Does It Compute?

More from the Family Archives

I have recently been working on some family archives – including reminiscences of one Ebenezer Battelle, one of the first settlers of Ohio in the company of Gen. Rufus Putnam (a Revolutionary War General) in 1788. He was accompanied by his wife, Anna Durant Battelle (a portrait of whom by Gilbert Stuart is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts).

She couldn’t take it and eventually returned to Boston. One of the reasons given was:

    “A story told in the family is that an Indian would walk in to the house, take up a loaf of bread, – put down a pair of moccasons, – and walk off thinking that he had done the proper thing.”

Seems to me that the settlers got by far the better end of the deal – a new pair of shoes for a loaf of bread.

Innumeracy -- Buying Gas and Saving Real Money

Allen Poulos has a very useful book called “Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences.” The fact is that most people don’t know how to deal with numbers, and not just very large or very small numbers.

Let’s take the case of sales or my recent favorite, buying gas for your car. Do you, as I frequently do, go out of your way to get gas that is a few cents cheaper than at a station nearer you?  While this may make you feel good, does it really save any money, and if so, is it a significant amount?  Let’s say you get 15 gallons of gas at $.10 cheaper than you might otherwise. That’s $1.50. Now if you drive 10,000 miles a year and your car gets a combined 25 miles a gallon (which is what my Volvo Stationwagon gets), you burn 400 gallons of gas a year, and at that $.10 savings that’s $40. Meanwhile, how much extra time and miles have you spent driving around to the “cheap” gas. It is unclear whether you actually save money and if you do, whether it is worth the time and effort.

This is magnified in cases like a friend who lives in New York and drives to New Jersey where gas is $.30 a gallon cheaper. That sounds like a good deal (filling the tank with 20 gallons saved him $6.00) until you realize that he has to pay the $6.00 toll go cross the Hudson River to get the gas: Savings = 0; time wasted 1 hr each time.

This sort of thing applies (frequently with a vengeance) to “sales” where you get 50% (or whatever) for buying an extra pair of shoes, clothes, etc.  You wind up “saving money” by buying something you don’t need. So, it makes sense to do the math!

Where this is heading is the reverse case: NOT doing something that will save a LOT of money because it is “too expensive.”  That’s the case of Return on Investment for case management and similar systems.

In the second part of his excellent two-part series on Document Assembly in Technolawyer, Seth Rowland sets some parameters:

What is 30 minutes a day worth? Let me run the math for the average timekeeper:

• 30 minutes * 5 days = 150 minutes per week.
• 150 minutes * 48 weeks = 120 hours per year.
• 120 hours * $200 per hour = $24,000 for each timekeeper.

So a gain of 30 minutes per day equates to $24,000 a year for each timekeeper. In reality, the amount of savings from a well-implemented document automation system could be as much as one or two FTE (Full-Time-Equivalent) staff members, a value of $150,000 to 300,000 per year

Case management programs typically offer two types of savings: soft costs and hard costs. “Soft costs” are of the type Seth defines: you save time, so it frees you up to take on more clients, go home early, etc. That is useful for a number of reasons (not least of which is employee morale).

Hard costs are a different matter: they are actually more money in your pocket. So if a case management software lets you record even one phone call a day correctly as being 30 minutes instead of 15 minutes, and bill the time accordingly, you have billed at least 12 minutes a day MORE for doing the same amount of work. As in Seth’s example above, 12 minutes a day, or 1 hour a week, times 50 weeks a year times $200 an hour, is $10,000 a year more money in your pocket – and that’s per lawyer. 

You can plug in whatever numbers you choose, the ROI on case management programs is astronomical, not just in soft numbers, but also in hard numbers. Amicus Attorney has for years had an ROI Calculator on its web site. Play with the numbers. You will be amazed.

In these economic times, how many firms can afford essentially to just “throw away” additional billings of $10,000 per lawyer per year (or even more–that’s really a very conservative estimate)? Can you?

Illegal Characters - Once Again

Most people know that you cannot create file or directory names with “illegal characters” such as \, *, |, <, >, =, ;, etc. However, with the rise of XML running in the background of a number of applications, there are some additional “illegal characters.” in particular the apostrophe (').  It turns out that XML considers this illegal. 

So programmers who were too sloppy or lazy to explicitly work around this issue may create a situation where you get unexplained errors for something that *shouldn’t* be an illegal character.  The end result is that you can’t  use apostrophes in client/matter names in programs such as PCLaw or Amicus Attorney 2008 PE!

