TechnoLawyer: TL NewsWire

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers the latest version of a popular litigation support suite, the latest version of a popular document comparison and security suite, and a free teleconferencing service. Don't miss the next issue.

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

Blazing New Trails in Litigation Support
By Dennis Kennedy
The growing importance of electronic discovery has resulted in an increasing number of choices among litigation support tools. But which of these tools will endure as the market inevitably consolidates and shakes out? No one can say for sure, but CT Summation and its Blaze LG, Blaze LG Gold, and iBlaze tools seem like a safe bet for several reasons — a long track record, a large installed base, and parent company Wolters Kluwer's financial commitment.

The CT Summation Blaze LG product family features tools that enable you to store, organize, and search scanned documents, electronic documents and e-mail, transcripts, case chronologies, and more. The product family also has robust OCR and PDF capabilities. And now, just in time for the new electronic discovery amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, CT Summation has released version 2.8 of Blaze LG, Blaze LG Gold, and iBlaze with new capabilities for quick review of electronically stored information.

You can allocate documents into discrete review sets for each reviewer, and then you can use the new quick review to consistently identify, classify, and organize documents with mere clicks. The classification tools include category "tags" (e.g., author, responsive, or type of document) and issue "tags," which you can apply to documents instantly. Also included are "Folders" for organizing these documents. You can define Folders however you please — your own collection, by team, for a specific deponent, etc.

Version 2.8 was designed in response to user feedback and emphasizes improved usability. For example, other new features include spell-checking in the database fields to reduce errors, autosave, the ability to correct/re-unitize images, an "Update Bates Range" tool to automatically add new Bates numbers, improved loading and export tools (including the ability to validate load files before loading documents and the ability to export data to Microsoft Excel), redesigned online help and user documentation, and much more.

Learn more about Version 2.8 of the CT Summation Blaze LG Family.

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 gadget that enables laptop users to reap the benefits of multiple monitors, a hot new smartphone guaranteed to make lawyers drool, and a document management system with a fresh approach. Don't miss the next issue.

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

You Can Never Have Two Many Monitors
By Dennis Kennedy
You decide to replace your desktop PC with a laptop. After all, laptops can do everything desktops can do, right? They can even burn DVDs nowadays. Soon, you start hearing about all these lawyers using two or three monitors. And then you learn the ugly truth — your laptop has just one video port. Ouch. Burned by technology yet again.

Matrox feels your pain and has created two products designed to bring you into the 21st century law office — DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go. These two products enable you to respectively run two or three monitors from a single video port.

A black box measuring about the size of your hand, the DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go do not contain graphics cards. Instead, they contain patent-pending circuitry that takes the memory of your existing graphics card and redistributes it among multiple monitors. Matrox claims that you will not see any distortion or scaling, which makes sense since no interpolation occurs — you're just using the actual memory in your laptop.

The DualHead2Go can drive two monitors at resolutions up to 1280x1024 pixels. The TripleHead2Go can drive three monitors at up to 1280x1024 pixels. If that's not enough, you can alternatively use the TripleHead2Go to drive two monitors at higher resolutions, including widescreen monitors.

The DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go require a VGA output connector (easily achieved with a converter if your laptop has a DVI output), and works with Windows 2000/XP. The DualHead2Go sells for about $150 and the TripleHead2Go sells for about $300. Learn more about DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go.

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 three sweet suites — an e-discovery suite designed to expedite the review process, an e-mail archiving suite for securely storing and searching your e-mail, and a suite of online services to help you manage your firm's Web site. Don't miss the next issue.

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

The Truth Is in Here
By Dennis Kennedy
The new amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have lawyers working feverishly to assemble their electronic discovery tool kits. Many have found an overwhelming number of different electronic discovery tools and that electronic discovery involves much more than just searching.

MetaLINCS claims to integrate the core electronic discovery tool sets of search and document review with extensive guided analysis, giving those involved in electronic discovery a powerful, efficient, and complete approach to today's electronic discovery projects. The software addresses multiple phases of the electronic discovery process, from data acquisition to production.

MetaLINCS uses its patent-pending search algorithms to move you beyond plain old search with a unique set of visual tools. These tools combine leading capabilities of social network analysis, thread analysis, related concepts, and dynamic directory. You can sort results by topics, threads, people, and concepts.

In addition to advanced search, MetaLINCS offers you a collaborative platform on which your team can review documents efficiently and less expensively. You can prioritize review, highlight high value data, de-duplicate documents, review and flag key documents, and generate useful statistics on the process.

