TechnoLawyer: Practice Management/Calendars

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers a new lawyer-centric practice management program and an electronic billing system that enables corporate counsel to keep a lid on legal fees. Don't miss the next issue.

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

A Dashboard for Pro Lawyers
By Dennis Kennedy

Too often, the information we want exists in several different "silos." Our documents are in one place, contacts in another, and financial information in yet another. We could manage our information and our law firms better if we could see, access, and use our information from one central location.

ProLaw 11.6 combines document, case, and client relationship management with time, billing, and accounting functions. The new version of this venerable practice management program offers you a flexible and lawyer-oriented Dashboard to connect your silos of information and let you get the information you need in a familiar Windows- and Outlook-style interface. And it's all done with an lawyer-centric focus.

From a single screen, you can see your personal calendar and view your current matters. You can also customize your dashboard to display your contacts and saved searches, and use pop-up menus, smart data entry functions, a navigation bar, and a Quick Find feature. You also get a wide variety of custom display features, including grids and lists, with groups and sub-groups, the ability to show or hide records, and even customize your screen.

ProLaw 11.6 also features improved integration with Microsoft Outlook and Word, and provides the much-desired ability to capture and save email messages along with documents in the corresponding matter. Plus your Outlook calendar can sync with your ProLaw case docket calendar. Best of all, you do not need to leave Outlook or Word for the synchronization to occur in ProLaw.

You will also find a wide variety of reporting tools, and many ways to print and save information in the file type of your choice. You can analyze matters, dockets, financials, profitability, and more. ProLaw's deep integration with Westlaw enables you to do research of all kinds directly from ProLaw.

You'll also find a variety of other enhancements from earlier versions, including the ability to split billable hours and expenses across several related matters, saving hours of manual re-entry of data. ProLaw 11.6 makes it even easier to enter and track time, generate financial summaries by matter, and create enhanced profiles for documents and matters. Learn more about ProLaw 11.6.

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.

Coming February 22, 2007 to Answers to Questions: Rick Crowsey provides a litigator's guide to using maps and GIS data in trial, Jay Hollander reviews Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9, Randall Jacobs reviews the Outlook integration in Amicus Attorney 7, Tim Hughes discusses the key to tracking client referrals no matter what software you use, and Mike Cash responds to the continuing debate regarding the easiest way to manage retainers in PCLaw. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published Thursdays, Answers to Questions is a weekly newsletter in which TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers (including you if you join TechnoLawyer). Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Coming February 15, 2007 to Answers to Questions: Carolyn Thornlow, a legal tech consultant, reviews Tabs3 versus QuickBooks for legal time-billing, Thomas Caffrey explains how to use Time Matters to track client referrals, Craig Bayer gives three reasons why he recommends Word to his clients over WordPerfect, Charles T. Lester, Jr. shares his experience getting Acrobat 7 to work with several scanners, and Brant Gluth reviews a utility for encrypting files on your hard drive and in email. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published Thursdays, Answers to Questions is a weekly newsletter in which TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers (including you if you join TechnoLawyer). Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Coming February 2, 2007 to Fat Friday: Joe Sewell discusses the security benefits of Linux, William Lloyd shares how he avoid eyestrain despite using three monitors, Ernest Marquez discusses setting up Amicus Accounting and its pricing, Matthew Gould reviews Time Matters' support policy, and Mazyar Hedayat offers up his thoughts on making your work (or life) public on the Web. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Fridays, Fat Friday is a weekly newsletter that features a grab bag full of genuinely useful product reviews and tips on a wide variety of topics. 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 utility for managing, merging, and synchronizing multiple calendars, a business productivity suite, and a backup utility with versioning and open database capabilities. Don't miss the next issue.

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

Your Nine Lives Each Deserve Their Own Calendar
By Dennis Kennedy
It's hard enough to keep up your calendar and contact list at work, but we all live double, triple, or even quadruple lives, each with its own calendars and contacts. For example, most lawyers do not place doctor's appointments, soccer games, and other family events on their work calendars. Yet synchronizing these other calendars can be a major chore.

Tanner Research's ClearSync gives you a way to manage calendars and contacts for all of your lives — "groups" to use the company's vernacular. Using ClearSync, you can set up multiple calendars and contact lists, and share, protect, and synchronize them as you need.