Someone recently brought to my attention that programs such as Word may have problems with merging names with high-end ascii characters – such as Spanish or French accents. Apparently Time Matters has this issue in merging with Word.  If you change “Peña” to “Pena” (without the accent) the problem goes away. The reason for this is that computers are stupid and do not know enough (or the programmers haven’t thought to) consider “n” (ascii 110) and “ñ” (ascii 164).  This is also an issue for databases – searches for “Peña” do not also return “Pena” and vice-versa. This is a major issue when you have entries for the same person that may or may not have the accent in different cases.

Document Management Overview

The January 2009 issue of Law Practice Today has published a really useful article by Debbie Foster and Steve Best outlining the history and characteristics of Document Management systems. Their definition of types of Document Management Systems (from manual to full-fledged DMS, including hybrid systems offered by many case management systems) and list of things to look for in a DMS is particularly useful.

One issue they don’t address is the question of workflow – routing documents for approval, etc. Not all systems have this feature, and many of those that do tend to be of the “hybrid” variety. So choosing this option may mean not being able to have other functionality that may be equally or more important. This can be a difficult choice.

A separate issue – especially important in a disastrous economy – is how much time (and thus money) implementing one of these systems can save a firm by increased efficiency and rapid retrieval of documents.

I have also dealt with this topic in my “Why Document Management: A White Paper,” available on my web site.

Obama Gets To Keep His Blackberry

So Obama gets to keep his Blackberry.  Albeit with a number of restrictions – new address, very small number of people authorized, his emails won’t be able to be forwarded, etc.

Still, many people would probably like to have some of these restrictions on their own email systems – eliminates spam, unsolicited emails, provides a really functional email. Doesn’t let people monkey with and/or misrepresent your email.

Some of these functions can be provided now – limiting incoming mail by using whitelisting (which only accepts emails from previously designated sources) systematically for example, but most people don’t do it because there is too much administration involved (somebody would have to monitor a second, more general account to weed out acceptable new senders).

Still, this represents the formalization of the sea change in how people communicate – email, texting, twittering. PDAs are now a fundamental element in communication – and politics.

Fax Programs for a Small Firm

A client asked me recently about fax programs. Not a topic I have spent a lot of time on, so I thought it was worth investigating. Based on what is available, one has to conclude that faxing is dying, being replaced by sending attachments via email.

The program I use, WinFax Pro, has not been updated since 2000. And while it still works fine (on Windows XP at least), it doesn’t even seem to be available from Symantec any more. So scratch that.

At the high end, programs like RightFax (OpenText) are a totally different animal, designed to send hundreds or thousands of faxes using multiple linked fax lines. But that is not relevant to smaller firms.

There are a bunch of Internet-based fax programs, which work pretty much the same way: you email a “fax” to a fax number. That either comes out as a fax to an actual fax machine, or is transmitted to another email address using an Internet “fax number.”

These programs, such as jfax (now jconnect), efax, myfax, maxemail or rapidfax, all work about the same. For a fixed monthly fee of $10-20, you get a fixed number of pages (approximately 100-200 outbound and 100-300 inbound. Above that, there is a per-page charge of $.10-.15 per page. So, just like the cell phone model if you exceed your alloted number of minutes/pages, it can get very expensive. Most of these programs (again, like cell phones) give you a higher number of pages for a higher monthly charge. So the trick lies in figuring out exactly what your usage is.

If you are a smaller firm doing a minimal amount of faxing, these programs make sense. However, if you do a lot of faxing then a dedicated fax machine may make sense. Newer models, or multi-function machines will let you fax from the desktop, which gives you the advantage of simplicity (and better quality since there is less image degradation).

Law Technology News Awards and the Decline of Time Matters

The annual Law Technology News have been released for 2008. These awards always have a somewhat problematic character, since the various vendors often push heavily to get their consultants and clients to vote for them.  So the awards are as much the result of ballot stuffing as of users' unsolicited approval of the various products.

That said, they do represent a significant industry benchmark.  It is therefore rather significant that whereas in both 2006 and 2007 Time Matters, heavily promoted by LexisNexis,  won the award for the best Case Management Software (in 2006 for firms over 50 users and in 2007 for firms under 100) users, in 2008 it was not even among the three winners, never mind the recipient of the top prize. It did, however, keep the Gold in the area of Docketing and Calendaring.

Not surprisingly, Tabs/Practice Master was the big winner – showing up in a number of new categories.

Since Time Matters and Lexis have traditionally pushed hard to “get out the vote,” this can only mean that clients and consultants are expressing their dissatisfaction with the state of affairs by voting with their mouse clicks, so to speak.

