Does It Compute?

Cutting Edge/Bleeding Edge

I have had several clients call recently wanting to upgrade their servers to Microsoft Small Business Server 2008, which now comes only in a 64-bit version.

In many cases, older versions of legal software (and even newer versions, for example Timeslips) won’t work with an 64 bit OS. And when they do, this is a case where “cutting edge” turns into “bleeding edge.” 

Here are some of the problems we ran into.

It is a known issue that some programs will not uninstall under SBS2008 or Vista unless you disable the UAC controls.  You try to uninstall and get an error 1721. A search of this error on the Microsoft site reveals the information.

If you are using an older version of SQL, you may need SP3 to run under 64 bit. It turns out that there are 3 versions of SP3 and you want the version that corresponds with the program that will be running, NOT with the operating system. So SQL 2005 is 32 bit and programs such as Amicus Attorney are also 32 bit, so you MUST install the 32 bit patch.

An issue that I have not finished troubleshooting yet, is that XML may not install correctly under SBS 2008.

So, double the amount of time you think it is going to take you based on previous 32 bit installations!!

Wikipedia: "Too Malleable"

Wikipedia is notoriously unreliable as a tool for serious research. Sure, like everybody else I use it when I want something “quick and dirty.” But for serious research, especially on subjects other that somebody’s date of birth, there is way too much tendentious editing – you never know exactly what you are getting.  This explains the fact that many colleges and universities have outlawed using Wikipedia as a source reference for term papers and similar research.

Recently, this has spread to the courts as well.  A recent article in the New Jersey Law Journal notes: 

    A New Jersey judge who allowed a lawyer to plug an evidentiary gap with a Wikipedia page has been reversed on the ground that the online encyclopedia that "anyone can edit" is not a reliable source of information.

    "[I]t is entirely possible for a party in litigation to alter a Wikipedia article, print the article and thereafter offer it in support of any given position," an appeals court held. "Such a malleable source of information is inherently unreliable and clearly not one 'whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned,'" such as would support judicial notice under New Jersey Evidence Rule 201(b)(3).

    The ruling tossed out a judgment in a collection case, Palisades Collection v. Graubard, A-1338-07, in which the plaintiff relied on a Wikipedia entry to help trace ownership of a credit-card debt to establish standing to sue.

So for quick and dirty basic facts use Wikipedia. For anything else, stay away.

New compareDocs update

DocsCorp has just released an update to compareDocs (v. 3.1.5) which has some nice features:

•    The ability to print only pages with changes on them. For a long document, this is a tree-saver.
•    A new “compareDocs toolbar” in Word, making document comparison a click or two faster
•    Better integration with Worldox, including right-click menu options under “Compare with compareDocs.”

Maybe not enough to justifying buying the product new, but certainly worth upgrading if you already have it.

Web Site Readability

With my old, bad eyes, I am somewhat fanatical about the readability of web sites. Yes, you can use the Ctrl + keystroke shortcut to make the type bigger, but that leaves in the clutter, extra panels, etc.

Jim Calloway's blog put me on to a fantastic site called "Readability." This installs as a button on your browser toolbar. Simply click on it and it brings up the main text of a web site in a defined view – I have mine set to look much like a word processing document.

I've tested this on a number of sites I use all the time and find very hard to read (like Ross Kodner's site, for example) and it works like a charm.  Just type in "readability" on the browser search. You drag and drop the addin button to install and that's it.

I'm sure I'm going to find this completely indispensable.

Clio and Rocket Matter

Web-based practice management programs have been generating a lot of buzz lately, in particular Clio and Rocket Matter. Readers should check out Seth Rowland’s extensive reviews of both products on Technolawyer and soon also to be posted on his web site, www.bashasys.com. I generally agree with Seth’s points.

Both systems are new and not fully mature products. By the same token, they are making improvements very aggressively and since they are web-based, as soon as a new feature is ready and tested, it is available to you. They are best for small practices, even startup practices since there is very limited (Clio) or no import capabilities (Rocket Matter)

The products also provide very limited (Rocket Matter) or no (Clio) export capabilities, and reporting is limited to non-existent. Searching within the products is limited – not all data is searchable.

Neither product offers any way to create “custom fields” to contain data specific to your practice – they are “out of the box” only. This may not matter to you, but if you do need custom fields it will be a significant disadvantage.

Perhaps the most important limitation is that there is no way to store the data locally in the event that the web is not available. If you are on a long plane flight, it would be nice to be able to work locally while the web is not available and then re-synch when you can connect again.

If you take a look and decide that Clio or RocketMatter don’t (yet) meet your needs, it is definitely making a note to yourself to check back in 6 months.

