The Connected Lawyer

Google Docs is becoming more popular as people realize the advantage of having documents accessible to them anywhere they have internet access. Recently Digital Inspiration posted a “practical guide to Google Docs.” The post includes tips such as the following:

Q: How do I upload all my Microsoft Office documents from the desktop on to Google Docs?

A: List Uploader is a Windows utility that enables you to bulk upload files to Google Docs via drag-n-drop or through the right click menu.

Mac OS X users can upload documents through GDocsUploader - simply drag-n-drop the document onto the uploader icon. Another option is GDocsBar – just drag your files in the Firefox sidebar and they’ll automatically get uploaded to Google Docs.

Q: How do I associate the common Office file extensions like doc/xls/ppt with Google Docs so that desktop documents open directly in the web browser?

A: Get the Google Toolbar for Firefox and select the ‘Google Docs’ checkbox from Toolbar options. This will let you open Office documents directly in the browser bypassing Microsoft Office.

Q: I am worried that someone may hack into my Google Account and delete the important files. To play safe, I want to download all documents from Google Docs locally and burn them on to a CD. Is it possible?

A: To download a copy of all your Google Docs documents on to the hard drive, get this Grease Monkey script. It will create a list of all your online documents that you can download in one step using the DownloadThemAll add-on.

Click here to see the remainder of the tips. If you use Google Docs, you definitely want to read this post.

Thanks to Dumb Little Man for pointing me in the direction of this post.

Chris Pirillo provides 10 Tips to Keep Your Notebook Safe When Traveling. My two favorites are:

Keep It On You: It is not uncommon for someone to set their luggage down while standing in line for a muffin, or to sit down while waiting for a flight. With all luggage, it is important to keep an eye on it and ensure nobody tampers with it or steals it. Because of their size and value though, laptops make prime targets and a thief can snatch the laptop bag and keep walking while you are unaware with your back turned. You should keep the laptop bag on your shoulder or keep it in sight at all times.

Back Up Data: Perform a backup of all critical or sensitive data before departing. Just in case your laptop does become damaged or lost, you don’t want to also lose your important files and information. You can buy a new laptop, but it is much harder to replace lost data.

Go here to read all of the tips.

Hat tip to Futurelawyer for pointing out this post to me.

Bonnie Shucha of WisBlawg recently pointed her readers in the direction of a great new Firefox add-on called CiteGenie.

CiteGenie describes itself as being able to:

Automagically copy text with correct citations from Westlaw and other websites

Cite Genie further explains:

Cutting and pasting when doing legal research using your browser is simple. But having to construct the citation for what you pasted is not so simple. This is especially true with legal citations from sources like Westlaw. You have to stop and copy the case name separately, determine the pinpoint page numbers, and adjust the date and court name format.

So I decided to write a browser plugin that would automatically add a pinpoint citation to the text I copy and paste. Thus CiteGenie was born.

* * *

When CiteGenie is installed, it adds a new option to the browser’s right-click menu to “Copy with CiteGenie.”  To use CiteGenie, simply highlight the text in the court opinion, right-click and select the “Copy with CiteGenie” option (or just press Ctrl-Shift-C).  Then you can paste the text into any other program, such as your word processor, and the text will be pasted, along with the pinpoint citation for the selected text from the court opinion.

This sounds almost too good to be true. However, a review of CiteGenie on LLRX.com reveals that it may work as easily and accurately as promised.

I have not yet had the opportunity to use CiteGenie in a brief. However, I have installed it in my browser and am ready to take advantage of it.

As I have said before, one of the reasons that I love Firefox is that it allows you to install add-ons to make the browser work the way that you want it to work. The newest extension that I have fallen in love with is WebMail Notifier.

WebMail Notifier checks your webmail accounts (including GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and others) and lets you know when you have new mail and how many messages you have. For my work email, I use Outlook. However, I have a variety of other email accounts that are aggregated into my GMail account. Before installing this add-on, I often forgot to check my GMail account. Since installing the add-on, however, I have remembered to check the account on a daily basis.

The add-on simply puts a small envelope on your bottom status bar. When you have mail, the envelope lights up. It’s very unobtrusive, yet effective.

If you have a webmail account, I recommend WebMail Notifier.

Last week, my review of Adobe Acrobat 9 was published by Technolawyer. The review can be found on my Files page or downloaded directly from here.

The short version is that I love the program and would recommend it to anyone who has not yet upgraded. There are several new features as well as improvements to existing features. As I said in the review:

The greatest improvement that I have seen, however, resides in the Forms feature. With Acrobat 8, I could create a form. However, doing so was not an easy process. Every time I tried to use the feature, I ended up spending a lot of time trying to get the form right. And I still usually ended up with a form that worked, but was not what I wanted.

With version 9, however, Adobe has made the Forms feature much more functional. The form wizard recognizes the form fields better. Also, I can now easily add new fields or modify any of the automatically recognized fields. Plus, Adobe has made form creation even easier by having all of the fields appear in the left sidebar. This means I can easily access and modify them, and I can change the tab order of the fields simply by dragging the field names around.

Download my full review here.

By now, most people have at least heard of David Allen’s Getting Things Done. The key to implementing GTD, however, is to ensure that you have a good system that fits the GTD philosophy.

