TechnoLawyer: Email/Messaging/Telephony

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers the new version of a popular integrated digital dictation and transcription system, an online time tracking utility, and an Outlook add-on to help you better manage and organize your calendar, email, and tasks. Don't miss the next issue.

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

Stop Typing, Start Dictating
By Dennis Kennedy
Drafting documents from scratch is difficult work. Typing may not be the most efficient approach. For generating a good first draft, many lawyers rely on dictation and transcription.

HTH Engineering has more than ten years of experience providing turn-key solutions for the digital dictation needs of law offices. The latest version of its popular Start-Stop Universal Transcription System offers an integrated solution for transcription designed specifically for the needs of law firms.

Start-Stop Universal Transcription System combines software with hardware to turn your firm's PCs into a state-of-the-art transcription system. The software integrates with digital voice recorders (including those by Olympus, Phillips, and Sony), and foot pedals with 2 or 3 pedals. HTH Engineering doesn't just sell the software, but also a wide variety of compatible recorders, foot pedals, and more.

You use Start-Stop with a handheld digital recorder or other digital recording device. Placing the recorder into its cradle or using the "End of Letter" button instantly sends your dictation file to a transcriptionist. Start-Stop's "Job Manager" keeps track of waiting and finished files. The "Folder Mole Auto-Notifier" automatically sends notifications to your transcriptionist whenever you add a dictation file to a shared folder. As a result, your transcriptionists will not overlook dictation files and can easily assign and prioritize files.

New in version 9.7 is the "Network Support Feature," which enables multiple transcriptionists to work on the same file simultaneously — great for urgent jobs. Also new is the "Smart Word Line Counter," which provides you with a word and line count after transcription.

Start-Stop has a wealth of other nifty features, including a built-in FTP client for uploading files remotely, automatic backup of completed files, configurable hot keys, variable speed playback, and a sleek new interface designed with the help of professional transcriptionists.

Perhaps most importantly, Start-Stop can now handle just about any audio file format, including WAV, MP3, WMA, and dozens of popular proprietary formats such as Olympus DSS, Philips DSS, Sanyo Digital Recorder, VOX, TrueSpeech, Dictaphone Walkabout, and many more. It even works with audio CDs.

If you already have a voice recorder and foot pedal, HTH Engineering sells its Start-Stop software by itself for $99. If you also need accompanying hardware — digital voice recorders, headsets, foot pedals, telephone recorders, etc. — the company sells a number of bundles for the legal profession. Learn more about Start-Stop Universal Transcription System.

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 November 17, 2006 to Fat Friday:  W. James Slaughter unveils the secrets to being a happy lawyer, Jay Solomon shares an anecdote that will make you think twice about automating your business correspondence, David Caracappa discusses computers with sex appeal (no, really), and Arthur Rieman reviews the Brother HL-5170DN laser printer. 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.

Sometimes we come across products or services that we cannot cover in TechnoLawyer NewsWire for various reasons — not enough features for a 250 word article, stuck in perpetual beta, not legal-specific enough, etc. Nonetheless, you may find some of these products of interest so here is a list:

Futurephone: Free international calls. My grandmother uses it to call the old country (Italy).

Optimus Keyboard: A keyboard with display screens on each key, enabling you to customize the keys. Insanely great! Unfortunately, we've had this product in our queue for more than a year. It's vaporware.

BackFence: Small town news and gossip (currently in California, Illinois, Maryland, and Virginia). Bo Peabody tried to serve small towns with StreetMail during Web 1.0. It didn't work then and I don't think it'll work now — and I know a thing or two about online communities (now called social networks). Besides, Craigslist will eventually serve every town in the country. Game over.

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.

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.

Coming October 3, 2006 to TechnoFeature: You may have heard the radio ad: A businessman forgets a key file at the office and saves a long trip back to the office (and a lost sale) thanks to this miraculous service called GoToMyPC. However, the GoTo suite of online products and services provide much more than remote file access. In this article, technology consultant Seth Rowland reviews this "secure desktop sharing" technology and then evaluates each of the individual products, focusing specifically on whether and how they fit into the practice of a busy lawyer.

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.

Coming September 22, 2006 to Fat Friday: Robert Fleming reviews the hidden benefits of a swivel monitor (or two), Yvonne Renfrew reviews the Intake Interview Jumpstart feature in CaseMap 6, Brooks Miller reviews a password and login management utility, and Charles Beans shares his feelings on public cell phone use . 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.

Today, most Americans will think for at least a moment about 9-11. Those of us who work in New York's financial district think about it more often thanks to constant reminders — most notably Ground Zero and the security checkpoints. Rather than wait for the official memorial in 2012, I encourage those of you who visit New York to take a look at Ground Zero as well as the temporary memorial in Battery Park.

This being TechnoLawyer, did 9-11 teach us any managerial or technology lessons? Yes. These five in particular:

• When telephone networks get jammed, don't panic. Instead, use e-mail, instant messaging, and the Web to communicate. On 9-11, we published a brief newsletter suggesting that TechnoLawyer members experiencing telephone problems try using the Internet. Many TechnoLawyer members thanked us, admitting that they had not considered the Internet. Nowadays, perhaps no one would need such a reminder, but people still have an inclination to reach for the phone during emergencies, which ties up the lines.

• At the very least, keep a radio with batteries and several flashlights at the office. It also couldn't hurt to have a spare battery for your laptop. A cell phone with e-mail capabilities would enable you communicate on the go with a large group of people — provided your network stays up.

• Store your firm's e-mail, computer files, and other electronic data offsite on at least a weekly basis. Replacing computers and even software is relatively easy. Not so data. For data, many solutions exist — from dedicated online backup services to using your own hosted FTP server. For e-mail, you can choose from a growing number of providers. TechnoLawyer sponsor NTT America recently published a white paper about e-mail archiving entitled Hosted Archiving for Peace of Mind.

• Create an emergency plan for your firm. Even a simple one is better than none at all. For example, set up an e-mail list using an easy-to-remember address (everyone@yourdomain.com) so that employees can easily reach everyone at the firm. Maintain a firmwide address book, including contact information for a spouse or other family member to contact in the event you cannot reach a colleague.

• Educate your staff about where they work. On 9-11, the subways stopped running. Those who knew about alternative forms of egress from the financial district (back streets, bridges, ferries, etc.) had an advantage.

Let's hope none of us will ever need to put our emergency plans into motion.

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 September 15, 2006 to Fat Friday: Miriam Jacobson shares the best advice she has received regarding her legal career, Bryan Keenan discusses acceptable and unacceptable cell phone use, Stephen Cole discusses the role multiple monitors play at his law firm's new office (including details on which programs lawyers and staff use on each screen), and Alex Simpson reviews his experience using a Tumi briefcase. In addition, this issue features links to 3 additional Posts in the TechnoLawyer Archive. 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.