TechnoLawyer

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:

Sixth Annual Holiday Gift Guide for Lawyers (2010 Edition)

How All the Great New Stuff in iOS 4.2 Works

Are Law Firms Morphing Into Managers of Legal Providers?

Dear Law Firms: Stop Hiding Your Blogs

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.

Today's issue of Fat Friday contains these articles:

Larry Bodine, ABA Proposed Ethics Rules to Regulate Online Lawyer Marketing

Harry Steinmetz, Review: TimeSolv Pricing and Conflict Checking

Michele Gressel, Tell-Tale Sign of a Bad Client

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 Answers to Questions contains these articles:

Lori Iwan, Starting A Law Firm With A $2,500 Budget

Jeff Stouse, How To Decide If You Should Use Multiple Monitors

Brett Owens, Review: GoToMeeting For Online Meetings

Dan Meyer, Review: Philips Pocket Memo 9500 And Olympus DS-5000

Kristin LaMont, Tip: Offline Access To Web Services

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

How to Receive Answers to Questions
Do you believe in the wisdom of crowds? In Answers to Questions, 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 Answers to Questions newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers a document assembly and document management add-on for Microsoft Office (see article below), a wireless Bluetooth speaker, a screen capture utility for Macs, a mobile word processor, and a project and task management app for iPad and iPhone. Don't miss the next issue.

Document Management Inside Microsoft Office

Bill Gates was raised by a lawyer, but he clearly didn't have lawyers in mind when his company created Microsoft Office. Nonetheless, this iconic software suite has become a fixture in most law firms — especially Outlook and Word. As a result, an ecosystem of legal software products has arisen around Microsoft Office, including document assembly and document management systems. One company not too far from Microsoft's campus has built these features into Microsoft Office rather than go the integrated product route.

Snapdone Version 6 … in One Sentence
Snapdone Version 6 adds document assembly and document management capabilities to Microsoft Office.

The Killer Feature
Microsoft Office excels (no pun intended) at document creation. But document automation and management? Not so much. Snapdone essentially snaps a document assembly and document management system onto Microsoft Office. The company reports that even newbies can get up and running in minutes.

The new version offers significantly enhanced document management features. When you use the Snapsave button on Microsoft Office's Ribbon, you trigger Snapdone's document management system. You can then apply identifying information about the document such as client/matter and type. Snapdone automatically names documents with a ten-digit ID code and stamps the document with this number.

Snapdone creates a customizable folder structure to best suit your firm. In addition to finding documents by browsing, you can use Snapdone's Boolean search engine. You can narrow searches by author, client, matter, document type, and more.

"Snapdone Version 6 boosts the Microsoft Office comfort-zone into a true document management system that also integrates a time-tested document creation tool-kit for small and midsized law firms," Snapdone President Scott Campbell told us. "We transformed the wish lists of long-time users into an affordable reality."

Other Notable Features
Snapdone's new document management system functionality works with Outlook, enabling you to save client-related email messages alongside your documents.

Snapdone integrates Outlook contacts with Word for document assembly purposes, eliminating having to type or even copy and paste names and addresses into letters, fax cover sheets, memos, pleadings, envelopes, labels, etc. The Caption Bank enables everyone in your firm to use pre-formatted templates and boilerplate language for these documents. For example, with Snapdone everyone at your firm can have their own personalized letterhead.

Snapdone mirrors certain functions in Microsoft Word with an emphasis on making them simpler to use. For example, Snapnumbers and SnapTOC provide legal-friendly paragraph numbering and table of contents creation respectively. Snapdone also offers a streamlined mail merge function.

What Else Should You Know?
Snapdone includes centralized administrative tools for setting it up, managing users, and adding and updating templates. Snapdone works with Microsoft Office 97 and later, including Office 2010. Snapdone costs $800 for the first computer. Each additional computer license costs $200. The license fee includes installation, customization, basic forms, and one month of free telephone support. Learn more about Snapdone Version 6.

How to Receive TechnoLawyer NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The "In One Sentence" section describes each product in one sentence, and the "Killer Feature" section describes each product's most compelling feature. The TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to TechnoFeature: Does "WordPerfect 15" make you feel old? No need to worry thanks to vanity naming, a close cousin of vanity sizing. Just call it WordPerfect X5. This new version contains all the favorite features such as Reveal Codes plus many new features. Should you squeeze into this new word processor or just stick with what you've got? In this TechnoFeature Houston lawyers Al Harrison and Randy Claridge take WordPerfect X5 for a spin to see how it stacks up against the competition. From PDF conversion to table of contents and authorities, look no further for the definitive legal review of WordPerfect X5.

