TechnoLawyer: Transactional Practice Areas

Originally published on September 21, 2009 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

In 1993 Best Case Bankruptcy represented the vanguard of practice automation. Best Case promised users would make fewer mistakes, save time, and prepare complex bankruptcy documents without having to become "specialists." Then Best Case upped the ante and introduced a knockout punch — as courts across the nation began mandating electronic practice in about 2003, the company rolled out its "one-touch electronic filing" feature. For a time Best Case had the e-filing field to itself. Good times.

Meeting (But Not Exceeding) Market Expectations

To give credit where credit is due, Best Case Bankruptcy enabled a generation of software-savvy lawyers and their staffs to serve more clients than ever, and to do so without breaking the bank. That made Best Case a pioneer and the sales leader. With a huge installed-base, the company enjoyed Microsoft-like market dominance among bankruptcy practitioners even as competitors mimicked everything from its menus, prompts, calculators, and user-interface to its once-exclusive e-filing features.

But that was then. Over the past 5-6 years, the competition has become more adept at keeping up with the leader, many even exceeding the Best Case Bankruptcy feature set. Several offer bankruptcy preparation products that have fewer features, but at a lower price, hoping users upgrade to a more robust version of that product later.

Interestingly, Best Case does not appear to see other products as a threat. Take for example the fact that Best Case charges more than others for licenses and annual "support" (according to my unscientific survey). Best Case maintains that its product is more feature-laden (including I suppose features that not every user needs). And there's no disputing that it remains the market leader.

However, thanks to the Great Recession, small firms considering bankruptcy preparation software may wonder why they should pay more than they would for a competitive product to do virtually the same thing. At the end of the day, we're all working with the same bankruptcy courts right? So what makes Best Case Solutions the "best"?

With these questions in mind I took a close look at Best Case Bankruptcy V. 18.

New and Improved? Yes and No

By way of full disclosure, I've been using a bankruptcy automation solution other than Best Case Bankruptcy for about five years. But after many, many solicitations in the mail, by phone, by email, and at various seminars and events, I decided to try the market leader.

I used Best Case Bankruptcy to prepare and "file" a demo case. The product worked well, but as a practitioner who has enjoyed the benefits of automation since 2003, I was not all that impressed either. It's not that Best Case doesn't live up to its claims. It boasts a fairly intuitive menu-driven interface, an online intake interview that prospects fill out before they even step into your office, and the crucial ability to import and cross-check user-inputs against third-party information such as credit reports and credit counseling certification, among others.

So if you'd never used a piece of bankruptcy automation software I believe you would jump at the chance to fork over the roughly $1,050 for the Chapter 7 & 13 package, and an additional $700 or so in annual support fees. No doubt the product would pay for itself within a few uses. (The Chapter 7 package costs $850, and the Chapters 7, 11, and 13 package costs $1,250.)

But I wasn't a newbie and what I saw and experienced did not represent a quantum leap. Instead I saw a Buick being spruced up for the new buying season with whitewalls and a pair of tasty tail-fins. So while Best Case improved on its last version by enhancing compatibility with the latest browsers (IE 8), word-processing software (WordPerfect X4), and Federal Case-Management and Electronic Case Filing (CM/ECF) systems, as well as by updating the ability of the software to handle some of the more exotic forms such as the Chapter 11 Plan of Reorganization or Disclosure Statement in a "Small Business" case, the backbone of the software remains largely untouched. Even the interface says "1998."

My Best Advice

If your practice is national (or at least covers multiple states) and consists of both consumer (Chapters 7 and 13) and business bankruptcy (Chapter 11), Best Case Bankruptcy is the way to go. But other small law firms should look for slimmer, less pricey solutions.

Oh, and one last thing — would someone please develop a Clio-like Web-based bankruptcy solution priced on a monthly subscription basis. The day I find that solution my checkbook will open up faster than you can say best case scenario.

Written by Mazyar M. Hedayat of M. Hedayat & Associates, P.C.

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Coming today to TechnoFeature: Hollywood loves mentor movies. But don't count on seeing "Westlaw Practitioner" at a theater near you. Westlaw Practitioner is an online service that collects primary and secondary resources by practice area, essentially eliminating the need to create or use a law library. How well does it work? To find out, we asked Houston business and patent lawyer Al Harrison to dive into the practice areas in which he works every day as well as those in which he doesn't and report back to us. Before you take the plunge, read Al's review.

