Does It Compute?

The Cost of Not Having E-mail Retention Policies

In a settlement announced yesterday by the regulatory authority for brokerage firms, Morgan Stanley agreed to pay $12.5 million to resolve charges that it failed to produce e-mail in arbitration cases and falsely claimed that the messages were lost in the Sept. 11 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.  It turns out that the messages were archived at other locations and could have been retrieved.

This comes on top of a $15 million fine in February 2006 to resolve charges it had failed to produce e-mail relating to investigations into initial public offerings and analyst research.

While the fines are commensurate with the size of the company, nevertheless it again offers stark evidence of the need for adequate e-mail backup and retention policies. Several court cases have also resulted in multi-million dollar penalties for not adequately responding to requests for the production of e-mails.

Advanced Search in PCLaw 9

Version 9 of the software formerly known as PCLaw has introduced advanced searches for some frequently used reports. This feature, taken from the advanced search in TimeMatters, lets you specify a number of additional parameters when doing a search. Thus, if a lawyer wants to list his time for the month, the easiest way is simply to list the time in the register. But lets say you want to see your time not counting certain categories, such as contingency or pro bono work.

With PCLaw 9 you can define a report that will let you do this.  To date, this feature has been added only to a small number of reports - Client Fees Listing, Trust Listing, Receivables by Client and Time Listing. Most of these are also the reports that let you modify the layout to a greater extent than previously possible.  Hopefully this feature will be extended to other reports as well.

Worldox - Use Document Retention to Automate Deletions

Many firms restrict users ability to delete files in Worldox. This is both to prevent errors (whoops! I didn’t mean to do that!!) and for security purposes.

However, users rightly want to be able to create temporary documents that they need only for a while and then can be deleted. I therefore generally create a document type called “delete.” Users can assign a document to this doc type, and the administrator sweeps the system every month or so, does a search for the “delete” document type and deletes them.

With document retention, this process can be automated.  Assign the document type “delete” a retention period of, say, 4 weeks (so that people can change their minds). Then, schedule the indexer to do an archive/delete sweep once a week or so. The documents will be automatically deleted.

Stop Mousing Around - Word's Keystroke Shortcuts

Most of Word’s shortcut keys are the ones that are standard in most Windows programs (Microsoft did define the standard, after all).

These include

Ctrl-B; Ctrl-I; Ctrl-U  for bold, italics and underscore respectively. These are toggles. Ctrl-B once turns on Bold, Ctrl-B again turns it off.

Ctrl-O        Open a document
Ctrl-N        New document
Ctrl-S        Save a document
F12        Save As

Ctrl-F4    Exit a document
Alt-F4        Exit the program
Ctrl-P        Print a document (note: if you click on the icon, the document just prints; if you hit Ctrl-P you can select printers and options.)

Ctrl-Hyphen    Hard Hyphen (won’t break at the end of a line)

Ctrl-T        Hanging left indent (margin release)
Ctrl-M    Indent the current paragraph one tab stop

Word 2007

Word 2007 retains most of the old shortcuts.  In addition, if you tap the Alt key, the shortcut keys available appear on the various functions of the Ribbon .

Stop Mousing Around - PCLaw's Keystroke Shortcuts

PCLaw does not have the myriad of shortcut keys that a word processor may have. However, it lets you customize the “Favorites” window with the functions you most commonly use. Since PCLaw returns to the last window you were on, if you work from the Favorites screen, you have one-click icons available. To add a button on the Favorites screen, right-click anywhere on the screen and select “Add a Button”. The options are listed in the same order they occur on the menu bar across the top of the screen.  If you turn off the Help panel, you can get 12 icons on the screen - 12 of the things you most commonly do.

Shortcut keys, where available, are listed next to the function on the drop-down menu. The most commonly used ones include:

Ctrl-Q        Starts the Timer
Ctrl-S        Starts the Time Sheet for Time Entry
Ctrl-R        Receive Payment from client
Ctrl-E        Starts Expense Recovery

Ctrl-P        Starts Pre-Bills
Ctrl-B        Starts Bills

Ctrl-N        Starts a New Matter
Ctrl-H        To write a check
Ctrl-D        For electronic deposit slips
Ctrl-L        Opens the Ledger

Stop Mousing Around - WordPerfect Shortcuts

WordPerfect has a very large number of shortcut keys - more than any one person is likely to use, or can be listed here.  For complete lists, look in WordPerfect Help under “Keyboard shortcuts, Accessibility.”  For people transitioning from WordPerfect to Word, look in WordPerfect Help under “Microsoft Word, shortcut keys” for an extremely useful comparison of Word and WordPerfedt shortkut keys.

That said, here are some of the shortcuts I use all the time:

Ctrl-S        Save a document
Ctrl-P        Print a document
Ctrl-O        Open a document
Ctrl-N        Create a new document. If you have a document on the screen, this creates a new blank document.

