TechnoLawyer: TL NewsWire

I have some great news to share with you. As you can see below, we have changed the structure of our TechnoLawyer NewsWire articles to better serve our two audiences — those who want a quick overview of new products and those who want an in-depth analysis.

Specifically, the new In One Sentence section describes the product we're reporting on in one sentence, and the new Killer Feature section describes its most important feature. Readers who want more information will find a detailed discussion of the product’s Other Notable Features as well.

Please let me know what you think, and please sign up to receive TechnoLawyer NewsWire if you have not yet done so. We publish only a few select articles here in our blog. For example, this week's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers a hosted extranet for law firms, a Word add-on that enables you to manage defined terms in legal documents, and new PDF software for power users. We've placed one article below. The other two are available only to subscribers of the newsletter. — Neil J. Squillante, Publisher

Show Your Clients That You Care
By Peter R. Olson

Lawyers get in trouble when they focus on work at the expense of client communication — similar to doctors actually. While a clever cross examination or well drafted legal brief might impress your clients, they care more about the outcome and your hand-holding along the way. After all, the leading cause of disciplinary complaints is poor communication. But in this day and age, you need more than the bedside manner of Dr. Marcus Welby. You also need the technology of Dr. McCoy.

Attorney and Client ... in One Sentence
CLC Technology's Attorney and Client provides you and your clients with a collaborative online work space (extranet).

The Killer Feature
Using a Web browser, your clients can access the documents in their case file, review upcoming calendar items, and find contact information for everyone at your firm who works on their cases. Your assistant may like Attorney and Client even more than your clients do.

Other Notable Features
When you take on a new matter and enter it into Attorney and Client, your client receives a login via email (they can change the default password to make it more secure).

Attorney and Client features a dashboard that lists all recent activity. You can brand the dashboard and other pages with your logo.

A busy matter may involve dozens of documents — incoming mail and your work product. Attorney and Client enables you to upload multiple files simultaneously. You can also create and file documents into folders using drag and drop just as you would in Windows Explorer. There is no storage space limit.

In addition to the matter-specific calendar and case file, Attorney and Client also includes secure and searchable instant messaging and discussion threads. You can elect to use one or both or neither of these communication tools on a matter by matter basis.

To keep everyone in the loop, you can create email alerts for calendar items, documents, etc. For example, if a document changes, Attorney and Client can let everyone know. You can even use Attorney and Client to send bills to your clients, thus creating an archive automatically.

What Else Should You Know?
Attorney and Client costs $29.95 per month per attorney. You can try it for free for 30 days. It works in all modern Web browsers on Mac and PC. Learn more about Attorney and Client.

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 a document assembly application that integrates with Microsoft Office (see article below), an online backup and file sharing service, and two new document scanners. Don't miss the next issue.

Recycle Your Work Product
By Peter R. Olson

If you work in higher education with its publish or perish rigors, allegations of plagiarism can bring stiff consequences. But as a practicing attorney, recycling forms, pleadings, clauses, etc. from court files, colleagues, and even other law firms can get you a pat on the back from the managing partner and your client. In fact, some practices would not exist without the ability to recycle previous work product because of price-conscious clients.

PowerReuse 1.0 by SoftPowerHouse caters to the legal document recyclers among us. A document assembly tool, PowerReuse has two core features — Project File and Content Library. You group related Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files into the Project File, and then use clauses and data fields from the Content Library to build your documents.

When you open Microsoft Office files in PowerReuse, the PowerReuse Pane pops up, enabling you to access its tools. You can share projects with your colleagues. The Content Library features drag and drop, making it easy to insert text into documents. Switch between different files by using tabs for navigation.

You can store just about anything in the Content Library, including your biography, letter salutations, engagement letters, contract clauses, etc. Instead of searching through many files and then using copy and paste, PowerReuse enables you to see your saved clauses in a tree structure for easy manipulation and insertion into new documents.

PowerReuse creates data fields for storing all commonly-used information such as client name. If you change a field, PowerReuse makes the same change in all documents in the project.

PowerReuse 1.0 works with Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007 and costs $299 for a single-user license. You can try it for free for 30 days. Learn more about PowerReuse.

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 a practice management application for Windows Mobile devices (see article below), software that enables law firms to offer financing to their clients, and a Web-based billing application. Don't miss the next issue.

Your Practice in Your Pocket
By Peter R. Olson

The problem with being out of your office is being out of your office. Despite significant advances in smartphones and PDAs, their bundled applications lack the legal-specific functions of case management software. Gavel & Gown has responded to this problem with Amicus Mobile, an add-on to Amicus Attorney 2008 Premium Edition, its desktop case management software.

Amicus Mobile runs on Windows Mobile smartphones and PDAs. It offers two significant innovations — push synchronization and time capture.

