The Connected Lawyer

I love tips that help us use MS Word more effectively. Nerino Petro at Compujurist has a great little post detailing how to take the last bit of text that appears by itself on the last page and squeeze it into the previous page. Not only does Nerino share this tip, but he also tells us how to do it in both Word 2003 and Word 2007.

I would note that you should be wary of trying this on briefs that are filed with courts that enforce strict page limits and font sizes. Word adjusts the font sizes to repaginate the document.

If you need to solve this problem, jump over to the post and see the details. I will give you a hint. The Print Preview feature plays an important role.

The fact that agents can search your computer when you cross international borders presents special problems for attorneys, given that our computers likely contain information we are ethically bound to keep confidential. If you are considering international travel with your laptop, I recommend that you check out Bruce Schneier’s column on crossing boarders with your laptop.

Bruce’s advice for your best defense:

So your best defence is to clean up your laptop. A customs agent can’t read what you don’t have. You don’t need five years’ worth of email and client data. You don’t need your old love letters and those photos (you know the ones I’m talking about). Delete everything you don’t absolutely need. And use a secure file erasure program to do it. While you’re at it, delete your browser’s cookies, cache and browsing history. It’s nobody’s business what websites you’ve visited. And turn your computer off - don’t just put it to sleep - before you go through customs; that deletes other things. Think of all this as the last thing to do before you stow your electronic devices for landing. Some companies now give their employees forensically clean laptops for travel, and have them download any sensitive data over a virtual private network once they’ve entered the country. They send any work back the same way, and delete everything again before crossing the border to go home. This is a good idea if you can do it.

I urge you to check out his entire post. Also remember that they can search your phone/PDA in the same way that they can search your laptop.

I am not sure how he does it, but Rick is able to figure out what problems I am encountering in Acrobat and tell me the solutions. All without me having to bug him by email. Earlier this week, Rick posted on his blog an answer to the question of how to extract nonsequential pages from a document.

Acrobat allows you to easily extract sequential pages, however, there was no easy way to extract nonsequential pages. Or at least I thought there wasn’t. Rick, however, comes to the rescue with his explanation of how to do so. He explains:

Yes, it’s true that you cannot select and extract a discontinuous range of pages using the Extract Pages option and the Pages Panel.

However, you can drag and drop a non-sequential bunch of pages between two PDFs using the Pages Panel:

Go read the entire post, however, because not only does he give you step by step instructions on how to do is, he also includes a video showing it being done.

This is another excellent post from Rick and another example of why his blog’s feed should be in your RSS reader.

I just read a great article by Jim Calloway. He points people to an article that he recently wrote for the Oklahoma Bar Association explaining how to answer simple questions by searching the internet. I can think of several people off the top of my head who would benefit from reading this article.

Jim explains that the genesis of his article is the fact that he often sees people publish questions to list serves that they could easily answer themselves. As Jim explains:

So today I propose an answer to a question that has troubled me for years. Why would that person send that question to hundreds of people via e-mail when they could simply find the answer online themselves?

The irony is that they probably find it themselves as quickly as they can type the question and send the e-mail. So why bother hundreds of others? I have determined that part of the answer to my question is narcissism and laziness. It doesn’t bother some people to force hundreds of others to reach for the delete key if they can get what they need.

But, I now believe that most people simply don’t know they can now get instant answers to almost anything online or they don’t know how.

Many lawyers who can do superb digital legal research for their clients seem to not know how to do other online research. They can easily find precedents and cases, but cannot easily find the flash point of kerosene. (Oh, wait, that’s in 25 Oklahoma Statutes § 34 and the Oklahoma Constitution; bad example.)

I recommend that you read the article and pass it around to “those people” who never bother to answer their own questions.

If you are curious, as I was, about why the flashpoint of kerosene is in the Oklahoma constitution, a Goggle search will lead you to the answer.

To the surprise of no one who has ever used multiple monitors, recent studies show that multiple monitors increase a user’s productivity 20%-30%. As the Slashdot article notes:

For those of us who use multi-monitors, this is not shocking.

The Microsoft article states:

Give someone a second monitor, let them use it for while, and then try to take it away. It just isn’t going to happen. They’ll never go back to a mono display. Researchers in the Visualization and Interaction for Business and Entertainment group (VIBE), found that increasing a computer user’s display space made it easier for them to complete their tasks.

I have used multiple monitors for more than four years now and wholeheartedly agree that using multiple monitors improves my productivity by the 30% shown in the study. The only drawback that I have ever encountered in using a multiple monitor set up is that I have multiple monitors only when I am in my office. When I am away from the office I find myself often wishing that I had a second monitor to use. In fact, I have used MaxiVista to co opt a second monitor get to get the extra desktop space.

I wrote a short column on using multiple monitors. This can be found on my Files page.

