Does It Compute?

Conceptual Barriers to Using Worldox Efficiently

I try to train users to take the best advantage of Worldox by using the indexed search features. But I frequently find that, although perhaps not explicitly stated, they want Worldox to mirror how they worked previously using the Windows file structure. They are used to having directories many layers deep as partial compensation for Window’s inability to do any advanced searches. While Worldox has a number of ways to accommodate this desire, it is hardly the way to use it most efficiently. Some programs actually boast that they work “the way lawyers want” – i.e., based on an inefficient directory structure.

In a pre-document management system world, people are accustomed to using a Table of Contents (the directory structure) in the giant book that is their entire document store. Or, to use a legal analogy, to looking through Chapter 1, 1.1, 1.1.1, 1.1.1.1, and so on. But books have indexes, and LexisNexis/Westlaw searches are similarly based on indexes. Think of Worldox as a structured Google search for your document store.

I often have attorneys tell me, “I want to see all the documents for a given matter.”  OK, but why?  A too broad search is essentially worthless on a case of any size. If “all the documents for a given matter” turns up 500 documents (not unusual, especially if you are integrating emails and scanned documents), then you have to spend time whittling it down to usable number.  In Worldox GX2, a great tool for doing this is the “Tags” function at the bottom of the Worldox window that lets you restrict the list on the screen to, for example, only pdf or Excel files, etc.

The “I want to see all the documents” type statement is rarely factually true, however emotionally accurate it may be.  What people actually want to see are all the letters, all the pleadings, all deposition-related documents, all documents EXCEPT the emails, etc..  Or, to drill down even further, all the pleadings for all matters containing the terms “excited utterance,” or all the pleadings containing the terms “excited utterance” done in the last six months of last year, and so on. 

The one reasonable rationale I sometimes hear for “wanting to see all the documents” is the fear of “missing something” due to mis-filing; poor naming conventions, etc. if they don’t look at absolutely everything.  However, if we refer again to the Google/Lexis/Westlaw paradigm, it is clear that searching is an art: you may have to make a couple of passes before you get the search results you know are there.  The same is true of Worldox.

The bottom line is that if you can switch mental gears to take advantage of the multi-tiered index that Worldox offers, you can dramatically increase your productivity.  Or, as one partner told me a few hours after he had returned from training: “I did this search and everything came up just the way you claimed it would.”  QED.

Integrating DropBox with Worldox

Clients occasionally ask me: “Can I integrate DropBox with Worldox?” The short answer is “no.” Fortunately there is a longer answer.

Programs such as DropBox, Box.net or Smartsync allow for automatic synchronization between a folder on your hard drive with a location on the internet. This can be useful for collaboration – multiple users modifying the same file – or as an extranet, where you put client files up on the web for them to see and possibly modify.

Normally, you do not want to put all of a client’s files on the internet for them to see. (Use your lurid imagination on those memos you don’t want to publicize). You want a selection of important files or files that are currently being worked on. In this scenario, it is feasible to synchronize with DropBox on a relatively small scale.

First, set up your DropBox account and create your DropBox client directory. Let’s say c:\dropbox\client1. Give your client the appropriate rights to modify (or not) files in that directory on the web.

Secondly, create a “SendTo” entry in Worldox to let you send files to that location. Right-click on any Worldox list, select “SendTo” and then “Add/Edit” at the bottom. Add an entry.  The name of the entry will be something like “Send to Client1 DropBox.” In the Program field enter “%WDCODEPATH%/wdcopy.exe” (without the quotes). In the location field enter “%@% c:\dropbox\client1\*.* /lfn.”  The /lfn switch tells Worldox to put the long file names and not just the Worldox document number.

Alternatively, you could check out a file to c:\dropbox\client1, but then you would not be able to work on the file within Worldox while it was copied to your DropBox account on the internet.

So now your file is synchronizing between the dropbox\client1 folder on the local hard drive and the internet. Your collaborator makes some changes (of which DropBox and similar programs can notify you). You now need to get the new version back into Worldox.

