TechnoLawyer

Today's issue of Fat Friday contains these articles:

Neil Squillante, Review: Royal SC180MX CrossCut Shredder

Yvonne Renfrew, Review: Destroyit Cross-Cut Shredder

Philip Franckel, Review: Royal Shredders; High-Security Shredders

Edward Zohn, Review: Fellowes PS-79Ci Shredder

Michael Haller, Shredding Service Versus Buying A Shredder

Dario Zaffarano, Shredder Purchasing Advice

Question Of The Week: What Helped Or Hurt You In 2011?

Don't miss this issue — or any future issues.

How to Receive Fat Friday
Our most serendipitous offering, Fat Friday consists of unsolicited contributions by TechnoLawyer members. You'll no doubt enjoy it because of its mix of interesting topics and genuinely useful knowledge, including brutally honest product reviews and informative how-tos. The Fat Friday newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL Answers contains these articles:

Mark Deal, Thoughts About Document Assembly Software and Consultants

Kevin Maloney, Review: Safesync for Cloud Document Storage and Syncing

Henry Murphy, Thoughts About Timeslips and New Versions

Manning Huske, Tip: Kodak SCANMATE I920

Sandy Bautch, Insider Tip: Ecopy Paperworks for Bates Stamps

Don't miss this issue — or any future issues.

How to Receive TL Answers
Do you believe in the wisdom of crowds? In TL Answers, TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers. This newsletter's popularity stems from the relevance of the questions and answers to virtually everyone in the legal profession. The TL Answers newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to TechnoFeature: The first legal billing applications started surfacing more than 30 years ago. However, many lawyers still jot down their time on paper, and many law firms still use a word processor to create invoices. Why? No one knows for sure but the simplicity of the old ways is likely a factor (though a paper-based system makes collections more complex). For this issue of TechnoFeature, Seattle estate planning and business lawyer Chandra Lewnau has written a comparative review of Paymo and Time59 — two web-based (cloud) billing applications. Are Paymo and Time59 simple enough to persuade paper-based law firms to enter the 21st century? More importantly, can either application serve your law firm's needs better than your current billing software? Chandra has the answer in her no-punches-pulled shootout review.

How to Receive TechnoFeature
Our flagship newsletter never disappoints thanks to its in-depth reporting by leading legal technology and practice management experts, many of whom have become "household names" in the legal profession. As a result, TechnoFeature offers some of the most profound thoughts on law practice, and helpful advice about legal-specific products. The TechnoFeature newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on November 23, 2011 in our free BigLaw newsletter. Instead of reading BigLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

No doubt you've read in BigLaw about all the midsize and large firms equipping their lawyers with iPads — or at least supporting iPads purchased by their lawyers. For example, the BigLaw Pick of the Week earlier this month, Damon Morey Makes iPads Standard Equipment.

Many methods exist for integrating iPads and other mobile devices into your legal environment. For example:

• Should you license, build, and configure mobility servers or gateways (e.g., WorkSite Mobility Server)?

• Should you encourage the installation of numerous purpose-built apps on your mobile devices directly (e.g., LexisNexis' Courtlink, WestLawNext, Linsay Associates' IPLaw)?

• Should you create a VPN connection to encrypt connections from your devices to your LAN?

• Should you implement an expensive and involved enterprise security solution (e.g., MobileIron)?

• Should you require that the IT Department authenticate/approve each device manually before it can be used to connect to your network?

• Should you require that all documents be synced when the device is on your LAN, or even when it is physically plugged into your computers, all of which must then run iTunes?

• Do you need access to applications other than document management, or web-based reference/resource apps? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to access all of your firm's various applications — from Elite to Concordance and everything in between?

Here's One Solution That Works Well

These questions can all seem daunting. There are no wrong answers or approaches necessarily. But some approaches and solutions are easier to implement than others, and some approaches are more or less secure.

