Does It Compute?

Happy Winter Solstice

The Winter Solstice has traditionally been celebrated in all cultures for at least 5,000 years as marking the point where the days start getting longer. Maes Howe in Orkney (north of Scotland) is a very large chambered cairn (about 100 feet in diameter and 22 feet high on the outside: the interior chamber is about 14 feet square and about the same height). The 45 foot long entrance way is constructed so that the setting sun shines directly through the passageway onto the back wall of the cairn on the shortest day of the year, setting directly over a stone (the Barnhouse Stone) placed a half-mile or so from the entrance. And of course a similar setup at Stonehenge is even more well-known.

Pre-historic/neolithic peoples were acute astronomers – their existence depended on predicting crops and seasons. The Mayan long calender is more accurate than our current calender with its leap years every four years and “super leap years” at the turn of the century once every 400 years. Other calendars (in India and Mesopotamia – Omar Khayyam was a much better mathematician and astronomer than he was a poet) were also more accurate than our current one.

Subsequent religious year-end myths were manifestly modeled on the celebration of the Winter Solstice.  So during this winter holiday season, I wish you all a Happy Winter Solstice. Spring is coming.

When Software "Disappears"

I had a client call me a while ago very upset that their Outlook had “disappeared.” After an initial reaction that software doesn’t just autodelete itself for no reason, it appeared that they had auto updates turned on in Windows as well as the obligatory “Windows Genuine (Dis)Advantage.”

Microsoft in its wisdom had decided that the copy of Outlook was illegal and deleted it – even though it had in fact been downloaded from the Microsoft site and had a legitimate serial number (Other than Outlook, they use WordPerfect). Apparently this is not all that unusual – “False Positives” are notorious from Windows Genuine (Dis)Advantage.

The client got things straightened out, but only after several hours of phone calls (and of course wait time).  You would think that with its 75% profit margin – in today’s economy no less – Microsoft could do better (of course, any time you start a computer-related sentence with “you would think that...” you know you are in trouble).

Automating Client Intake

One law firm process that cries out for automation is client intake. Depending on the cases – from simple accident cases to very complex asbestos/mesothelioma cases – an intake form can range from a few pages to 30 or so pages.

However, if you were to sit in front of a computer when doing the intake, it would almost certainly make prospective clients very uncomfortable. My doctor has computerized his system and he always records information on a tablet PC. It makes me very nervous, as if he were paying more attention to checking off boxes on his form than to what I was actually telling him. So personally I can sympathize with the nervousness.

Another solution would be to have two people do the intake, one to do the interview and the second to record it on a laptop. This is probably more labor intensive, although since the information has to be entered into your system at some point, perhaps not as much as it would initially seem.

Here’s a possible solution that recently occurred to me: if you presently have clients fill out a paper form, it might be worth considering having them fill out a computerized form. In this day and age where many of your clients are accustomed to filling out information for purchases on the Internet, it might not be as off-putting as it might seem. Lets say you got a standalone $500 Netbook that would be dedicated for client intake. You create a fillable PDF form from your existing intake form and put it on the Netbook. Prospective clients fill it out. You can then copy back to your system. I really don’t know how well this might work, but it might be worth a try.

Installing Vista

Over the weekend, I helped a relative buy a new computer. My first adventure with Vista.
The computer store had a bunch of low-end PCs running nothing but Vista. The "downgrade" to XP was not available on any of these machines (you had to buy it separately from the manufacturer), although it still is available on business-class PCs from major manufacturers.

We wound up getting a Lenovo (ex-IBM) with 64-bit Vista, dual core 2.8 Ghz Intel chip, 4GB of memory and a 640 GB hard drive for $550.  According to the salesman, Vista “would not run” Office 2003 – turns out that was just a bald-faced lie in order to sell more software (Home/Student Edition of Office 2007 - $89). But we were under time pressure since I had to get everything installed by the end of the weekend, so we went with it.

His needs are extremely simple: email, word processing, some Internet (which I am sure he will use more of after upgrading from a 1.4 Ghz Windows XP machine with only 256 Mb memory), limited photography. The machine is very fast (with that power it should be – basically Vista is costing $200 or so more than what you might otherwise want to spend).

To my surprise, installation was a snap. Turn off a few things that would have driven him crazy (UAC controls for example), set Word to default to 2003 mode, and so on.  It confirms one of my basic premises about Vista and Word 2007: simple things are made easier (as long as you are agreeable to the proposition that Microsoft knows best about how you should work); complex things are significantly more difficult to accomplish.