ClearSync works with PCs and Palm devices, including Palm OS wireless devices like Treos. Using a browser, Macintosh and Linux users can also view calendars and contacts.

The result: Wherever you are — work, home, school, sporting events — you can access contact information, dates, and times for everything going on in your life, thus reducing your chances of missing school plays and birthday parties, or finding, to your surprise, that your kids don't have school on the day of an important work meeting.

ClearSync supports bi-directional synchronization so you can enter or make changes to contacts or appointments on your PC or your Palm device. You can also synchronize your Outlook contacts and calendar.

On both your PC and your Palm device, you can keep multiple calendars, color-code them, and display them one at a time, side-by-side, or as merged calendars. If you use the merged view to show your full agenda, ClearSync maintains the separate underlying calendars, and lets you share each of them — or not — in accordance with the rules you establish.

ClearSync comes in three versions — ClearSync Free, ClearSync Silver, and, ClearSync Gold versions. ClearSync Free enables you to view shared calendars in your browser.

With ClearSync Silver ($19.95 plus $9.95 for each subsequent user), you get the more functional desktop application as well as the ability to create your own calendars, view them side by side or merged, synchronize them with your Palm  and over the Internet, and share them with others.

ClearSync Gold ($59.95 plus $29.95 for each subsequent user) provides wireless synchronization, encrypted online synchronization, and telephone support.  Learn more about ClearSync.

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.

Coming December 14, 2006 to Answers to Questions: Gerald Pinzino suggests six simple tips for keeping your wireless office network secure and weighs in on the WiFi analogy debate, Craig Humphrey discusses new integrated desktop and enterprise search tools, Norton Townsley offers up a solution to keep formatting and fonts in a PDF file, Katrina Curfiss reviews PracticeMaster for civil case management, and Craig Bayer reviews PCLaw for time-billing. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published Thursdays, Answers to Questions is a weekly newsletter in which TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers (including you if you join TechnoLawyer). Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Coming December 7, 2006 to Answers to Questions: Steven J. Best offers up his thoughts on New Jersey retainer rules and some advice for managing these fees in PCLaw 8, Sharon Kirts shares which HP printers have served her practice well and why she believes you get what you pay for, Al Harrison reviews LogMeIn for remote access (really remote — South Africa to Houston, TX), Daniel Fennick reviews how he uses PracticeMaster to manage case-related e-mail messages, and Jay Stassen reviews his office's new case management software from CIBER. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published Thursdays, Answers to Questions is a weekly newsletter in which TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers (including you if you join TechnoLawyer). Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Paolo Broggi, Tip: How to Link Amicus Attorney and Your Treo 650

TechnoLawyer member Paul Landsman asks:
"Does anyone have experience with setting up the link that allows Amicus to transfer data to the Treo 650. I had it working perfectly with my old Treo 600.  I can transfer my contacts but not the calendar, event, to-do, etc.  If any one knows the proper settings, I would appreciate the assistance."

The first thing to do is to remove Palm OS from your PC as instructed by the Palm manual and then install the new Palm/Treo desktop. After synching at list once then go to the Team50\Install\PILOT folder and run the PPSetup.exe.

You will be asked to turn off the HOTSYNC manager before getting into the setup selection windows where you can choose which conduits (connections) you want enabled, e.g. Appointments, To Dos and Contacts or any combination of those.

As you finish this installation of the links select to turn on the HOTSYNC manager and now go to HotSync icon next to the clock lower right corner the blue and red arrow (in the system tray), right click on it and select Custom ...

If every thing went well (assuming that you choose all the three conduits) here you will see three new entries starting with Amicus. If you have Amicus V and you don't see the Amicus entries you will need to contact Gavel & Gown tech support to obtain a patch that will add the entries in the registry.

Double click on any of the Amicus Attorney entries to choose how you want Amicus and your Treo to exchange the information. Remember to check the default box so that the changes will apply to every HotSync you do.

Once you start the HotSync the first time with Amicus you will be asked about mapping categories for example Business with Clients, Private with Private and so on.

The first time you sync your Treo with Amicus Attorney will take sometime according to the amount of data you have in the Amicus database. After that it will take only a couple of minutes.

