TechnoLawyer

Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers document assembly software with built-in knowledge management (see article below), a document archiving system, and a practice management and electronic billing system for corporate legal departments. Don't miss the next issue.

Shift Your Document Drafting Into Overdrive
By Peter R. Olson

Lawyers will never admit it even behind closed doors, but the profession's dirty little secret is that much of time billed during document drafting involves non-legal work like chasing down templates and formatting documents. Eliminating these inefficiencies can boost revenue in the case of law firms (charge the same for less work) and reduce costs in the case of corporate legal departments. But how?

Ixio Legal QShift Version 2.0 ... in One Sentence
Ixio Legal QShift 2.0 is a clause-based document assembly system that automates document drafting by enabling everyone in your office to use your best templates along with alternative clauses and instructions on how and when to use them.

The Killer Feature
Ixio Legal QShift captures the knowledge associated with each document. It keeps track of who drafted it and when, the best practice template used as the source and where it's stored, and most importantly why the clauses in the document were selected.

By capturing the author's thought processes while drafting the document, Ixio Legal QShift creates a contemporaneous log of the author's expressed intention — helpful if questions, problems, or disputes later arise.

Other Notable Features
When creating templates, you can elect to make clauses optional or required. In alternative clause situations, you can designate one as the default, and also create rules such as "choose at least one," "choose only one," etc. To further help those using the templates, you can annotate templates and clauses.

Ixio Legal QShift enables you to create a consistent look to documents, eliminating the need for your colleagues to waste time formatting. The template-based system also makes it easy to update templates firm-wide since you need only make the changes in one place. There's no need to worry about several different versions floating around the office.

If drafters have a question, they can email the author from within Ixio Legal QShift. These dialogues are saved along with the annotations for the benefit of others. Similarly, you can use this email capture technology with opposing counsel to save time when renewing a contract or negotiating multiple contracts for similar deals with the same parties.

What Else Should You Know?
Ixio Legal QShift requires Windows 2000 or XP. Ixio licenses the software on a subscription basis and also offers template creation and training services. An Author License (create and use templates) sells for $99 per user per month, whereas a Drafter License (use templates) sells for $59 per user per month. The licenses include upgrades and technical support. Learn more about Ixio Legal QShift 2.0.

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 September 4, 2008 to Answers to Questions: David Giuffrida shares some tips for saving and filing case-related email plus he reviews MessageSave, Matthew Cockman reviews SherWeb's hosted Exchange service, Ron Murphy reviews TrialSmart trial presentation software for the Mac, Edward Still reviews Eudora, and Douglas Thomas explains the difference between Word and Excel for calculations. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on 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 September 5, 2008 to Fat Friday: Ay Uaxe shares his insights on the single most important ingredient for a successful legal career, Scott J. Sachs discusses his encounters with opposing counsel clueless about electronic discovery, Gregory Harper shares his experiences with Dell laptops, Tom Trottier rebuts Ross Kodner's claim that document management is the killer legal app, and Jason Kohlmeyer criticizes those who complain about Microsoft Word. 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 September 2, 2008 to TechnoFeature: With so many ways to market your firm, which vehicles should you pursue? In this article, law firm marketing specialist Stephen Fairley shares ten points to consider when creating a marketing action plan. Do you know your Ideal Target Market? Can everyone in you firm explain your Unique Competitive Advantage? If not, read Stephen's ten tips to give yourself an edge and improve your marketing mojo.

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 August 29, 2008 to Answers to Questions: Frank Feilmeyer shares several options for securing files on a network, Steve Loewy reviews CryptMagic and Passwords Plus for password management on a BlackBerry, and Donald Diamond reviews the Tritton USB 2.0 DVI Video Adapter. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on 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 August 28, 2008 to Answers to Questions: David Hudgens explains why you should consider a larger second monitor or LCD TV instead of a third monitor, Fredric Gruder reviews Mozy for online backup, and Sandy Hagman shares more Paste Special tips for Word 2003 and Office 2007. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on 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 August 27, 2008 to Answers to Questions: Nerino Petro discusses how to get your hands on a digital recorder with a 4-in-1 slide switch, Daniel Holt shares his file naming dos and don'ts, and James Kamp reviews Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred and the Olympus DS-50 digital recorder. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on 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.

Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers a culling solution for electronic discovery documents (see article below), a network-ready multifunction inkjet printer, and an online service in which your clients can store their estate planning documents and you can earn referral revenue. Don't miss the next issue.

