Does It Compute?

The Cost of Document Management Software

Technolawyer published last week a comparative cost analysis of Worldox, iManage/Interwoven and NetDocuments for a 25-user firm over 5 years. The estimates included web access (necessary to level the playing field with NetDocuments, which is a web-based SaaS product). The results are revealing, particularly when you add what is not included in the estimates.  Here are the base numbers:

Worldox:   $41,045
Interwoven: $79,000
NetDocs   $65,440

This does not include the cost of new hardware over time (almost certainly needed at some point over a 5-year span). It also does not include any costs for version upgrades for Interwoven or SQL (with Worldox maintenance there is no cost for program upgrades and it does not need SQL). It does not include installation or consulting costs for the Interwoven web product (again, needed to establish a par with NetDocs in terms of costs). While it includes start-up consulting and training costs, it does not include ongoing consulting costs for Worldox or Interwoven (presumably NetDocs would have no “consulting costs” per se), which are likely to be significantly higher for Interwoven than Worldox.  Lastly, it does not include the local document service for NetDocs – which lets you “back up” your documents on the web to a local server and thus be fully protected in the event of a web failure or if NetDocs were to go out of business. This would add $1,500/month, or $90,000 over a five-year period to the cost of NetDocs.

What all this means, that if you add in what is omitted in the quotes, the price differential between Worldox and NetDocs or Interwoven is likely to increase over the base numbers, perhaps dramatically. And while price should certainly not be the main criteria for choosing a product, nobody today can argue that a differential of 2x or more will not be a factor. And when you consider that the per-user cost of Worldox for 25 users over 60 months is under $30 a month, it is a bargain.

Security and the Cloud (Again)

There has been a flurry of posts and documents recently on Cloud computing security. Check out Sharon Nelson’s “Ride the Lightning.”

I also recently read Garry Wise’s Lawyers In “The Cloud”– A Cautionary Tale” article, which should be must reading for anyone contemplating moving to Sofware as a Service.

While most of his examples and concerns are appropriate, there are a few major differences between legal software in the “Cloud” and the examples he quotes. Perhaps the major one is that, unlike the theft of hundreds of thousands of credit card and social security numbers, information contained in SaaS programs would not be profitable if stolen. So a major motive for data theft is not on the same scale. It would still apply in certain instances, such as big-number law suits, mergers & acquisitions negotiations or where individuals nurse a particular grudge (family law, divorces, etc.), Government spying on sensitive legal cases.

On the other hand, two points that he raises should be stressed. The first is that most SaaS programs are ill-suited to the demands of Electronic Data Discovery. What happens if you get a discovery demand and can’t comply with it because of the limitations of your SaaS provider?  How sympathetic do you think courts will be to the argument “The Cloud Ate My Data?”

The second is data backup. If you are considering a SaaS program – such as Clio, RocketMatter, Houdini or AdvologixPM – I would think the ability to back up your data to a local server would be a deal breaker. This is the opposite of backing up data to the Internet, but it does protect against loss of data in almost all circumstances.

The pro-Cloud people make one good point: namely that the office security of many small firms is even worse than it would be in the Cloud. See Nicole Black’s article for an example of this view. 
While this is a perfectly valid point, it really is an argument that jumping from the fire back up into the frying pan is a step forward. Wouldn’t it be better to put out the fire?

LexisNexis: Is the Empire Crumbling?

In the wake of LexisNexis’ acquisition of Time Matters, it projected an empire-building strategy around acquired legal software. In short order, Lexis acquired PCLaw, Juris,  Concordance and CaseMap to add to HotDocs, which it had previously acquired. It announced a “privileged” relation with NetDocuments. This gave it solutions to almost any legal software need.