It's hard to believe that synchronizing your smartphone with your PC using a cable once seemed revolutionary. Nowadays, it's a chore right up there with taking out the trash and doing laundry. Amicus Mobile eliminates the need for you to manually sync. Instead, it synchronizes automatically, instantaneously, and wirelessly over your carrier's cell phone network with your Amicus Attorney 2008 server.

For example, as soon as you record a time entry, enter a contact, write a note, create an appointment, etc. that same information appears in Amicus Attorney back in your office. Similarly, any changes made back in the office such as a corrected phone number appears instantly in Amicus Mobile on your Windows Mobile device.

Amicus Mobile also addresses another chore — time entry. Instead of making a phone call and then manually entering the time afterwards, Amicus Mobile asks you after each call if you would like to create a record of the call and optionally a time entry. Just click Yes or No, add a note if you wish, and you're done. Amicus Mobile already knows its duration and enters that information. You can exclude personal contacts such as your kids from these prompts, and all captured call records can later be reviewed and converted into time entries.

Amicus Mobile pretty much mirrors its desktop counterpart. You can access, modify, and create contacts, appointments, notes, tasks, call records, stickies, and time entries. You can even access your file index and basic file details. With stickies, you can exchange text messages with your staff and bypass the charges associated with SMS. Because Amicus Mobile uses ActiveSync, it also synchronizes with Outlook if you use that program (and who doesn't these days).

In addition to Amicus Attorney 2008 Premium Edition, Amicus Mobile requires Windows Mobile 5 or higher and Microsoft ActiveSync 4.5 or higher. Amicus Mobile costs $149 per license. Learn more about Amicus Mobile.

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 redaction software (see article below), an online backup and file sharing service, and an online conference call service. Don't miss the next issue.

For Your Eyes Only
By Peter R. Olson

From the Bay of Pigs to Watergate to Valerie Plame, we've always had a fascination with our nation's clandestine service. But if you've ever bothered to make a FOIA request, you'll often find page after page of supposedly declassified information redacted. Annoying. But certainly understandable since you often use this same tool in your own practice to protect confidential client information — but hopefully not with white tape.

Redact-It Desktop 1.0 from Informative Graphics provides a number of automated redaction tools designed for computer files. You can use Redact-It Desktop to remove sensitive contents from briefs, exhibits, and more before sharing them with courts, government agencies, or another party.

Redact-It Desktop includes predefined macros that automatically redact names, social security and credit card numbers, and other such items. You can also create customized macros to search for and redact words, phrases, and images. You can review recommended redactions, modify them if necessary, and produce a new redacted file for distribution.

To further simplify the redaction process, Redact-It Desktop includes easy-to-use pop-up lists to select standard search items. Redact-It Desktop highlights the terms you want to redact for easy review. Best of all, it does not alter your original file. Redact-It Desktop can add Bates stamps and watermarks too.

In addition to redacting documents, Redact-It Desktop also removes metadata (hidden information such as authors and revisions). Redact-It Desktop outputs your redacted document in PDF or TIFF format, or in Informative Graphics' Content Sealed Format (CSF), which provides additional security as they cannot be altered. Recipients can download the free Brava viewer to open CSF files.

Informative Graphics offers a free trial version of Redact-It Desktop. Pricing starts at $195 for a single-user license. Learn more about Redact-It Desktop.

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 a document grouping application to expedite the early stages of discovery (see article below), a service that enables law firms to accept credit cards, and an online store that can digitize your old photos, film, records, video tapes, and more. Don't miss the next issue.

Group Therapy for Discovery Documents
By Peter R. Olson

Let's face it — having your most junior paralegal handle the first cut of documents in your cases is probably not a good idea. But who else higher up in your firm would volunteer for this critical but grueling chore? No one is the likely answer. You need someone like Mikey — that kid who hated everything except Life cereal or in your case document review. Good luck.

Instead of searching for someone who doesn't exist, Clustify from Hot Neuron can help you with this task. Clustify groups similar documents into groups or clusters, providing quick insight into the contents of each document set. These clusters enable you to make decisions one cluster at a time instead of one document at a time, streamlining the document review that you and your experienced personnel conduct after the initial cut.

Whether used in Clustify's own user interface or within your preferred document review platform, Clustify identifies document keywords and then groups documents by keyword sets. You can sort by specific keywords, phrases, or even long passages. Clustify labels a "representative document" for each cluster.

Clustify offers a number of review tools. For example, you can compare specific documents side-by-side with Clustify's document comparison tool. Clustify highlights the changes for you. Clustify also offers custom tagging to categorize documents as you review them. Apply a tag to a single document, all documents in a cluster, or all clusters containing a certain combination of keywords. You can tag hundreds of documents with a single mouse click and link documents to other documents. This automated categorization improves the quality of document review because you can assign related documents to a single reviewer instead of having reviewers skip from one topic to another.