Winning the Civil War

One of my ancestors spent four years (1861-65) in a Union Artillery brigade during the Civil War. We have a large number of his letters home. Most of them are of anecdotal interest (“I wish you would send me a gallon of Bourbon whiskey”). But the following is of significant historical importance, as it demonstrates that Slaves and/or Free Blacks played a significant military role in the eventual victory of the Union.

                    Camp 10 miles before Richmond
                    June 2nd. 1862

“...The second time that we went out we (with part of the fifth New York Zouaves) were sent to destroy a turnpike bridge 200 feet long a half mile inside of the rebel pickets. We went there, tore down the bridge and took one of them prisoner. The third time we went out we would all have been killed or taken prisoner but for the warning of two negroes. There were two regiments of infantry and one masked battery lying in ambush for us on each side of the road. The negroes met us when we had got within a mile of them and told the Col.  We then turned back. The next time we went out we went with Gen. Porter's division and drove the rebels back beyond the Richmond and Harrisburg railroad and took over 500 prisoners. “

Unreadable Web Sites and Documentation

Ever since Microsoft decided to use Calibri as its new default font, documentation and web sites have been proliferating in this basically unreadable font.

Now I'll grant you that I have bad eyes (and in fact just got a new glasses prescription that has yet to be filled), but I am not alone. Furthermore, there is the issue of the 15% or so of the population that is color blind to some degree or another. I once asked my optometrist about this in relation to things like Powerpoint presentations. He said that as long as you used high-contrast combinations, you were ok, even if people could not perceive the exact color. The problem with Calibri is that it is a low-contrast font (blue-grey on white). Furthermore web combinations that have been sprouting up using orange or light green for emphasis are also low-contrast and even harder to read than Calibri.

When I (and all my optically challenged kindred) have to focus on a sentence in a web site or printed documentation three times to make out what it says, this is not very productive from the vendor's point of view. It certainly does not make people WANT to visit your web site.  It's more like “Oh crap, I have to look something up there again.” Generally, I can't focus on the web site at all, and have to print everything out in order to be able to read it. It's bad enough when it is hard to understand the content of documentation. Making it hard to see is just adding insult to injury.

I once had a meeting with a vendor where I raised this issue. I had taken the precaution of printing out the web site as it appeared, and then copying and printing it to a black-on-white font. I put both pieces of paper in front of the vendor and said, “Now which one is easier to read.”  Response: “I see what you mean.”

As I said, this tendency is proliferating, so I won't name names. But you know who you are. Take a closer look, and please, please, make your site and documentation more legible.

ContactEase -- The Unknown Contact Relationship Manager

Every once and a while, somebody asks me about Goldmine or Act! or other Contact Relationship Management programs. The king of the hill in larger installations is Salesforce.  But I use (and have used for close to 15 years) a program called ContactEase from ColeValley.

This has evolved from a relatively simple program to a full-featured contact manager. It features an overlay with Outlook, so that the program is transparent to the average user: data entered in Outlook is also entered into ContactEase, where it can be further massaged and used by a marketing department.

For smaller firms, the program can be extensively and easily customized to meet their needs. The use of Categories lets you track groups of contacts for newsletters, marketing or other purposes (and of course contacts can be assigned to multiple categories). A HotKey link to any other Windows program lets you insert addresses, email addresses, etc. wherever you want, be it Word, Outlook, WordPerfect, OpenOffice or whatever. These can be inserted in formats controlled by you. It also lets you design and print labels or envelopes easily.

For law firms, it lets you insert a client/matter table that is linked to specific contacts. A “relations” tab lets you control the “three degrees of separation.” Thus for example if I am doing work for a firm which is also using, say, an IT contractor, accountant or other outside consultants, I can set up links so that when I open the “relations” tab for a given contact, their various outside consultants are displayed (as well as the date the link was updated and by whom). If I open up a consultant, I can see that he is linked to multiple firms.

Activity and Assignment tabs also let you control projects and provide a tickler system to keep track of them.

So why is this program not used more widely?  A firm that is using a practice management program such as Time Matters, Amicus or PracticeMaster, is understandably reluctant to implement a specific Contact Manager which overlaps the functionality of the practice management program. Therefore ContactEase has been used more by marketing departments in larger firms.

But when people ask me whether I use Time Matters or Amicus to track my practice, I reply: “Neither. I use PCLaw for time and billing, Worldox for document management, and ContactEase for client relations.” Take a look.