Many firms want to use the iPad for a terminal services solution (e.g., Citrix or Microsoft's Remote Desktop Services) as a way to meet this challenge with a degree of simplicity. But what about security? If an employee loses his device, is there a window of opportunity in which a compromised device could be used to breach your network?

At Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, my team and I have developed an easy-to-implement solution that is secure, and provides full access to your application environment for your iPad users. Here's what your firm will need:

1. A Windows 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services (RDS) Server. Or a server farm if your environment could benefit from the load balancing/failover features of two or more application servers working in concert — and who couldn't really?

2. A Windows 2008 R2 Server configured as a Remote Desktop Services Gateway Server.

3. A two-factor authentication product that uses employee cell phones as physical tokens. Two options — PhoneFactor or SecurEnvoy.

4. An RDP client that supports Secure Gateways. Some possibilities include iTap RDP App for the iPad or Xtralogic Remote Desktop Client for Android, both with the Secure Gateway option, purchased from the App Store or Android Market respectively.

Security First: The Advantages of Two-Factor Authentication

So what is two-factor authentication? Two-factor authentication is based upon what you have (a digital certificate, a mobile phone, or land-line phone) and what you know (a valid login for your firm's network, and a valid password for the same). Two-factor authentication has been in use for many years (perhaps most readily recognizable in the form of an RSA SecurID token key fob), and is superior to other forms of security because it requires that you have both.

For example, if someone were to learn your password they would still be unable to connect to your firm's network without your mobile phone or a valid firm-issued digital certificate. And conversely, it is not enough simply to have the "key" (the digital certificate or cell phone) — one must also have a valid login and password pair to gain access to the network.

Using an employee's mobile phone as a physical token is an elegant way to achieve two-factor authentication. Employees will always have it with them. And use of their mobile phone to effect this authentication is as easy as (1) entering your user name and password (what you know) at the RDS Gateway, (2) answering your phone (what you have) when the service calls you to confirm the login, and (3) pressing "#" to complete the authentication process. For convenience, firm-owned laptops can be equipped with digital certificates (again, what you have) that permit access without requiring a call-back.

Install and configure the RDP client on your mobile devices
The key here is the Secure Gateway support, which permits you to specify both an externally accessible gateway (via IP or DNS), and an internal hostname for pass-through to your RDS Server or Server Farm itself once the two-factor authentication has been achieved.

This solution will work not only with iPads, but also on any Android OS tablet (Samsung Galaxy, Motorola Xoom, etc.) — so long as you purchase an RDP client app for the device that supports Secure Gateways (Xtralogic, iTap).

For that matter, any non-Windows-based remote computer (Unix, Linux, Mac) can connect using this infrastructure as well — again, so long as an RDP client that supports Secure Gateways is available (and they are).

And of course you need not worry about an RDP application when your employees use Windows PCs. With employee mobile phones serving as the "what you have" component of a two-factor authentication solution, employees can securely use any Windows computer (e.g., a kiosk computer at a conference) to remotely access your network.

Conclusion

If your firm has struggled with architecting a solution that provides the level of access to firm applications you would like to support, I think you can recognize the simplicity, security, and power of the solution provided above.

Written by Matthew Berg, Director of IT at Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C..

How to Receive BigLaw
Many large firms have good reputations for their work and bad reputations as places to work. Why? Answering this question requires digging up some dirt, but we do with the best of intentions. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, BigLaw analyzes the business practices, marketing strategies, and technologies used by the country's biggest law firms in an effort to unearth best and worst practices. The BigLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 99 articles from the past week worthy of your attention, including our Post of the Week. Here's a sample:

Nuance PaperPort Learns New Tricks in the Cloud

What You Need to Know About the Carrier IQ Scandal

Attorneys Going Solo

Lawyers Make a Case for Advertising

This issue also contains links to every article in the November/December 2011 issue of Law Technology News. Don't miss this issue or future issues.

