TechnoLawyer: TL NewsWire

Read our latest coverage of CaseMap here.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers the latest version of a popular case analysis program, a financial forecasting and modeling program for law firms, and a freeware and shareware emporium that uses a problem/solution format to help you find products. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

Case Analysis Never Looked So Good
By Dennis Kennedy

LexisNexis CaseMap, a litigation case analysis program, is a rare breed in that its user base consists of virtually everyone from solos to large firms to government agencies. What these litigation teams have in common is a need for a central location to enter facts, issues, and evidence, and then generate reports.

In the latest version, LexisNexis CaseMap 7.5, LexisNexis has lavished lots of attention on the reports — the program's public face. Reports and ReportBooks look a lot snappier now that you can add graphics to the title page, including your logo.

Also, a new Reports menu enables you to access all reports with one click. From this new menu, you can also configure Page Setup and Print options, insert a TimeMap timeline, insert a NoteMap outline, send a spreadsheet report to Word, WordPerfect, or a Web browser, export to Excel, and launch the Summary Judgment Report Wizard.

As for the all-important content within your reports, you can now include "By-Issue" reports in ReportBooks. These reports display records linked to an issue (e.g., all facts and documents associated with the breach of contract issue). You can use the default By-Issue reports that ship with CaseMap and also build your own custom reports.

LexisNexis has also beefed up CaseMap's "Link Summary" technology. As a result, you can now generate reports that show the number of documents a party, witness, or other key participant has authored (LS: Docs Authored) as well as the number of email messages sent (LS: Emails Authored) and received (LS: Emails Received). These reports should make deposition preparation much simpler. Just click the count to access all the documents or email messages. As for getting these records into CaseMap in the first place, it's easier than ever thanks to an an overhauled "Send-To-CaseMap" tool.

Other enhancements include live spell checking, the ability to add Facts (people, places, documents, etc.) on the fly, tighter integration with NoteMap, and case auto-logon, which enables you to side-step the login dialog when you're the only person working on a CaseMap case. Learn more about LexisNexis CaseMap 7.5.

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.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers an automated metadata removal utility, a database that doesn't require programming, and monitoring software designed to keep your servers up and running. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

Metadata, Meet Your Match
By Dennis Kennedy

We regularly read news accounts of sensitive, confidential, or downright embarrassing information being exposed through poor metadata handling practices. Metadata is all that hidden data associated with your document files, including deleted text, comments, author name, date created, email addresses, and more.

We most often hear about it in connection with Microsoft Word documents, but metadata can also be found in PowerPoint presentations, and any other office suite that generates OpenDocument format (ODF).

3BView's 3BClean metadata management tool does what its name suggests. It helps you ensure that each document contains only the appropriate metadata or none at all if you prefer. When you email a document, 3BClean automatically monitors and cleans unnecessary metadata pursuant to your settings.

3BClean emphasizes automation. You can administer rules-based metadata policies for your entire office through a central administrator. No software is installed on user desktops and little or no user training is required. 3BClean can scale from single documents to thousands of documents. It also cleans email attachments sight unseen and even supports Webmail, BlackBerrys, and PDAs — a plus in this day and age as lawyers often send email with attachments when they are on the road, in court, or burning the midnight oil at home.

3BClean's smarts and versatility stem from the fact that it resides on a server. As a result, it also integrates with document management systems and works on Mac and Linux machines as well as Microsoft Windows. This centralized approach enables you to enforce firm-wide policies consistently both in and outside of the office.

In addition to metadata scrubbing, 3BClean can convert files, at your option, to a cleaned, secure PDF format for worry-free distribution. (Traditional PDF conversion does not remove metadata.)

In a new twist on the free trial, you can upload a document to 3BView's Web site to test 3BClean. You can also sign up for a free 2 week trial. Learn more about 3BClean.