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Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers an online tax research services (see article below), virtual PBX iPhone app, a store for BlackBerry apps, an online service to help you get agreements digitally signed by the parties, and an online Bluebook citation tool. Don't miss the next issue.

Tax Facts at Your Fingertips

The flat tax is a great idea, but law firms that handle tax-related issues need not worry. Too many special interests have their hand in the tax code for that too happen. In fact, the tax code will likely grow more complex, not less. As a result, you'll need better research tools.

IntelliConnect … in One Sentence
Wolters Kluwer's IntelliConnect is a tax-oriented online research service that combines the previously separate services, Tax Research NetWork and Internet Research NetWork.

The Killer Feature
When you consider that we all used tabs in our trapper keepers in grade school, why exactly did it take so long for Web browsers to have tabs? Who knows but we all use them now that we have them.

Wolters Kluwer understands the popularity of tabbed browsing and has taken it several steps further.

IntelliConnect enables you to maintain up to five searches at once using its search tabs. In addition, each search result has a checkbox. If you check it, IntelliConnect saves the accompanying document in the Document Tray. IntelliConnect also keeps track of your search history much as Web browsers keep track of the Web sites you visit.

Other Notable Features
You can conduct research by browsing or searching. If your searches pull up too much information, you can apply filters such as document type (explanations, laws, regulations, etc.), practice tools, jurisdiction, state tax type, and more. You can also search within a search and save searches.

IntelliConnect's tri-screen display enables you to view your search results and specific documents simultaneously. It works like an email preview pane with your search results on top and the specific document you've selected below. When you find a relevant document, you can print it or save it in PDF or text format. You can email documents too.

What Else Should You Know?
IntelliConnect also includes CCH's Tracker News, which enables you to receive alerts about important developments via email or RSS feed. Pricing depends on which libraries you need to access and other factors. Learn more about IntelliConnect.

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Coming today to TechnoFeature: Should you take on a new client? Where can you find new clients? How can you better serve existing clients? Charitable donation records can help you answer these questions. The NOZA database provides information on more than 40 million charitable gifts by individuals and companies. We asked Mike Schley, a business attorney and frequent TechnoLawyer contributor, to assess the usefulness of the NOZA database for the legal profession and rate it using our TechnoScore system. As usual, Mike delivered a comprehensive and useful review.

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Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers a contract management application (see article below), a CLE courseware program, a cost recovery system, anti-virus software, a voice recording application for iPhone, an online store for BlackBerrys, and a case management application for Windows Mobile. Don't miss the next issue.

Cut Through the Mumbo Jumbo
By Neil J. Squillante

Management. The most overused word in legal software? First came case management. Then knowledge management. Contact management. Client relationship management. Etc. Cliche or not, this word underscores the growing need of the legal profession to, yes, manage disparate types of electronic information. Well, it's time to add new one to the list — contract management.

Mumboe ... in One Sentence
Mumboe is an online application that enables you to manage existing agreements and also store and share templates from which to create new agreements.

The Killer Feature
Most contracts drone on for pages and pages. This level of detail is necessary, but some details are more important and more likely to be referenced than others. Also, some details exist in virtually all contracts regardless of subject matter.

When you upload contracts into Mumboe for storage, Mumboe extracts the most critical data so that you can review it at a glance and also compare it across other contracts. It even extracts this data if you upload a scanned contract thanks to its built-in OCR technology.

What does it extract? The parties, addresses, term, choice of law, etc. You can review the data extracted and make corrections and remove details you don't want to track before saving. Mumboe refers to this information as "contract intelligence."

Other Notable Features
Like most online applications, Mumboe provides a dashboard from which you can access all of Mumboe's functions. For example, you can search for an agreement, view all agreements, and create an agreement.

Mumboe offers simple and advanced search. You can search the full text of agreements or just extracted data. The advanced search mode provides you with Boolean operators, date ranges, and other tools to narrow the results.

Mumboe also enables you to create reminders for important milestones, create tasks and assign them to others, bookmark agreements for quick access, and import contacts so that you can more easily populate agreement templates.

What Else Should You Know?
Like most online applications, Mumboe offers a free "gateway" version, Mumboe Express, which provides you with storage for 10 agreements. Mumboe Pro costs $24/month for 250 agreements. You can purchase additional storage at a rate of $12/month per 100 agreements. Learn more about Mumboe.