BigSolo SmallSolo

The recent overheated debate about Ross Kodner’s term “BigSolo” to describe refugees from BigLaw, and in particular Susan Cartier Liebel’s attacks on Ross, likening the use of the term to racist epithets, falls apart almost immediately on examination. The bottom line of Ms. Liebel’s attacks is that trying to stratify or categorize solo practitioners is invidious: there are "only Solos." This is absurd on the face of it.

Of course legal practices are stratified: so are doctors, CPAs, consultants and virtually every other profession. Furthermore, invidious characterizations – from terms like “Ambulance Chasers” to lawyer jokes in general come into being for a reason, albeit most often a partial and misguided one. In these cases the abuses of a minority become emblematic of the majority. Anybody can cite examples.

Secondly, contrary to what Ms. Liebel seems to think, “BigLaw” is not generally a complimentary term to those outside it. When I mentioned to an associate at a small firm that my daughter worked in a Big Law firm notorious for slave driving its associates, she reacted in genuine horror: “of her own free will?”

There is no doubt that there is a phenomenon of refugees from BigLaw, whether of their own free will or due to recent layoffs. However, as a consultant my take on these people is somewhat different from Ross’s.

In dealing with some of these attorneys, what strikes me is that not just that they are “used to having an IT department” to do things for them, but they are much more aware of the advantages of technology and are willing to spend money to get the same (or similar) level of services that they had at their old firm. They tend to be believers in the utility and productivity that technology can bring to their practice. As such they make excellent clients.

The Cloud, Outsourcing, Collaboration and Mashups

Cloud computing is all the buzz. But it means different things to different people, from Internet backup to full-fledged web applications. It makes sense to break it down into various areas.

First, there is outsourcing to some sort of service. The area that is most popular and best established for this is backing up data to the Internet.  The premise is very attractive: for a very low cost, you get to back up your data to the internet where it is even more secure than an in-office backup would be. Potential drawbacks include primarily (1) what happens if your provide goes belly up; what kinds of guarantees do you have about being able to access your data? and (2) if you ever do have to do a full restore it may well take a day or two (downloading, say, 50 GB of data from the Internet will not be quick).

Second, there is outsourcing of specific functions in addition to backup.  This has in fact existed for years. For example, there are a number of dictation services that let you dictate over the phone and send you back your document the next day. Conceptually, this is no different than any other type of outsourcing. From the law firm’s point of view it is the best of both worlds: it gives you the savings and efficiency of outsourcing combined with the fact that you are not putting all your eggs in one basket, so you are less exposed.

More recently, outsourcing of specific services – paralegals or specific types of legal forms has started gaining ground.  Full Service Virtual Support, for example, offers canned paralegal services for standard functions such as bankruptcy filings, settlement offers in PI cases, medical records review by nurse paralegals. Other companies (such as abaparalegal) offer divorce preparation, and so on. The idea behind these companies is that the offer skilled and specialized paralegals that may do hundreds of filings in one specific area and therefore can do it more efficiently, faster, and with fewer errors than someone who only does a view. The above is based on a quick web search. There are many such services available. YMMV. With a little work you can probably find a service that meets a specific need you may have.

Thirdly, there is software-as-a service. Full blown (or ostensibly full-blown) web-based programs that purport to offer the same functionality as traditional programs such as Amicus, Time Matters or Practice Master.  Two that have gotten a lot of press recently are Clio and Rocket Matter. Another company, which has been around for quite a bit longer (in Internet time, that is) and is more full-featured, is Case Manager Pro.

In the area of time and billing, there are companies such as Bill4Time or FreshBooks.

The common trait of these companies is that they tend to be startups and are not mature or indeed full-featured (Case Manager Pro has been around longer than most), offering only a much-simplified sub-set of functions available in more traditional programs. However if you are a small firm startup with simple needs and are willing to “make do” with what is available, these could be a good choice. The upside to this approach is that these companies are developing and adding new features very rapidly. They are "hungry" and thus liable to be more responsive to user concerns and requests. Since they program is web-based, you don’t have to worry about upgrades – the new features become available to you as soon as they have been tested and added to the code. So updates come much more rapidly than with a traditional PC-based program.

Lastly, and this is where things get interesting, there is web-based collaboration, as typified by Google Documents. If you are collaborating on a project with friendlies (as opposed to opposing counsel, for example), collaboration via Google can be extremely useful. But what do you do with the final product?

Similarly, if you go with a web app such as Clio or Rocket Matter, wouldn’t it be nice to integrate the web app with a second application, either web based or still on your office system?  Why, in short, can’t web apps link to other applications the same way that traditional systems do?

In some areas, there is already a way to do this: it is called “mashups.” This lets you take different applications (or applets) and display them together in a single PDA or browser screen. My son-in-law (shameless plug) has a company called "RadiusIM" which lets cell phone users use any IM service and displays a Google map showing where other users are, or Facebook friends, and so on.