"Publisher Could Not Be Verified"

People who have installed a new copy of Internet Explorer 7 are frequent driven crazy (as I was for a good part of the weekend) by the message “The publisher could not be verified, are you sure you want to run this software” any time they launch a program.

Fortunately, the fix is fairly easy.  In IE, go to Trusted Sites (under Tools | Internet Options | Security) and add the UNC path for your server/programs  to the site, for example \\server3\server or \\server1\documents.

This gets rid of the problem. It is, however, typical of Microsoft “security,” which tends to be so restrictive (as with the Vista UAC function), that it creates the “crying wolf” syndrome, and users simply become inured to warnings.

Crosseyes for Word

Are you one of those people who switched to Word and there are days you spend regretting WordPerfect, in particular Reveal Codes?  (The Word “equivalent” is not even close).

If so, think about getting CrossEyes.  This software, from Levit & James, does “reveal codes in Word.”  Looks almost exactly like WordPerfect, except that you can’t edit the codes directly in the reveal codes window – but if you click on a code, it takes you to the proper editing screen.

And at $29.95, this is a no-brainer. You will earn it back the first 10 minutes you save not cursing Word. Not to mention the medical benefits of lowering your blood pressure.

The Essence of Christmas - 2008

Every once and a while Big Law bonuses pop up and make news. Normally, one firm announces bonuses and the rest follow suit. This year, however Skadden Arps was first out of the gate and announced it would maintain the same bonuses as last year (while dropping last year’s “special” additional bonuses). The next day, however, Cravath announced it would issue only half of last years bonuses and might not have any bonuses at all in 2009 (leading to it being dubbed “Half-Skadden” in the blogs). Other major firms (collectively, the “Half-Skaddens”) followed Cravath, although not all the announcements are in yet. So a 7th year associate at Cravath will get a smaller bonus than a 1st year associate at Skadden. We are talking about a range of about $17,000 to about $65,000 between “half” and “full” bonuses here. It is unclear whether this is a ploy to drive out younger attorneys without having to officially resort to layoffs (as both White & Case and Orrick Herrington have done) but it may well have that effect (assuming they can find new jobs, which is far from evident).

Meanwhile, at a WalMart store in Long Island, a 270 lb temporary employee died when the door collapsed under pressure of the crowds waiting for the store to open at 5 am on “Black Friday” after Thanksgiving, they rushed into the store, trampling him to death underfoot. The paramedics who tried to revive him narrowly avoided being trampled as well.

In what increasingly appears to be most serious cyclical crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression, this would seem to represent the essence (if not the spirit) of Christmas, 2008.

What's New - PCLaw Versions 6 through 9

People who have older versions of software frequently ask: “What are the new features?  Will it be worth my while to upgrade?”  This is easy enough to answer of they are upgrading from, say, version 8 to version 9, because software makers usually produce a “What’s New” document to answer just this sort of question.  But what if they are on version 6, or 7?  The old “What’s New” documents are usually lost in the sands of time and there is no easy way to answer this question (unless of course you had the foresight to save all the “What’s New” documents when each version and service release came out).

However, the other day I discovered that LexisNexis has posted all the old PCLaw “What’s New?” documents on their web site. While they may never have intended this to really be public, nevertheless, the documents are there, all 25 of them.  I have summarized the main new features of each release in a document in the Cheat Sheets section my web site. Here is a shorter summary of the most major new features in each release.

Version 6-6.6 (July 2002-Oct. 2003.  This is probably the most major release PCLaw ever put out. It included both the Matter Manager and the Register, which fully updated the graphical interface and allowed users to see all their entries in ways never before possible. Department Codes were introduced in v. 6.5. A number of billing features were introduced, including Quick Bill (great for real estate closings) and the ability to bill a minimum amount even if the hours don’t reflect it, or to add a percentage to billings. Custom Reports which let you design your own report were introduced in v. 6.6

Version 7-7.63 (Oct. 2003-Sept. 2006) was the longest-lasting release and included the acquisition of PCLaw by LexisNexis (April 2006). It introduced the Document Management and other “Front Office” features. It added improvements to closing matters, transferring matters from one client to another. You could now “drill down” on entries in Pre-Bills to correct them. V. 7 also let you produce bills, reports and G/L statements in PDF format. It enabled batch printing of checks. All in all, it build on v. 6 and was stable over a long period of time.