Clustify supports most document formats you're likely to encounter, including PDF, Microsoft Office, WordPerfect and HTML. Clustify runs on Windows and Linux. Learn more about Clustify.

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 a video email service, and Outlook plug-in that makes your email messages more useful and easier to find (see article below), and a Web-based suite of tools to help you assess and improve the document review process. Don't miss the next issue.

Fall in Love With Email All Over Again
By Peter R. Olson

Email. You can't live without it, but living with it has become a challenge because email today doesn't look a whole lot different than email a decade ago. But you use it differently. And because it has become much more important, the volume of messages you need to process has ballooned. Time for an upgrade don't you think?

Xobni ("inbox" spelled backwards) is an Outlook plug-in that analyzes your email messages to supply you with the information you need. For example, Xobni offers "lightning fast search." Xobni begins to display results as you type and separates contacts, messages, and attachments. Xobni also groups your messages into threaded conversations — even if the subject of a related message has changed.

Xobni doesn't just search and group, however. It also transforms Outlook into a Facebook-like social network except with no setup required and no annoying email alerts informing you that a friend just ate a lightly-buttered English muffin.

Select a message and instantly see useful data such as past sent and received email involving that contact along with an email frequency ranking, and a time of day chart that tracks when the contact typically sends email. Xobni also provides a detailed view of all past document exchanges for each contact. You can even discover shared friends.

Tired of copying and pasting information from email signatures? Xobni extracts telephone numbers from messages and automatically displays them for each contact. With one click you can add phone numbers to your address book. Xobni also facilitates the scheduling of meetings. One click creates an email message listing your available times based on your Outlook calendar. You can of course edit the message before sending it out.

Xobni currently works with Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007. The company plans to integrate Xobni with other email clients in the future. For now, Xobni is free. Learn more about Xobni.

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 legal forms that come bundled with automation software (see article below), contact and project management software for Mac users, and a Web application for managing your eDiscovery workflow, including legal holds. Don't miss the next issue.

Smart Legal Forms
By Peter R. Olson

Law students daydream about writing perfect legal documents. But real lawyers don't have time to daydream, and their clients don't want them to reinvent the wheel. Thus, while a law student may fret over some inconsequential detail, lawyers just want to know — Who's got the best legal form?

Masterform offers customizable legal forms for lawyers that come embedded in a document automation program that looks like a word processor. The automation features help you transform Masterform's document into your client's document. Plus, you need to make your changes only once and the form does the rest.

Masterform's documents provide standard word processing tools, but the automation tools make the documents much more flexible. For example, the forms contain blue hypertext links in nearly every paragraph. When you click, a pop-up window appears from which you can select options such as paragraph numbering or a particular clause. Click on green hypertext links for pop-up "information windows" with hints and legal references.

Masterform legal forms also save you time by automatically renumbering paragraphs, changing clause references throughout the form, inserting data such as your client's name, and matching all gender-specific words. When you're done modifying your legal form, a single click removes the embedded hyperlinks to save or print a clean, professional-looking document. You can save it in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF format, or leave it in Masterform.

Masterform currently offers the following forms: Distribution Agreement, Consulting or Services Agreements, Employee Non-Disclosure and Non-Compete, Employment Agreement, Equipment Purchase Agreement, Non-Disclosure Agreements, Web Site Development Agreement, and Work Order Agreement.

Masterform's legal forms are free for three months. After this free trial period ends, you can purchase a registration key for unlimited use for $95 per form. Learn more about Masterform.

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 alternative word processor, a utility designed to automate the formatting of legal documents, and software that automates time capture (see article below). Don't miss the next issue.

Stop Tracking Your Time and Start Capturing It Instead
By Peter R. Olson

As a lawyer, you may not love living your life in painstakingly quantified six minute time increments, but until some of the so-called "alternate billing" options become mainstream, the billable hour (more like the billable one-tenth of an hour) remains your meal ticket. So instead of wasting your time (money) complaining, how about automating your time capture as much as possible?

IntApp's Time Builder 2.2 is a time capture solution that tracks your time keeping by directly monitoring email, smartphones, phone systems, calendars, and document management systems. Time Builder aims to reduce the time spent entering time.

Rather than scribbling down your time notes for later entry into a separate accounting or billing program, Time Builder provides you and your colleagues with a "journal" of all your billable activity. From this report, you can quickly create time entries in your billing software.

Using Time Builder's Web-based configuration interface, your administrator chooses specific applications for continuously monitored time tracking. Time Builder can email everyone's journal daily, weekly, or not at all (your choice) with your time breakdown. Time Builder enables you to exclude peripheral activities like personal email messages and phone calls.