An analogous setup may be the next thing in computing. You might want to link Google docs to Worldox; or Clio to a local PC time and billing program, or two web services offering different functionality together. This expands the "best of breed" vs. "one size fits all" discussion to web services. You could combine specific "one size fits all" web programs with specific "best of breed programs.

Disabling the Indexer in Time Matters 9

The Indexer in Time Matters 9 can be extremely aggravating. It starts up whatever machine first logs in to TM and can be a massive performance hit for that machine.

Fortunately, for those whose setup does not depend on it, there is a way to disable it. If you create a simple text file with Notepad named norun.txt. Put this file in the ...\Data\Index\LNDATA folder on the server where the shared Time Matters data is located. While the file is in that folder, the data indexer will not start. (Thanks to Wells Anderson for the tip).

There are some downsides to doing this, however.  The indexer indexes all your TM data, enabling a “global search” for text anywhere in the database. If you do not run the indexer, you will lose this capability.

If you have an extra license (or are willing to spring for an extra license), you can run TM on the server. Log everybody off, then log in on the server. That will automatically start the indexer on the server and other users’ performance will not be affected.

Digital Dictation

I recently had an interesting conversation with a representative from the Philips Dictation unit. They have long manufactured leading dictation systems for legal, medical and other industries, and are making a push to expand into the US.

Some of their points seem indisputable, others may be more questionable or depend on personal taste.

The first and most obvious point is that if you currently have an analog dictation unit, get rid of it. You don’t play music on a tape cassette any more, do you? Buy a digital machine such as those made by Philips or Olympus. They are much more versatile than tapes, and many units can plug into a USB port for transcription.

The approach Philips is pushing is to dictate short notes, memos to file, messages, instructions and have them transcribed and relayed to the appropriate party. They can then be saved as part of an audit trail about what has been done on a case. I think this is the part of the scheme I am most dubious about.

For larger firms, the dictation can be sent to a central system and parceled out according to who is available.

For longer dictations, it makes sense to me to couple the dictation system with Dragon Naturally Speaking. This takes the onus off any original transcription. All a secretary has to do is review the transcription while listening to the original. This would be a considerable savings in time.

A last point is perhaps the most interesting. Apparently one fairly large firm has mandated that lawyers dictate everything as opposed to typing, on the grounds that you have to think more when you dictate and the quality of the ensuing product will be superior to simply running off at the keyboard. This has a certain surface logic to it, but I’m not certain that in an age where most younger lawyers have been composing on the keyboard since college or law school, that it really holds up.

This is one of those topics that nobody ever really thinks about. It is certainly worth looking around your office, seeing how people work and whether there might be a place for dictation.

What Is a Consultant, Actually?

I regularly get questions along the line “I have a small/solo firm. Do I really need a consultant? I’m pretty computer literate, shouldn’t I be able to do it myself?” There are several parts to this question, some more deserving of a serious answer than others.

Lawyers would scoff at the idea of turning the argument against them: “drafting a will should be so easy that I can take some canned form and do a perfectly good job.” Right. Furthermore, lawyers are the first to accept the proposition that expertise in one area does not mean expertise across the board. Most small firms specialize in at most a small number of areas of law.  A firm that does Estate Planning normally has no interest in PI work, and vice-versa. So the fact that a person is “generally computer literate” does not make them capable of dealing in a particular niche area, not to mention any given practice management system. For that matter, consultants who specialize in one practice management software frequently recognize that they are not in a position to deal with a different software even if it is in the same category. Being an expert in Amicus Attorney does not make you an expert in Time Matters (and in fact, for programs with fundamentally different underlying approaches, it may even be a hindrance) any more than being an expert in Real Estate transactions qualifies an attorney as an expert in Family Law. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “An attorney who represents himself has a fool for a client.”

And let’s dispense with the extreme view: “Software should be so easy to use that I should be able to do it on my own” (or as the Geico ad has it, “so easy a caveman could do it.” – I'll avoid the invidious question as to whether lawyers are smarter than cavemen). At bottom, this view is a testimonial to the success of the marketing departments of software makers, starting with Microsoft about how “easy” their software is to use.  Word 2007 has made doing simple things easier.... but doing complex things harder.  Guess what: law firms do complex documents with footnotes, paragraph numbering, Table of Contents, multiple sections, caption boxes, and so on. To the best of my knowledge no one has ever claimed that manipulating sections properly in Word is “easy.”