Using Windows explorer, drag the changed file to the Worldox WorkZone cube at the top of your screen (or right-click on it and select copy). A Worldox profile screen will pop up. Click on the “Menu” button at the top right of the profile screen. Select “Same Profile As...” Then select the original document, and “save as new version.”  Note that you could also do this using the Worldox Folder Tree display and “Copy” the document back to Worldox. In that case, the button at the top right of the profile screen reads “Quick Profile” instead of “Menu.” Other steps are the same.

For ease of consulting the files being synchronized with your DropBox account, you might want to create a bookmark for that directory.

There may be slight differences between the various on-line storage/synchronization programs, but this approach should work. Not the most automated in the world, but it does provide practical integration on a small scale.

Document Management Buyers Guide - 6,000 Downloads!

I just heard from the Technolawyer people that my “Buyer’s Guide to Document Management Systems for Law Firms” has been downloaded from the Techolawyer library 6,000 times. That’s a lot! You need to subscribe to Technolawyer to get it, but the subscription is free.

I’m honored that so many people have found it useful.  The more extended version, “Why Document Management: a White Paper” is available from my web site at http://www.heckmanco.com/dmissues.html

The House of Wisdom - Arabic Science in the Middle Ages

I just finished reading Jim Al-Khalili’s “The House of Wisdom. How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance.”  A fascinating book. In general, it has long been known that Arabic Science acted as a transmission belt between the Greeks and the Renaissance. Translation of Greek texts into Arabic and then into Latin were the path by which Renaissance thinkers were able to make their advances. These Arabic scientists are frequently known today (if they are known at all) by latinized names such as Avicenna (Ibn Sina) or Averroes (Ibn Rushd),

Thus we use today “arabic numbers” (which actually originated in India). In Europe, decimal numbers were long resisted as “symbols of the evil Muslim foe” (“terrorist numbers,” anybody?). In fact, the French Audit Office was still using Roman numerals in the 18th century (have you ever tried to multiply Roman numerals?). But the advances of Arabic science were much more extensive than I ever realized.  Algebra was the creation of an arabic mathematician in the ninth century. Doctors wrote medical compendiums that were the definitive texts for 500 years thereafter and invented basic medical instruments such as the syringe. They perfected tracheotomies. Studies in optics pre-dated Newton. Arabic scientists knew the earth was round and were able to calculate its circumference to a relatively high degree of accuracy. They produced calendars that were more accurate than the one we use today. And the list goes on.

But the main contribution of these scientists, in Al-Khalili’s view, was the sytematization of the scientific method. Thus a quote from “the first real scientist,” Ibn al-Haytham:

    “We should distinguish the properties of particulars, and gather by induction what pertains to the eye and what is found in the manner of sensation to be uniform, unchanging, manifest and not subject to doubt. After which we should ascend in our enquiry and reasoning, gradually and orderly, criticizing premises and exercising caution in regard to conclusions – our aim in all that we make subject to inspection and review being to employ justice, not to follow prejudice, and to take care in all that we judge and criticize that we seen the truth and not be swayed by opinion.”   

Another leading chemist and clinician, al-Razi (c. 854 - c. 925), notes the following:

    “If the people of religion are asked about proof for the soundness of their religion, they flare up, get angry, and spill blood of whoever confronts them with this question. They forbid rational speculations, and strive to kill their adversaries. This is why truth became thoroughly silenced and concealed.... How can anyone think philosophically while committed to those old wives’ tales, founded on contradictions, obdurate ignorance, and dogmatism.”

Words that could equally refer to both Muslim and Christian fundamentalism today. And yet Iran celebrates “Razi Day” every year.

Even more than specific advances on which Renaissance thinkers from Copernicus to Newton built, the Arabic scientists gave the west scientific method: the insistence on gathering data through observation and measurement, then formulating and testing hypotheses to explain the data. 

Finally, consider al-Biruni, perhaps the pro-eminent scientist in the first half of the eleventh century:

    “The extremist among them would stamp the scientists as atheists, and would proclaim that they lead people astray in order to make ignoramuses, like him, hat the sciences. For this will help him to conceal his ignorance, and to open the door for the complete destruction of science and scientists.”

Words as applicable today as they were when they were written a thousand years ago.