But two years after each acquisition, Lexis canned the principles of the acquired software programs (with the sole exception of HotDocs), that is, the people with the vision who had developed the programs to the point that they were worth acquiring.  In the past five years, Lexis has regularly announced new management and product champions announced that it would do better. This has all been reminiscent of the recent Mac ads about the announcement of new versions of Windows: this time all the problems are fixed, “trust me.” The fact is that the Practice Management division of LexisNexis (in its various incarnations) has not had “very effective management team in place” (to quote a recent listserv post) since they got rid of Bob Butler.

Last year, Lexis broke off its relationship with NetDocuments, which apparently had not “met its numbers.” This week, it announced it was selling HotDocs to British-based CapSoft, one of the largest providers of HotDocs solutions. Although HotDocs had for years been the market leader in document assembly, recently it has been losing ground to competing products such as Exari and DealBuilder.

In addition, in a move that left me (and a lot of other people) scratching my head, Lexis is now re-positioning PCLaw as the “entry level” practice management program. So if you call Lexis sales and tell them you are a small firm (3-5 users) and want practice management they will suggest PCLaw, NOT Time Matters.  PCLaw is a great time/billing/accounting program, but this is simply weird. Does this mean that PCLaw will get additional resources (which would be a good thing) or will Lexis change its corporate mind a year from now?

Whatever all this means, it is certainly not indicative of a cohesive product strategy.

Google Scholar

Several recent blogs have pointed to the fact that Google Scholar has added a dedicated search for legal journals and court opinions.  Initially, this may be somewhat limited and may not offer many arguments for switching from a paid plan.  Since I don’t practice law, I am not in a position to evaluate it. On the other hand, it also includes the ability to search for patents. With the growth of free search engines offered by many bar associations, and the general tendency to putting “everything on the web” it seems clear that the days of the paid services are numbered. Also, with multiple resources available, it seems likely that you might be able to find additional references by searching multiple sites/services.

In a related move, the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center has just released a ree full-text online law review/law journal search engine that searches the free full-text of over 300 online law reviews and law journals as well as other document repositories.

Getting the Most Out of Your Existing Software

One of the common calls I get as a consultant says in essence: “I know I’m not getting the most out of my software: how do I make better use of what I already have?”  Even with a marginal upturn in the economy, there is a lot of pressure on firms to make the most of what they already have.  Here are some suggestions that may point to areas where relatively simple improvements or adjustments can reap significant benefits in terms of a firm’s efficiency and productivity.

WordProcessing: Is your firm using electronic letterhead?  Are you using real templates (as opposed to copying over an existing file) for standard tasks such as fax cover sheets?  Do you have any macros at all for common tasks such as inserting a graphical signature in your documents?

Practice Management: Have you customized your practice management software at all or are you just using it as a glorified rolodex/calendar?  By customizing your software to contain information you commonly need to retrieve, you can significantly reduce the number of times you have to consult a paper file. In addition, you can lay the basis for using this information to lay the basis for document assembly to product commonly used documents such as retainer letters.

Time and Billing: Are you using productivity reports such as PCLaw’s Lawyer Budgeting/ Lawyer Overview to put a dollar figure on how your firm or specific partners are doing, as opposed to a general impression of “well” or “poorly.” Productivity reports can also help you identify areas of your practice that are less efficient.

Document Assembly: Arguably using some form of document assembly can be one of the greatest productivity enhancements for a firm. This does not have to be heavy-duty players like Hot Docs. Simpler forms of document assembly ranging from simple word processing templates to merge forms used with a practice management program can yield considerable returns.

Training: When you go through a training session on a new program, if you have a really good instructor, and you are having a really good day, you may remember 70% of the content of a class. Very rapidly even this tends to dissipate so that the minimum a user needs to know in order to get their work done rapidly tends to become the maximum they know about a program. Judicious use of “brown bag” lunch training sessions can serve to increase efficience across the board. One user’s question during such sessions will benefit others who may have had the same question in the past. In addition, if you put out a weekly or even bi-weekly “FAQ” email, it can serve to reinforce training (as an example, see my “Worldox FAQs” on my web ite).

Should You Declare Email Bankruptcy?