How to Receive BlawgWorld
Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of legal technology, practice management, and law firm marketing, but not the only coverage. To stay on top of all the noteworthy articles published in blogs and other online publications you could either hire a research assistant or simply subscribe to BlawgWorld. The BlawgWorld newsletter has received rave reviews and is free. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on July 19, 2011 in our free BigLaw newsletter. Instead of reading BigLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

Many large firms use System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (SCCM), often in concert with Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), to push software updates and patches out to their server and desktop computing environment. Many even use it to deploy new operating systems.

While SCCM, if properly configured with all the appropriate levers pulled and buttons pushed, is a powerful tool for managing and manipulating the desktop and server environment, it falls short as a proactive monitoring tool of these same environments.

Enter System Center Operations Manager (SCOM).

How Does SCOM Work?

Once the server, service accounts, and database are configured (much like SCCM), SCOM has a Discovery wizard that can use the Active Directory or IP address subnets/ranges to identify new "target" computers or devices. Devices and appliances are a bit different (see below), but for computers running a Windows OS, the SCOM server can then push out the SCOM agent to these discovered computers automatically.

And then the magic happens. Once the agent is installed, it begins to monitor a myriad of data points accessible on its host — from event logs, to application states, to CPU, memory, and disk usage. And really, that is just the beginning of what SCOM can monitor and report back to you.

Microsoft's Management Packs: From Basic to Best Practice

If the SCOM agent is up and running on a given target computer, and it is able to call home, then a basic heartbeat is established. But if the target computer is a Microsoft Windows-based computer, and the appropriate "Management Pack" (downloadable for free from Microsoft) is installed on the SCOM server, then the alerts can report a whole lot more than just an up or down OS state.

The Windows 7 client agent, for example, monitors everything from boot performance to memory exhaustion analysis to shell performance to hardware and software component failures.

On the server side, when using the SQL Management Pack for example, the monitor will not only tell you that a backup failed, or let you know about a long-running SQL Agent job, but it will also let you know if your databases aren't configured according to Microsoft's Best Practices (e.g., "The auto close flag for database Northwind is not set according to best practice.")

The Exchange Management pack reports delays in SMTP queuing, log file growth, mailbox availability, etc. You get the picture.

What About Non-Microsoft Servers, Appliances, and Network Devices?

If your non-Microsoft servers, appliances, and network devices can be configured with Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), you can create your own device Management packs (if you are familiar with the data being served up by a given device), or download or purchase the non-Microsoft Management Packs pre-configured to give you access to all of the minutiae detail that the SNMP agent on a given device provides.

As with Microsoft SCOM agents, SNMP-managed devices operate via a software agent installed on each device, the sole purpose of which is to report on device-specific health data. And if it's a name-brand, enterprise class product (e.g., Cisco routers, EMC SANs), you can be sure that every major manufacturer provides SNMP ready to go on all of their shipped products.

When freebie Management Packs are not available (e.g., VMWare), you can buy them from companies that know how to "speak" your server/appliance/device's SNMP language. Some examples:

Veeam Software's nworks Management Pack for VMware

Jalasoft's Smart Management Pack for VMware VirtualCenter

Bridge Ways' System Center Ops Manager

Or you can browse for your product in the SCOM Management Pack Marketplace.

Conclusion

Whether you work for a massive, multi-site international law firm, or a midsize law firm with one, two, or three locations, SCOM is an invaluable tool for staying on top of the health of your firm's computing environment. With SCOM, you can manage your environment as proactively as possible. Don't wait for your users to tell you that you have a problem. Get SCOM up and running and you'll know before they do!

Written by Matthew Berg, Director of IT at Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C..

How to Receive BigLaw
Many large firms have good reputations for their work and bad reputations as places to work. Why? Answering this question requires digging up some dirt, but we do with the best of intentions. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, BigLaw analyzes the business practices, marketing strategies, and technologies used by the country's biggest law firms in an effort to unearth best and worst practices. The BigLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on July 12, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

Who's on your list? You know which list I mean.

