Does It Compute?

Happy Halloween

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The King is Dead! Long Live the King!

At its developer conference this week, Microsoft officially unveiled Windows 7. While reviews have been generally positive, albeit with titles like “Why Windows 7 Will Suck Less Than Vista,” there have also been some detractors, who mainly complain that the improvements are aimed at the home user, not business user, with comments like “I was looking for a "mea culpa" and some solid integration tools and compatibility features. What I got was a prettier GUI and new ways to share music with my dog. Ugh!”  For an overview, see “Inside Windows 7 Pre-Beta.”

None of this is the most relevant point, however. The most relevant point is that Microsoft has more or less officially declared Vista dead, and is barely even bothering to hide the fact.  Windows 7 is currently due for release approximately a year from now - or year and a half if the normal slippage holds true. What that means is that there is currently no good reason at all to buy Vista: stick with XP, which you can still get if you ask. 

This was underscored by a recent tongue in cheek article about "loving Vista." The reviewer had just gotten a new PC, a quad core machine with 8 GB memory and a high end graphics card with 1 GB of dedicated graphics memory. On that machine, Vista rocked!

I'd Dump It in a Nanosecond If....

I frequently hear law firms complain about a product (this complaint is not limited to a specific product): “if I didn’t have so much time and money, not to mention mountains of data, invested in Product X, I’d dump it in a New York Nanosecond.” (That’s the amount of time between when the light turns green and the car behind you honks at you to get going already).

So if you are totally fed up, what realistically are your options (other than increasing the dosage of your blood pressure medication) and what is the best way to proceed when a product appears to (at best) entering a period of instability and uncertainty, as appears may well be happening with Time Matters?

Logically, there are three obvious options: (1) make do with what you have, with some modifications; (2) upgrade to what has reported to be a stable version (possibly not the very latest); or (3) switch.

In any case, you have to evaluate at your situation in great detail. What are the pieces that you are unhappy with?  Many, if not most, programs were built around a central core (practice management, time and billing). Those areas are generally pretty decent. The areas that were tacked on at a later date (typically email and document management) tend to be the focus of your problem areas. How much advanced customization do you have?  If you have a large database that has accumulated over the years, how much of it is simply dead weight? Do attorneys use the program extensively or is it mainly support staff?  Are you heavily committed to links to the Blackberry or iPhone via Outlook? Consider having a consultant evaluate how much of the program’s capability you are actually using (obviously the less you are using, the easier it will be to switch). Make a list of the 5 most valuable features of your current program, as well as the 5 things you hate most. In evaluating a different program check its functionality against your list.  Is the grass really going to be greener or will it just be out of the frying pan and into the fire? This will give you an informed basis for making a switch.

1.  Making Do.  Consider stripping out some of the problem areas and using something else to manage them. For example, email and document management have always been weak links in Time Matters and other Practice Management programs (Amicus, Practice Master). They could profitably be replaced by Worldox: you would get better functionality and your case management program would probably be more stable.

2.  Upgrading. This can be a little tricky. Barring catastrophic meltdowns like Time Matters 9, SR3, software makers usually consider their bug lists as ultra-top secret. However, at the same time, firms like Amicus do make a “known problems” list available to consultants and bugs have a way of making themselves known in the consultant community. With some work, you should be able to find the latest stable version that will be best for you. With companies routinely “sunsetting” older versions and supporting the current and 2 most recent versions, it is in your interest to get the latest version possible as a hedge against the future.

3.  “Rather Switch than Fight.”  If you find a program with a conversion utility for your existing software, great. Otherwise you will have to go through some sort of export/import routine. This may have to be custom-written by somebody with an advanced knowledge of SQL, Access, Excel, or whatever is relevant. Here too, you will be best off if you can somehow dump your “dead” data and convert relatively current items. The “old” database would remain on line for consultation, conflict checks and similar items until it simply becomes irrelevant. The more aspects of your current program you use, the harder the switch will be. 

If at all possible, you should do a trial conversion so that the new program can be customized and tested before it is rolled out.  Generally speaking, if you can get a conversion that initially gives you 90% of what you had before, people will be willing to accept that you need additional tweaks and be somewhat patient. However, if you only get 60% of what you had before, the perception will be “it doesn’t work.”

Can LexisNexis Fix Time Matters?

