TechnoLawyer: TL NewsWire

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers cloud billing software for small firms seeking a standalone solution without practice management bells and whistles (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of a legal research service that helps you get up to speed in new area with checklists, interactive forms, practice notes, and a new way to mine SEC filings for agreements and clauses, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

It's easy to get bogged down in practice management software with features you don't need. One company found that many small law firms only care about three core features — entering time, creating and sending bills, and getting paid. So, the company used its expertise to create a new product catering to these desires.

Kurent … in One Sentence

Tabs3 Software's Kurent is a cloud billing system with tools for managing hours billed, expenses, accounts receivable, receipts, and more.

The Killer Feature

"After more than 35 years of making Tabs3 billing software, we know that most solos and small firms just want a simple way to get their bills out," says President and CEO Dan Berlin. "Kurent is designed as an easy-to-use billing software without expensive practice management features that clutter the billing process, and it's made by us, the experts in legal billing."

Kurent's top navigation bar exemplifies this simplicity with always present buttons to enter a fee or cost, or create a new matter or invoice. From here, you can also search every record in Kurent.

Each major function in Kurent has a dashboard with charts showing Key Practice Indicators and one-click access to the underlying records. For example, the Home Dashboard lists your recent activity, recent matters, billable hours versus your target, and notifications about items that need your attention such as unbilled activities and overdue invoices. Click any item to drill down for more details or to make changes.

"Kurent is seamless and easy to use," says Jim Krzyminski of the Law Office of James M. Krzyminski, "Everybody's happy that we switched. It's all in the cloud, so we can safely access our files from anywhere."

Other Notable Features

Kurent's side navigation panel takes you to each dashboard - Home, Firm, Matters, Contacts, Invoices, Fees, Costs, Receipts, and Reports. The Firm Dashboard keeps you apprised of the financial state of your firm with charts showing top clients, accounts receivable, unbilled activities, cash receipts, new matters, and billing history.

As you would expect from the company behind Tabs3, Kurent supports custom rates for matter type or client, write-offs, LEDES-compliant eBills, contingency and flat fees, and batch invoicing. Choose from several invoice designs, customize invoice and fee details, and add your firm's logo.

Kurent further streamlines financial management through integrations with LawPay and QuickBooks Online. When clients use the payment portal to securely pay by credit card via LawPay, Kurent automatically updates their account when the payment posts. The QuickBooks integration keeps your accounting records in sync without having to retype anything.

Kurent's dashboards are designed to minimize your need for reports. When you do need a report, choose from accounts receivable, aged accounts, write-offs, unbilled activity, receipts, and many others. Use simple checkboxes to add columns and data to reports. You can export reports in CSV or Excel format.

What Else Should You Know?

Kurent costs $26 per user per month with an annual commitment ($29 if you pay monthly). If you switch from another product, the Kurent team can import your existing data at no charge. Kurent offers a 30-day trial with no credit card required. Learn more about Kurent.

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 a legal research service that helps you get up to speed in new area with checklists, interactive forms, practice notes, and a new way to mine SEC filings for agreements and clauses (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of a research service dedicated to health care regulations, including tools to keep you apprised of regulatory deadlines, holiday gift ideas for cultured geeks with good taste, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

The faster and more efficiently you provide quality legal services to your clients, the more work they'll send you. As requests increase so does the likelihood that they will involve issues you don't handle often. But that's no excuse for not continuing to exceed client expectations.

Lexis Practice Advisor … in One Sentence

Recently redesigned, Lexis Practice Advisor offers analytics, checklists, forms, practice notes, and other guidance on a growing number of practice areas.

The Killer Feature

Lexis Practice Advisor's new Transactions Search is powered by Intelligize — the securities law analytics company LexisNexis recently acquired. Transactions Search enables you to search agreements and clauses in SEC filings. Search by keyword, document type, transaction type, date, deal size, acquiring company, target company, law firm, key M&A deal terms such as termination fees, etc.

Transactions Search gives you access to more than 15,000 M&A transactions, and a similar number of registered offerings and exempt offerings filed since 2008 as well as a broad range of agreements from other practice areas. New filings become available within 24 hours. Lexis Practice Advisor users can use Transactions Search at no extra cost.

