The Connected Lawyer

I am a big fan of using styles in Word. If you understand and use them, Word becomes very powerful and, I think, more easy to use.

I understand, however, that not everyone uses or understands styles. I believe that the proper solution to this is good training. However, not everyone understands that. However, I implore everyone, whether you understand sytles or not; whether you use Word, WordPerfect, or OpenOffice; or whether you know how to type or not, DO NOT USE YOUR SPACEBAR FOR SPACING.

The space bar is to allow you to put a space between words and sentences (on a related note, please observe that with today’s proportional fonts you need only one space, not two, between sentences). The space bar is not to be used to add spaces to make your text line up. To do this, you use the Tab key.

Given the fact that Tab keys have been around for quite some time, I had thought that most people understood this. However, that is clearly not the case. I recently received a draft settlement agreement today from another attorney. When I started making some modifications to the document, I noticed that the formatting got all screwed up.

Once I clicked the paragraph button, I realized what the problem was. Instead of using tabs, the author has used spaces to create the illusion of tabs. Upon counting, it appears that it takes 12 taps of the space bar to simulate a 1/2″ tab stop.

I understand that some people don’t want to learn how to properly use software. That is your choice. If you make that choice, however, then hire someone to do your word processing for you. Please!!!!

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I love Adriana Linares‘ blog I Heart Tech. Her posts often contain the best tips. Her tips are so good becaue they are often very simple to perform, plus they are practical. Her latest tip is a tip for Outlook that I love. In her tip, she explains how to simulaneously view nonsequential days in Outlook. As she explains:

Start by going to the Calendar view in Outlook, you’ll see (hopefully) a thumbnail view of the current month on the left hand side of Outlook .

Press and hold the Control (Ctrl) key down as you click on the dates you want to view.

The big Calendar pane to the right will change to show you only those dates.

You can even select dates in other months by going to those months (see red arrow on graphic) and still Ctrl + Clicking.

This is so simple to do, yet it is something that never occured to me.

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If you have not seen the video of the NYPD Office and the Critical Mass rider, (in which the bicyclist has been charged with attempted assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct) watch it below:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUkiyBVytRQ[/youtube]

According to the New York Daily News, the police officer described the above incident as follows:

Pogan [the officer] said he saw Long weaving in and out of lanes and obstructing traffic before he ordered the cyclist to stop. The cop claimed Long deliberately drove his bike into him, sending both of them falling to the ground. Pogan claimed to have suffered cuts from the impact.

Given the prevalence of cameras in almost every handheld device as well as the ease at which a video such as this can be added to You Tube, we now live in a world in which we no longer have to wonder whose story to believe. We can watch the video and determine for ourselves who committed the crime in this instance.

Plus, I suspect that this video will end up as excellent evidence in a 1983 action against the NYPD.

Update: The Smoking Gun has a copy of the police report.

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Over the past few weeks I have enjoyed an interesting series of posts from both Dennis Kennedy and Ernie the Attorney. Dennis has posted a three part series in which he explains the process that he went through in deciding to purchase an iPod Touch as his new laptop computer.

At the same time, Ernie the Attorney was posting a series of entries about his trip to Panama during which he left his laptop at home and took only his iPhone. After his experience, he concluded:

As you recall, last week when I went to Panama I didn’t bring a computer. I mentioned that I relied heavily on my iPhone, and that I was able to do a lot of work with just that device. But, I pointed out, that the trip was for pleasure so I didn’t really need a computer. If I had been away longer, or if I had been required to do more work on the trip, I would most certainly have brought my laptop. But, for a short trip that doesn’t involve a lot of work, I can say that an iPhone works just fine. In fact, I would venture to say that the iPod Touch would work fine. My daughter had one and was able to check email and do most of the things that I did on my iPhone.

Although his phone service did not work in Panama, he was still able to make calls using his iPhone.

I thought my iPhone would be able to work on the local phone network here in Panama. It did last time I was here, but not this time. AT&T assured me it would when I checked right before I left on my trip. “”Yes sir, you’re signed up for the Intenational option at $3.99 a month,” the representative told me.

That turned out not to be true. But doesn’t matter because I have the TruPhone app for my iPhone which lets me make low cost calls using the free Wi-Fi at my brother’s beach paradise.

I found both of these series of posts quite intriguing. It certainly sounds attractive to be able to travel without a laptop and still be able to get some work done. However, I doubt that I will be traveling down either Dennis or Ernie’s path in the near future. First, as I have mentioned before, I hate iTunes, and I would be tied to it to use either product effectively. Second, with respect to the iPhone, I hate AT&T’s service (which is your only real option with an iPhone). My wife and I both have Treos. She has AT&T service, I have Verizon. Often I will have better reception than her. Also, when traveling to the less populated areas of the country (where we have family), she often has no reception, while my phone works just fine.

Nevertheless, if you are considering trying to lighten your load while traveling, check out these posts from Ernie and Dennis and consider leaving the laptop at home.

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In a recent post, Dumb Little Man gave some good tips for beating stress when working at home. Although aimed at people who work from home, you can apply most of the tips, regardless of where you work. This is especially true if you take your work home with you.