Last week I blogged about the problems surrounding the release of SR3 for Time Matters 9, but focused mainly on the issue of quality control: how could this happen? 

How it happened seems fairly clear in retrospect: in the years since the LexisNexis aquisition of Time Matters, a number of senior programmers have left, and the central programmer was kicked upstairs and hasn’t written any code in several years. In addition, 2 of the senior Quality Control engineers have left (no doubt contributing to the QC problems with SR3).

If you don’t simply live in a Panglossian universe of “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds” (unlike Alan Greenspan and the Bush administration with regard to financial markets), you have to ask yourself the question: “Can LexisNexis fix Time Matters?”

Assume for the sake of argument that they actually WANT to fix it. That is, management is willing to tell marketing to take a hike and to insist that they will put out new versions when the product is ready and not to meet some quarterly deadline, and that they are willing to invest serious money in fixing the product. It also assumes that they are willing to listen to the feedback from consultants. None of this is at all self-evident but assume it is true.

The more serious question is: do they have the technical resources to fix the product?  You cannot simply replace the 20 or so years of programming experience with Time Matters with somebody new and say: fix it. Similarly, good quality control people are hard to come by. So while this answer to this question is unclear, prospects are not encouraging.

So aside from getting depressed, what can anybody actually DO? That’s a topic for another day.

You Need a Metadata Scrubber!

The issue of “metadata” comes up repeatedly, and it is easy to become inured to it: along the “cry wolf” syndrome. Technically, “metadata” is data about a document that is stored somewhere in or attached to the document. This can be a good thing (e.g. in document management systems) or a bad thing – when it unintendedly releases information you would rather not have exposed. Nor is this just a lawfirm issue: governments have repeatedly been exposed. For example, when a British government “white paper” justifying the Iraq invasion was revealed to have been written be an press secretary; or when Homeland Security (sic) posted documents from which all the authors and editors could be recovered! Or, finally, a report released by the Pentagon which contained the names of an Italian secret agent in Iraq who was assassinated and the name of the US soldier who shot her!  (Click here for reference).

For a legal example, I had a client who was once sent a draft of a contract from opposing counsel. When he opened it the “hidden” comments popped out, with somebody on the other side asking “do you think we can get away with this sort of language?” Needless to say, the language in question did not survive negotiations!

From a practical point of view, the main culprit here is Word. While WordPerfect does contain metadata, it is not as pervasive as with Word and WordPerfect users tend to use the program in ways that minimize metadata.

For a good overview of the question, see the white paper from Payne Consulting.

Most of the bad or incriminating metadata comes in documents sent by email. Therefore it is imperative for law firms to buy some form of “metadata scrubber” that lets you delete metadata before it is sent out of the firm (just converting the document to PDF format is not enough).  Two of the best are the Metadata Assistant from Payne Consulting and iScrub from Esquire Innovations. 

Recessions, ROI and Other Tactics

In terms of workflow, lawyers do three things:
1.  They gather and assemble information, do research, etc.
2.  They apply their legal training and experience to analyzing that information; and
3.  They produce documents incorporating the results of step 2.

To the extent that technology can reduce the amount of time that needs to be spent on the first and last steps, lawyers are free to increase productivity by spending more time on the middle step, which is what they were trained to do: actually being lawyers.

This is why investing in time-saving technology such as document management or practice management software is a smart move, especially now in the middle of a recession. The Return on Investment of this technology, no matter what numbers you plug in, is spectacular. Automated Horizons, a consulting firm in Virginia, has prepared useful ROI calculators for both document management and practice management.

And despite how impressive the results may seem, you also have to add in the fact that practice management software, in addition to saving time (which is all the ROI caculator addresses) ALSO helps you capture more billable hours (up to 10% or more) for the same amount of time because it calculates time spent on, for examples, phone calls or email, more accurately.

So to those who complain that they can’t afford new software in the midst of a recession, I would reply that you can hardly afford NOT to adopt such software.

For another interesting article on dealing with a recession, see Steve Best’s “Will Your Firm Survive Despite a Sluggish Economy.” Despite the fact that the article was written before the October crash (“sluggish” is a massive understatement), it has a number of useful points.

LexisNexis Quality Control [sic]

When Time Matters SR3 was released, a major problem was immediately discovered: SR3 broke TM Connect. A “fixed” dll was immediately posted, but anybody who updated via the “approved” method didn’t know that.