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Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers real estate automation software (see article below), an application for local and remote backups, and a Web clipping service with an optional iPhone counterpart. Don't miss the next issue.

Automate Your Real Estate Closings
By Neil J. Squillante

In today's real estate market, buyers and sellers want their lawyers to work more efficiently to reduce costs. That means you can either wring your hands and reminisce about the good old days or you can streamline your closings so that you can undercut the competition without reducing your profitability. If you choose the latter strategy, you'll need some help from your trusty PC.

Easy HUD ... in One Sentence
Easy Soft's Easy HUD real estate closing software automates the entire real estate closing process, enabling you to enter information once and create all the statements needed for a transaction, including HUD-1 and HUD-1A.

The Killer Feature
For real estate lawyers, the job doesn't end when the parties sign the closing documents. Other responsibilities include disbursement of and accounting for client trust monies and reporting sales proceeds to the Internal Revenue Service on form 1099-S.

With Easy HUD, you can electronically file 1099-S forms, and also print copies for the seller. This automation reduces the risk of error while also eliminating the time required to re-enter closing data.

Other Notable Features
Easy HUD doesn't only fill in forms for you, but performs calculations as well for more than 40 jurisdictions (if your state is not included, Easy Soft will add it for you). Easy HUD can handle just about any situation, including transactions with two loans, and up to 8 buyers and 8 sellers.

If you handle many similar transactions, you can create templates for HUD-1 and HUD-1A and share them throughout your firm. You can output completed forms in PDF or Word format. A case log lists all transactions and their status.

An integrated ledger can automatically adjust for pre-disbursements, earned deposits, and mortgage yield spread premiums. You can combine or split checks, print checks, and print an itemized ledger for each real estate closing.

Easy HUD integrates with two other offerings from Easy Soft — Easy Trust for managing client trust accounts, and 1099-S electronic filing service.

What Else Should You Know?
According to Easy Soft, Easy HUD's automation can reduce the time required for preparing closing documents by 70%. Easy HUD runs on Windows and costs $149.50 for a one year license with tech support and upgrades. Additional annual licenses cost $49.50 each. Learn more about Easy HUD.

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Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers a culling solution for electronic discovery documents (see article below), a network-ready multifunction inkjet printer, and an online service in which your clients can store their estate planning documents and you can earn referral revenue. Don't miss the next issue.

Make a Mountain Into a Molehill
By Peter R. Olson

Your latest case involves 200GB of data. Piece of cake, right? After all, it can all fit on a cheap $80 hard drive. Guess again. That could easily mean 15 million pages and hundreds of thousands of dollars in processing costs. Now, how exactly can you and your team get through that amount of data on deadline while justifying the costs?

Discovery360 DataMapper ... in One Sentence
InterLegis' Discovery360 DataMapper module enables you to cull irrelevant and duplicate documents prior to full processing, thus saving time and money.

The Killer Feature
Used by both corporate counsel and their outside counsel, Discovery360 DataMapper saves money by eliminating irrelevant documents before you spend time actively reviewing documents. By creating a smaller collection of documents to review, it also reduces the risk of inadvertently producing privileged information.

Discovery360 DataMapper can reduce irrelevant documents in your dataset by 20-80% prior to processing. The extent of the reduction depends on the nature of your document collection.

Other Notable Features
Traditional culling processes typically involve manual labor and don't afford much flexibility. Discovery360 DataMapper takes a new approach by enabling you to run as many "what if" scenarios as you want before you commit to a particular set of documents to process. You can even generate reports to further explore the various options.

To help you with this task, Discovery360 DataMapper employs InterLegis' visual analytics tools. For example, you can extract and index metadata and text from native files (discovery documents in their original formats), and visually group them by concept as well as search them. Discovery360 DataMapper also features on-the-fly de-duplication technology so that you can eliminate duplicate documents.

Once you've settled on your final dataset, you can "seamlessly" load the selected files into your preferred review environment, including of course Discovery360 Reviewer.

What Else Should You Know?
Discovery360 users can use Discovery360 DataMapper at no additional charge. Learn more about Discovery360 DataMapper.