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. It's in TechnoFeature that you'll find our oft-quoted formal product reviews and accompanying TechnoScore ratings. The TechnoFeature newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on November 8, 2010 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

At a time when law firms and their clients seek to reduce expenses, the option to conduct meetings online, rather than in person, has evolved from a novelty to a viable cost-saving opportunity. Of course, a standard telephone conference has long served as a cost-effective way to communicate. But it has limitations — particularly when more than a handful of parties join the call or when the participants need to jointly review documents. Web meetings work better for these more complex scenarios. But which service best suits small law firms?

Battle of the Web Conferencing Titans

The beauty of Web conferencing lies in the ability of the meeting moderator — or any designated participant for that matter — to share his or her computer screen with the other participants. For example, if you want to walk your client through an agreement, you can open the document on your computer and "share" the screen with your client. The client sees the document on his or her own screen within the Web conferencing application's window.

Of the many commercial online meeting services available, the two leaders in the field are Citrix's GoToMeeting and Cisco's WebEx. At the most basic level, GoToMeeting and WebEx offer the same general service. One party initiates a Web meeting from a computer and invites others to join via email or calendar invitation. The invitees then join the Web meeting either by clicking a link in the invitation or by entering a meeting ID in their Web browser. The service launches a small application on the user's computer — which in most cases does not even require any system administrator privileges — that connects the participants. Both services enable each participant to choose between communicating through their computer's microphone and speakers or headset or by telephone.

Beyond the basics, there are some notable differences between GoToMeeting and WebEx. In my opinion, these differences make WebEx the better choice for small law firms. First, WebEx provides video conferencing, a feature currently absent from GoToMeeting. Second, in addition to screen sharing, WebEx enables you to upload, share, and annotate individual documents. Third, all features of the WebEx service are available to both Windows and Mac users, whereas the Mac version of GoToMeeting is missing some important features such as document annotation and the ability to display only a portion of your computer screen.

In terms of price, both services offer a single-user plan for a flat fee of $49 per month that includes an unlimited number of Web conferences. Under the flat fee plan, WebEx allows up to 25 participants per meeting, whereas GoToMeeting limits the number of attendees to 15. At the enterprise level, both companies offer multi-user plans that you can customize to suit your law firm's particular needs.

Mobile Web Conferencing

Both GoToMeeting and WebEx have ventured into the realm of mobile Web conferencing by releasing apps for Apple's iPad (and in WebEx's case, for the iPhone too.) Here, WebEx again excels.

Although the GoToMeeting app provides the mobile participant with the audio and the ability to observe the moderator's screen, it doesn't provide any of the text messaging functionality available in GoToMeeting's desktop service. The audio levels also tend to be much lower, the video appears to stutter a bit, and the app lacks a button to exit the conference.

By contrast, the WebEx application includes the text messaging features, the audio sounds loud and clear, and the on-screen images are noticeably less choppy.

Neither app enables the viewer to take control of the moderator's screen.

Conclusion

GoToMeeting and WebEx offer lawyers an economical alternative to in-person meetings. The technology works as advertised. Going forward, we can expect more functionality on the desktop and especially mobile devices.

Written by Dan Friedlander of LawOnMyPhone.com.

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.

Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 104 articles from the past week worthy of your attention, including our Post of the Week. Here's a sample:

How Email Apps Will Help You Learn to Love Your Inbox Again

The Traveling Lawyer

The Nintendo Law Firm

Lawyers Blase About Changing Dynamics of Legal Profession

This issue also contains links to every article in the November/December 2010 issue of Law Practice and the November 2010 issue of Law Practice Today. 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 November 1, 2010 in our free BigLaw newsletter.

Apple's App Store offers more than 200,000 apps for the iPhone (primarily) and iPad. Apps run the gamut from games to social media clients to sophisticated document editors to flashlights. Yet there is a shortage of law-related apps, especially those developed by large law firms. In future BigLaw columns, I'll discuss the app development process as well as enterprise apps for internal use at large firms. Today, let's explore law firms apps as marketing tools.

Ignore Smartphone App User Psychographics at Your Peril

The iPhone — now in the hands of over 30 million users, many of them corporate executives — seems like an ideal platform for large law firms to advertise their legal services. However, most firms have not yet released an app.

App development is not cheap. Even the simplest of iPhone apps costs around $20,000 to develop — and that's just to write the code. The price can quickly escalate to upwards of $50,000 once you include the costs to maintain the code, house and run the servers necessary to feed information to the app, and the need to keep the app up to date with Apple's iOS operating system releases. While you can spend less to develop an app, the cost savings is usually apparent in the resulting quality and utility of the app.

Despite the high costs of entry, some law firms — big and small — have ventured into mobile advertising by releasing iPhone apps. Did being first to market help these firms? Probably not. Most of these apps don't offer significant value, which means that those who download them quickly abandon them.

