Does It Compute?

Worldox GX2 Released

Worldox has announced the release of Worldox GX2 effective September 1 for new installations, and about November 1 or so for updates to existing sites.

The major new features that are available mostly have to do with the underpinnings and administration of Worldox. It is now much easier to create “ethical walls” (formerly known as “Chinese walls”) and security groups. It is also now possible for an administrator to create Quick Search Bookmarks for a selected group of people (a given practice area, for example). The Archive, Records and Salvage repositories can now be set to a different location than the main document store, which many larger firms have wanted for a long time.

For firms and individuals that make heavy use of the Folder Tree, the descriptions of Clients, Matters or Document Types are now listed in addition to the actual location (typically a number such as 003456). A number of other display features have been added, such as a tri-pane preview window and the ability to see a “cloud” listing the number of each type of document in a list, with the larger number of documents displayed in larger type.

New End User features depend heavily on how you set up Worldox. If you use a relatively “flat” structure – Client and Matter but do not have Document Types as a directory, you can now usefully see Worldox files from within Outlook. You can also usefully make use of “Workspaces” which are basically hyperlinks to directories. However, if you set up Worldox to use saved searches by various criteria (which I regard as faster and more efficient), these functions may be of only limited use. 

One area where they are effective, however, is in making Projects easier to manage. Projects, are a supra-organizational form that lets you group, for example, all closing documents in a real estate document; all Exhibits for a trial; the final versions of key documents for a given contract; or any other group of documents you want to collect together. They are potentially very useful, but  have always been an underused feature of Worldox.

I have created a new version of my Worldox Cheat Sheet to account for GX2. Since it reflects how I typically configure Worldox, some people may find some of the new features underrepresented. It is available on the Cheat Sheet Page of my Web site.

Flat Fee Billing - Even for Consultants?

As the pressure on attorneys’ fee structures continues, the trend toward flat fee billing continues to grow.

Some practice areas already use this widely – for example, real estate transactions, will preparation, etc.  The main reason for this is that these are known quantities. But what about “unknown” quantities such as, primarily, litigation?

Matt Homan has a very useful blog, “the [non]billable hour” on the subject. He recently posted a “Q & A on flat fee pricing.” 

The core point is that even when an overall engagement may be unknown or unclear, it can be broken up into mainly known chunks. For example, a day in court costs so much, depositions and transcripts cost so much, a price for drafting standard motions can be easily fixed, and so on.

So even a complex engagement can be broken out in the form: “known pieces will cost so much” (flat fee). Unknown pieces, what in the construction industry are known as “change orders,” will be extra.

The other point is that even though some cases may wind up with overruns (losing money); in others you should be ahead of the game – especially if you use any form of document automation – so on balance you should be OK, assuming you can estimate time accurately.

OK Hotshot (I hear you say), what about flat fees for consultants?  Although I believe this is possible, at least in part, there are two major caveats here.

First, when you install a new program on top of an existing system, it is a bit like renovating an old house: you never know what you are going to find (and hence how much time it will take). I recall the first major renovation I undertook on an old house in Cambridge, MA, I what horrified to discover that the joists were cross-braced, so that electrical or other lines could not be “dropped down” in between joists. Second, the 2x4's were actually 2" by 4" and not today’s nominal 2x4's which are actually 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches. So nothing fit right. Provision has to be made for that.

Secondly, there is what is sometimes known as “project creep” – “While you’re at it, can’t you just....”  Sure, but that is extra. That has to be clearly understood.

As long as provision is made for these two exceptions (which can frequently be major), I do think that certain basic installations can be broken down into flat fee pieces, if not 100% for an entire job.

PCLaw v. Time Matters: Can PCLaw Do It All?

There seems to have been a recent uptick in inquiries along the line "Do I really need Time Matters?" Can't I do everything I do with TM just with PCLaw? (Manifestly, this corresponds to increased dissatisfaction with Time Matters and LexisNexis).

The generic answer is pretty simple: If you have an extensively customized Time Matters setup (for example, do you have custom fields on the "Additional" tab?), and make substantial use of chains and triggers, then the answer is "No, you would not be happy with PCLaw." However, if you use TM mainly as a calendar and rolodex for contacts and matters, then PCLaw may be able to do what you need. As usual, the devil is in the details.

Calendar and Chains (Linked Events).  PCLaw has an excellent calendar, on a par with Time Matters. And while TM can be customized almost any way you want, PCLaw has a built-in "location" category (where is the appointment taking place), and is much more geared to billing time than TM is. PCLaw will let you create and store "linked events" (what TM calls "chains"), and notify someone of an appointment.

Triggers.  PCLaw does not have triggers (where one event "triggers" another).

Customization of Matters.  While TM puts everything "up front" on three screens, PCLaw does let you create a series of "Custom Tabs" that can be associated with a matter or type of law. As you might expect from a billing and accounting program, these are heavily oriented toward billing items. However, while you do not have options such as calculated fields, phone, social security number, web or email fields, the options you do have include dates, yes/no, etc. You have lookups of PCLaw fields but not customized lookup tables as with TM. However, if you wished to set up a Custom Tab to display all the dates for particular kinds of court matter for example, you could do so easily and display it all in one place (which you cannot do in TM).