That should do the trick.

If you still have problems contact me directly.

Installation of Palm link on Amicus Attorney 7 is very different.

Paolo Broggi, Information System Engineer
Premier Amicus Attorney Consultant and traininer since 1997
2b1 inc.
San Francisco, CA
www.2b1inc.com

About Answers to Questions
Posts like the one above appear exclusively in Answers to Questions, a weekly newsletter in which TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers (including you if you join TechnoLawyer). Like all of our newsletters, it's free. You can subscribe here.

Coming November 14, 2006 to TechnoFeature: Outlook sure knows how to keep your contacts in order — but did you know that case management software can do that too, and so much more? In this article, technology consultant David Moon highlights some of the best features of the latest case management software and how they can benefit your firm. Whether you're a newbie or an expert who has used the same old version for decades, David will show you why you need to give up your "tried and true" for "new and improved!"

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Tuesdays, TechnoFeature is a weekly newsletter that contains in-depth articles written by leading legal technology and practice management experts. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

TechnoLawyer wrote:
"If you contribute anything else, your Post will appear in our Fat Friday newsletter. Can't think of anything? How about reviewing a product you recently bought, sharing tips and techniques for widely-used products, responding to something you read in a TechnoLawyer newsletter or elsewhere, etc."

Info Select is not a legal specific program, but is advertised as "a Personal Information Manager that organizes Internet data, notes, to-do's, schedules, contacts, addresses, forms, ideas, images, and much more..."   I have, and make limited use of AbacusLaw, which is a legal specific detailed case management system.  However, I am gravitating more and more away from it to Info Select because of the ease of use of the program.

What I like about Info Select is that on one screen I can get an overview of all my cases and clients.  The program is highly customizable.  Down the left side of the screen I have listed all of my cases/clients names.  When I click on the name, the entire right side of the screen becomes active for that case.  Here is where I put my clients' contact information, the opposing attorney contact information and then under that I keep my daily notes of anything I need to document about the case. The program allows you to hit a date key and the date appears for note keeping.  The program allows you to cut and paste almost anything into the space — documents, pictures, links, etc.  Sometimes, I place a link to certain documents in my word-processing program so that when I click it, the document appears.  When a client calls, I can hastily look down the left side to identify the client's name, click the name and all my notes and info are instantly on the right side, so that I can talk with them about the case.

The problem with the larger programs is they are more cumbersome and take longer to maneuver to the data.  Don't get me wrong, the larger programs are o.k., but I like the simple screen in front of me, with an instant view of all my cases and instant availability of the data.  The program also allows me to create an icon under my clients name on the left side, which will open a spread sheet on the right side to record time on the case.  The spread sheet also allows for organization of discovery that has or needs to be done.  The program has a search system that allows you to type a word or part of a word and every file that has that word in it appears on the left side column so that you can open it and look at the words. The program has a calendaring system and alarms.  You can keep a separate calendar for each case and put reminders and alarms for various events. The program allows you to change the color of the files on the left side.  I like to use red on files that are needing attention. When I finish a case, I can just drag and drop it to my retired case folder that I keep toward the bottom of the left screen.

On the left side of the screen, I can keep a to-do list  and files for names and address of service providers, courts, doctors, etc.  Sure, all the large management systems can do all of this and more, but I don't believe any are this simple, customizable, and visually helpful on one main screen. I'm still discovering new ways in which to use it to help me with my cases.  It also has an e-mail program but I still like my Outlook program.  I, also, use the program to organize my personal life in that I can keep all my passwords, etc in a file and the program has a simple but powerful encryption system.  Any of the files can be easily encrypted.  The program is inexpensive and I don't think I could do without it.  I have no monetary interest in the program.

Danny C. Wash
Wash & Thomas, Attorneys
Waco, Texas

[Publisher's Note: Read Alfred Poor's review of the latest version of Info Select courtesy of PC Magazine.

Also, blogger Ananda Sim shares her two cents. — Sara Skiff]

About Fat Friday
Posts like the one above appear exclusively in Fat Friday, a weekly newsletter that features a grab bag full of genuinely useful product reviews and tips on a wide variety of topics. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. You can subscribe here.