The Connected Lawyer

Leveraging Technology to Practice Law More Effectively

Monthly Archives: July 2008

A Mobiliti Solution

One of my favorite programs is Mobiliti which is now owned by Packeteer, Inc. When I first started using the program it was called Network Ungplugged. I actually prefer that name, because it is a great description of what it does. The program allows me to synchronize my network files to my laptop so that I can work on the files when I am away from the network. Not only is this program easy to use, but it also preserves the file paths of the files, so that working on the files on my laptop is just like working on the files on my network.

Mobiliti is a great program and one I recommend for anyone often has to work when disconnected from the network.

Recently, I had some files on our network that were deleted. I had local copies of the files on my laptop and I needed to synchronize them back to the network. The way that the synchronization is set up, if a file is deleted from either the network or the local drive, the other file is deleted upon synchronization. In this case, I did not want that to happen. Instead, I wanted certain local files to be copied back to the network.

I looked in the configuration settings and did not find a way to do that. I checked the online Knowledge Base and still found no solution. So I contacted customer support via email and got my answer. I am posting it here in case others need the info and so that I can find it again.

  1. Go to File\Synchronization settings\synchronization tab and set it to fully interactive mode. Save changes by clicking OK.
  2. Sync.
  3. At the preview, select the file that you don’t want to be deleted from the real network. Right click and choose “Change sync action”
  4. Set the sync action to the new desired action and proceed with sync.

Another Office 2007 Conversion Solution

A couple of days ago I wrote about the fact that many people still use Office 2003 and are unable to read documents created in Office 2007. The solution that I suggested was that if you are using Office 2003, you should download the compatability pack that allows you to read Office 2007 documents.

Of course, not everyone will download the compatability pack. Tom Mighell, of Inter Alia, has a different solution. He suggests using Scribed.

Tom explains:

Here’s how it works. Take your document and attach it to an email. Address it to the members of your team, and CC ipaper@scribd.com on the message. Scribd will take your document, convert it to iPaper, and send your collaborators a copy of the link to the online document. And if you haven’t viewed a document in Scribd yet, you’re missing out. Scribd supports a lot of document formats, too — in addition to all Office files (both 2003 and 2007), it will convert PDF, PS, .TXT, .RTF, and open document formats.

The great thing about Tom’s solution is that you are simply adding an additional email address to your message. You do not have to take the time to manually upload the file a to a service such as Scribed or Google Docs.

As always, when using a service such as this, you must be cognizant of their terms of use to make sure that you are not disclosing confidential information to third parties. However, this is a great simple solution for sharing documents with others without worrying about what software program your recipient is using.

Another Great Acrobat Feature

For years, I have done the majority of my research online. Until a couple of years ago, I would identify the cases that helped me, email those cases to myself, print them out, and then highlight/take notes on the hard copy. A couple of years ago, I realized that it made no sense for me to keep all of my documents electronically, but keep my research in hard copy.

After coming to this realization, I switched to printing my cases to PDF and then commenting and highlighting the cases in Adobe Acrobat. If I have a big project, however, I can end up with several cases to print to PDF. This can be a time consuming task if it is done one case at a time.

Using Adobe Acroabt 8 Professional (no, I do not yet have 9), I can take advantage of the Batch Processing feature. I simple select Advanced > Document Processing > Save as PDF. I then identify the files that I want converted to PDF. Acrobat will open the files and convert them to PDf for me.

Last week I had about a dozen cases to convert to PDF. I simply started the batch processing and ran out to grab some lunch. When I returned, all of the work had been done and the files had all been saved as PDFs.

MS Office 2007 Compatibility

When I got my new computer recently, it came with Office 2007. It took me a while to get used to 2007. The reality is that I was perfectly happy with Office 2003 and I felt no overwhelming reason to change. Since getting Office 2007, I have realized that many other share my opinion in this. It seems that relatively few people have moved to Office 2007.

The problem is that Microsoft changed the file format in Office 2007, and users of Office 2003 cannot read files created in Office 2007. Fortunately, there is an easy and free fix for this. Unfortunately, it seems as though very few people know about this fix.

Simply go here and download the compatibility pack. After you install this, you will be able to work with Office 2007, even though you still use only Office 2003.

Adobe Acrobat Seminars

It is no secret that  Adobe Acrobat is one of my favorite programs. I am excited about the launch of version 9 and am curious about what new features that Adobe has added to make Acrobat even better for lawyers.

Fortunately, Adobe appears to want to answer that question. Rick Borstein has announced on his blog that he will be free 1 hour eseminars where he’ll “show off the latest legal-specific features of Adobe Acrobat 9.”

Rick says that during the seminar, you will

  • Find out which features are in which version of Acrobat
  • Learn how to create a PDF Portfolio for a Closing Binder
  • Discover the new and powerful Document Comparison tool to help you spot changes fast
  • See how to accelerate Redaction workflows with pattern-based search
  • Split documents for electronic filing workflows
  • See new, easier-to-user forms creation and data collection tools
  • Use enhanced Bates Numbering to help you manage your case
  • Take advantage of new ClearScan OCR
  • Export PDFs for re-editing in a word processing program

Right now he has three different seminars scheduled. I am getting ready to sign up now. If you are at all interested, simply click here to go to Rick’s blog and sign up.