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People who recall the ‘60s and ‘70s may remember I.F. Stone, who was a leading figure in exposing government lies and misrepresentation about the Vietnam war and other issues. There is a fascinating new biography of him by Myra MacPherson, entitled “All Governments Lie!”
The title comes from a quote that is equally apt today:
“All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.”
I’ve always suspected that a good portion of the “Going Green” options are questionable if not outright scams. A good example is the latest rage in Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs). They are touted as being longer lasting and using less energy for the same amount of light (they are, of course correspondingly more expensive). This seems to be true. BUT (and this is a big BUT), they also contain Mercury, a highly toxic chemical. When the bulbs are disposed of they will poison landfills, etc. (The caveat that they should be “properly disposed of” is manifest nonsense – they will just be thrown in the trash). So it is an open question as to whether CFL’s just amount to trading a current problem for a future one (you can always use less electricity; can Mercury poisoning be undone?).
But here’s an idea that DOES make sense. How many of the little power cubes do you have attached to various devices - computer speakers, portable docking stations for laptops; docking stations for older smart phones, LCD monitors, answering machines, printers, etc.
Each one of these devices uses 3-5 watts an hour even when the device they are connected to is switched off, and the average household has 6 to 10 of them. If you pick out the devices that you want to be truly off when you turn off what they are connected to, and plug them all into a single power strip, and if you turn off the power strip at night (or whenever), then your monitors, speakers, etc. will stop using power. And this actually represents true savings. Not a major amount perhaps, but real nonetheless.
So you have a Paperless Office (or nearly so). All your emails are saved, documents, incoming items that have been scanned, etc. You want to take your whole case with you to court on a laptop. What’s the best way to do this?
There are a number of options, depending on what your current configuration is.
Larger firms with a higher volume of litigation, will have invested in a true litigation support/trial preparation software such as CT Summation or Verdict Systems “Sanction.” So the question really comes up only if you need to do this on a less costly scale.
If you are using a document management system such as Worldox, you can simply export the entire case to your local hard drive (or even a flash drive), and retain all the organization, searching, etc. of the DMS. This is by far the easiest and most efficient way to proceed. In fact, if you need to take an entire case to court on a regular basis, it could be a decisive reason to invest in a document management system.
If you have a do-it-yourself handyman’s solution, you can copy the entire directory containing the case. Or better, use one of a number of tools available to synch the directory in question either with your laptop or an external hard drive. Putting in on an external hard drive has the advantage that you are not dependent on your specific laptop, you can access the files from anywhere.
However, this solution then raises the issue of how you efficiently organize and search for files. You can use Copernic or a similar solution to full text index the files, but this does not allow for any other organizational principle.
Or, you can turn to third-party tools such as pdfDocs to create “binders” of files. This lets you search them and gives you a table of contents.
Lastly, if you have a solution such as Time Matters, you can create a clone and then use a separate utility to synch the files (since synching the document files in TM may not be an option due to limits on the size of the clone file).
If you employ this type of solution and your program is expecting the data files on, say, the “F” drive, there is an old DOS trick that may help. Create a directory on your C: drive called “fakeserv” or some such. Create and synch the same directory as exists on your server to “fakeserv.” For example: c:\fakeserv\docs\client\case.
Then create a batch file with a DOS substitute command that reads like this:
subst f: c:\fakeserv
(you can create this in notepad and then save it as e.g. “local.bat”) So if your documents are normally on f:\docs\client\case, the operating system will recognize the directory c:\fakeserv as f: To run the batch file, simple double-click on it.
Obviously this trick will not work if you are dependant on UNC naming conventions, but it is something I use all the time.
People love to quote that old saw from Shakespeare, “first, lets kill all the lawyers.” It seems to give status to all the lawyer jokes in the world.
But let’s look a little closer. The quote comes from Henry VI, Part 2. The conspirators, led by Jack Cade, have just killed the Duke of Suffolk and are plotting to put Jack Cade on the throne. When he is king, Cade says,
“... there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.
Dick the Butcher: The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers
Jack: Nay, that I mean to do.”
To further demonstrate their backward ignorance, they then immediately proceed to execute a clerk for knowing how to write his name instead of having “a mark to thyself, like an honest, plain-dealing man.” When the clerk admits to being able to write his name, the conspirators say in chorus “He hath confessed; away with him! he’s a villain and a traitor.”
Cade: Away with him! I say: hang him with his pen and ink-horn about his neck.”
So, for Shakespeare, killing all the lawyers is a mark of ignorant demagogues.
