You Send It | The Connected Lawyer

One of my favorite online services is You Send It. It allows you to send large attachments via email. I have written about this service before. I have used the service to send discovery documents, pictures, and powerpoint presentations without having to worry about exceeding the limits on someone’s mailbox.

One of the great feautres is that the service has a plug-in that integrates with Outlook. This means that if I send an attachment that is above a certain size (I can set this size), then You Send It automatically kicks in and handles the file.

Another great feature is that there are many options available. They provide a free service that has size and number limitations (on both the individual message and over a period of time). They also provide pay services that include additional features.

Now You Send It has added an additional feature. In addition to the Outlook plug-in, they have a desktop application called You Send It Express that allows you to send and receive files directly from your desktop. They also have several other plug-ins that allow you to send large files directly from a variety of applications, including Adobe Acrobat, iPhoto, and Corel Draw X3.

If you have a large file to send to someone, you might want to check out You Send It.

I had some discovery that I had to deliver to an opposing attorney. It was a construction case. This meant that almost all of the original documents actually existed as handwriting on paper. The remaining documents were letters and other similar documents. Thus providing evidence that not all cases are headed down the electronic discovery path.

As is my standard practice, I had all of the documents scanned so that I could Bates Stamp them and work with them electronically. Knowing that I needed to deliver these documents to opposing counsel, I was faced with three options.

I could print the 800 pages and have them physically delivered to the attorney–thereby incurring both costs of printing and costs of delivery; or
I could burn a copy of the documents to a CD and mail that to the attorney–thereby incurring costs of delivery (admittedly only $0.41); or
I could electronically transfer the documents electronically–thereby incurring no costs.

I chose option 3. I used a service called YouSendIt. YouSendIt uploads a copy of your document to their server and sends an email to your designated recipient with a link where they can download the file you uploaded.

As long as the file is less than 100MB, the service is free. With the free service, the link is good for seven days. If you want to deal with larger files, you can also sign up for paid accounts. The paid accounts also give you the ability to control the maximum number of downloads for a file, give you file tracking, and give you the ability to password protect the file.

The one thing I would caution about the free service is that the file is not encrypted. Thus, you would not want to send confidential information through the free service. In my case, the documents that I was sending contained no such information.

The best part of the service was the call I received from opposing counsel, who absolutely loved the way that I delivered the documents. He inquired about how the service worked and was interested in trying it out as method of sending the same documents to his client.

As I noted above, this service should not be used with all types of communications or documents. However, if you have a big file that you need to send to someone, YouSendIt is a great, free option that allows you to transfer files virtually instantaneously.

YouSendIt is just another example of how we can leverage technology to make our lives easier (as well as to save us some overhead costs).