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.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers an easy-to-use document assembly program, a new case management program available online or in a client/server format, and a backup utility capable of backing up open database files. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

I Came, I Saw, I Created Legal Documents
By Dennis Kennedy

All legal documents are created in one of three ways — staring at a blank page, using an existing document as a model, or using document assembly software. A classic trilemma, staring at a blank page means you have to reinvent the wheel, using a model is prone to embarrassing copy and paste errors, and document assembly software is difficult to set up.

Fortunately, someone forgot to tell Esquire Innovations about document assembly software being difficult to set up. Esquire's iCreate 4.0 comes out of the box with many useful templates ready to go, including letters, memos, fax cover sheets, pleadings, agreements, Bates labels, address labels, envelopes, etc. You can easily tweak these templates as you see fit such as adding your logo and lawyers to your letterhead.

Of course, you can also use iCreate to build your own templates for any document type. The design philosophy behind iCreate is to enhance Microsoft Word (and Excel and PowerPoint), not force you to learn something entirely new. Nowhere is this philosophy more apparent than with iCreate's iHyperstyles Toolbar, which iCreate adds to Word. The iHyperstyles Toolbar turns the daunting and difficult job of working with Styles in Word into a much simpler process that enables your firm to standardize its approach to document formatting.

With the iHyperstyles Toolbar, everyone in your firm can create, modify, apply, and manage styles and paragraph numbering in Word. From the toolbar, you can create new numbering schemes and save them for use on other documents, apply headings, simplify the creation of tables of contents and authorities, and of course apply formatting. You can also apply multiple styles and numbering schemes in the same document, automate the handling of paragraphs, and clean up manually-typed documents.

iCreate's other features include QuickMerge, which integrates with the address books of Outlook, GroupWise, Lotus Notes, and InterAction to make the insertion of contact information seamless, iCreate Label, which creates any imaginable label size, icCalendar, which can grab an Outlook calendar and place it in Word, and iBatesLabel for Bates stamping.

As you might expect, iCreate integrates with popular document management systems such as Hummingbird, InterWoven, NetDocuments, and Worldox.

The company offers two purchasing options. If you need a full-blown document assembly tool for creating templates, you can of course purchase iCreate, which includes the iHyperstyles Toolbar. If you just want to make Word's Styles easier to use and standardize them across your firm, you can purchase the iHyperstyles Toolbar by itself. Learn more about iCreate and the iHyperstyles Toolbar.

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.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers an online document repository for transactional lawyers, an inexpensive PDF creation tool for Windows, and a suite of PDF utilities for Mac. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

How to Find a Good Deal Document
By Dennis Kennedy

Large firm transactional lawyers often have the benefit of a handy document bank of prior agreements that they can use when working on a new deal. An agreement similar to what you need can serve as an initial prototype, a checklist for issues, or as a useful way to determine how others treat similar deals.

But even the largest firms don't have every possible document available in house. And what about smaller firms?

Real Practice's RealDealDocs provides access to hundreds of thousands of exhibits from public filings from the SEC EDGAR database selected for relevance to transactional lawyers. Real Practice has categorized these documents and made them searchable using its own technology. As a result, you get access to not only thousands of agreements, but also millions of deal clauses, created by lawyers from the leading law firms in the U.S.

RealDealDocs organizes these materials so you can use simple pull-down menus to find the type of agreements you want. You can search by document or clause, or browse document categories. For document searches, you simply select the type of document and then drill down into sub-types. You can run full-text searches. The search results display of relevant documents with titles, parties, law firms, and other information to help you select a relevant document.

RealDealDocs currently highlights four main topic areas — mergers and acquisitions, securities and corporate finance, labor and employment, and real property and leases, but also provides materials in other practice areas.

You can use RealDealDocs for many other useful purposes than document creation. Documents from other deals make excellent issue checklists, indicate how a party you're negotiating with might have modified standard provisions in the past, and make for an effective parry when opposing counsel tells you that lawyers never change a certain provision.