Recently, Rocket Matter has written a post about how to use Rocket Matter to implement GTD. In the post, Larry Port, the guy behind Rocket Matter, explains:

We built this notion of a User Dashboard, where you can see all of your calendar events and to-do’s at a glance.  You can quickly capture next actions, then assign them to matters.

Matters in our system allow you to trap your file information, but really they can organize any information. So, you can just as easily create a matter “Rocket v. Matter” as you can a matter called “@Phone”, and assign a to-do item to either one.

You can easily re-assign a to-do item from one matter to another, allowing you to easily track your next actions.  And with Rocket Matter, all to-do’s can be converted into billable activity.

Rocket Matter is one of the new online practice management systems to hit the market. The things I have heard about it have been good. Knowning that you can easily implement the Getting Things Done system just makes it that much better.

My wife and I are in the process of refinancing some rental property that we own. Because we have all of our information in a digital format, we were able to send our financial info, tax info, etc., to the bank electronically. In response, the bank sent us an application that they wanted us to complete and sign. The app was emailed to use. My wife completed and we each simply stamped our signatures on the application and returned it to the bank. I am sure that this was not what the bank anticipated when they asked for our signatures, but I wasn’t terribly concerned about this.

This morning, we get an email from the bank. They can’t process our loan applications because we didn’t initial a line that appears just above our signatures. Yes, that is right. They have no problems with the signatures. But they must have actual written initials on the page before they can actually do anything with our application.

When the loan officer was asked for the reason for this. He admitted that he didn’t know why this was required. He just knew that it was.

I want to emphasize that this was an initial on a separate page to verify the info there, or anything like that. No, it was initials directly above our signatures.

The point I want to make here is that when you create rules, you should make sure that the rules have some rational basis or justification. Don’t create rules that must be blindly followed simply because someone once thought up the rule.

The Greatest American Lawyer posted today on the Cost Savings in Going Digital. If you have not yet made the move to keeping all of your documents digitally, I recommend that you check out this post. The post explains:

I’m often asked how much money it will cost in staff and time to scan in all of the documents which are generated from outside our own office onto our file server.  Essentially, people want to know whether or not a paperless law office will save, or cost, them money.

There’s no doubt that it takes people and time to scan in documents.

He goes on to observe

Scanning documents is a multi-step project.  Obviously, someone has to stand at the scanner and scan them in.  That person then has to pull the document from a common scanning file and place it on the file server under the correct client/matter.  Quality control requires that the person confirm that all pages have in fact been scanned.  This does take time.

However, this time is more than made up on the back end. The post continues:

Once the documents are scanned, however, there is lots of time saved on the back-end.  I never have to ask my staff to find me a hard copy of any document, pull a file or engage in host of related administrative activities.  My overall sense is that the amount of time it takes to scan the documents is far less than the amount of time spent in a paper-based office retrieving and organizing physical files.

I cannot agree with these observations more. My ability to retrieve any document, from any case, at any time, is absolutely invaluable. I cannot calculate the amount of time that I save on a daily basis simply by being able to immediately retrieve any document that I need.

In my experience, the only way to make this transition is to start scanning everything today. Scan every document that comes in to your office. As you work, you will identify that prior documents that you should add to your digital collection as well.

I will not tell you that the transition to a digital world will be painless. However, I can assure that it will be worth every bit of pain that you may endure. In fact, the majority of the “pain” that I endured in the transition period was the fact that I got too used to having the digital documents and I became frustrated when I had to pull a physical file to retrieve an older document that had not yet been scanned.

I have yet to meet anyone who has transferred to a digital practice that regrets it at all.

At The Illinois Trial Practice Weblog, Evan Schaeffer reports that he and his wife, Andrea Lamere, are spending the month in Arentina. Given that their firm consists of Evan and Andrea, some people may be wondering about how they are keeping their practice going while they are both in Argentina.

In his post, Evan reports that the ubiquitos nature of wi-fi in Buenos Aires makes it easy for him to work while there. He reports he is using services such as Skype, iPhone, MyFax, Google Calendar, Google Notebook, and Slingbox to keep in touch with home.

Read his entire post here. It’s a nice primer on how to practice while away from home.

I would also note that all of the services that Evan talks about are useful even if you don’t leave the country. For example, I use an electronic faxing service to receive my faxes. I will never go back to having only a fax machine. It is simply too convenient to be able to receive my faxes anywhere that I have internet access.

I was in court this morning waiting for my case to be called. The judge was hearing a short argument over how much access and expert needed to a private home to render his opinion. To demonstrate the situation, one of the attorneys had brought in some pictures of the houses at issue.

While the attorneys were arguing, the judge asked for the address of the property at issue and then pulled that up on Google Maps. She asked the attorneys if the map accurately depicted the homes at issue, both attorneys agreed that it did.

From my perspective, the great aspects of this situation are that the judge actually had a computer on the bench that was connected to the internet and that she was not afraid to use it to resolve the discovery dispute between the parties.

Had she pulled this up during a trial and used it to issue her ruling, there would likely be some evidentirary issues. Here, however, this was a discovery dispute that she was able to resolve more efficiently because she was better able to accurately picture the property in question.