If you have never used multiple monitors before, I strongly encourage you to try it out. I have never met anyone who used multiple monitors that ever wanted to go back to a single monitor.

When I schedule trips, I often end up with reservation confirmations from airlines, hotels, and car rental companies. I then have to put all of that information together to keep track of when I am supposed to be and how I am getting there.

TripIt is a website that offers you a way to organize your travel plans. You simply forward your reservation emails to your account at TripIt and TripIt automatically organizes your travel plans. In organizing your plan, TripIt also automatically adds common maps that people use. Additionally, TripIt shows you typical weather based upon historical patterns. It also includes a cool feature to give you one button access to flight check in and flight status on your airline’s website.

As long as you don’t mind uploading your travel information to the website, TripIt looks like a useful tool for traveling.

I have a terrible time coming up with gifts to send to people. The main reason for this is that I might think of a gift for someone for Christmas or their birthday, but I will think of it months before the occasion. By the time the date rolls around I have forgotten what I wanted to send. I am also in the bad habit of not remembering other people’s birthdays or anniversaries until the day of the event.

Fortunately, Amazon.com has come to my rescue with their new feature Amazon Gift Central.  Amazon’s gift organizer gives you a great place to keep track of both gifts that you have given to people as well as gifts that you would like to give to people in the future.

Setting up the organizer was a piece of cake. I simply went to the site and clicked on add recipients. Amazon then looked at the people to whom I had already shipped items from Amazon and offered them as the first choices as possible recipients. I could then add additional recipients and, if I wished, I could add all or part of their birthday. This is so Amazon can remind you to buy something to send to them.

Once you have this set up, if you are browsing through Amazon and you see something you would like to give as a present, you simply click on the drop down arrow beside wishlist and chose which recipient’s list to add it to.

I live far away from all but my immediate family. Thus, any gifts I send, I would have to ship anyway. Because of this, I have used Amazon for years to send gifts to friends and relatives. Also, I have found shopping at Amazon much more convenient, and generally cheaper, than shopping at brick and mortar stores. Thus, this a great option for me.

Even if you do not shop at Amazon, however, this organizer could still be a great thing for you. As the post at 43 Folders explains,

Now, the cool part of all this — even if you don’t use Amazon very much — is that Amazon.com is friggin huge. Which means that they (or their “Marketplace” partners) carry a ridiculously high percentage of the purchasable, shippable items available in the consumer universe. So, if you start using the Gift Organizer today — even for stuff you have no intention of buying from Amazon — your life is going to be much easier the next time a gift-giving occasion rolls around; you’ve capitalized on several months of passive, half-assed attention to actually do something useful.

Thus, relieve the stress of gift giving from your life and set up your Amazon gift organizer today.

Disclaimer: I know that there may be privacy issues related to this, especially if you are entering your recipient’s full birthdays. Whether this convenience is worth the privacy risk is up to you. In my case, I am sure that Amazon already knows more about me than I do.

Everyone once in while I notice that my keyboard gets a little dirty and key may start sticking. When that happens, I get out my can of compressed air and blow the dust and stuff out of my keyboard.

For those of you who really like a clean keyboard, however, Scott Moschella of Plastic Bugs tells us how he got his keyboard really clean: He put it in the dishwasher. I don’t know that I would recommend this approach, however it worked for him.

As he explained:

Last Monday, I spilled beer on my keyboard and received the Dishwasher advice from two very tech-savvy people.

Today, I can report that not only will the keyboard come out clean, but it will probably work once it dries completely. Every key on the keyboard works and feels just right - the Caps Lock light even works! This ‘hack’ is not for the weakhearted, and I would probably avoid putting a $100+ keyboard in the dishwasher. But if you don’t have any other options, it’s a pretty good bet.

So if your keyboard is real dirty and you would otherwise have to replace the keyboard, this might not be a bad option for you.

In the legal world, we often have to calculate the number of days between two dates. In my practice, I run into this frequently in determining postjudgment interest and calculating real estate tax prorations.

I use a custom spreadsheet created by my mathematically inclined wife. TechnoEsq offers some other solutions. In his post, he talks about a WordPerfect macro that you can download. If you are not using WordPerfect, he also points you to TimeAndDate.com, which will perform these calculations for you as well. He also points out that if you are a Mac user running Leopard, you can create a widget out of the TimeAndDate webpage.

The point is that there are a variety of resources available. You should never be manually calculating these dates.

I often tell people that I married someone with an advanced degree in mathematics so that I would not have to do math anymore. For those of you who are not quite as lucky as I am, Bootstrapper has a list of 100 Financial Calculators to help you calculate everything from your profit margin to your effective tax rate. This is a great resource to bookmark and keep close at hand in the event you need to perform a quick calculation.

Hat tip to Build A Solo Practice for the link.