"Our goal for Lexis Practice Advisor has always been to create a product that is as intuitive and user-friendly as possible, while providing attorneys with the high-value, easy-to-digest content needed to complete any legal task quickly and efficiently," said Rachel Travers, vice president of Lexis Practice Advisor and Analytical. "With the new refreshed Lexis Practice Advisor interface as well as the recent integration with Intelligize, we deliver an improved user experience and provide easier access to vital information."

Other Notable Features

LexisNexis Corporate and Securities Subject Matter Advisor Ben Knuth visited our office to show us Lexis Practice Advisor's new interface, which incorporates feedback from users. You now have three ways to drill down through the available material — practice area, content type, or jurisdiction. Or you can enter a keyword search.

Lexis Practice Advisor offers several new practice areas in an ongoing effort to expand its coverage of important niche topics, including employee benefits and executive compensation. Each practice area has a home page you can bookmark. Home pages list common tasks, your recently browsed documents, the latest Law360 News articles, and the above-discussed Transactions Search if available.

When you select a task, you'll find practice notes, checklists, forms, and clauses. Forms are interactive with appended drafting notes, fields you can fill with your matter-specific data, and alternate and optional clauses you can insert (you can also insert your own clauses). For practice areas such as labor and employment that differ among jurisdictions, Lexis Practice Advisor offers comparison charts.

LexisNexis recruits top practitioners to create the content in Lexis Practice Advisor. You can also submit questions to authors about their contributions, and the Lexis Practice Advisor staff will get an answer for you.

In addition to these core materials, you'll also find related cases, statutes, regulations, Matthew Bender treatise excerpts, etc. from Lexis Advance. You can download forms and other materials in Word or PDF format, email them, and save them to a Lexis Advance Folder or your Dropbox account.

What Else Should You Know?

Lexis Practice Advisor Journal is a quarterly magazine for Lexis Practice Advisor users with tips across all the practice areas covered by Lexis Practice Advisor. The weekly Practice Insights email newsletter keeps you apprised of new content and features in Lexis Practice Advisor. Learn more about Lexis Practice Advisor.

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 a research service dedicated to health care regulations, including tools to keep you apprised of regulatory deadlines (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of holiday gift ideas for cultured geeks with good taste, a specialized legal research service for trademark law, including tools for quickly obtaining answers across different circuit courts and international jurisdictions, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

The Affordable Care Act added to an already rich regulatory environment in the health care industry. Perhaps no other practice area offers lawyers as much opportunity to stay gainfully employed — provided you can stay on top of the torrent of information and find answers fast. A single point of reference is the best option for doing so.

Health Reform KnowlEDGE Center … in One Sentence

Wolters Kluwer's Health Reform KnowlEDGE Center is an online health care law research solution, offering primary and secondary sources as well as specialized tools.

The Killer Feature

Regulations and deadlines go hand in hand. The Health Reform Law and Regulatory Calendar Tracker in Health Reform KnowlEDGE Center enables you to find all applicable deadlines.

Select a source such as a C.F.R. section, a time frame, or one or more topics (e.g., Health Insurers, Medicare, Tax Impact, etc.). This generates a table listing all the effective dates related to your query. Each effective date is accompanied by the source, topic, and instructions written by the lawyer editors who maintain Health Reform KnowlEDGE Center. Click a source to view it. To stay on top of items of interest, you can receive email alerts. You can also export deadlines and related information in a variety of formats, including iCal for importing into a calendar such as Outlook.

Other Notable Features

More than 30 additional Practice Tools exist that work similarly to the Calendar Tracker. For example, Health Reform Navigators enable you to generate summaries on particular topics, including the date the regulation last changed, expert analysis, and links to primary sources. Other tools include Checklists, Decision Trees, and Wolters Kluwer's popular Smart Charts. These tools can reduce the time required to complete a memo or survey.

Among the more popular features of Health Reform KnowlEDGE Center is the Health Reform WK-EDGE news feed comprised of exclusive articles that keep you apprised of new developments related to health care reform. Search the archives back to 2013. Stay on top of breaking news by subscribing to the Health Reform WK-EDGE email newsletter or using the Android or iPhone app of the same name. You can customize the newsletter and app by jurisdiction, topic, and document type. For areas of intense interest, receive an email alert upon publication of a matching article.

You access Health Reform KnowlEDGE Center via a dashboard that you can customize with the references and tools you use most often. Also, you can search through all materials or a subset of content. Primary sources include state and federal cases, administrative decisions, statutes, proposed and final rules, notices, agency documents such as CMS Letters and OIG Reports, and much more.