Saving Money

But given the current economy, perhaps you can save some money by doing it yourself. Can you really?  Let’s say that any attorney who never does real estate nevertheless agrees to help a friend with the sale of their house. How much less efficient will that attorney be with a real estate matter than with the type of law you normally practice?  The same goes for hardware consultants who try to “muddle through” a software installation (and vice-versa). But if you do decide to do it yourself, the installation is quite likely to take you 4 hours instead of the 2 hours it would have taken the consultant (and that assumes that you do get it done and don’t have to call in a consultant to fix the mess you created). In addition, your billing rate is likely to be double that of the consultant. So in fact it costs you maybe 4 times as much to do it yourself than to have a consultant do it (if you’re lucky, and that doesn’t count the hair torn out, the dangerously high spike in your blood pressure or the curses that resound throughout the office). So unless you consider playing with software a hobby (and there are definitely some lawyers that do), in which case it is not really a business decision, this route is not going to save you any money. As the oil fire fighter Red Adair famously said, “if you think hiring a professional is expensive, try hiring an amateur.”

Getting it Right

OK, but now at least it is done. What about customizing the program so that you get the most efficient and productive use from it? This is the area where a consultant will add the most value to your installation. Most programs come with various generic defaults and options, many of which will not be applicable to your firm. By customizing and tweaking an installation, a consultant will make your program much more efficient.  A consultant will (or should) have answers to questions of the type “how do I....”  or “can the program do X?”  In many cases, programs CAN be made to do what you want. But bear in mind the old saw that a program should be able to do 90% of what you want; getting that last 10% is going to be very difficult and very expensive.  By contrast, “out of the box,” a program may do only 60% or 70% of what you want. But a consultant who has seen many different setups and requirements at many different types of firms will be able to judge what works and what doesn’t. In addition, a consultant will have access to the “consultant network” (consulting on any given software is a small world) and sometimes specialized forums run by vendors for advanced problems.

What Sort of Consultant Do You Need?

Once you decide on the principle, how do you go about actually selecting a consultant?  How do you tell the difference between somebody who will do a good job for you and what one client referred to as “snake oil salesmen,” keeping in mind the old adage that “a consultant is the person you call in to clean up the mess created by the last person who called themselves that.” This is as much an art as a science, but here are some general considerations.

•    Do not try to use a hardware consultant to install software, especially if he says he has little familiarity with the product but “thinks he can manage.”
•    Most vendors maintain lists of “certified” consultants. While this is not always a guarantee, it is a good place to start.
•    Look at the consultant’s web site. Is it all sales, or do they offer any actual content as well (as someone who puts a lot of content on my web site I am of course biased in this direction).
•    Make a list of things you want to accomplish. Ask about them. “How can I make it do X?” (Keep in mind, however, that a sales call is not the same as a detailed discussion of actual implementation.)
•    Ask difficult questions. A consultant should be able to compare the product they are pitching you with others on the market. If they are not familiar with the other products they should say so – in fact, getting a sense that the consultant is being “up front” with you is a key ingredient to forming a good relation. Ask what are the three main weaknesses of the program (hint: if they consultant says there aren’t any, he’s lying).
•    Get and check references. This may seem obvious but it is an important part of “due diligence.” Keep in mind, however, that you may not get a reference to a firm “exactly like” yours.
•    Does the consultant listen to your needs and respond appropriately, or is it all just generic examples?
•    Does the consultant know anything about law firms and the practice of law?  Can he give you examples that pertain to your practice or analogous situations?
•    Does the consultant do training?  Ask to see their training materials (do they “come with” or are they extra?). Adequate training can make the difference between a successful and a failed installation. Will they do followup or is it just an installation and then cut and run?
•    Technology transfer. A thorough installation will enable someone at the firm to manage the software for day-to-day tasks. You should only need to call on the consultant in the future when there is a specific problem or when you want to implement or change significant features. Someone at the firm should be able to manage simple tasks such as adding or removing users or maintaining lists (client/matter lists, various lists for a practice management system). A consultant should be comfortable with training someone to be responsible for this scenario.
•    Last but not least, do you feel comfortable with the consultant? Do they “speak English” to you or does it all seem to be technobabble? Ideally, if you establish a relationship with a consultant over time, they can advise you concerning a much wider range of things than what they were originally engaged for. This leads to the last point: what is the true function of a consultant?

What Is a Consultant, Actually?

Most immediately, the job of a consultant is to install, configure, customize and train on the software you are purchasing. More fundamentally, however, the job of a consultant is similar in many ways to the professional relationship a lawyer has with their good clients.  The true job of a consultant is to advise the client what is best way for them to proceed in order to meet their goals. Like an attorney, a consultant's professional opinion is  based on accumulated experience with similar situations . If, like many people, you tend to view your relationship with your computer and software as adversarial, think of a consultant as a “computer lawyer” who can help you get the best deal possible from your software. If a consultant objects to how you want to configure the software – and can give you good reasons why your way will not work or is not optimal – you should listen. But this implies a degree of trust. Over time, a good consultant will become a valuable asset to the most efficient running of the firm.