MetaLINCS also guides users through the review process with a set of visual automated analysis features. You might find relevant information before manual review starts or spot key communications and other patterns, helping you make better strategic decisions.

Because you can organize content by topic, conversation, timeframes and other categories, you can review discovery materials more efficiently, reduce mistakes, and manage workflow by matching materials with reviewers who have the appropriate experience and expertise.

You can use MetaLINCS either as a stand-alone Windows application or through a Web interface. The Web interface uses AJAX technology, which powers much of today's Web 2.0 applications. This technology makes Web applications behave like more like a desktop application. Learn more about MetaLINCS.

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 edition of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers three unique time-billing solutions that take a new approach to this age old activity. Don't miss the next issue.

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

Track Your Activities and the Time Will Follow
By Dennis Kennedy
Why do so many lawyers still track their time on paper? PensEra set out to answer this question, and found that most time-billing software takes more time to use than a pen and paper. Using a pen and paper is also less distracting.

So did PensEra abandon all hope? Not quite. Instead, the company developed its TimeKM family of products, which include TimeKM Time and TimeKM Mobile. This software resides in just one location — on a server at your firm. Lawyers and their assistants access it via Web services. PensEra claims that TimeKM usually requires less than 15 minutes of training.

TimeKM provides lawyers with a variety of ways to capture time. Each method is designed to integrate into a lawyer's workflow. For example, at the office, after working in a Word file, just drag the file onto the TimeKM Time icon in the Windows Deskband. TimeKM will capture the name and date of the document, and enable you to enter the time spent. The idea is to quickly capture time now (thus creating a placeholder) and worry about the details later. Similarly, when you compose an e-mail message, you can cc TimeKM or forward the message to TimeKM to capture that activity.

TimeKM Mobile, used on your BlackBerry, Good device, or Treo, works similarly. You can use the "jot-it-down" tool for activities that cannot be tracked (such as your time in court) and the "tag-and-send" tool for activities that can be tracked (such as telephone calls). You can even set up reminders with the "Remind Me" feature. Making entries is quick and easy thanks to programmable codes. For example, type "mwc" and "Meeting with Client" appears on your screen.

At the end of the day, week, month, etc., you or your assistant can flesh out these "placeholders" and transform them into full-fledged time entries. You can then send these time entries to your accounting or billing system. Speaking of which, TimeKM integrates with just about any accounting or billing software, including Elite, Juris, QuickBooks, Timeslips, SAP, etc.

Pricing for TimeKM Time starts at $249/user. Pricing for TimeKM Mobile starts at $139/user. PensEra offers volume discounts. Learn more about TimeKM.

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 new time-billing and accounting package with a user-friendly interface, a service that enables you to add search capabilities to your Web site, and a Web-based suite of collaboration and project management tools. Don't miss the next issue.

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

Your New Friend in Accounting
By Dennis Kennedy
Lawyers live in the front office. Most don't like to deal with back office issues. They often feel that operating the business of a law practice gets in the way of practicing law. From handling trust accounts to editing pre-bills, lawyers dread nearly every back office operation.

Help is on the way. Gavel & Gown, the company behind the ever-popular Amicus Attorney, now offers Amicus Accounting, a time-billing and accounting package designed specifically for law firms. Amicus Accounting builds on the reputation of Amicus Attorney for simplicity and ease of use.

For example, Amicus Accounting enables you to handle time-billing and accounting in a single package. When used with Amicus Attorney, you benefit from a truly integrated front and back office — the so-called holy grail of law office technology.

Amicus Accounting uses the familiar graphical interface of Amicus Attorney 7, which emphasizes common workflows. It handles all of the back office chores in a law office: timekeeping, expenses, bill generation, receivables management, payables, check writing, general ledger, trust accounting, report creation, and a variety of client matter details and inquiries, including the ability to track transactions by client and matter.

With Amicus Accounting, you can track billable and non-billable hours with multiple rates per timekeeper, issue checks and allocate expenses to matters in one step, prevent trust account overdrafts, process hourly, split and flat fee billing, implement UTBMS task-based billing codes, customize billing templates, process 1099s, support three accounting methods (cash, modified cash and accrual), generate more than 50 reports, access all client data and account information in one location (you can even drill down for more granular information), and much more.

Amicus Accounting sells for $249 per user. Learn more about Amicus Accounting.