What Else Should You Know?

"The Health Reform KnowlEDGE Center migration to the Cheetah platform is timely," says Paul Clark, Managing Editor, Health Law, Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. "Congress is still attempting to repeal and replace the ACA, while the Trump administration is using its executive power to scale back regulation of the law. In this time of uncertainty and change, having a single source like Health Reform KnowlEDGE Center for news, analysis, primary source and tools remains important." Learn more about Health Reform KnowlEDGE Center.

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 a specialized legal research service for trademark law, including tools for quickly obtaining answers across different circuit courts and international jurisdictions (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of a Microsoft Word add-in that enforces firm standards through automated document creation, including data connections to Outlook, document management systems, and other software, a legal research service that automatically locates statements of law in cases and directs you to the best authority for each of them, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

When you conduct trademark research, it can take a maddening amount of time just to get your bearings. You switch back and forth among several browser tabs, grapple with poorly designed government websites, try to recall which treatise to consult, etc. A better alternative is a single platform with everything you need.

WK Trademark Navigator … in One Sentence

Wolters Kluwer's WK Trademark Navigator is a research service for trademark practitioners, offering single-point access to case law, news, secondary sources, forms, and more.

The Killer Feature

WK Trademark Navigator now runs on the Cheetah platform, offering a modern user experience. A global search bar enables you to search all available references. Beneath the search bar is a dashboard with one-click access to all references and tools.

Case law includes published and unpublished TTAB opinions from 1993 to present. Search by case number, party, or keywords. WK Trademark Navigator also offers more than 160 forms available for download, the ability to search secondary sources such as Allen's Trademark Digest and Manual of Industrial Property (Brown Book), a daily news feed to keep you apprised of the latest trademark cases, and tools for analyzing and comparing requirements and costs in the United States and more than 230 international jurisdictions.

"Regardless of where you are in the process — research, search, application, appeal, or foreign registration — you'll find exactly what you need with WK Trademark Navigator," says Michelle Virzi, Product Manager, Intellectual Property, Wolters Kluwer. "We designed it as a single solution for a multifaceted process."

Other Notable Features

WK Trademark Navigator's news feed has become so popular you can receive the headlines via the Trademark Daily News email newsletter. Unlike competing services, case summaries are written by lawyers. Each case summary links to the court opinion for further investigation.

When clients have questions, WK Trademark Navigator's Smart Charts enable you to provide answers more quickly than a keyword search. For example, the Manual IP Trademark Smart Chart is based on Manual for the Handling of Applications for Patents, Designs and Trademarks throughout the World. After selecting a topic such as registrability of colors and one or more jurisdictions, the Smart Chart provides the answer for each selected jurisdiction with a link to the originating reference.

Other Smart Charts include Likelihood of Confusion by Circuit and TTAB Precedential Decisions. The Likelihood of Confusion by Circuit Smart Chart summarizes the test and factors for the circuit courts you choose. The TTAB Precedential Decisions Smart Chart provides the case citation, case summary, goods and services at issue, marks at issue, and year for the topics you choose.

Like Smart Charts, Checklists and Strategy Guides can save you time. One set of checklists walks you through the entire cancellation process before the TTAB. An accompany strategy guide provides insights and tips for both petitioners and respondents. Other checklists and strategy guides cover trademark filings, classification, and office actions.

What Else Should You Know?

WK Trademark Navigator links to three popular services — Alt Legal for filing domestic applications and responding to office actions, Corsearch for trademark screening and monitoring, and ktMINE for analyzing intellectual property data. Learn more about WK Trademark Navigator.

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 a Microsoft Word add-in that enforces firm standards through automated document creation, including data connections to Outlook, document management systems, and other software (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of a legal research service that automatically locates statements of law in cases and directs you to the best authority for each of them, a specialized legal research service for trade secrets, including coverage of the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 and tools for comparing jurisdictions, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

The larger your firm, the more difficult it becomes to maintain efficiency and document quality. This relates both to the time it takes to create certain document types and the way they look. The secret is to enhance Microsoft Word and better integrate it with your other software.

Word LX Enterprise … in One Sentence

Infoware's Word LX Enterprise is a Microsoft Word add-in that automates document drafting tasks, and enforces your firm's work product guidelines.

