TechnoLawyer: Transactional Practice Areas

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a cloud application for automating the creation of QDRO and related documents (see article below), timeline creation and presentation software, an iOS calendar app, and an online meeting and presentation service. Don't miss the next issue.

AUTOMATE YOUR QDRO PREPARATION AND GET HELP FROM SPECIALISTS

A spouse seeking your assistance for a divorce wants you to provide top-notch service, especially when drafting the Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO) if one or both parties has significant retirement benefits. Regardless of whom you represent in the divorce, this document is on par with a multibillion dollar merger agreement as far as the former couple is concerned. Accordingly, you want to make sure you nail every last detail so it can't hurt to automate the process and obtain the help of a QDRO specialist as needed.

QdroDesk … in One Sentence

Pension Appraisers' QdroDesk is a cloud application that automates the preparation of QDROs and associated documents.

The Killer Feature

Pension Appraisers has provided QDRO-related consulting services since 1989. QdroDesk incorporates the company's expertise to make QDRO preparation more accessible and affordable. QdroDesk walks you through an interview about your client's situation that takes into account all applicable federal and state laws, the marital or property settlement agreement, and conforms to plan guidelines.

When you finish, a QdroDesk specialist runs your QDRO through a nine-point review process to check for common errors and omissions, the correct plan name, verification of jurisdictional requirements, etc. to ensure court and plan approval. You can export the final document in both Word and PDF formats. If you run into any problems, you can obtain email and telephone assistance from a QDRO specialist.

"Wrapping up the division of retirement accounts upon divorce is greatly simplified with QdroDesk," Pension Appraisers' President Theodore K. Long, Jr. told us. "Whether attorneys use QdroDesk or send their clients directly to us, the benefits of instant QDRO delivery, full document control, and an experienced staff eliminates the hassles that come with lengthy delivery periods and communication barriers."

Other Notable Features

QdroDesk provides an explanation for each question. You can use QdroDesk in a linear manner or skip questions and return later if you don't currently have the information you need. The software will let you know which questions you skipped so that you can finish the QDRO. There's no time limit on completing a QDRO once you start the process. QdroDesk saves your work in progress until you're ready to complete the preparation process.

QdroDesk encompasses all types of plans, including defined benefit, defined contribution, federal government, military, railroad, state, local and municipal, and school systems for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

What Else Should You Know?

QdroDesk costs $299 per QDRO, including unlimited email and telephone support. Pension Appraisers offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee. QdroDesk works in all modern web browsers on Windows PCs and Macs. Learn more about QdroDesk.

How to Receive TL NewsWire
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Originally published in the October 25, 2012 issue of LitigationWorld: In brief writing, small mistakes such as failing to define an abbreviation, inconsistent capitalization, etc. inevitably occur. Intelligent Editing's PerfectIt Pro 2.0 combs through your Word documents to help you find and correct these and other errors. We asked Charlotte real estate lawyer Richard Belthoff Jr. to test PerfectIt Pro for this issue of LitigationWorld, figuring that if it can handle his 35,000 word commercial leases it can handle anything in the litigation realm. Read his review to find out how well PerfectIt Pro performed. Also, don't miss the LitigationWorld Pick of the Week for tips on creating supplemental juror questionnaires.

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All practice areas evolve, but none faster than litigation. Written by successful litigators and other litigation experts, LitigationWorld provides you with practical tips related to electronic discovery, depositions, litigation strategy, litigation technology, and trial presentations. LitigationWorld also features in-depth litigation product reviews with accompanying TechnoScore ratings, as well as links to the most noteworthy litigation articles in other publications so that you'll never miss anything. The LitigationWorld 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 125 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.

Email Problems That Lawyers Face and Possible Solutions

The PC is the Titanic and the Tablet is the Iceberg

The Middle Class Needs Lawyers, but Who Wants the Work?

Break Into a New Market by Going in the Side Door

Congratulations to Bob Ambrogi of E-Discovery Search Blog on winning our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award: Ignorance of Technology May Soon Get You Disbarred

Today's issue also contains links to every article in the Sep/Oct 2012 issue of Law Practice. Don't miss today's issue or any future issues of BlawgWorld.