By presenting this information directly within your existing time entry applications, Time Builder makes it easy for lawyers or their secretaries to review, edit, and then approve billing entries. You can configure Time Builder to send journal reports via email or to present information directly into your existing time entry application so you can review, edit and submit entries through a single, consolidated interface that you already know how to use.

Time Builder's time monitoring integrates with Microsoft Exchange, BlackBerrys, Windows Mobile phones, Avaya and Cisco VoIP phone systems, Interwoven, Open Text/Hummingbird, Lexis InterAction, Elite WebView, Advanced Productivity Software's DTE, Sage Carpe Diem, and Aderant CMS. Learn more about Time Builder.

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.

Intervals, Wrike, and OnStage — Special Online Project Management Issue
By Neil J. Squillante

Choosing an online project management system is a lot like getting married. Realizing you made a terrible mistake carries a great cost. And unlike marriage, project management systems don't offer the safety net of a prenup.

While the companies behind these services may promise that you can extract your data, you'll probably need to hire someone to use what you extract. In other words, choose your project management system even more carefully than you choose your spouse.

Previously in this newsletter, we covered the two heavyweights in this nascent category — Basecamp (see What's a Matter? in the 02-09-05 issue) and CentralDesktop (see Report to Desktop Central in the 09-18-06 issue).

Today, we cover three new contenders — Intervals, OnStage, and Wrike. What do they have that their predecessors lack? Find out in this special edition of TechnoLawyer NewsWire.

INTERVALS: MEDIUM WEIGHT ONLINE PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Intervals attempts to fill a void between lightweight project management applications that don't contain any analytical tools and complex applications that use Gantt charts and the like. With Intervals, you can enter predictions for the time and cost of a project, track both of these metrics, and then analyze how well your predictions fared when you complete the project.

Of importance to lawyers, the time tracking tool features timers, weekly timesheet submissions and approvals, reminders (nags) for those who do not submit their timesheets, and reports that present information in charts. You can also use Intervals to create and track bills. Intervals can even email clients automatically about overdue bills.

Intervals can track your tasks in addition to your time. You can receive email alerts every day listing what's due. If you assign tasks to someone else, you can receive an email alert when a status changes.

Most projects at law firms involve documents. Intervals offers document storage and sharing within projects. You can even associate a document with a task. Intervals supports versioning for revisions of the same document. You can share other file types as well such as photos and videos.

Intervals provides a number of useful reports that you can export in .csv format. For example, you can compare billable versus unbillable time, analyze employee productivity, compare actual hours billed versus your goals, and more.

Intervals offers four different plans that range in price from $20 to $175 per month. The difference among the plans concerns the number of projects and the amount of storage space — plus the two higher-priced plans offer encryption. A free plan also exists that limits you to one project and provides no storage space. Learn more about Intervals.

WRIKE: EMAIL'S LITTLE HELPER

According to Wrike, the world revolves around email. So rather than try to teach old dogs (you) new tricks, it has created an online project management system that integrates with plain old email.

For example, to create a task, you don't have to login. Instead, you can email Wrike directly or if you're assigning the task to someone you can email that person and cc Wrike. Wrike automatically creates a task. If you include a due date in your email message, Wrike can send a reminder to the person responsible for the task as the deadline approaches. At any time, you can log into your Wrike dashboard to see and manage all tasks.

In addition to creating tasks, Wrike transforms email messages about a topic into a Gantt timeline. It also stores your email messages so that you can easily find and search them. Wrike's "Flexible Structures" doesn't force you into the project paradigm. While you can group tasks by project, you can also group them by people, process, or any other system of your choosing — and you can apply multiple types.

Within Wrike itself, you can track time, share files, engage in threaded discussions, and view reports. The reports enable you to drill down to specific data points like a time entry.

Wrike works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari and includes free email support. Wrike costs $3.99 per user per month if you commit to the annual plan. The monthly plan costs $4.99 per user per month. Learn more about Wrike.

ONSTAGE: IT'S THE CALENDAR, STUPID

Chmura believes that project management requires a shared calendar. As a result, its OnStage online project management offering features a calendar at its heart. On the main calendar, you can create and view events, milestones, and tasks for all projects. When you enter a project, you see only the items related to that project.

In addition to the calendar, OnStage offers two other ways to view information — dashboards and reports. And within a project, you can share files, exchange messages, and create and manage contacts and tasks. File sharing includes versioning. You can assign tasks and create email alerts when the status changes. You receive messages via email, but they also remain in OnStage grouped in threads and fully searchable.

OnStage works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. The five different plans range in price from $10 to $135 per month. All of them provide SSL encryption so they differ only with regard to the number of projects and storage. A free ad-supported plan provides as many projects (20) and storage (750 MB) as the $20/month plan. Learn more about OnStage.

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.