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 alternative to Microsoft Office, a free service for tracking your wealth (and comparing it to that of your peers), and an Outlook add-in that enables you to organize and archive your e-mail by client and matter. Don't miss the next issue.

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

An Office Without the Overhead
By Dennis Kennedy
In this new Web 2.0 world, expensive desktop applications may end up going the way of the dodo thanks to simple Webified versions — word processors, spreadsheets, and the like. These low-priced or free tools can serve as economical alternatives to programs such as Microsoft Office in certain settings.

Silveroffice offers up such a tool with gOFFICE, an online office suite that enables you to quickly create documents using just your Web browser. gOffice has four modules — word processing, desktop publishing, presentations, and spreadsheets. You create all four types of documents in your Web browser.

Each module features many templates. For example, the word processing module features more than 1,000 letter templates, making it easy to create a professional-looking letter. When you complete a document, you can export it to PDF format. gOffice handles the conversion so you do not need a copy of Adobe Acrobat. You can also email and fax documents directly from gOffice (faxing is limited to the United States).

You can use gOffice from any computer with an Internet connection, and you can store your files online or locally. Alternatively, you can host gOffice on your own server at your firm. gOffice works in Firefox (Mac and Windows) and Internet Explorer (Windows).

Like other Web 2.0 tools, gOffice offers limited functionality and customization compared with desktop applications. But because gOFFICE makes it easy to produce nice-looking documents, you may find it an acceptable trade-off. gOFFICE costs 99 cents per month. Learn more about gOFFICE.

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 hosted e-mail service for small and mid-sized law firms, a new expert witness online research service, and a free Firefox plug-in that enhances Google. Don't miss the next issue.

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

Got E-mail? Get Archived.
By Dennis Kennedy
Still managing your own e-mail server? Or perhaps you host your firm's e-mail at an ISP. If so, your e-mail may lack advanced applications such as BlackBerry support and archival and search capabilities.

Here to help small and mid-sized law firms and legal departments is NTT America, a division of NTT, the world's largest telecommunications company (more than $100 billion in revenue).

NTT America's new service, Email Archiving Solution, aims to provide law firms with peace of mind with regard to all aspects of e-mail infrastructure. In addition to providing traditional POP and MAPI e-mail, Email Archiving Solution coupled with hosted Microsoft Exchange also provides for wireless e-mail via RIM's BlackBerry and Microsoft's ActiveSync (Treo and other Windows Mobile smartphones).

You also get the benefit of the latest in anti-spam and anti-virus protection (say goodbye to the deeply flawed Bayesian filters and highly annoying challenge response technologies of yesteryear).

Living up to its name, Email Archiving Solution also provides you with advanced archiving capabilities, which you can configure by mailbox (both incoming and outgoing messages). NTT America claims that this service can meet any regulatory or internal compliance requirements.

Even if you have no compliance needs, this archiving technology has other benefits. For example, a powerful search engine enables administrators to search for and retrieve lost messages and entire mailboxes — much faster and with more certainty than restoring a backup.

Email Archiving Solution also addresses another problem with traditional e-mail systems — storage costs. Thanks to some nifty technology, NTT America has figured out how to reduce such costs and pass along the savings to law firms. For example, its "single-instance" technology means that it stores just one copy of an identical message (such as those group messages sent to everyone in your firm).

NTT America's service level agreement (so-called "SLA") guarantees a 99.9% uptime thanks to its secure and highly redundant data centers. When you do need help, you can get it 24/7. Email Archiving Solution does not require any software, licensing, or maintenance fees, IT staff, or on-site servers. Instead, you just pay a low monthly subscription. Learn more about Email Archiving Solution.

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 discount online store for inkjet cartridges and laser toner among other supplies, a utility that runs Windows on your Mac, and presentation software for your iPod. Don't miss the next issue.

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

Alternative Fuels for Your Inkjet and Laser Printers
By Dennis Kennedy
Ink and toner are as essential for the operation of today's law firms as gasoline is for running our cars. Unfortunately, the prices of inkjet cartridges and laser toner cartridges can give us the same sense of sticker shock as seeing $3/gallon gasoline at the pump.

Databazaar.com is one of the industry leaders in providing inkjet cartridges, laser toner cartridges, copier and fax supplies, paper, and projector bulbs at discount prices. You'll also find cables and printers at Databazaar.com.

Inc. magazine recently mentioned Databazaar.com in an article on "business bargains." Databazaar.com carries cartridges for almost every brand or make of printer, including HP, Brother, Canon, Epsom, Dell, Imation, Lexmark, Samsung, Panasonic, Sharp, Sony, and Xerox/Tektronix.