Mobile industry analysts and Apple's own software engineers have stated that the most successful mobile apps are those that do one thing and do it well. Generally, users of mobile technology have a short attention span. They want to click on an app, use it, and move on. They don't want to spend ten minutes drilling through attorney bios, case law updates, and legal news it as if they were sitting at their desktop computer viewing a Web site.

This psychographic profile of a typical app user explains why the current iPhone offerings by law firms have failed. Most law firm apps consist of simplified regurgitations of their Web site. They try to squeeze too much information onto a tiny screen and do not offer anything to motivate users to return to the app a second time. So, what should your app contain?

The Recipe for Law Firm Smartphone App Success

To succeed, advertising your law firm should be incidental to the primary purpose of your mobile app — not the other way around. Ideally, it should offer frequently-updated information or a tool that makes users want to return to the app again and again. Also, incorporating game dynamics can help make a useful app even more addictive.

Morrison & Foerster's free MoFo2Go app is probably the best of the law firm apps currently available. In addition to attorney bios, legal news, press releases, and firm newsletters, the app also provides some entertainment value by including a small labyrinth game. Although a step in the right direction, the game is not compelling enough to persuade users to return.

Obviously, developing an app that corporate executives download in droves is easier said than done, but not impossible. Eventually, a large law firm will release such an app. It may as well be your firm.

Written by Dan Friedlander of LawOnMyPhone.com.

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 November 1, 2010 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

I've often heard lawyers say "I would have switched from this lousy program years ago if only I hadn't invested so much time and data into it." If you haven't said it yourself, you have likely read many such complaints in TechnoLawyer not to mention elsewhere on the Internet. When a particular program is driving you nuts, how do you rationally analyze your options? Or as I like to say, is the grass really greener or just astroturf?

Analyze Your Existing Software

As a first step, make a list of the top 10 issues that drive you crazy. Then divide them into the following categories:

1. Deal-Breakers: What functionality does your firm needs that the program doesn't provide? For example, if you recently acquired clients that require electronic billing, and your billing software doesn't feature electronic billing, you have a serious problem. Issues like these fall under the "deal-breaker" category.


2. Nice to Have: What functions do you wish the software included? The company says its software is "WAD" (that's Working As Designed), but you think it is WAPD or even WAVPD (Working as Very Poorly Designed).


3. Workflow: You wish the software included a keyboard shortcut for a given function but it doesn't. Or, the software requires three steps to do something you wish you could complete in one step.


4. Bugs: The software doesn't work as advertised, and you can't get the software company to admit to a "known issue" (aka bug).

Rate Your Problems

Next, create a point system to rate your dislikes. Assign numbers to categories — say, 5 for deal breakers, 1 for workflow issues, etc. Then add up your numbers: if you come up with a high point total, you may have good reason to ditch the software. But if you only have a low point total you are probably being irrational.

Training can solve certain problems. Most software companies from Microsoft on down find that a high percentage of requests for "new features" are for functions already included in the program. Or as I tell clients: If you find yourself thinking "I wish the program could do X," call me because it probably can.

Comparison Shopping

If you still think the grass is greener, create a second list of the 10 features you most like about your existing software or features it has that a replacement must have. When evaluating new software, ignore the vendor checklists. Use your like and dislike lists as a basis for comparison shopping.

Obviously you want to keep all the features you like and avoid features you dislike. Shopping gets complicated when circumstances force you to make a tradeoff. Are you willing to give up a preferred feature to fix a particular problem? If the proposed new software will not remedy your existing problems or if you have to give up too much, switching may not be a good idea (remember, making the switch is very expensive).

What About My Data?

If you decide to switch, you'll likely ask, "What about my data?" First, ask whether you need to convert your data and move it into the new program. How often do you actually consult items (appointments, notes, etc.) more than six months old? If you handle complex litigation, your answer might be "All the time." If you primarily practice real estate, your answer might be "almost never."

If you leave a "legacy" installation of the old program that's still accessible by one or two people but is not active, after six months or so you will find you hardly ever need it.

If conversion is necessary, make sure your new software can import all your data and ask how much it'll cost. You should be able to convert most of your data — although billing systems typically do not convert historical data.

Conclusion

Years ago — in Atlanta, I believe — folks frustrated with intractable technology could take their old computers to a shooting range and blast away their frustrations. Talk about catharsis! While yelling and screaming may help you blow off some steam when you're facing a technology challenge, it's not very productive in the long run. Whether you decide to fight or switch, quantifying the problems you face as described above should help you put these issues into perspective.

Written by John Heckman of Heckman Consulting.

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.

Today's issue of Fat Friday contains these articles:

Michael Kelly, Review: My IPad Experience Thus Far

Thomas Stirewalt, Review: Microsoft Office 2010

Mark Peneguy, Review: PCLaw Annual Maintenance Plan Plus Discount Tip

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.