Documents.  PCLaw will let you create merge documents which are similar to TM's merge documents. In terms of usability, they are somewhere in between formattable clipboards and merge documents in TM and will also let you access fields in your Custom Tabs. They will work with WordPerfect, but must be created in Word.

Timers. If you make use (or would like to make use) of timers. PCLaw lets you start timers from Word, Excel or Internet Explorer to track and bill time spent in those applications. TM does not do this.

And of course, in terms of overall time and billing functions, PCLaw is miles ahead of TM's Billing Matters (which is in the process of being discontinued by LexisNexis).

Data Import. You may have trouble getting existing data into PCLaw. When it links with Time Matters or Amicus, it imports the clients, but not any other contacts. However, there is a little-known utility called “pclawdi.exe” which can be downloaded from the PCLaw download site (http://support.pclaw.com/techpage.asp). You may have to fight with tech support to get the product key (it is a 25-digit key which was used prior to v. 8.20c, not the current 40-digit key), but the utility itself is free. You can import basic information – contacts, clients, matters and calendar items. Not complete, but a big step along the way. You will not, however, get any custom field information in your current program (on the other hand, if you have a lot of custom field information chances are PCLaw will not do what you want).

So the answer is.... it all depends on what you are looking to do. If you make a list of the five things you wish your current system would do, but doesn't; and another of five functions you absolutely can't afford to lose, and compare the result with some of the details above, you will be in a much better position to make an informed decision.

What's In a Name -- Or Email Account?

Jim Calloway recently had a post on avoiding self-inflicted wounds, which included commenting on a twitter post that “if your lawyer’s email address ends in hotmail.com, gmail.com or yahoo.com (or aol.com) find a new lawyer.”

While the comment is a bit extreme if taken as an absolute rule, there is a valid underlying point here. Teenagers today expect people to have a Facebook account, and clients expect law firms to have a website. Especially for a small firm or solo, a web site tells the public that the firm actually exists. It validates the firm to the public at large. In addition, although this is a separate point, the content of a web site leads prospective clients to form a (hopefully positive) impression of the lawyer and the firm: “They’ve been successful,” “They’ve got a lot of useful information,” “They do exactly what I need.”

By extension, an email address serves to identify the sender as a member of a firm and not “johndoe4389@gmail.com.” For example, when I get an email from someone, I routinely look up the web site that is the extension of the email. For an email of heckman@heckmanco.com, the web site will be www.heckmanco.com. The bottom line is that in this day and age, not using a business-oriented email address as the main email to clients is unprofessional and counterproductive in terms of client relations.

Now of course most people ALSO have a gmail or other account that they use for specific purposes:  listservs, ebay, personal email, etc.  But that just reinforces the point: use a personal account for personal email; use a professional account linked to the firm’s web site for business email.

Word Tips

Love it or hate it, Word is a fact of life. So it behooves you to gain at least an elemental mastery of the program. (Personally, the thing I hate the most is the way sections work.) Fortunately, help is available.

Jan Berinstein has brought out a very useful book canned "Formatting Legal Documentws With Microsoft Office Word 2007" which is available from Amazon. She focuses on what you really need to know (especially if you are coming from WordPerfect) rather than some of the more abstruse areas that most firms consign to their IT people or trainers.

A list of "Frequently Asked Questions" also provides useful information.

Finally, a list of "221 keyboard shortcuts" provides an exhaustive list of Word's keyboard shortcuts. Many of them you will never use. But even if you only find a half-dozen or so that provoke the reaction "that would be really useful" it is worth looking through the list.

Kindle Once Again

After six months, I still love my Kindle and the 50 or so books I have read on it. But... The main drawback is the proprietary format. You cannot "give" a book to anyone else, even another Kindle owner. The second drawback is price. Book publishers are apparently charging hardback prices to provide electronic copies of their books. This makes no sense, since the cost of converting the electronic version of a typeset book to a Kindle (or any other) version is essentially zero.

The Kindle format and restrictions is increasingly coming under fire, principally by Sony, which will be selling its books in the open source ePub format, a format backed by some major publishers such as Random House and HarperCollins. Sony will also scrap its proprietary anti-copying software in favor of technology from Adobe which lets a user copy a book a restricted number of times. This will let you "loan" a book to someone but presumably not resell it on eBay.

I have to admit, though, that the provision of this format that lets people read books on a cell phone mystifies me. The Kindle screen is already small enough, I can't imagine going to a cell phone display. Conceivably you might do it as a temporary measure when you can't take the larger device with you – but then the 2 copies of the book I n question would have to synch somehow so that you pick up on your cell phone where you left off on your Kindle or Sony. As far as I know, that is not likely to happen any time soon.

As other publishers emerge, they are likely to join the Sony/open source bandwagon. The big question is what Apple will do. Apple is expected to release a tablet computer that can function as an ebook reader, but using what format?  I would think Apple would be foolish to try to go it alone with its own proprietary format, and if it teams up with the ePub format, Amazon could well be forced to revise some of its policies.