F7        Indent
Ctrl-Shift-F7    This incredibly useful shortcut (because it is otherwise totally unavailable unless you customize the toolbar) inserts a soft line break in an indented section so that it does not wrap to the left margin.
Alt-F7        Right margin align (this is a function that Word does not have at all). Can be used when there is already text in a line.

F3        Document Save As
Alt-F3        Turns Reveal Codes off and on

Ctrl-Backspace    This deletes the entire word the cursor is on
Ctrl-Delete        This deletes to the end of a line

Ctrl-Spacebar        Puts in a hard space (one that will not break at the end of a lien)

Ctrl-D        Inserts today’s date.

Stop Mousing Around - TimeMatters shortcuts

Like many other programs, Time Matters makes use of a large number of keystroke shortcuts. The list can be found centrally in Help if you look for “Hot Keys” in the Help Contents.

You can open almost any list with an F-key.  They start at F3 and move up. Find the ones you use most often. Thus Contact is F5 and Matter is F6. As usual, the shortcut keys are listed on the menu dropdowns, so if you go to File | New Record, you will see a complete list.

One of the most useful is the lookup hot key - F2. Instead of having to click on the lookup button, just hit F2.

Ctrl-A opens the Auto-Entry form list for a given function. You must be in the “Add” screen for this to work.

Tagging records in Time Matters does not conform to Windows standards. Instead, Ctrl-T tags all the records in a list and Ctrl-U untags them.

Shift-T will tag a single record. If you hit Shift-T to tag one record, then continue holding down the Shift key and hitting T you can tag consecutive records.  Very useful if you want to tag a small set of records.

The date calculator is reached with Shift-F12. While this is not at all obvious, it is the sort of thing that once you learn it, it is extremely useful.

The In/Out list (if you use this) is Alt-Shfit-L

Note that in Time Matters, like many other programs, the shortcut keys are listed next to the menu item on the drop-down menus (but not the icons on the button bar)

Stop Mousing Around - Use Keystroke Shortcuts

Keystroke shortcuts are called “shortcuts” because they save time.  For people who are comfortable with the keyboard, you don’t have to take your fingers off the keyboard, grab the mouse, click several times and reposition your fingers on the keyboard.  Most people know some basic shortcut keys, but here is a more extensive list.  I certainly don’t use all these shortcuts all the time. But even the ones I do use are incredibly convenient and save me a lot of time. Even if you wind up only using a few of the following, you will become noticeably more productive. The next few days will be devoted to keystroke shortcuts in specific programs.

Ctrl-A        Selects all in most programs
Ctrl-C        Copies selected text
Ctrl-X        Cuts (deletes) selected text (Shift+Del does the same thing)
Ctrl-V        Pastes text that has been copied or deleted (Shift+Insert does the same thing)
Ctrl-P        Print in most programs
Ctrl-S        Save a document in most programs

PrintScreen key    (at the top of the keyboard, to the right of the F12 key) copies the entire screen to the clipboard, and then you can pasted into a word processing program and print it.

Alt+PrintScreen    copies only the active window, dialog box, etc.  Can be much more precise in getting you what you want.

The Windows Logo key is also associated with some very useful shortcuts:

Windows+D    Brings up your desktop, no matter how many programs you have open
Windows+E    Brings up Windows Explorer.
Windows+Spacebar Brings up a list of Windows shortcuts
Windows+M    Minimizes all open programs

Alt+Tab    Moves through the list of programs you have open

Last but not least remember two basic Windows principles:
Left Clicking performs some sort of action
Right-Clicking brings up a menu of options on which you can Left Click to perform one of the options.

Microsoft Stealth Update

It turns out that even if you have Microsoft updates set to not install automatically, Microsoft is installing some updates anyway.  Scott Dunn, of Windows Secrets has documented the fact that Microsoft is updating the updater automatically.  So far, only some small, innocuous files are being updated.

So who cares, you say?  If it just makes things work better, why not? Well, aside from the issue of personal privacy, there are a number of reasons to be concerned.

First, Microsoft “stealth” updates are frequently buggy, such as the infamous Windows Genuine Advantage program, which has a history of claiming that your copy of Windows is not legitimate even when it is.  So if something suddenly appears to go wrong with your PC, one possibility is that it is due to a buggy update from Microsoft.

More importantly, larger corporations want to control verifying and rolling out patches to make sure that they do not conflict with various other software the company is running.  This patch does an end-run around that process.

Finally, for companies who have to certify that they control their computers for auditors in line with the Sarbanes Oxley provisions, how can they certify this if they do not control what patches Microsoft is applying?

More of Mark Twain

Mark Twain was America’s Boswell - a permanent fountain of insight and sarcasm. One main reason for the depth of his wit and wisdom is that he never took himself too seriously

"You may have noticed that the less I know about a subject the more confidence I have, and the more new light I throw on it."
        Mark Twain

"In all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane."
        Mark Twain