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

Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers an appliance and accompanying software for finding evidence on backup tapes during discovery or for compliance purposes (see article below), a practice management suite with a document assembly engine for law firms in high-volume practice areas (e.g., personal injury, real estate, etc.), and deposition and trial presentation software that runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. Don't miss the next issue.

Nixon's Not the Only One With Secrets on Tape
By Peter Olson

Remember backup tapes? Thank goodness hard drives have largely replaced them. Or so you thought. Lots of backup tapes still exist, many created with backup software that no longer exists. If you haven't yet received backup tapes from your clients during discovery, give it time. It's bound to happen sooner or later.

Index Engines' Tape Engine 2.5 aims to take the time and hassle out of retrieving backed-up data by searching offline tape data locked in unsupported, old back-up formats. Tape Engine unlocks the data contained on backup tapes, making individual files and email easily accessible, whether for discovery purposes or regulatory compliance.

A hardware appliance with proprietary software, Tape Engine indexes tapes and makes the data immediately searchable. Importantly, you need not restore the backup tape using the original backup software. In other words, no need to hunt for old software (and a computer to run it) on eBay.

The scanning operation begins when a backup tape is mounted into a tape drive connected to Tape Engine. Tape Engine also works with virtual tape libraries. The indexing software reads through the contents of the tape, and creates full content and metadata indexes for files, email, and other electronic documents.

Tape Engine supports many backup formats, including CA ArcServe, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, Symantec NetBackup and Backup Exec, and EMC NetWorker. Indexing occurs at tape speed (there's no getting around the laws of physics), but the footprint of the index is just 5-8% of the size of the original data, which translates into speedy searches.

Each Tape Engine can scale to 200 million files or email messages with clustered configurations available for larger environments. It supports common unstructured file types such as documents, spreadsheets, text, HTML, and PDF files, as well as Microsoft Exchange and other email systems.

Tape Engine uses a Google-like search interface that returns queries in one second or less. Dynamic de-duplication means that every file listed is unique. You can search specific parameters such as name, date, email address, etc. Once you find what you need, you can extract only those files. Learn more about Tape Engine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learn more about digIT Enterprise 2.5.

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

Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers software that manages medical records and calculates damages, email archiving technology with eDiscovery capabilities (see article below), and an online resource for lawyers, paralegals, and others who handle the compliance work of corporations. Don't miss the next issue.

The Ultimate Email Cocktail
By Neil J. Squillante

You and your colleagues receive thousands of email messages every day, many of them confidential and potentially important in a future lawsuit. An email exchange to schedule a luncheon may seem innocuous except the date of the luncheon might help impeach a witness. And all those lengthy do-not-compete agreements with multiple comments speak for themselves — especially in front of a jury. Do you have a handle on all this email?

Mimosa Systems' Mimosa NearPoint for Microsoft Exchange offers an email archiving system that combines immediate message archiving, eDiscovery, disaster recovery, and storage management in a single software package.

Using NearPoint's capture method, "Continuous Application Shadowing," you can continuously store Exchange data, including email, folders, calendars and contacts, and backup to a NearPoint archive. Once captured, NearPoint's search functions allow for easy retrieval through keyword and time period searches.

NearPoint captures email through transaction logs. As a result, it does not interfere with or slow down your Exchange server. NearPoint is also scalable. It can archive thousands of mailboxes.

NearPoint expands its usefulness through five optional add-ons: NearPoint eDiscovery, NearPoint Custodian Collector, NearPoint Disaster Recovery, NearPoint PST Archiving, and NearPoint Content Monitoring.

The eDiscovery option provides an application for yourself and workgroups to use to search and produce email from the NearPoint archive. Email discovery that in the past took you days or weeks to compile takes mere minutes by leveraging NearPoint. As an adjunct, the Custodian Collector enables you to zero in on the documents of the key players in a dispute and preserve them in a forensically sound manner. You can search and retrieve files from laptops, desktops, file servers, etc.

The Disaster Recovery option enables you to restore Exchange data to a standby Exchange Server, including the restarting of Exchange services and the remapping of mailboxes in an Active Directory Server. One click is all it takes to initiate a complete Exchange recovery. The NearPoint PST Archiving option centrally manages all PST data in an email archive.

NearPoint runs on Windows Server 2003 or later and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 SP3 or later. You'll also need three to five times your total Exchange storage. Learn more about Mimosa NearPoint for Microsoft Exchange.

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.