TechnoLawyer: Email/Messaging/Telephony

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers an email archiving appliance, a Web-based time-billing solution, and a powerful desktop search tool. Don't miss the next issue.

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

The Renaissance Man of Desktop Search Tools
By Dennis Kennedy

Lawyers spend an increasing amount of time searching. While cynics might quip that lawyers spend much of that time looking for misplaced files (both electronic and paper), even the most organized lawyers need to search their hard drives and networks as well as discovery documents — and the free desktop search tools often fall short.

ISYS Search Software's ISYS 8 moves law firms well beyond the realm of free desktop search tools into powerful and versatile search technology. ISYS 8 offers a wide array of tools that enable you to find the information you need fast whether it resides on your PC, a file server, or elsewhere on your local or wide area network.

ISYS 8 works with your unstructured data as it finds it, including email. In fact, it can index and search data in more than 200 file formats (including Office 2007) in 60 languages, and each index can accommodate up to 64 million documents. You do not have to prepare your data before indexing it. You can, however, select from a number of indexing options, and automate indexing with a scheduler. For example, you could have ISYS index your email and attachments every hour.

ISYS 8 gives you a wide range of search options from the familiar standard keyword search to Boolean operators to useful options like "Starts with" and "Sounds like." ISYS 8's "Intelligent Agent" can even automatically perform searches for you and notify you of new results. ISYS also uses "fuzzy logic" to help you find "mis-shaped" words from OCR scans and "Synonym Rings" enables you to engage in "concept searching" — finding documents that contain terms related to your search terms (e.g., nicknames, synonyms, etc.). For email and other structured files, you can search by fields such as TO, CC, and BCC.

In addition to fast and powerful search, ISYS enables you to navigate and work with your results in many helpful ways. You can search within your initial results, filter or automatically categorize results, highlight, group, or cluster hits, set views or previews, and hide results that do not matter to you. ISYS 8 has a "Did You Mean?" feature to suggest alternative search terms for you. You can annotate your results, print or extract them to a file, and even search metadata.

ISYS 8 boasts a number of new features that should prove quite helpful with many legal tasks. Regarding electronic discovery, the "Entities" feature can identify people, organizations, email addresses, and similar information in your search results and group the documents you find accordingly. For knowledge management, ISYS 8's new "Best Bets" feature enables you to designate model documents for certain search terms. And for large firms, "ISYS Federator" can synchronize indexes across the network and even across the globe so that everyone in the firm obtains the same search results.

ISYS 8 costs $1,000 for a network license plus $100 per seat with volume discounts available. Learn more about ISYS 8.

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 March 30, 2007 to Fat Friday: Carol Bratt explains everything you ever wanted to know about using Styles in Word, Diana Brodman Summers provides an update on her legal career since we profiled her techie-turned-solo story on TechnoLawyer Blog, Scott Bassett explains how to watch movies on your Treo 650, Grace Lidia Suarez discusses how she achieves as close to a paperless office as one can get, and Jed Berliner shares how he handles enclosure letters. 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.

Two weeks ago, I poked fun at legal technology predictions.

But that's not to say I don't like reading them. How timely then that Dennis Kennedy has issued his latest predictions in a report entitled: Seven Legal Technology Trends for 2007: Widening the Digital Divide in Law Practice.

Of note, Dennis predicts that:

• BlackBerry usage may have peaked among lawyers.

I disagree, particularly in light of RIM's push into the small business market. I do believe that Treo usage may have peaked because I think Apple's iPhone will grab market share from Palm. I don't think the iPhone will have as much impact on the BlackBerry.

• A sizable number of lawyers will begin using MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks since they can run Windows.

I agree, and hope to see some enterprising legal technology consultants add Windows installation on these notebooks to their repertoire (it's not trivial to install Windows).

• The growth of all-in-one electronic discovery tools for smaller cases that law firms can handle in-house.

I agree since even your run-of-the-mill slip and fall case involves electronic evidence nowadays (such as email admissions).

• A shift from Yellow Pages advertising to search engine advertising among law firms.

I agree. Yellow Pages has not kept up with the times. No one under the age of 30 Fewer people use the Yellow Pages now than during its heyday 20-30 years ago. I use a Yellow Pages as a laptop stand.

Read Dennis' Seven Legal Technology Trends for 2007.

What do you think of his predictions and predictions in general?