The Killer Feature

When your firm pulls the trigger on Word LX, Infoware works closely with your implementation team to create all the document templates you'll need at the outset. Just as importantly, Infoware integrates Word LX with your existing software to further enhance document automation. For example, Word LX can retrieve contact information from practice management software and Document IDs from your document management system.

Out of the box integrations include Active Directory, Outlook (including Office 365 and Exchange), InterAction, iManage, OpenText, Amicus Attorney, PCLaw, and Time Matters. If you use products for which an integration doesn't exist, Infoware can build one using its API.

"Any law firm that wants to improve their document creation process should take a close look at Word LX," says Ivaylo Nikolov, Director, Information Technology at Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg. "For many years, we've relied on it for increasing the efficiency of our staff and lawyers, and maintaining the accuracy of our documents."

Other Notable Features

Word LX resides in Microsoft Word's Ribbon. Click the LX New Docs button to view a customized dialog box, the top left of which lists templates for the most common document types — typically Letter, Memo, Envelope, Labels, etc. Use one of these or search for more specific template such as one related to a practice area (Word LX calls these "precedents").

Selecting a template or precedent unfurls additional options. These variations can accommodate different practice groups, offices, languages, paper size requirements, etc. Thanks to the Active Directory integration, users can create documents on behalf of others such as their boss. Personal settings enable you to control the zoom level and other niceties.

Once you finalize these options, a custom form appears. Here you can import data from connected applications per the integrations noted above. You also choose from a number of predefined options. For example, the Letter template offers choices for delivery method, salutation, cc/bcc, closing, and more.

When you need to print a document, Word LX's MultiPrint tool incorporates all of your firm's idiosyncrasies. Examples include printing final versions from the letterhead tray, applying stamps such as Draft or Copy, outputting a corresponding envelope, and creating a PDF version simultaneously for emailing or filing.

Word LX seeks to end the heartbreak associated with paragraph numbering and styles with a range of prebuilt options designed to work reliably. Infoware can create customized versions for your firm. CEO Dan Sharp tells us that Word LX offers more customization options than any competing product.

Other Word LX tools similarly improve on Word's native functions, including page numbers, section breaks, tables of authorities and contents, exhibit indexes, signature lines, headers and footers, and more.

What Else Should You Know?

"Our goal is to make document creation faster and easier for the legal profession," says Sharp. "Our solutions optimize and extend Microsoft Word with tools that are easier to use and that are more specific to the task of creating legal documents." Learn more about Word LX Enterprise.

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 a legal research service that automatically locates statements of law in cases and directs you to the best authority for each of them (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of a specialized legal research service for trade secrets, including coverage of the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 and tools for comparing jurisdictions, a customizable, multiuser text entry automation utility that runs in Windows, Mac, and iOS applications, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

Successful legal research doesn't only require finding authoritative answers to legal questions, but finding the best possible authority fast. Answering a client question the same day you receive it, supporting your arguments in a brief with irrefutable case law, etc. sets you apart from other lawyers.

Points of Law on Bloomberg Law … in One Sentence

Launched recently, Points of Law on Bloomberg Law is a new feature that uses artificial intelligence to improve the speed and accuracy of your legal research.

The Killer Feature

Like other legal research providers, Bloomberg Law provides headnotes for cases. Headnotes help you assess whether a case has potential but you must then dig into the case itself for the specifics.

As its name suggests, Points of Law goes beyond headnotes by highlighting the sentences in a case that include statements of law such as legal tests, elements, and standards. Clicking on a highlighted sentence opens a contextual Points of Law reference box with a definition of that point of law and a list of the most cited cases, any of which you can access. At the bottom is a button labeled Citation Map.

The Citation Map is a visual representation of the leading citation and all other citations for a point of law, each ranked. Each citation is represented by a bubble, the size of which indicates the number of citations. Connecting lines depict citations. You can rank citations by most cited or jurisdiction, and filter them by federal or state cases. Click any citation to view the point of law you're investigating in that particular case.

"By enabling litigators to quickly identify the statements of law within a court opinion and then see the most cited, most relevant, and most recent cases related to those statements, Points of Law enhances the ability to understand all sides of a legal issue," said Douglas Smith, Partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and a member of the Bloomberg Law Litigation Innovation Board.

Other Notable Features

Points of Law encompasses all published and unpublished opinions in all jurisdictions available in Bloomberg Law. The Point of Law reference box discussed above contains a second button labeled Related Points. Clicking this button lists related points of law that courts have expressed in addition to the one you're reviewing. Click any of these for exploration.

