service

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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.

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a cloud document assembly app with a large library of forms across many practice areas (see article below), a cloud app for scheduling meetings, an iOS web browser, and a Mac PDF program. Don't miss the next issue.

CUSTOMIZABLE DOCUMENT ASSEMBLY IN YOUR WEB BROWSER

Many lawyers use model forms as the basis for the documents they draft. This old method may have shifted to CDs and website downloads, but it's too time-consuming in today's buyer's market for legal services. Instead, lawyers need a more automated way to complete legal documents accurately so they can increase efficiency and get paid faster.

LegalNature Pro … in One Sentence

Launched last month, LegalNature Pro is a web-based document assembly platform that guides lawyers through the process of gathering client information and creating documents.

The Killer Feature

LegalNature started as a consumer service in 2011, but it quickly attracted a sizable number of lawyers as customers. "Our lawyer customers found our platform easy to use and our documents highly accurate," Founder and CEO Corey Bray tells us. "Their requests for increased access and customization capabilities led us to develop LegalNature Pro."

LegalNature Pro has a document assembly "engine" at its core. It's not just a forms library. The software walks you through the steps involved in creating the form you choose. As you answer these questions, you preview the document you're creating in real-time on the same screen. The interview process contains contextual help should you need it.

You can save time if you use Clio thanks to its integration with LegalNature Pro. Any data in a client's record in Clio becomes available to use in LegalNature Pro. All data remains encrypted in both apps.

Other Notable Features

LegalNature Pro offers jurisdiction-specific documents for all 50 states and the District of Columbia in the areas of business, employment, estate planning, family, and real estate. The company regularly adds new documents. Some of the above categories include subcategories given the number of documents available.

The human resources collection is particularly deep with documents such as Consulting Services Agreement, Employee Confidentiality Agreement, Employee Handbook, Employee Non-Disclosure Agreement, Employment Contract, and Employment Offer Letter among others.

The Business library includes Bill of Sale, General Partnership Agreement, LLC Operating Agreement, Promissory Note, Purchase Agreement, Sale of Goods Agreement, and Invoice.

In addition to the major categories, LegalNature Pro also includes affidavits and documents for personal affairs such as Advanced Healthcare Directive, Cease and Desist, and Medical Power of Attorney.

What Else Should You Know?

When you finish a document, you can export it to Word or PDF format. LegalNature Pro is multiuser so your colleagues can collaborate on documents. Pricing starts at $58.95 per user per month for an unlimited number of documents. Learn more about LegalNature Pro.

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Today's issue of TL Answers contains these articles:

Donald Lowrey, Tips for Better Results From Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Henry Murphy, Review: Symphony Suite With Worldox

Nancy Chausow Shafer, Review: Family Law Software

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

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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.

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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 NewsWire covers a cloud application for estate settlements that all concerned can access (see article below), an iOS email app that intelligently processes your messages, another iOS email app that transforms email messages into tasks, and an enterprise-grade replacement for Dropbox with mobile apps. Don't miss the next issue.

FACILITATING ESTATE SETTLEMENTS VIA THE CLOUD

While death causes grief, it can also provide a financial cushion. Accordingly, anything that gets between beneficiaries and their inheritance becomes a problem — including probate lawyers like you. The key to contentment (and referrals) lies in keeping all concerned informed about the estate.

EstateExec … in One Sentence

Launched recently, EstateExec is a cloud application for tracking, calculating, and sharing information about trust and estate settlements, including assets, debts, expenses, and distributions.

The Killer Feature

Once you set up an estate, you can grant online access to clients, executors, beneficiaries, other lawyers, etc. You can choose limited read-only access or full administrator access. This empowers clients to obtain status updates when they want without needing to reach out to your office. Those with full access can update information such as assets they sell.

"EstateExec applies the latest cloud-based technology to the estate settlement process," EstateExec Board Member Dan Stickel tells us. "This results in an easy and affordable way to simplify the estate and trust settlement process while providing enhanced client services at the same time."

Other Notable Features

The developers of EstateExec set out to make estate and trust settlement "easier by simplifying the process even for old hands with battle-tested spreadsheet templates," says Stickel. EstateExec's central repository tracks all estate assets, debts, expenses, etc. This not only documents each transaction for record-keeping purposes, but also tracks what's left for distribution in the estate — including funds of sold assets.

Thus, if you sell Uncle Jimmy's Apple Watch Edition because that jokester left it equally to two beneficiaries, EstateExec will track the sale and the eventual distribution of the funds from the sale. Distribution planning tools can mark assets for future distribution, and then mark them complete when finalized.

You'll spend most of your time in the Assets table, which functions like a spreadsheet. It lists all assets by type, value, distribution status, and more. "It's like Quicken, but geared towards estate settlement rather than household finance," says Stickel.

On-the-fly reports via sorting and filtering enable you to answer any question you might have or receive about the estate. You can sort the Assets, Debts, and other tables by column, including secondary sorting (e.g., sort by asset type and then value). Each table column contains a search field for filtering. For example, you can find remaining assets of a certain type, at a certain location, or with a certain keyword such as "watch," the value of assets received per beneficiary, all assets worth more than a certain value, and much more.

Regardless of whether you choose to give others access, you may also want to send them saved reports. You can export reports in PDF format for a professional look, as well as in CSV format for analyzing in Excel or importing into products such as QuickBooks.

What Else Should You Know?

EstateExec runs in all major desktop and mobile browsers. It costs $79 per estate regardless of size. You can try EstateExec for free. Learn more about EstateExec.

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.

Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 57 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.

The Tools That Five Virtual Lawyers Use

The Best Portable Document Scanner

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The Fifth Anniversary of the iPad (Podcast)

Congratulations to Jeff Richardson of iPhone J.D. on winning our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award: PDF Documents in Tabs on Your iPad: It's Christmas Again!

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