Make a Mountain Into a Molehill
By Peter R. Olson

Your latest case involves 200GB of data. Piece of cake, right? After all, it can all fit on a cheap $80 hard drive. Guess again. That could easily mean 15 million pages and hundreds of thousands of dollars in processing costs. Now, how exactly can you and your team get through that amount of data on deadline while justifying the costs?

Discovery360 DataMapper ... in One Sentence
InterLegis' Discovery360 DataMapper module enables you to cull irrelevant and duplicate documents prior to full processing, thus saving time and money.

The Killer Feature
Used by both corporate counsel and their outside counsel, Discovery360 DataMapper saves money by eliminating irrelevant documents before you spend time actively reviewing documents. By creating a smaller collection of documents to review, it also reduces the risk of inadvertently producing privileged information.

Discovery360 DataMapper can reduce irrelevant documents in your dataset by 20-80% prior to processing. The extent of the reduction depends on the nature of your document collection.

Other Notable Features
Traditional culling processes typically involve manual labor and don't afford much flexibility. Discovery360 DataMapper takes a new approach by enabling you to run as many "what if" scenarios as you want before you commit to a particular set of documents to process. You can even generate reports to further explore the various options.

To help you with this task, Discovery360 DataMapper employs InterLegis' visual analytics tools. For example, you can extract and index metadata and text from native files (discovery documents in their original formats), and visually group them by concept as well as search them. Discovery360 DataMapper also features on-the-fly de-duplication technology so that you can eliminate duplicate documents.

Once you've settled on your final dataset, you can "seamlessly" load the selected files into your preferred review environment, including of course Discovery360 Reviewer.

What Else Should You Know?
Discovery360 users can use Discovery360 DataMapper at no additional charge. Learn more about Discovery360 DataMapper.

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.

Originally published on August 18, 2008 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

I've been thinking about what to write this month. I could cover the proliferation of location-based networks (Brightkite, Loopt), or the surge of applications simultaneously living on the desktop and in the browser (Twhirl, TweetDeck). And of course, there's the iPhone 3G, which has helped liberate social networks and become an important new platform for application development.

But not every development in recent weeks occurred online.

This summer marked the first time in five years that I would not serve as chair of the practice management committee at the DuPage County Bar Association. To commemorate the event, I had a dustup last week with the new chair, a nice enough guy who politely warned me to stay the hell out of his way.

I guess now that I'd built up the committee and nearly sacrificed my practice and marriage in the process, it was time for someone else to take over. I was always the loudmouth kid at the bar association's grown-ups table. Now I was old news — look for me on the next episode of Where Are They Now? after the segment on Mindy Cohn.

Which got me thinking.

Bar associations will always be social clubs. They never have, and never will, give up their secrets or focus on merit, innovation, or transparency. That would undermine their power base, their cash flow, and the reason for their existence, which is to legitimize their members. Think about it — bar associations exist to congratulate their members for being ... part of the bar association.

It's a brilliant system, and like the profession itself it thrives on being exclusive and mysterious, but most of all it suppresses dissent or disruptive ideas. After all, if lawyers could form working groups, share information with the public, trade experiences with each other, or collaborate to save time and money without the need for bar associations, there would be no need for ... bar associations.

Could small firms and sole practitioners band together to mount a united, realistic threat to big law supremacy? With the advent of online tools, mobile devices, and cheap hardware, this scenario could occur in the right environment.

To get from here to there, I present this modest proposal for small firm lawyers — let's apply a sliver of our collective intelligence, numbers, vision, and money to secure a brighter future. Thus, let's:

1. Disband state and county bar associations.
2. Eliminate state-based regulation of lawyers.
3. Adopt a nationwide civil-law-style system.
4. Abolish state bar exams in favor of a national one.
5. Measure and regulate bar passage by population.
6. Mandate apprenticeships, public service, and CLE.
7. Mandate periodic retesting of lawyers.
8. Require LexisNexis and Westlaw to provide free legal research.

It's not a perfect proposal, but I'm working on it. You got a better one? Where's Jonathan Swift when you need him?

Written by Mazyar M. Hedayat of M. Hedayat & Associates, P.C.

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 August 21, 2008 to Answers to Questions: Diane Nelson reviews Adobe Acrobat Connect for Webinars and online conferencing, Sharon Kirts explains how she uses a number of applications (Time Matters, Timeslips, HotDocs, etc.) as a single system in her small firm, Connie Brazeau shares her experience hiring a consultant to help set up Amicus Attorney, Sharon Taylor explains how to configure OmniPage Pro to scan documents for editing in WordPerfect, and Carlton Barnes writes in with an update on Copernic Desktop Search pricing. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on 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.