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Today's issue of Fat Friday contains these articles:

Theda Page, How I Use an iPad in My Bankruptcy and Family Law Practice

Jonathan Jackel, Review: Jaybird Freedom Earphones

Thomas F. McDow, My Return on Investment in WordPerfect Over the Years

JD Rice, My Switch From BlackBerry to iPhone 4S; Review of 2Do

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

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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.

Originally published in our free TL NewsWire newsletter. Instead of reading TL NewsWire here, sign up now to receive future issues via email.

Create Legal Documents Without Excel or a Calculator

When ATMs started accepting deposits, it freed law firms and small businesses from having to rush to the bank. But the experience wasn't 100% automated because you had to place your checks into an envelope, stick the envelope into the machine, and hope for the best. Nowadays, ATMs scan your checks and print the images on your receipt. Full automation plus peace of mind. Document assembly programs suffer from a similar problem. They can automate the entry of variable words and clauses into your documents, but they can't crunch numbers. A new product aims to make document assembly fully automated.

TheFormTool PRO 2.0 … in One Sentence
Your Dollar Matters' TheFormTool PRO 2.0 automates the creation of legal documents in Microsoft Word, including math calculations.

The Killer Feature
A growing number of enterprising law firms use document assembly software to create complex legal documents quickly so they can charge clients a flat fee yet still earn more than if they charged an hourly fee.

However, many documents require math calculations that document assembly programs can't handle, forcing you to switch back into manual mode to use Microsoft Excel or a calculator. This slows you down, reducing your profit per document. It's also error-prone.

TheFormTool PRO 2.0's new math functions enable you to automate both the words and the math all in the same document template.

"Cutting and pasting numbers from a spreadsheet into a contract, or worse, from scratch paper, is fraught with risk," TheFormTool's creator Scott Campbell told us. "Including the variables and the computations within the document they support is a best practice. Any other approach is just an invitation for trouble."

Other Notable Features
TheFormTool PRO 2.0 offers five types of math functions -- finance, basic, descriptive, logical, and time.

The PMT finance function can determine periodic payments for a wide range of common documents such as alimony, promissory notes, real estate transactions, and settlement agreements to name a few.

Basic math functions include Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, and Division. Thanks to the ability to nest these functions, you can perform complex calculations in your documents. For example, in a trust or will you could calculate distributions depending on variable factors at the time of death such as the number of beneficiaries and/or their ages. Corporate lawyers can use these functions to determine the voting rights of each shareholder in a company.

Descriptive math functions include Integer, Round, Absolute, Logarithm, Remainder, Exponentiation, Root, and Constant. Patent lawyers often need these functions in scientific patents. Also, environmental lawyers use them in assessments.

Logical functions include List, Sum, Max, Min, Multiply, Item, and Count. These functions often play a role in SEC filings, wills and trusts (oldest/youngest), real estate transactions (maximum/minimum value), and inventory agreements.

Finally, the time functions such as Now, Days, First Date, Last Date, Months, Years, and Fixed and Variable Offsets play a role in transactions (e.g., amortization), employment agreements, wills and trusts, etc.

What Else Should You Know?
TheFormTool PRO 2.0 costs $89. It works with Microsoft Word on Windows PCs. Learn more about TheFormTool PRO 2.0.

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.

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers an online resource for employment law needs (see article below), a desktop search utility, software for making image-only documents searchable, an extranet add-on for Time Matters, and an iOS reading app. Don't miss the next issue.

Add a Team of Employment Lawyers to Your Firm With One Click

If your law firm represents businesses, you probably field lots of questions about employment law even if that's not your primary specialty. In the old days, a client would call you up, ask about an employment law issue, and gladly pay to have your firm research the answer. Or draft an agreement. Etc. Nowadays, they still ask such questions, but don't want to pay for time spent on ramp-up research or drafting a document from scratch. Small firms have it especially tough as they don't have the resources to write off research and lack a large library of "routine" model documents.

^PLCLabor & Employment … in One Sentence
Practical Law Company's ^PLCLabor & Employment is an online service that provides employment law practice guides, model documents, state surveys, and more.

The Killer Feature
No request makes lawyers feel as conflicted as the multi-state survey. They're lucrative but involve a lot of mind-numbing research. And as noted above, clients no longer want to pay law firms to invent a wheel that they feel must already exist.