If you have a specific legal question, you can search Bloomberg Law's Points of Law database directly. Each Point of Law has a home page you can save for future reference. The home page lists the common expression at the top, cases below, and filters on the left. You can filter by court, jurisdiction, and more.

What Else Should You Know?

"Points of Law is another example of our commitment to continuous innovation and ongoing investment in data and technology to empower attorneys to more effectively and efficiently advise their clients," said Scott Mozarsky, President, Bloomberg Law. "With Points of Law, we have streamlined and improved the legal research process using machine learning and data visualization to reveal previously undiscoverable patterns and insights." Points of Law is included in Bloomberg Law at no extra charge. Learn more about Points of Law on Bloomberg Law.

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 a specialized legal research service for trade secrets, including coverage of the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 and tools for comparing jurisdictions (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of a customizable, multiuser text entry automation utility that runs in Windows, Mac, and iOS applications, a popular cloud practice management system that now offers a full-featured mobile app, a chat system, and payment processing, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

The Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (DTSA) provides a federal cause of action for the first time in American history. But trade secrets also remains a state law issue, one that cuts across many practice areas such as employment law. This means trade secrets law has more jurisdictional depth, uncertainty, and potential conflicts than purely federal areas of intellectual property law. All the more reason for a specialized research service.

Trade Secrets Advisor … in One Sentence

Launched recently, Wolters Kluwer's Trade Secrets Advisor is a research service dedicated to the practice of trade secrets law with workflow tools, including comparison charts, checklists, and forms.

The Killer Feature

Trade Secrets Advisor enables you to search state and federal case law and statutes, news, and treatises related to trade secrets. In addition to the DTSA, statutory coverage includes the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Economic Espionage Act, Uniform Trade Secrets Act, applicable U.S. Code sections, and all state trade secrets statutes. Case law coverage spans all 50 states and federal courts, including unpublished opinions.

Among the treatises is the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 Handbook written by DTSA experts such as R. Mark Halligan. Others include Business Torts: A Fifty State Guide, Epstein on Intellectual Property (5th Edition), Scott on Information Technology Law (3rd Edition), and Employment Relationships: Law & Practice. You can receive email notifications when a reference of interest is updated.

"Trade secrets cases move at a very quick pace, so it is critical that attorneys stay ahead of new developments that impact their clients' cases," said Susan Gruesser, Portfolio Director at Wolters Kluwer. "Updated regularly, Trade Secrets Advisor consistently equips attorneys with the resources to protect and enforce their clients' trade secrets under evolving state and federal laws."

Other Notable Features

Trade Secrets Advisor's news feed keeps you apprised of new court opinions. Click on a case of interest to reveal the Case Findings, a summary of the facts, and a link to the full opinion. In addition to browsing or searching the news, you can subscribe to the email newsletter, Trade Secrets Update. If you find a case of interest, you can email it to a colleague or client.

A number of tools exist in Trade Secrets Advisor to facilitate different research needs. For example, the Business Torts Smart Chart enables you to conduct comparative research. Select one or more topics such as Misappropriation of Trade Secrets, and one or more jurisdictions to generate a table summarizing the law in each jurisdiction. Links to the corresponding treatise invite further exploration.

The Checklists and Forms feature obviates the need to comb through treatises for a particular task. Choosing a checklist or form of interest takes you directly to its location within its parent treatise. You can share, download, and customize it, print it, or add it to your favorites. The library of checklists and forms encompasses trade secret identification and protection, employee and contractor confidentiality, licensing, and litigation.

What Else Should You Know?

Trade Secrets Advisor is accessible through Wolters Kluwer's Cheetah platform. Advanced search functionality enables you to narrow search results by date range, document type, court, jurisdiction, and other parameters. Learn more about Trade Secrets Advisor. Learn more about Trade Secrets Advisor.

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 a customizable, multiuser text entry automation utility that runs in Windows, Mac, and iOS applications (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of a popular cloud practice management system that now offers a full-featured mobile app, a chat system, and payment processing, a service that enables you to analyze IP portfolios for M&A due diligence, litigation strategy, and prior art research, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

Legal drafting involves a constant battle between precision and time spent. While hard enough for one lawyer to balance, it becomes even more of a challenge to scale across a law firm. Automating boilerplate language enables everyone at your firm to use carefully crafted language in a few keystrokes, ensuring consistency across work product.