Other problems were also noticed: clicking on a hyperlink in the Messenger crashed the Messenger (but not the program). Problems with html display of email that existed in SR2 were not fixed. Various other problems in SR2 were also not fixed. This is to the point where the semi-official CIC listserv is recommending to wait on installation for SR3a (which will no doubt be out shortly). And in fact, as of yesterday afternoon, SR3 seems to have been pulled from the Time Matters download site which, under the circumstances, seems like a smart move.

Nor is this limited to Time Matters.  Most people never even noticed that there was a PCLaw release 9.20e, because it was pulled so quickly and rapidly gave way to 9.20f. And the soon-to-be-released PCLaw 9.30a reportedly has massive bugs with credit card processing and links to other products. Normally, during the beta phase, testers are notified of bugs or things that are not ready (that is part of the beta process). In this case, however, LexisNexis apparently was aware of the bugs but didn’t warn anybody. 

The major issue here is not which bugs did or didn’t get fixed, but the fact that versions are released without proper Quality Control. This is obviously a function of having to “rush out” a release before it is ready. Given that the new product manager for Time Matters comes from a quality control background the conclusion can only be that development and QC are no longer in charge of developing and releasing the product.

This trend by LexisNexis underscores the old adage that you should never install a new release immediately.  But now you have to extend this to “never install a new service pack immediately.” The only other product where this is accepted wisdom is with Microsoft service packs, which are notorious for breaking things.

Quality Control, anyone?

Worldox GX - New Feature

The latest Worldox update includes a very nice new feature: a “Client/Matter Favorites” list. Now, when you do a lookup in Worldox for any field (Client, Matter, DocType, etc.), there are two tabs: the regular list and a “Favorites” list which show the last 20 items you have used: the last 20 Clients, Matters, etc. Note that 20 is the default, it can be changed if desired.

For larger firms with different practice areas and a large number of matters, this is extremely convenient, since instead of having to look through a list of thousands of matters, you see the ones you are actually using. Similarly, attorneys in different practice areas will see the Doc Types they use and not those typical of other practice areas. To set the "Favorites" tab as the default, just right click on it and select "set as default." You can always switch back to the full listing if you get a new client -- the Favorites tab will be automatically updated.

This addition matches “My Matters” feature much trumpeted by Interwoven – and does so automatically without the setup that Interwoven requires.

Time Matters SR3 - Wait

Within a day or two after Time Matters SR3 was released last week, a glaring problem surfaced: SR3 breaks TM Connect, which lets you move emails from Outlook to TM. This problem was rapidly noted and a “fixed” dll posted on the download site. However, this does nothing for people who simply did their update automatically and never even looked at the download site.

For people who use consultants, this is not a major issue, since the problem was rapidly identified. However, it is a fair amount of work for larger sites, since the new dll has to be loaded on each PC individually.

So for the time being, as Tom Rowe has advised on the CIC forum, users would do well to avoid SR3 until such time as the fixed dll is incorporated into the download itself, unless you are willing to go through the extra effort of downloading and installing it separately.

A separate, but perhaps even more important question is how such a major issue ever made it through Quality Control in the first place. It certainly does not say much for LexisNexis internal development processes.

Collaboration: Adversarial or Not?

Collaboration and ways to manage it is the word of the day. However, all the discussion of technical ways to manage collaborating on a document (such as putting it up on Google and letting everybody work at it), obscures a basic fact of law firm life. At bottom, the practice of law is essentially adversarial, not collaborative.

It follows that there are two flavors of collaboration: adversarial and non-adversarial.

If you are collaborating on a document or agreement, ask yourself: does the person you are collaborating with represent your client or the other side?  The types of openness and collaboration you are likely to be willing to engage in differ dramatically depending on the answer to this question.  This fact is recognized by metadata management programs such as iScrub which lets you adjust the amount of metadata is sent along with documents being emailed as Active (standard firm defaults), Cooperator and Adversary. The last two are self-explanatory.

Even within larger firms, where associates are engaged in a frequently no-holds barred struggle to see who makes partner, “collaboration” is always tinged with a healthy dose of competitition.

So while collaborating on documents is essential, the way you do it must also be adjusted by an acute awareness of exactly who you are collaborating with.