And in this case the wheel does indeed exist in the form of ^PLCLabor & Employment's State Q&A Tool. This database summarizes state laws on various topics such as anti-discrimination laws, background check laws, drug testing laws, hiring requirements, leave laws, non-compete laws, wage and hour laws, etc.

"PLC's State Q&A Tool, like all of our other resources, helps lawyers work efficiently so that they can focus more time on the higher-level advising that clients value most," Practical Law Company CEO Jeroen Plink told us.

Other Notable Features
^PLCLabor & Employment also includes downloadable model documents in Microsoft Word format. You'll also find Practice Notes, which are how-to guides written in plain English. Think of them as roadmaps for practice. Topics include corporate transactions and bankruptcy, cross-border and immigration and employee data, and monitoring and privacy among others.

The service also saves you time on executive employment agreements with its What's Market tool that consists of data culled from agreements filed with the SEC. You can create custom trend reports using filters such as industry, market capitalization, and governing law. You can also browse agreements and compare provisions within agreements (280G, clawback, base salary, etc.).

What Else Should You Know?
A team of lawyers who previously worked at employment law powerhouses such as Jackson Lewis and Littler Mendelson create these materials. They also serve as your reference librarians. Tell them what you're working on and they will email you links to the applicable resources. You can try ^PLCLabor & Employment for free. The annual subscription provides unlimited use. Learn more about ^PLCLabor & Employment.

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.

Originally published on May 17, 2011 in our free BigLaw newsletter. Instead of reading BigLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

While Exterro's April Fool's spoof on robots replacing lawyers by "eliminating up to 99.9 percent of all inefficient cerebral functions currently performed by highly paid attorneys, paralegals and technologists" proved humorous, those of you who work in litigation may have found it hit too close to home.

The buzz surrounding Predictive Coding has steadily increased. This eDiscovery technology, which essentially uses machine learning to automate part of the review process, is causing a lot of head-scratching in large law firms. I remember pitching an article to a legal technology editor ten years ago themed "auto-coding is here." The first question that came back to me was, "Is it really here?" I feel like many of you are about to ask same question about predictive coding.

My former colleague John Corey who is now Regional Manager at Recommind told me about how large law firms are responding to their predictive coding product.

"We are seeing the early law firm adopters put predictive coding through its paces and validate the time and expense savings," said Corey. "They also found, sometimes to their surprise, more accurate results. Once litigation departments realize that predictive coding optimizes rather than completely replaces human review, any concerns about defensibility evaporate. We're now seeing a broader adoption as firms realize that they'd rather benefit from predictive coding than compete with it."

Corey also told me that after working directly with large firm lawyers for many years, he has a very strong hunch that the early adopters most likely ran data through the traditional review process as well as the predictive coding process. Once they realized that predictive coding could be trusted, they converted 100 percent.

If you missed the link last year in BlawgWorld, Monica Bay interviewed two eDiscovery experts about predictive coding on her October 2010 Law Technology Now podcast entitled Crash or Soar? Predictive Coding.

A Court Docketing David Challenges the Goliaths

While the "big boys" are battling it out in eDiscovery, let's not forget about the small and nimble players in the legal technology industry. I've noticed a recent trend in which the "little guys" are landing the big deals. Why? Are law firms finally realizing they can get a better product, better customer service, and a better price by going with a less known company? Maybe so.

It seems to be true for American LegalNet (disclosure — a client of Edge Legal Marketing). The company has landed some noticeably big deals for its eDockets rules-based docketing and calendar system from McKenna Long & Aldridge, Baker & Daniels, and Fenwick & West — and these are just the firms willing to talk. Why have firms such as these spurned giants such as CompuLaw and Elite Calendar Manager for American LegalNet?

I caught up with Connie Moser, senior marketing director of American LegalNet (she previously worked at Elite), to get her perspective. "Having a cost-effective product in place to help with critical date management is essential for law firms that want to enhance workflow and minimize malpractice risk," she told me.

ALM Media Switches Teams

ALM Media, the parent company of American Lawyer, National Law Journal, and many other legal publications, announced last month that it has "reunited" with LexisNexis. ALM Media will shift its exclusive legal news content licensing from Westlaw to rival Lexis.com. ALM Media CEO Bill Pollak has the best take on the deal — not surprising since he's the ultimate insider. "West has been a solid partner for the past five years and this decision was not one that was made lightly," writes Bill.