TextExpander … in One Sentence

Smile's TextExpander is an automation tool for quickly entering frequently-used text in any application on Windows, Mac, and iOS.

The Killer Feature

TextExpander offers cloud-based administration tools. This enables everyone in your law firm to benefit from centrally managed "Snippets" — Smile's term for TextExpander's text automations — on all their supported devices.

TextExpander computes statistics so that you can see which snippets have the highest usage, and how much time your staff saves en masse. Sales and Business Development Manager Mike Burda tells me that the average TextExpander user saves one hour per day on average assuming a typing speed of 60 words per minute.

"I use TextExpander for many things in my practice — including responding to discovery," says lawyer Stewart Albertson of Albertson & Davidson in a blog post. "I have over 60 objection "snippets," including attorney-client privilege, work product doctrine, calls for expert's opinion from a lay person, etc. Before TextExpander I used to cut and paste from a template of objections. While this works, in my experience it takes much longer and it is easy to get lost in a large response file. As you can imagine, using TextExpander speeds the process up for responding to written discovery. Give it a try."

Other Notable Features

At its most basic, TextExpander enables you to type a shortcut such as "sig" in conjunction with a hot key of your choosing to enter your email signature snippet at the end of a message in Outlook. Snippets can contain rich text formatting, hyperlinks, images, and even HTML. They can span many paragraphs such as an entire engagement letter. You need not memorize TextExpander shortcuts. Instead, you can use another hot key to view a list on the fly and search through them. Your firm's TextExpander administrators can organize snippets into folders to make it easier for users to find the one they need.

More advanced snippets can incorporate conditional text. Such text appears next to a checkbox that controls whether to include it or not. For example, you may not want to include your mobile number in your signature every time so you can omit it by default unless you check its box. Additionally, snippets can perform date and other calculations, prompt you to enter data or choose an option from a menu, remove formatting of text on the clipboard, complete forms, etc.

Snippets can incorporate other snippets. With these "Nested Snippets," your administrator could reference a marketing snippet within each user's signature snippet. This would enable your firm to consistently promote whatever it wants in everyone's signature without users having to do anything.

What Else Should You Know?

TextExpander Team costs $7.96 per user per month billed annually ($9.99 otherwise). The Life Hacker plan for single users costs $3.33 per month billed annually ($4.16 otherwise). You pay only for active users and can accrue credits. The administrator tools provide control over access rights. Learn more about TextExpander.

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 a popular cloud practice management system that now offers a full-featured mobile app, a chat system, and payment processing (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of a service that enables you to analyze IP portfolios for M&A due diligence, litigation strategy, and prior art research, on-demand service for capturing social media and other web evidence in accurate and defensible PDF documents, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

In the early days of modern smartphones and tablets, lawyers complained about the lack of native companion apps for cloud practice management systems. When these apps arrived, lawyers discovered that they lacked key functionality, offering a watered-down experience. The dream of running your law firm from your phone requires a mobile app with complete feature parity.

Rocket Matter Atlas Gold Edition … in One Sentence

Launched recently, Rocket Matter Atlas Gold Edition (Rocket Matter) is a popular cloud practice management system with Android and iOS apps that now mirror the functionality of the desktop web app.

The Killer Feature

This identical functionality on mobile and desktop is exemplified by Communicator, Rocket Matter's new internal messaging system. Director of Sales Matt Nelson and Sales Operations Manager Alejandro Dao gave me a demo with one using an iPhone and the other a Mac. Channels organize conversations within Communicator into specific topics, while direct messages offer one-to-one communication. Rocket Bot, Communicator's artificial intelligence system, recognizes matter names and links to their file, offers to create an event when someone enters a date, etc.

"We've been using the desktop and mobile app," says Robin Cherkas of Bull & Reinhardt, PLLC. "We love Communicator here. It's seriously awesome. Everything is all in organized channels. It has eliminated people leaving Post-it messages on my desk. It has lived up to the word "communicator" with the whole firm communicating more effectively than we ever have."

With your entire firm in your pocket, state-of-the-art security is essential. You can now require two-factor authentication for the mobile app, which requires you to enter a PIN number in addition to your stored password when you login. For faster two-factor logins, you can enable Touch ID on iOS (Face ID on the iPhone X).