Deep within the folds and confines of your LinkedIn connections or Outlook contacts or Facebook friends or wherever exists the hub of all your business relationships, there is a small and very exclusive group — the people whose support and friendship has made the difference between success and failure for you.

Maybe you call them referral sources or key clients or just friends. What you call them and where you store them is less important than that they exist in the first place. I'm going to refer to them as VIPs for the sake of brevity.

Over the years, first as a practicing lawyer and later as a practice management advisor, I've heard many lawyers and marketing gurus refer to the need to compile a core group of 10, 15, or 20 people who comprise a professional's list of VIPs — the folks who help you build your practice and make your business world go round.

Top of Mind

It's not enough to build this group of VIPs though. You need to maintain contact with these heavy hitters — enough so you always remain top of mind when they need your skills, but not so much that you annoy them. Remembering enough detail about their lives that you demonstrate sincere interest, but not so much that you become creepy. (It's a fine line — remembering their kids' birthdays is okay, but remembering their spouse's yoga schedule is creepy.)

But with all the effluvia and ephemera that pass through the transoms of our minds and Facebook walls, there's not as much gray matter to remember the important stuff as we would hope.

CRM to the Rescue

CRM or client relationship management (companies outside the legal sector use the word "customer" instead) software can help. Long the province of salespeople, CRM software helps you manage your VIPs by enabling you to stay in regular touch with them, and reminding you of the important details of your relationship with them. It does this by:

1. Serving as the repository for all key information about your VIPs.

2. Reminding you when you interacted last with a VIP and what you talked about.

3. Prompting you to follow up with them in the timeframe you choose.

I realize this publication is called SmallLaw and not Selling Power, but don't let the sales origins of CRM software get you wrapped around the axle. When I was in college, I worked as a file clerk for a sole practitioner in a little hippie town in upstate New York. His "CRM" system consisted of a bunch of stuff typed on index cards. I know because I filed the cards.

Some CRM Options

When you start thinking about using CRM in your practice, it's important to recall that the end goal is strong relationships with your group of VIPs. Don't miss the forest for the trees, and become consumed by finding the CRM software with the most widgets, doodads, and gizmos. Find the product that best helps you connect with your VIPs.

Here's a test — if you are spending more time curating your VIP details in your CRM program than you are having lunch with your VIPs, you're on the wrong track.

As I've mentioned in previous SmallLaw columns, I'm a bit of techno-gadfly — and my experiments with CRM are no exception. I've tried 800 pound gorilla Salesforce (which TechnoLawyer uses), some more streamlined options that I liked (Highrise and BatchBook), and one or two forgettable options that ride on top of Outlook.

I can heartily recommend all three of the options I just listed. If you are in the market for CRM, they are each worth a look and all have free trials. The truth is, though, I don't use any of them. I found my personal CRM nirvana someplace else.

Back to the Inbox With Xobni

Covered several times in TechnoLawyer NewsWire, Xobni is a well-known Outlook add-on that helps users draw more functionality out of their email programs. I tried it years ago and was not terribly impressed — I don't keep enough email in Outlook for it to be particularly helpful so I cast it on the scrap heap of my discarded tech toys (if you use Outlook, check out that version).

Recently though, Xobni released Xobni for Gmail (currently in beta), which has provided the answer to my CRM needs. It pulls from all my contacts in Gmail, as well as their LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter information. It provides a graphical "relationship summary" of the frequency of our email exchanges and topics, including other people commonly included in our exchanges. And because in Gmail I keep all of my old messages, it draws on an unbelievably extensive history of information with each contact.

Best of all, though, it does all of this (courtesy of a Google Chrome extension) right in my Gmail inbox automatically without my needing to go to some other place to interact with it. It richly contextualizes my email exchanges when I need it and gets out of the way when I don't.

Xobni for Gmail does not have a task component built in, but that works for me anyway. I'm a bit of a Getting Things Done nerd (GTD — another three-letter acronym for a future SmallLaw column) so I use other tools for my task list.