Real Practice offers a 10-day free trial, with RealDealDocs available in daily ($9.95), weekly ($19.95), and monthly ($29.95 or $39.95) plans. Multiple user plans exist. Learn more about RealDealDocs.

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.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers an online legal research citation tool designed to save time, an online case management and time-billing application, and a new laser printer tailor-made for law firms. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

Better, Faster, Smarter Citations
By Dennis Kennedy

Lawyers have used "hyperlinks" before hyperlinks even existed. In our vernacular, we called them citations. When we found a good case, we would then review the citations to that case, often finding even better cases and sometimes finding reversals, statutory supersession, etc. Nowadays, of course, online research services provide real hyperlinks to related cases. But even so, the number of citations listed can be overwhelming to review.

Wolters Kluwer's Loislaw, a leading provider of online legal research, has updated its GlobalCite feature to address this and other issues based on feedback from its customers. The result is a more powerful citation research tool designed to help lawyers find relevant cases, statutes, and secondary sources more efficiently than ever before. Specifically, Loislaw has added two major features to GlobalCite, each of which saves time and takes advantage of modern Web technologies.

First, GlobalCite now offers a pop-up box within the document you are viewing that summarizes the GlobalCite results and provides links to the types of sources that you want to explore further. The pop-up box arranges the results by category. For example, you can view all sources, cases only, statutes only, treatises only, or other documents only. GlobalCite also displays the number of links within each category. You can click directly in the pop-up box to move to exactly the set of results you want, saving an extra step or two and valuable time. If no citations exist, you'll also know that at a glance without having to click further.

Second, GlobalCite enables you to search directly within your set of citations. With this feature, you can narrow your search quickly, thus eliminating the all-too-common problem of "noise" or "clutter" of unrelated documents. You can conduct full Boolean searches within this pool of citations. For example, you might search for a statutory section, case name, "reversed" or other terms, or keywords. Lawyers have become comfortable with this search within a search paradigm thanks to Web search engines.

As an added benefit, subscribers get the full text of every document they find via GlobalCite at no additional charge no matter what their subscription level. GlobalCite works across Loislaw's entire collection. GlobalCite is included with the purchase of any Loislaw package that includes primary law. Learn more about GlobalCite.

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.

In today's special "best friends" issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers a document comparison, security, and review tool that integrates with Word, an Outlook add-on that makes it easy to schedule meetings, and a voicemail-to-text service that integrates with any cell phone or smartphone. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

Microsoft Office's Best Friend
By Dennis Kennedy

Your documents have rich and interesting lives with fascinating stories to tell. Documents are created, revised, shared, printed, filed, archived, etc. Some of these stories you want told and others you don't.

As a result, management of documents throughout the entire lifecycle has become an important priority. The new Workshare Professional 5 delivers an integrated approach to document lifecycle management, providing control and reducing risks of information leaks during document review and other document usage without changing the tools you use today (i.e., Word, Outlook, your document management system, extranet, etc.).

In short, Workshare has significantly beefed up its comparison, security, and document review functionality. Regarding document comparison, accuracy is critical, especially when you work with complex tables, intricate paragraph numbering, or complex formatting. Workshare Professional's improved document comparison engine should be able to handle anything you throw at it.

Among the notable new features is a tabbed view within documents similar to the tabs in modern Web browsers. With its "One-to-Many" technology you can now compare multiple document versions inside this tabbed view, which makes it easy to accept or reject changes across all document versions in one place.

As you work on documents, Workshare Professional maintains the entire history of all changes and proposed changes. You now have the ability to eliminate the risk that inadvertent formatting changes, new styles, template changes, or file corruption will, for lack of a better word, screw up your documents.

Workshare Professional also provides a platform for managing collaboration and review of documents. You can exchange documents by email or SharePoint extranets and never have to worry about juggling multiple document versions or losing track of the master. Workshare Professional manages all of the review copies and ensures that you always work on the correct master document, whether it is stored in a document management system, a network drive or a local file system.