Most often, users create their own Quick Profile Drag & Drop Worldox folders in Outlook. The reason for this is simple: different attorneys are working on different files, so there is no “one size fits all.”
However, there may be times where creating firm-wide drag & drop folders is appropriate. Either for large clients that everyone works on, or small firms where client work is widely shared. When a user creates an individual Drag & Drop folder, they put their initials into the “author” field. How does this work on firm-wide items?
If you create a firm-wide drag & drop folder (the system administrator will want to do this through the Admin program), instead of putting a user ID into the “author” field, put *WDUSER. Assuming the author field is linked to the Worldox user list, this field will be populated by the person logged into Worldox when the email is dragged to the Worldox folder.
For the past several years, I have been frustrated when at my beach house on the Connecticut shore with not being able to print anything. Broadband internet access is fine, but sometimes you need to print something.
With summer coming and vacation time around the corner, I splurged on a portable printer from HP - the HP470b (“b” for “Battery”). It also comes in a standard and wireless model.
The printer is not as tiny as some of the older thermal printers were, but at 13.5" wide, 7.25" deep and only 3.25" high and less than 5 lbs, it is easily portable in a briefcase or shoulder bag. It advertises 22 ppm black and white and 18 ppm color, and up to 450 pages of black and white on a single battery charge. The battery only takes about 4 hours to charge, so this is not a burden. It will also print photographs and supposedly can print photos directly from a camera, although I haven’t tried that yet, but the print quality is excellent.
So if this is something that has been nagging at you for a while, give it a try. About $270 from Amazon or other sources.
What did I ever do without one? If you spend a lot of time on the phone, a cordless headset not only frees up your hands to take notes, do things on the computer (although beware, the person you are talking to can hear you typing), shuffle papers (also noisy). It also avoids having to scrunch your head over the phone or subject the other person to a speakerphone (which I regard as horrendously impolite because the quality of speakerphones is universally so lousy).
Most important, if the headset is cordless, it lets you stand up, pace, go get some coffee, or whatever.
I use a Plantronics headset connected to my Polycom phone and a number of people have said they would never know the difference.
I have just finished the Amicus 2008 Small Firm Edition Cheat Sheet. As with other Cheat Sheets, this is not intended as a replacement for a manual.
It is intended to answer basic questions following training: “Oh, yes, he said something about that, now how do I do it?”
The Cheat Sheet can be downloaded from the Heckman Consulting web site list of cheat sheets or directly by clicking here.
If you are using a program such as Worldox, Time Matters or Amicus Attorney to manage your email, Xobni (that’s Inbox backwards)may not be for you. Otherwise, however, Xobni is definitely worth taking a look at.
Xobni indexes your emails providing lightning fast searches (OK, other programs do that as well). However, it also creates a “social network” of your email based on emails that have been sent or cc’d to multiple people. This can be quite useful.
Also, if you click on an email, it lists how many emails you have sent and received from that person, as well as their phone number if they are in your contact list or even if their phone number is listed in the signature block but they are not in your contact list.
Xobni will also set up threaded conversations - so if you have exchanged emails over a period of days and they are lost in the mass of your emails, Xobni will break them out for you.
You can also use Xobni to schedule appointments - it will even find free time for you.
All in all, if you use Outlook as a primary method of organizing your practice and workflow, Xobni is definitely worth taking a look at. While technically in beta, it seems pretty trouble free and in my testing did not interfere with other programs Outlook was linked with.
If you are currently thinking of buying a new PC, you have until June 30 (or earlier). Dell is saying that June 18 is the cutoff date. However, if you have a business account, you may be able to get it somewhat later – but don’t count on it.
Also, if you buy from a “white box” maker, they should be able to install XP up until the end of the year.
However, if you buy Vista Business or Vista Ultimate (or you have an enterprise site license) you can get a “downgrade disk” that lets you install XP. Dell, ever sensitive to market demands, has announced that it will pre-install the “downgrade disk” at no additional charge (or a slight charge on some PCs), thus giving you Windows XP. Dell says it will support this as long as Microsoft supports the “downgrade” policy.
If you made the mistake of buying Vista, you can do the downgrade yourself, although it takes some work. Here’s how:
Why bother? Essentially two reasons. First, it will cost you more money to buy a Vista machine that runs acceptable than an XP machine - you need more memory (4GB), a more expensive graphics card, etc. Secondly, especially for law firms, some of the legal-specific programs may not run, or not run acceptably under Vista. Apparently AutoCAD is an extreme example: the current version will not run under Vista. An upgraded version will - but that’s around $10,000 a pop. A good reason to stick with XP.