Databazaar.com sells genuine new inkjet and toner cartridges as well as compatible cartridges in factory-fresh retail boxes — the same ones sold by manufacturers and big box retailers — at deeply discounted prices. Plus you get free shipping on all orders. All orders ship within 24 hours, except on weekends and holidays.

Databazaar.com offers a comprehensive, well-organized Web site. You can check and compare prices. Even better, the site offers RSS feeds for you to stay apprised of new products and special offers without visiting the site. Learn more about Databazaar.com.

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 mobile billing solution for solos and small firms, a Web-based tool for tracking vacations and other time off, and a new multifunction inkjet copier/fax/printer/scanner. Don't miss the next issue.

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

Mobile Billing for Small Firms
By Dennis Kennedy
Time sheets are the bane of existence for most lawyers, especially for lawyers on the move during the day. Solos and small firm lawyers are among the most mobile in the legal profession because they usually spend more time in court and with clients. Often, these lawyers don't have a timesheet handy to record activities. During a hectic day, they may forget about activities that add up to a significant amount of time.

The all-too-common result is that lawyers "lose" billable time because they forget to record it or underestimate what time they spent on projects.

AIRTIME-Manager's AIRTIME-Professional helps lawyers contemporaneously capture time entries wherever they are by using their BlackBerrys, Treos, and Windows Mobile devices.

Originally available as AIRTIME-Enterprise for larger firms, AIRTIME-Professional is a new version designed for solos and small law firms.

AIRTIME-Professional enables you to record time entries immediately after you finish an e-mail or phone call by popping up a reminder entry screen on your mobile device so you can enter time for the activity. You can also enter time no matter where use a mobile device. Thus, on-the-go lawyers can capture time that is often forgotten or underestimated when they return to the office and get to a traditional timesheet.

AIRTIME-Professional also "remembers" and aggregates small amounts of time spent on e-mail and phone calls. When these small amounts reach a pre-determined threshold, say fifteen minutes, you will be notified and can make a decision about whether to bill that time rather than "lose" those small amounts.

AIRTIME-Professional has some nifty features designed specifically for solos and small firms. For example, it integrates with most time-billing software. Thus, lawyers can synchronize their client/matter numbers as well as their billing codes. And of course, they can export the time captured by AIRTIME-Professional into these programs for final processing.

AIRTIME-Professional has two components — the client software on your mobile device and a Web-based component for managing your time entries and synchronizing with your time-billing software.

AIRTIME-Professional costs $25/month for solos or $100/month for five lawyers. Other configurations also exist. No contract is required, but if you sign up for a year you receive two months for free.  Learn more about AIRTIME-Professional.

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 network appliance that makes short work of electronic discovery tasks, an online service that enables you to create multimedia presentations, and a handheld document scanner. Don't miss the next issue.

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

E-Discovery for the Rest of Us
By Dennis Kennedy
Electronic discovery can seem like a daunting world of software, services, and outside vendors, all combined with arcane technology issues. But what if you just want to work with a limited amount of e-mail and other electronic data?

Cricket Legal Technologies' Cricket Box may hold the answer. The Cricket Box is a dedicated electronic discovery appliance designed for law firms and litigation support consultants. It gives you a dedicated, turn-key solution with no software to install or configure. Just turn it on, follow the on-screen wizards, and start working.

A simple interface enables you to handle most of the standard tasks in today's world of electronic discovery. Just drag and drop your documents, and then use Cricket Box to filter, de-duplicate, and bates stamp your documents before exporting them to other litigation tools. Cricket Box can handle images, text, and metadata in many file formats.

The company claims that Cricket Box is easy to operate and can be used without IT support. It features a variety of powerful search and other electronic discovery tools. You can run Boolean, fuzzy, stem and other searches often used in electronic discovery.

Cricket Box uses a SQL Server database, which means it's fast. It can pull data from just about any source, including CD-ROM, DVD, flash memory, hard drives, etc. If you run into password-protected files, Cricket Box can probably crack them for you. The company claims that all these smarts mean you'll never miss a valid document, resulting in more accurate work product than competitive offerings.

When you're ready to export data, you'll find that Cricket Box integrates with Concordance, CT Summation, Ringtail, iConect, iPro, and other popular tools. Cricket Box is sold on a subscription basis. For a limited time, a one year subscription sells for $10,000.

Learn more about Cricket Box.

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.