Where will Thomson Reuters' West obtain its legal news for Westlaw going forward? Publisher Neil Squillante got the scoop and reported that Reuters and West have teamed up to deliver their own legal news and analysis.

In the Meantime, Plug in Your BioPorts

With corporate clients pressuring law firms to cut costs, the only path for doing so increasingly lies in technology. Exterro's "easy-to-install and hard to remove BioPorts (certified to be 85 percent pain-free)" might sound silly, but don't laugh too hard. Yesterday's technology pipe dream sometimes becomes tomorrow's reality (smartphones anyone?). As Michael Lewis once wrote, the future just happened.

Written by Amy Juers of Edge Legal Marketing.

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Many large firms have good reputations for their work and bad reputations as places to work. Why? Answering this question requires digging up some dirt, but we do with the best of intentions. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, BigLaw analyzes the business practices, marketing strategies, and technologies used by the country's biggest law firms in an effort to unearth best and worst practices. The BigLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published in our free TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter. Instead of reading TechnoLawyer NewsWire here, sign up now to receive future issues via email.

Practice Management That Perfectly Fits Your Practice

A doctor and a lawyer (that's you) walk into a bar. When asked about their profession, the doctor says "doctor" and you say "lawyer." The questioner asks the doctor "What kind of doctor?" but the questioner probably won't ask you "What kind of lawyer?" However, as we all know, legal practice is every bit as specialized as medical practice. Just as no one hires a podiatrist for heart surgery, no one hires a 1940 Act lawyer for a divorce. A company that develops a popular practice management system has taken note of this specialization with some specialized technology.

Needles Case Type Library for Needles 4.8.2 … in One Sentence
The Needles Case Type Library is a growing collection of practice area-specific setups for the Needles 4.8.2 practice management system.

The Killer Feature
The Needles Case Type Library eliminates the need to create your own workflows within Needles from scratch. They include everything you need for a given practice area such as forms and reports. Once imported, you can customize a Case Type further.

Currently, you can choose from 19 Case Types — Bankruptcy Chapter 7, Construction Civil Litigation, Criminal-Misdemeanor, Divorce, Custody, Property Division, Dog Bite, Estate Planning, Estate Probate, Immigration, Insurance Defense, Mass Tort Pharmaceutical-DEVICE, Medical Malpractice, Motor Vehicle Accident, Premise Liability, Product Liability, Real Estate Closing, Social Security, Third Party Collection, Workers Compensation, and Wrongful Death.

Needles created the Case Types in conjunction with its clients who over the years honed their use of Needles for activities ranging from client intake to billing to collections to closing matters. Needles expects the number of Case Types to grow both in number and in features as its community of clients shares more and more details about their best practices.

"In our more 25 years of business, we have strived to maintain a sense of community among our clients," Needles Director of Training Liz Teixeira told us. "There are few companies that can boast of a clientele so willing to share their wealth of knowledge. Client contributions have shaped and defined the case type setups that we offer as part of our new library."

Other Notable Features
The Case Types in the Needles Case Type Library take advantage of the latest features of Needles 4.8.2, which include a number of integrations with popular programs such as Outlook and QuickBooks, enhancements to the time capture tools, calendar, message system, and reports, and a phone dialer that works with traditional and VoIP telephone systems.

What Else Should You Know?
Needles 4.8.2 includes free access to the Needles Case Type Library. Just download the case types that best fit your firm. Learn more about Needles Case Type Library for Needles 4.8.2.

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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.

Coming today to TechnoFeature: A file server can cost upwards of $22,000 plus another $7,000 per year to maintain. Should you instead keep that money in your bank account? But can your law firm conduct business without a server? In this TechnoFeature, legal technology consultant Seth Rowland explains how you can cut the cord by using "the cloud" — online applications for backups, practice management, and document management. But everything has a downside, which Seth also explores. What's his verdict on moving the cloud? Read the article to find out.

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Coming today to Fat Friday: David Hudgens reviews CaseMap, TimeMap, and TextMap, Lewis Kinard lists tips and pitfalls with regard to blogging for marketing purposes, David Moskowitz shares his company's secret to success during a recession, William Anderson reviews Best Case Bankruptcy, and James Atkins discusses the number one benefit of challenge response software (and we explain why we disagree). Don't miss this issue.

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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.