Other Notable Features

Rocket Matter has three core features always available — global search, sidebar navigation, and the contextual Add New button. The Dashboard offers a personalized view of your events, tasks, billing activity, and more across all of your active matters. Each matter contains its own dashboard within which you'll find the Matter Stream — a ticker listing all activity in reverse chronological order. Rocket Matter also enables you to view any aspect of a matter in isolation such as calendar, documents, email, invoices, and payments.

Speaking of payments, Rocket Matter now integrates with LexCharge legal payment processing, enabling your clients to securely pay invoices or replenish their trust account by e-check or credit card. You can also enter payments manually. The new Recurring Payments option facilitates alternative business models such as a monthly subscription, or letting struggling clients split payments across time.

For document management, Rocket Matter integrates with Box, Dropbox, and Office 365, the latter of which supports versioning. Or you can upload documents directly into Rocket Matter. ScanSnap integration enables you to scan directly into Rocket Matter. The mobile app one-ups the desktop app in one regard — you can use your device's camera for scanning on the go.

What Else Should You Know?

"When Rocket Matter launched in 2008, we introduced something truly novel to the legal industry," Rocket Matter CEO Larry Port tells me. "Nearly 10 years later, our team remains relentlessly inventive and continues to provide revolutionary features that help law firms significantly boost revenues and operate more efficiently." Rocket Matter costs $65 per user per year on the annual plan (you can pay monthly). This includes the new payment processing features. Learn more about Rocket Matter Atlas Gold Edition.

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 a service that enables you to analyze IP portfolios for M&A due diligence, litigation strategy, and prior art research (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of on-demand service for capturing social media and other web evidence in accurate and defensible PDF documents, a practice management system with a large forms library that automatically captures the billable time you spend on document drafting and email, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.

It may seem like we live in a world of abundant information, but much remains hidden — not necessarily private but too voluminous to review and connect all the dots. This is especially true of patent and other intellectual property data in the context of M&A due diligence, litigation strategy, and prior art research.

ktMINE … in One Sentence

ktMINE is a research service available through Wolters Kluwer that provides previously unavailable intellectual property data and analytics searchable by company, industry, and technology.

The Killer Feature

You can use public databases to piece together a company's patent portfolio. But good luck calculating its value. ktMINE applies machine learning to resources such as SEC, SEDAR, and other patent offices to provide such insights.

You start by searching for a company or keywords. In my demo, ktMINE's Market Lead of IP Strategy & Valuation Eric Podlogar ran a search for "wireless technologies." Clicking the Agreements tab at the top of the search results displays Royalty Rates Over Time — an interactive bubble chart listing the value of the licensing agreements related to your search. Heat maps and other charts show you which territories and SIC Codes represent the most activity.

View the data for a specific territory or SIC Code as well as by licensors, licensees, fixed payments, etc. The Royalty Rates Summary Chart lists the mean and median value as well as any outliers such as a category killer patent that many companies need to license. Drill down on any group of agreements for their summaries, including licensor, licensee, effective date, grant, terms, etc. You can view the full text of specific agreements that you need to review in detail.

"ktMINE offers significant time savings and unparalleled IP analytics by finding and connecting many types of IP data, such as license agreements, royalty rates, patents, and syndicated news," said David McIntosh, Partner at Ropes & Gray, IP Transactions.

Other Notable Features

In addition to Agreements, ktMINE's search results also include Companies, Patents, Patent Assignments, Trademarks, and News. Save your important searches and receive email alerts.

When searching by industry or technology, you can quickly find companies with your search term in their name, and those with the largest IP activity. Each company has a Company Profile — a dashboard listing its patents, trademarks, IP assignments, IP litigation, M&A deals, and recent news.

You can combine two or more company profiles to help forecast the value of the combined IP assets and assess an M&A deal before any initial outreach. ktMINE also enables you to view other companies that work with a target company, and search by Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) to identify licensing opportunities or litigation threats.

The search results for patents, patent assignments, and trademarks enable you to discover what's hot, and who's doing business together. Similarly, you can search court cases for the docket, information on the original complaint, and patents asserted, and narrow these searches by plaintiff, defendant, judge, CPC, etc.

What Else Should You Know?

"Through ktMINE, we are excited to provide IP lawyers and other professionals with valuable access to royalty rates, license agreement offerings, patent, trademark and mergers and acquisitions deal data that cannot be found anywhere else," said Susan Gruesser, Product Line Director for Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. "It's a powerful platform that quickly connects data sets in ways that other products can't." Learn more about ktMINE.

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.