Experiment for Yourself

Don't take my word for it. Try Xobni for Gmail or Outlook, Salesforce, Highrise, and Batchbook for yourself. See if one of them helps you keep track of your VIPs. They're your VIPs, after all. Shouldn't you treat them like that acronym?

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 October 11, 2011 in our free BigLaw newsletter. Instead of reading BigLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

Does your email archiving solution leave you wanting more? Tired of dealing with an Outlook plug-in that doesn't play nice? With archived email and attachments that are sometimes available and sometimes not (usually when you need them the most … like in a client meeting)? With the need to perform two separate searches, often via two different interfaces, to search your "live" email and your archived email?

On the administrative side, are you tired of backing up two separate environments, administering your email archive through a separate admin console, possibly one without the most intuitive knobs, dials and levers for making it behave and perform?

Have you considered eliminating your third party archiving solution altogether, and implementing Exchange 2010's native Personal Archive?

The thought may seem daunting when you let yourself dwell on all of the problems you encountered implementing your third-party archiving solution in the first place, and when you extrapolate the problems you likely will have moving your messages to Exchange 2010's native archive. But there are a number of very sound reasons, from compliance, to recovered software licensing fees, to improved administrator and user experience, that merit serious consideration.

What Is Personal Archive and Why Should You Care?

Personal Archive is a new product name from Microsoft that is entirely unrelated to PST files. In fact, Exchange 2010 has tools for importing any old PST files you might have lying around. Also, Exchange 2010 Archiving requires an Exchange Enterprise Server License and Enterprise CALs sufficient for all user mailboxes using the technology.

Microsoft espouses the ability of native archiving to achieve compliance through the following means: "preservation, discovery, control, protection, reporting, and availability."

At first blush, it appears as though Exchange 2010's toolbox of features could go a fair way toward achieving compliance if used properly in the context of a business compliance policy and practice that is at least moderately disciplined. And yes — Microsoft is careful not to make too grandiose a set of claims about Exchange's native compliance-supporting features being a silver bullet/complete solution for all your compliance needs. But really, there's a lot here.

Some highlights of features that support compliance (and which provide general utility):

• Multi-Mailbox Search Support: Configurable through the use of roles to be a process which can be managed outside of IT.

• Support for Litigation/Legal Hold: Once applied, all items which are deleted are searchable/recoverable for the duration of the hold.

• Content Retention: The ability to specify retentions periods and rules for both production and archival message data which can be different or the same across both environments.

• Dynamic Email Signature Blocks: Often required for compliance (e.g., "this is not tax advice" and other such disclaimers) using data (including logos) stored in the Active Directory.

• Protection/Message Encryption: Transport Layer Security (TLS), Opportunistic TLS, integrated content filtering, SSL, and more.

• Auditing: Permits determination of whether users have access to and when they accessed certain email folders and messages. It can also report on any multi-mailbox searches that have been performed, etc.

• Built-in High Availability (HA): Functions provide for the reliability that many compliance standards require, saving your firm from the potential for costly fines and a loss of reputation in the event that critical discovery data is not recoverable.

User Benefits

And the top three user benefits are:

1. No Outlook plug-ins to crash.

2. All email messages (live or archived) are searchable via a single interface using Outlook or webmail.

3. Along with Exchange 2010's increase in the number of messages permissible in the critical Exchange folders (Inbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items), native archiving also eliminates the need for users manually to prune and file their aging messages. The personal archive automatically creates duplicate copies of a given user's mail folder structure within the archive, and moves older messages to the corresponding archive folder (moving anything older than two years to the archive by default, but configurable based upon your firm's business rules).

Administrator Benefits

And the top five administrator benefits are:

1. Simplification of email backups and improved tools for managing retention policies.

2. Simplification of email administration through consolidation of all email and archived email under a single, unified architecture.

3. Improved access to critical administrative functions related to ongoing maintenance, operations, and archiving via webmail.