I’ve seen several posts lately about declaring “email bankruptcy.” This applies to people who have 5-10,000 emails in their inbox, unsorted, and who have no chance whatsoever of “catching up.” 

Attorneys frequently use their email as a substitute for document management – its where everything is (although finding it is another matter).

One solution to finding things in Outlook is to install Xobni (that’s “in box” backwards). I use this – not all the time, but when I know there is something there but I just can’t put my finger on it. It’s free and it works. You can install it and then turn the Xobni sidebar on and off as needed.

As usual, Jim Calloway’s “How To” post is very useful: this one on email bankruptcy.

The basic concept is that you create a “month” folder, then move your old emails into it and create a single PDF file of all the emails. Then delete that month and create the next one. The only thing Jim omits, is that you should really drag your sent items into the “month” folder as well.

Rick Borstein provides extremely detailed instructions for creating an Acrobat binder for small EDD productions.  But the same process could be used for “email bankruptcy.”

Rick’s blog, Acrobat for Legal Professionals should be on every lawyers resource list: if you want to know how to use Acrobat for something a little bit out of the ordinary, this is the first place to look.

Both of these processes, however, are manual and relatively slow, although they will do the job. If you are using a document management system such as Worldox, there is a better and quicker way, however.  Have your administrator create a “matter” under the Firm General “client” (or however you have Worldox organized) called “John’s old emails.” Then select up to your entire inbox and move it to this “matter.”  I have seen people move 3,000 emails at a time, although out of innate caution I would recommend you not do more than about 1,000 at a time. Do the same thing for your sent items. Depending on the speed of your system, this might take 15-20 minutes, but then you are done. Better yet, all your emails are indexed by subject line and the full text of the email, so they are quickly searchable.

People Who Can't Type

To paraphrase Steve Jobs in his “challenges of starting Apple”

“[Lawyers] couldn’t type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this.”

Annoying Security Message Won't Go Away

Have you ever seen that annoying security message for a program that you run all the time: “Security Warning – Do you Want to Run This File?”  You uncheck the “Always Ask Before Opening This File” box but that does no good. 

I finally found out how to fix this (thanks to Amicus Attorney tech support).

If you right-click on the file in question and select “Properties,” at the bottom of the screen, you will see two options. First, uncheck the file as “read only.” Secondly, there is a box that says “This file came from another computer and might be blocked to help protect this computer.”  Click the “Unblock” button. You have to do both these steps for it to work.

That should fix your problem.

TM 10: Big Firm Capacity; Small Firm Capabilities

Faced with repeated and ongoing complaints about Time Matters Pro in version 9 and earlier (some consultants wouldn’t even install the Pro version), Lexis converted all Time Matters editions to a SQL database.  This has gotten generally positive reviews in terms of stability and speed.  It has, however, created some issues in particular regarding backup.

SQL is not for the faint of heart. Firms that were accustomed to simply manipulating the TM database location, backup, etc. can no longer do that just by moving things around. You have to use the SQL Management Studio, a whole different piece of software with a not insignificant learning curve and stiff penalties for mistakes (loss of data).

The issue of backup is an especially critical one. TM now includes tools for backing up the entire database.  However, by default the backup is stored under the SQL directory, which by default is stored on the C: drive.  So if your hard drive crashes, your backup crashes as well.

Users would be well advised to find a knowledgeable Time Matters and/or SQL consultant to set this up. Once it is done, however, it should need almost no attention in the future, so it is essentially a one-time charge.

Matthew Homann's Lists

Matthew Homann specializes in lists of “ten rules” or “ten tips” on his blog “the [non] billable hour.” Generally I find at least one item useful and the “rules” usually encapsulate an entire approach to law firm management and marketing.

A recent list, “20 More Tips, Tricks and Ideas” included one that I’ve always toyed with but never quite came around to implementing.

Pick your least favorite client – the one you hope doesn’t call. Fire him.  If you’re feeling in a good mood, let your secretary fire a client too. Great for morale and the bad clients probably don’t produce a lot of income anyway.