Once you finalize a document, Workshare Professional goes beyond metadata management with "content risk discovery and remediation" prior to PDF conversion. It then helps you safely publish your document in a secure PDF format without the need for additional software. With the ability to create and impose business policies for PDF creation and distribution you can now enforce PDF security across your firm. You can also create PDFs from any application, not just Office.

This latest iteration of Workshare Professional is not only compatible with Microsoft Office 2007 and earlier versions, it actually integrates into the Office 2007 Ribbon and task panes. Another nice touch is its support for SharePoint Server 2007's collaborative workspaces and Live Meeting for "real-time collaboration."

Workshare Professional also comes with out of the box integration options for document management systems. Metadata links allow you to leverage your document management system to track matters across documents when sent for review from and to anywhere. It even retains a full audit trail of review and sharing activities. Learn more about Workshare Professional 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.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers a document comparison, security, and review tool that integrates with Word, an Outlook add-on that makes it easy to schedule meetings, and a voicemail-to-text service that integrates with any cell phone or smartphone. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

Your Calendar's Best Friend
By Dennis Kennedy

The day-to-day practice of law often looks like a series of meetings and conference calls. Some suggest that the effort of scheduling these calls and meetings — playing phone tag, exchanging email, looking for available dates and times, and re-scheduling — might average seven separate exchanges per meeting and 25 minutes per working day over the course of a year. Finding a way to automate some of that scheduling process would save time and money — not to mention your sanity.

iPolipo is a Web-based service with a Windows software component that integrates with Outlook to assist in automating your schedule by securely sharing your calendar with those who want to meet with you. The key lies in the way that iPolipo lets you selectively share portions of your calendar with others.

iPolipo adds a toolbar to Outlook with all of its functions just a click away. Your contacts need only use a browser to schedule meetings with you and do not have to subscribe to iPolipo.

You can make your Outlook calendar available on a 24/7 basis with as many of your Outlook contacts as you choose. You can also insert a link to your calendar into your email messages with a single click of your mouse. iPolipo automatically synchronizes with Outlook in real time and automatically handles time zone conversions for you.

Only the contacts that you invite will have access to your calendar and their view is limited only to your available time slots. You can categorize your contacts and offer available time slots based on group membership, limiting client access to regular office hours and keeping evenings and weekends free for friends and family.

No one can see any information about your other scheduled meetings. You can also share your calendar for a limited time period and make meeting slots available only for a limited time.

iPolipo comes in two versions — Basic ($99/year) and Premium ($149/year). The Basic version enables you to share your calendar and offer limited-time meeting invitations for a 3 weeks period. The Premium version doubles this window to 6 weeks. Learn more about iPolipo.

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.

In this special issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers three personal knowledge management tools — two for Windows PCs and one for Macs. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

Become a Wiz Kid
By Dennis Kennedy

The typical Microsoft Word user sees a screen with hundred of icons spread out over several toolbars and menus. Often, lawyers simply want to jot down some notes or organize their thoughts in an outline. For such tasks Microsoft Word is both overkill and inefficient.

AvniTech Solutions' WhizFolders Organizer focuses solely on notes and outlines, with the goal of making it easy to create, manage, and connect your ideas. This focus eliminates the clutter and difficulty of word processing and other programs for note-taking and gives you a great platform for working with your notes and great flexibility in using notes and outlines.

WhizFolders Organizer gives you fast access to all of your notes. The program features a two-pane list/edit interface so you can see the hierarchal list of your notes and outlines as you work. You can rearrange your lists by dragging and dropping, or even use duplicate names. It is this listing technology that gives the program its power and usefulness. You might also use the full screen edit mode, vertical panes, multiple windows, or other flexible approaches to best match the way you work.

You can enter your notes in a variety of ways and in a variety of formats. You can drag and drop text, insert pictures, links, and objects, and even insert links to other notes, documents, and files. You can merge groups of individual notes into larger documents.

