TechnoLawyer

Originally published on August 24, 2009 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

I'm back again with five more technology hacks for small law firms. While technology is not necessarily a bastion of hope in these dark economic times, it can give the small firm practitioner a leg up on the competition and level the playing field for client service and communication compared to a larger outfit. If you missed my first five hacks, you can find them on TechnoLawyer Blog.

1. Track Your Time Writing Emails With MonetaMail

MonetaMail is an Outlook add-on that tracks the time you spend on email activities.

MonetaMail is inspired by the following facts:

Email is the most popular communication tool. Much email activity is of short duration (certainly under the 6 minutes for the 0.1 hour minimum time tranche). Many users do not actually know how much time they spend in email and usually grossly underestimate their email activity time. Moreover, users do not want to leave the workflow of reading and replying to email to track their time.

The solution, prior to MonetaMail was to either ignore or forget about billing for email time, make some wild guesses, or sift through your Sent folder and reconstruct what happened.

MonetaMail tags, tracks, and reports your email time by two different user-selected descriptors (you need set up a descriptor only once per email address). The basic idea is to track the time that slips through the cracks by seamlessly integrating into Outlook. The reporting function enables you to evaluate email productivity by client, project or time-period, on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. The captured time should eclipse the $99 price.

2. Send Video Emails With Eyejot

Even in the hands of a gifted writer, the written word can prove difficult to decipher. Enter video messaging service Eyejot.

Eyejot enables you to send video messages by simply signing up, logging in to your account, uploading or recording your video, and clicking "Send." There is no software to install or download. It works with all major browsers.

A free account enables you to send an unlimited number of 60 second email messages, and provides support for RSS feeds and iTunes, and a visual address book. Upgrading to the Pro version for $29.95 per year extends the video length to 5 minutes and provides an inbox perpetual in duration (the free account stores email for only 30 days).

For $99.95 per year, the Pro Plus version enables you to add your own logo and color scheme to Eyejot's notification elements, receive alerts when recipients view your video messages, and attach documents to your video messages.

3. Tweet From Outlook

Twinbox is a free Microsoft Outlook plugin that seamlessly integrates with Outlook to enable Twitter users to update, reply, archive, search, and receive their friends' tweets.

After download and installation, simply visit the "Options" menu and enter your Twitter username and password. What sets this app apart from stand-alone Adobe Air based Twitter applications such as TweetDeck is the ability to archive, manage, group, and search your tweets the same way you manage your email. You can also upload photos and Outlook attachments and automatically download all tweets matching the keywords you specify, similar to a supercharged Google Alerts for Outlook. Thus, Twinbox enables you to monitor what people are saying about you and your firm.

4. Backup Your Browser Settings With FavBackup

FavBackup is a free portable utility (meaning it does not have to be installed, just executed) that will backup your browser preferences, passwords, extensions, and sessions.

It works with all major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Google Chrome. Backing up is as simple as running the downloaded file and following the guided prompts.

5. Set Up Advanced Voicemail With YouMail

YouMail is a free voicemail service that will blow the pants off your cell phone carrier's default voicemail package. Think Google Voice without the extra phone number.

YouMail provides visual voicemail, personalized greetings based on the caller, voicemail sharing, caller blocking, and voicemail alerts by email and text. For a fee of $3.99/month, you can have voicemail messages transcribed and emailed to you. Another nifty feature is the ability to make folders to organize your voicemail messages as you would your email. You can also download your voice messages in .mp3 format.

What better way to organize client communications, send notes to yourself, and compartmentalize all communications? Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Written by Will Geer of JDhacker.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on July 27, 2009 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

Small firms do not have to be at a technological disadvantage compared to their multinational brethren. Those proprietary systems and bloated methodologies can actually hinder an individual attorney's productivity. Flexibility is the key to appropriately leveraging technology for a more efficient and enjoyable practice. Below I have laid out five legal technology hacks to level the playing field.

1. Texter: Save Time With Text Substitution

Texter is a free text substitution application that will save you countless keystrokes by substituting user-defined abbreviations for commonly typed blocks of text.

Once downloaded and installed, Texter resides in your system tray and integrates with any program that accepts text input (virtually any program). You'll find this tool helpful if you find yourself writing the same phrases over and over again such as salutations, addresses, canned email responses, and form letters.

For example, each time I write a form letter, I type "addy" at the beginning of the letter and my entire name and address will be substituted in its place. To begin a commonly long salutation, I type "sal."

2. Mindmeister: Conduct Legal Research and Case Planning

Mind mapping software helps you to brainstorm by appealing to both the left (colors, images, creative) and right (text, analytical) sides of the brain. Doing so facilitates better data retention, more efficient note taking, and an aesthetically pleasing graph easy for others to follow.

Mindmeister is my favorite online mindmapping application, as it enables simultaneous collaboration in real-time, creation of mind-maps via email, PDF conversion, and online storage for ubiquitous access with a Web browser. Premium accounts cost $4/month per user and add features such as unlimited mindmaps, SSL encryption, and offline editing, to name just a few. The number of viable uses is limited only by your imagination.

3. Acronis True Image: Create Clones of Your Primary PC

Few technology mishaps will chill you to the core like a complete system failure of your primary office computer. We all know the benefits of backing up important data at regular intervals. However, even though all your documents and data may be backed up, your entire operating system must still be reinstalled.

It doesn't matter if the OS is Windows XP, Vista or Microsoft's latest baby, Windows 7, reinstalling and configuring the operating system to match your pre-crash specifications can take hours. Hours that you could otherwise bill.

What's the solution? Create a clone of your entire hard drive. Acronis True Image is a Windows based disk imaging utility that will create an exact replica of your PC's current state as it was before the crash. Restoration takes minutes as opposed to hours.

4. Backup Your Google Docs With GDocBackup

Many small firm and solo attorneys use Google Documents, Google's online word processor, for collaborative document drafting.

Even though Google stores your created documents indefinitely, I like to keep a copy on a local hard drive for safekeeping. You can always download or copy and paste the Docs straight to your desktop, but that's tedious.

Fortunately, GDocBackup exists — a simple utility that enables you to quickly and easily download your entire directory of Google Documents straight to a local hard drive.

GDocBackup even gives you the option to backup and download all the files in PDF format — perfect for attorneys following fellow SmallLaw columnist's Ross Kodner's famous "Paper LESS" law office.

5. MobileTM: Access Time Matters Data on Your Smartphone

The iPhone is quickly becoming the smartphone of choice for small firm attorneys. No one can deny that it is a magnificent piece of hardware, but it does have one shortcoming — the inability to sync with Time Matters. The same is true of other smartphones. They are limited to information that Outlook can understand plus the data is not accessible in real-time unless you use a Blackberry Enterprise Server or Microsoft Exchange Server.

Enter OTB Consulting's MobileTM, covered last year in TechnoLawyer NewsWire but worth noting again. A Time Matters add-on, MobileTM provides real-time data access to your Time Matters information through your smartphone's browser without the need for an Exchange Server.

Smartphone users who previously could only access To-Do's, Events, and Contacts can access Billing Records, Notes, and Client Matters. The icing on the cake is the ability to see all records associated with a contact or client matter, a feat not capable with Time Matter's integrated syncing technology. The software is a bit costly at $400 per year for a single user and $100 extra for each additional user. Also, you can only "read," not "write" data (it's one way).

Written by Will Geer of JDhacker.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.