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

Coming March 23, 2007 to Fat Friday: Gloria Perez debunks a myth about the integration abilities of legal software, Craig Humphrey reviews several email archiving and desktop search tools, Frank Lanigan reviews DictaNet and how those "across the pond" use it on-the-go, Barron Henley clears up a misunderstanding (he insulted a popular program, not the people who use the program), and Edward Still tells us how he really feels about the term "recovered attorney." 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.

Coming March 8, 2007 to Answers to Questions: Diane Sherman reviews two Internet fax services (and why she uses one for incoming and one for outgoing faxes), Martin Dean discusses a new ISO standard PDF format called PDF/A, and why it's important for law firms to know about, Jason Havens shares his thoughts on enterprise search tools from Google and Microsoft, Sandor Boxer reviews his Philips 9350 Pocket Memo digital recorder, and Marc Martin explains how to make electronic Bates stamping easier. 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 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 23, 2007 to Fat Friday: Andrea Cannavina discusses several tips for improving your voicemail and email etiquette, Nina Yablok shares two of her business travel essentials, Roy Ackerman reviews Copernic Desktop Search, Timothy Cleary hypothesizes why his millionaire friends continue to practice estate planning law, and Thomas F. McDow discusses his most valuable technology purchase of 2006. 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 an FRCP-ready email archiving tool, a personalized news site that learns what you like, and a free suite of online services, including email at your own domain name. Don't miss the next issue.

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

Vault into Email Bliss
By Dennis Kennedy
Email is essential, but the way we now use it serves as a textbook example of the law of unintended consequences. Its growing volume has produced a number of pain points. For example, how do you manage all your messages? How do you archive and search old messages? How do you handle bulging PST files? Do you find yourself deleting messages and attachments because you've reached the storage quota for your inbox? And what about email in discovery?

Symantec's Enterprise Vault 7.0 aims to solve these problems by providing and archiving tool for managing organizational data, including email, instant messages, and other content. Enterprise Vault's intelligent classification engines help you bring order to the growing chaos with a suite of helpful tools. As a result, you gain better control of data in a simpler manner with reduced storage costs.

Enterprise Vault offers a variety of useful tools. Automated management tools help you avoid annoying mailbox storage and size limitations. You can better manage PST files, expedite backups, and improve disaster recovery with centralized email management, and improve your ability to archive data. Archiving features enable you to store and retrieve email and other data in ways that meet your compliance and electronic discovery requirements. Archiving files may reduce your local storage requirements by 50 to 75%.

These tools automate the archiving of data in a number of useful ways, including content-based archiving. You might use the fifty predefined rules, pop-up menus to require users to select among pre-defined categories, or work in connection with your content or document management system. As a result, you can manage data based on your unique retention, deletion and compliance policies based on content, not just by senders and receivers. As you would expect, administrators have a lot of granular control over application of policies to individual users.

Enterprise Vault 7.0, the newest version, also offers a module for electronic discovery needs called the Discovery Accelerator, designed to help you with the new amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The Discovery Accelerator has three components to help you with predisclosure meetings, legal holds, and native file presentation. Users of Symantec's Information Foundation 2007 will appreciate the integration of Enterprise Vault with this security tool to help manage enterprise information policies.

Enterprise Vault 7.0 integrates with Microsoft's latest applications, including Exchange Server 2007 and Windows Rights Management Services, and enable you to search encrypted email and view email natively without using Exchange. Enterprise Vault also handles data from a wide range of content management and other commonly-used document management systems.

Enterprise Vault starts at about $40 per user license per year for 25 users. Learn more about Enterprise Vault 7.0.

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 16, 2007 to Fat Friday: Dave Markowitz reviews his experience using a Brother HL-2070N printer with multiple operating systems, Enrico Schaefer explains how taking his practice paperless boosted his profits, Susan Billeaud offers up several etiquette tips for using a cell phone in public, Gregory Landry issues a call to arms for public interest lawyers, and James Walsh shares how a recent TechnoLawyer NewsWire article helped him join the world of multiple monitors. 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.

Coming February 8, 2007 to Answers to Questions: Winlock Brown offers up some helpful suggestions for finding and displaying GIS data for trial, Mark Sargis reviews the HP 4345 and provides some tips for everyday use, Michael Mulchay reviews Tabs3 for time and billing, August Landi explains which word processor finally persuaded him to "upgrade" (if you can call it that) from his 26 year old IBM Displaywriter, and Jim Grennan reviews Send2Fax for online faxing. 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.