My two favorite tips are:

It’s all about the time

Really, it is. When you decide to work from home, it is you who would decides your working hours and how you can get the maximum the time. I know time-management is cliche now and you are tired of hearing it again and again, still the fact remains that you can’t get yourself out of the 24/7 schedule. If you set your priorities right and allot time to different parts of your work, in the end you’ll work less hours and gain more out of it. In other words you’ll be more productive.

Disrupt the continuity

Sitting at your desk for 5-6 hours continuously isn’t a good thing for your eyes or your health. I mean, it’s common sense right. So whether you take 3-4 short 5 minute breaks or 1-2 long breaks, you gotta take them.

If you work from home any, you should check out the entire post. Also, if you are not reading Dumb Little Man, you should be. In their own words, the purpose of their blog is as follows:

Welcome to Dumb Little Man. Each week we provide a handful of tips that will save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane.

They certainly have an eclectic mix of topics that they cover. However, during the week I almost always find some useful information there.

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A few weeks ago I received an email from one of the bankruptcy courts to which I am admitted. The email announced that they will be doing an “ECF Tip of the Month.” The idea is to address problems commonly encountered with the ECF system.

For example, the first tip is for filing an amended creditor matrix. From viewing the materials in the tip, it appears that people are filing the amended matrix as an original matrix.

The tip contains good information and includes a tutorial in Adobe Captivate that shows how to properly upload the creditor matrix. I think this is a good idea and eventualy it will provide a good source of archived tips.

I have two issues with how they have implimented it, however. First, there is no RSS feed. This is the perfect type of material to have an RSS feed with. Why make it difficult for people to find the tips when they are released. Second, there is no separate landing page for the Tip of the Month. Instead there is a blinking title over the link to the tip of the month, that takes you to the particular demo. Once again, if this is something you want people to access regularly, it should have its own page on the website.

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Nerino Petro has identified a great article revealing some hidden gems in Microsoft Excel 2007. I believe that Excel is one of the most under used programs in a law office. There are so many things that you can do in Excel must easier than you can do in any other manner.

I use it daily to keep track of my expense report. I also use it quite frequently to calcuate amounts due for preparing a judgment or a affidavit for collection proceedings. The program is quite powerful.

I owe a tip of the hat to my wife, because without her, I would likely have never understood the true power of Excel. Like many attorneys, I am not a math person. Because of this, I simply avoided Excel. Once I saw how it easy it was to calcuate postjudgment amounts due, however, I was hooked.

If you are looking for some great tips on using Excel, I urge you to check out this article. If you are not using Excel, I encourage you to try it out. On my Files page, I have several Excel templates that I talked about when I did a presentation on Excel for the Chicago Bar Association. These template predate my new computer. Thus they are in Excel 2003 format.

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Thanks to Jim Calloway for naming The Connected Lawyer the Site of the Week.

Jim is a leader in the the legal blogging world and it is an honor to be recognized by him. Also, if you are not reading his Law Practice Tips Blog, you need to start right now.

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A few posts ago I knocked TinyURL Creator (a Firefox extension) for the fact that it made me go through an unnecessary mouse click everytime that I used it. Because of this, I named Shrinkify my favorite URL shrinker.

Today I admit my error. Yes, in its default mode, TinyURL still makes you click a box everytime that it generates a tiny URL. However, stopping the extension from doing this is a simple as selecting: Tools > Add Ons > Extensions > TinyURL Creator > Options.  In the Options dialog box, select the box next to “Do not show confirmation dialog apon [sic] TinyURL creation.” Once you have done this, you no longer have to deal with the annoying dialog box again.

Now TinyURL Creator is back to being my favorite Firefox extension that shrinks URLs. The main reason that it moves back into first place is that the extension has been updated to work with Firefox 3. Shrinkify has not yet updated its extension.

If you are still using Firefox 2, either extension should work fine for you. If you are using Firefox 3, I would go with TinyURL Creator simply beacuse you can install and use it without any difficulty.

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We are getting ready to go on a short road trip. This means that I wanted to add some music to my wife’s iPod (it’s what we use for music on the trip). While selecting songs to add to the iPod (checking the little boxes in iTunes), I accidentally selected all of the songs in the iTunes library.

Given that we have over 5,000 songs in our library, this can be a bit of a problem. No one wanted to go back through the the library and select the songs that we actually wanted to synch to the iPod. Fortunately, we had recently synchronized the iPod and it had our currently selected songs on it. After some Googling, my wife found a solution that allowed us to reselect our desired songs without spending hours going through the library again.

Her solution is as follows.

1. On the iPod, create an On the Go Playlist.
2. Go to Genres.
3. Hold the select button down for each genre until it flashes blue three times. This should add the songs in that genre to the playlist.
4. Go back to playlists and open the On the Go Playlist.
5. Scroll to bottom.
6. The last option is save. Select that.
7. Uncheck all music in iTunes.
8. Synch iPod
9. The synch will wipe all the music off the iPod. However, the playlist will show up in iTunes.
10. Open the new playlist in iTunes. Select all of the songs. Right click, and choose check selected.
11. Check any other other playlists you might have to make sure that all songs were selected.
12. Synch again.
13. Problem solved.

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