Version 8-8.20c (Sept. 2006-Sept. 2007). This was the first LexisNexis “yearly release” and was pretty incremental. V. 8.20c made major structural changes for Vista compatibility. It included the very convenient ability to change billing rates effective as of a certain date (so you don’t have to spend New Years Even changing your billing rates for Jan. 1). It allowed you to track time from within Word, Excel, Outlook, as well as Internet Explorer (which it had been able to do for some time). Data could now be exported to QuickBooks after Month’s End. The ability to export to Excel was added to the Register

Version 9 (Sept. 2007 - present). The initial version 9 didn’t offer much, and took away the Payroll feature (infuriating the small minority of clients who used it). It added a Credit Card processing feature via PPI.  V. 9.2 let you jump versions if upgrading (previously, you could not go from e.g., 6 to 9, you had to go 6 to 7 to 8 to 9, which was a pain. V. 9.3, just out, added a very nice “Matters List” that for the first time let you see all your matters in a list and perform batch operations on them. It also allowed for printing G/L reports in both Cash and Accrual modes (or Modified Cash and Accrual). As usual, some of the newer functionality is still partial and needs to be rounded out (the search feature for G/L accounts for example).

To see the entire list, check the “Cheat Sheets” page on my web site or “What’s New PCLaw.”

Metadata and Ethics -- update

Jim Calloway has an excellent and well-reasoned article on the ethics of Metadata in the Oklahoma Bar Journal, as well as his followup blog entry to take into account the Maine opinion, which had not been published when the original article was written. The issue has been decided differently in different states – the Colorado and Maine opinions are the latest and in many respects the most reasonable.  LexisNexis’ Applied Discovery site has a list of the various state opinions (although it is not totally current).

I would agree with his conclusion:

“It is often the case to conclude legal analysis of an emerging issue with a note that we will have to watch for future opinions and developments for more instruction. Here, we take a contrary view. It would be better for lawyers, clients and the judiciary if this issue simply “went away” as all law firms strive to never transmit electronic files that might unintentionally disclose confidential information.”

The whole issue of whether or not it is ethical to look at metadata or if you do see it, even inadvertently, what to do about it, reminds me of those product warnings that have proliferated. They all contain essentially the same message: “Do not do anything incredibly stupid that anybody in their right mind would avoid doing.”  It seems to go back to the McDonalds hot coffee case, here a woman put a cup of steaming hot coffee between her legs while driving and, when it predictably spilled and burned her, sued McDonalds – and won!!

Sending out documents with confidential metadata is like sending a box of documents without every looking through them and then claiming that information was produced “unintentionally.” It is one thing to miss a document here or there, it is quite another to not even check!  But maybe that’s one reason I’m not a lawyer. Ethics aside, anybody who sends out a document containing significant metadata deserves anything that bad that comes of it.

The Maine decision requires that attorneys not “seek to uncover metadata” in documents received from opposing counsel. Yet an attorney using WordPerfect would see any Metadata without “intending” to. I go back to an actual example I have cited a number of times.  A number of years ago, before metadata had become a major issue, a client, who was using WordPerfect, received a document in Word format. Upon opening it, all the hidden comments, deleted information, etc. was automatically displayed, including a comment to the effect “Jim, do you think we can get away with this language.”  Needless to say, in the process of negotiation, the other side did not “get away” with the language.

Maxtor "SafetyDrill" Backup Doesn't Work Reliably

A couple of months ago, I bought a Maxtor OneTouch Mini 4, primarily because of its “SafetyDrill” software. This promises to create a drive image (a la Norton’s “Ghost”) which can be restored using a bootable Linux CD. You pop the CD in, it boots to Linux and does a “bare metal” restore of your drive, bit by bit. So in theory you don’t have to worry about open programs, etc. It sounded like a great idea, although I said at the time that I had not been able to test it. Well, now I have tested it.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work, at least not reliably. I had to rebuild my laptop over Thanksgiving, so my first thought was, “fine, I’ll just restore the image.”  Didn’t work – wouldn’t recognize the hard drive to restore to.

Called Tech Support, they had me download a newer CD image. That at least recognized my hard drive, but the “Restore” button was greyed out. By chance, I switched the language to French, which brought back the “Restore” button which stayed accessible even after switching back to English.

But nothing happened when I clicked “Restore.”  OK, maybe the image was bad – I had one from just a week earlier. That one wouldn’t restore either.

Called Tech Support again. The long and short of it was that “something on your machine must be conflicting with the software.” However since my machine is a Dell Latitude 630 laptop, it is not exactly unusual. Besides, this is supposed to be Linux-based and machine independent.

So the bottom line is – it just doesn’t work. For what it’s worth, the Dell Tech Support guy (very helpful and knowledgeable), said they had had bad luck with the SafetyDrill software.

So the moral of the story is, stick with Ghost.