4. The provision of a native, high availability solution that performs continuous replication of mailbox data ("live" and archival) from a production mail server environment to a backup mail server environment and that simplifies and automates failover of mail services and/or data on the fly.

5. The ability to store production mailbox data on high performance data storage devices (e.g., SANs with SSDs), and either or both backup HA and/or Personal Archive data on cheaper/lower performance disk — without losing any of the seamlessness of the HA solution or of the Personal Archive being always available alongside your live message store.

Well, Should You?

Yes. Exchange 2010's native archiving solution is ready to replace your third party email archiving solution. But is your firm willing — and prepared — to do what it takes to wrestle that costly and complicated monkey from its back?

Written by Matthew Berg, Director of IT at Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C..

How to Receive BigLaw
Many large firms have good reputations for their work and bad reputations as places to work. Why? Answering this question requires digging up some dirt, but we do with the best of intentions. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, BigLaw analyzes the business practices, marketing strategies, and technologies used by the country's biggest law firms in an effort to unearth best and worst practices. The BigLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL Answers contains these articles:

Harry Steinmetz, My Law Firm's Switch To Macs

Bryan Sims, How I Use Paper And What I Keep On Paper In My Paperless Law Office

Caren Schwartz, Review: CrashPlan, Gillware For Cloud Backup; Replacing Quicken

Ronald Cappuccio, Review: PHONEslips 12 For Client Relationship Management

Don't miss this issue — or any future issues.

How to Receive TL Answers
Do you believe in the wisdom of crowds? In TL Answers, TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers. This newsletter's popularity stems from the relevance of the questions and answers to virtually everyone in the legal profession. The TL Answers newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a new document assembly program (see article below), an iPad practice management system, a cloud-based document syncing and sharing service, an iPad note-taking app, and an iOS printing utility. Don't miss the next issue.

Simple Assembly of Complex Legal Documents

Legal documents are among the world's most complex. They often require specific layouts, paragraph numbering, tables of contents, etc. And that's just the formatting. The content is equally complex (that's why you get paid the big bucks). This fact explains why so many companies offer document automation software. Ironically, many of these expert systems are complex in their own right, making the adoption rate lower than that of other types of legal software such as practice management systems. One company has attempted to buck the complexity trend while simultaneously rolling out new versions at a furious pace.

Pathagoras 2012 … in One Sentence
Pathagoras 2012 is a document assembly program that works with Microsoft Word.

The Killer Feature
Pathagoras has escaped much of the complexity of its competitors by using Plain Text Variables that you can see within each template rather than hidden fields, and by not requiring a heavy duty database.

That said, databases serve a purpose — for example mail merges. Whether you store such information in a simple Excel spreadsheet or a relational database, Pathagoras 2012's new Instant Database module can connect to just about any database so that you can populate documents automatically.

Other Notable Features
Another new feature — Document Packages — enables you to generate a collection of related documents for a task that you often perform. The templates in these packages behave like other Pathagoras templates for document assembly purposes except that you can fill all the variables across the documents simultaneously.

"Recently, a user wanted a way to select a package of documents that would be automatically saved in a client's folder," President and Chief Programmer of Pathagoras Roy Lasris told us. "We didn't yet have that feature, but we liked it. So we programmed it."

Now officially out of beta, Pathagoras' bar code scanning enables you to insert clauses into documents using bar codes, which you may prefer if you're not a proficient typist.

Other new features include improved search technology, improved table controls, faster access to Pathagoras' major functions thanks to a new navigation system, and resizable screens.

What Else Should You Know?
Pathagoras 2012 sells for $379 for the first license and $250 per license thereafter. Volume discounts are available (e.g., $799 for a three-pack). Alternatively, you can pay $25 per month or $125 for six months rather than license the software if you prefer the software subscription model, which includes all new versions. Learn more about Pathagoras 2012.

How to Receive TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TL NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The newsletter's innovative articles enable lawyers and law office administrators to quickly understand the function of a product, and zero in on its most important features. The TL NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.