In the next year or so, I expect prices to drop (just as music prices dropped with the advent of iTunes), and that Amazon will, at least partially, give up the proprietary format so that books can be copied at least a few times.

The NSA Vacuums the Internet

I just finished reading a pretty scary book by Mark Klein, Wiring Up the Big Brother Machine... And Fighting It (available from Amazon).

Klein was a senior technician at ATT who accidentally discovered that the NSA has been vacuuming up all traffic on the Internet – and continues to do so under the Obama administration.

Klein discovered a "secret" room – 641A at the Folsom Street office of the phone company in San Francisco. A "splitter" was installed on the fiber optic Internet cables that directed half the light along the normal path and half the light to the Room 641A – and all the traffic to each side of the "splitter." Over the course of several years, being asked to assist in installing equipment, reviewing installation manuals, testing connections with other offices, etc. Klein realized that there are probably 15-20 such offices across the U.S. Based on internal (but not classified) ATT documents, it is clear that the NSA is intercepting virtually all Internet traffic in the US. This was confirmed by former NSA analyst Russell Tice on Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" program on MSNBC – on January 21, 2009, the day after Bush left office.

Needless to say, no warrant covers these actions, only the thin veil of "anti-terrorism." The "anti-terrorism" argument might make sense if cables and offices that routed mainly foreign traffic that is entering the US from abroad were targeted, but they are not. Thus ocean cable-head stations are not targeted but Atlanta and downtown San Francisco are.

The book goes into detail about how the NSA spying was revealed and the story spread despite government attempts to suppress it. Klein's conclusion seems unassailable: the NSA is snooping on every single piece of Internet traffic in the US. The only consolation is that they can't possible have the manpower and equipment to review it all – although a new center in a Denver suburb that seems to be designed to do exactly that.

Security Issues

As a consultant, I often go into law firms where either there is no login password (“too much trouble”) or the password is.... “password.”  At the other end of the spectrum, end users often have several (I have seen as many as 10) yellow stickies on their desk with various logins and passwords. This illustrates the first fact of security:  the more security you have the more difficult it will make the end user’s life.  So a firm needs to make a conscious decision about how much security they need and how much trouble they are willing to go to in order to attain that level of security.

The second issue is: what do you need security for anyway?  Exactly what risks are you protecting against? This might seem like a stupid question, but answering it correctly helps determine the level of security you need. There are four levels of risk.

The first level, internal to firms, is end-user error/stupidity. This includes things like dragging and dropping entire directories into who knows where using Windows Explorer, deleting files by mistake, etc.  This is relatively easy to protect against.

The second level is end user maliciousness. Someone decides to quit and wants to see how much damage they can do before they leave – deleting entire directories, etc. Maliciousness is the main cause of loss of data in large companies. This is one reason why document management programs such as Worldox can be set to prevent most users from deleting documents.

The third level is random outside attacks. This includes spyware, malware, etc.  This is the focus of much of the current security discussion. An important subset of this category is lost laptops and cell phones.  Somebody finds them and, “oh boy, a free laptop.”  They may or may not actually be interested in the data that is there, but from the law firm’s point of view loss of confidential data is critical.  And when banks or the IRS loses tens of thousands of credit card numbers of social security numbers, it is a major social problem.

The last level is targeted attacks. A lot of ink has been spilled on this issue, but in fact it is relatively rare.  This implies that your specific data is targeted. Lost phones and laptops are in between. If you lose your phone, that is random, if somebody steals your phone, knowing who you are and what data there might be on it, that is targeted.

Theft of credit card numbers is targeted, in that they want to resell the numbers, but random in terms of whether or not you are affected .

An excellent recent post on Sharon Nelson’s “Ride the Lightning” blog details the security issues for the iPhone – the bottom line is that the iPhone has essentially NO security if somebody actually WANTS to get at your data. This as opposed to picking up a lost phone and just using it.

Characteristics of a Killer SaaS Application

Most Web-based, SaaS applications are still immature.  But it is worth asking the question, aside from feature set (which is expanding very rapidly and obviously differs with different types of programs), what would make a “cloud” application really attractive.

1.  The immediate selling point is the web-based nature of the program. No server to install, no patches to apply, no consultant to pay (except perhaps for training). Immediate updates (with the bugs that come with the updates, too).

2.  Backup to local servers. More and more people are using services that back up your data to the web. For web-based programs, the backup should be reversed. You should back up to local servers. One of the very few web-based programs that currently does this is NetDocuments (a document management program). If the Internet goes down, you can still retrieve/access your data locally.

3.  Off-line capabilities. With today’s expectations of 24/7 work and availability, you need off-line access to your data. What if you are flying coast to coast or elsewhere? What if you are on vacation in a location where there is no cellphone/internet access? You need to be able to do the web-based equivalent of “working remotely” and then upload your new work/changes the next time you connect to the internet.

Aside from this key functionality, obviously you need to examine the company closely. What happens to your data if it goes out of business (this has happened a significant number of times)? What happens to your data if you decide to discontinue the service (this is where backup to local servers comes in). These are basic issues before you decide on a cloud-based application.

As these programs mature, a combination of local backup (and accessibility) and off-line capabilities will be key to making a program really stand out.