WhizFolders Organizer uses lists to help you categorize, sequence, and organize your notes. You can then move them around, color or highlight items, and define a tree structure that works best for you. The ability to drop in links to other notes turns WhizFolders Organizer into a personal wiki. WhizFolders Organizer also prints out a convenient table of contents with your notes.

WhizFolders Organizer offers Boolean search tools and the ability to export your notes in RTF and HTML formats. There is a free viewer you can use for distributing your notes. Sensitive notes can be password protected.

WhizFolders Organizer comes in two versions — Pro and Deluxe. The latter version features tables, keyword tagging, and templates. It sells for $80. The Pro version sells for $39. Learn more about WhizFolders Organizer.

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.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers an online service that can turn your camera phone into a scanner, a new high-speed scanner with a tiny footprint, and a universal driver that can make virtually any scanner Mac compatible. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

MacGyver Your Next Meeting
By Dennis Kennedy

Remember MacGyver? Often confronted with a near-impossible situation, he managed to use only the materials he found at hand to solve the problem and win the day. Imagine, if you will, that you find yourself in a situation where you need to make a copy of a document and have only your cell phone, or just a digital camera. What would MacGyver do?

He might very well use scanR, which has created applications and services that enable you to copy and fax documents using a camera phone or a digital camera. With scanR, you'll impress your clients and colleagues by capturing and sending the information you need.

scanR is a Web-based service. You create a user account. When you want to scan a document, you simply take a picture of the document, trying to fill the whole screen with your document. You can take pictures of documents, white boards, and even business cards. You can easily scan and store business cards from events or save what you've written on whiteboards before they get erased. For certain phones, you can download and install the scanR Mobile application to make the process easier and faster.

You then send your image to scanR from a camera phone using the MMS protocol or send JPEG photo images. Shortly thereafter, you'll receive in your email digital copies of your image in PDF format for you to use and print.

scanR provides a quality score to help you perfect the art of taking pictures of your documents. You even get messages alerting you that a photo is out of focus. You can send up to 15 pictures in one batch.

scanR supports sending faxes to most phone numbers in North America, Western Europe, and East Asia. You scan, fax, or email your images from your My Scans page. If you don't receive a copy, your scans are collected at your My Scans page in a searchable gallery. scanR is currently a free service. A premium service is planned. Learn more about scanR.

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.

In today's special eDiscovery issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers a new email archiving and search solution, an eDiscovery software suite, and an online litigation document repository. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

Take Decisive Action
By Dennis Kennedy

Trying to reduce your or your client's litigation risk and eDiscovery costs? Looking for a way to easily and securely search and share email across your organization?

Recommind, best known in the legal community for its conceptual search and categorization software, recently launched Decisiv Email, which automatically categorizes "massive amounts" of unstructured email data. Decisiv Email employs advanced categorization and conceptual search technology to automatically tag, organize, and file email messages and associated attachments with virtually no user involvement.

Additionally, you can use Decisiv Email as an email archiving tool. Recommind claims that using Decisiv Email to store business records delivers up to 500% in storage savings over traditional email archiving systems while substantially reducing litigation risk and eDiscovery costs.

Fully integrated with Microsoft Outlook, Decisiv Email facilitates collaboration within an organization by accurately correlating email-based information with related information in email archives, content management systems, document management systems, records management systems and countless other information repositories. By automatically organizing and filing information as it enters and leaves the email system, Decisiv Email significantly reduces time spent sorting through email correspondence in search of specific data and allows for near real-time knowledge transfer.

Other notable features of Decisiv Email include automated tagging and filing of incoming and outgoing messages, semi- or fully automatic modes of operation, a virtually invisible filing system that can prompt the sender to file email messages, support for Microsoft Office documents, scanned documents, voicemails, and other popular formats, and integrated project management functions such as roles, project templating, and activity reporting.

Decisiv Email sells for $300 per user for perpetual licenses. Learn more about Decisiv Email.

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.