Category Archives: Office Management

Avoid Waiting on Hold via FastCustomer

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fastcustomerDo you enjoy wasting time on hold while listening to elevator music? Me neither. FastCustomer can (thankfully) make that experience a distant memory.

Simply let them know the name of the company that you would like to talk with (via call, text, or search), and they will have a customer service agent from that company call you. Voila! No time wasted and no elevator music.

FastCustomer is available via website or its iOS and Android apps. Among the thousands of companies that participate in this service are Apple, Verizon, AT&T, Bank of America, Southwest, Citibank, Mastercard, Visa, Discover, Sirius/XM, USPS, Walmart, Costco, etc.

Great Resource About Evernote for Lawyers

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evernoteYou use Evernote, don’t you? If you don’t, you’re missing out. Evernote is an easy way to help busy lawyers keep track of all sorts of information and easily find it when needed. It can be used for all sorts of things, as evidenced by Tim Baran’s recent article discussing how lawyers utilize it.

Tim asked legal technology gurus from all over how they use Evernote, and his list included my good friends Tom Mighell, David Sparks, John Harding, and Katie Floyd (among many others). Better yet, his article includes links to many other resources discussing many best practices and uses for implementing Evernote into your practice.

So what two things do I use Evernote for on a regular basis and what makes it invaluable to me? You’ll have to read Tim’s article to find out, but trust me, it’s well worth your time. I want to offer a huge thank you to Tim for providing this excellent article and resource about Evernote for lawyers.

Source: “How Lawyers Use Evernote” by , published at Legal Productivity.

Switching from PCs to Macs in the Law Office

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mac vs pcIt’s no secret that Apple products continue to gain traction in the legal field, and that they are a great option for many attorneys, particularly solo and small firm lawyers. However, changing operating systems or learning a new computer may seem like a daunting task, particularly to a busy lawyer. So what is it really like switching from PCs to Macs?

My wife and law partner, Jenny Stevens (a/k/a @MrsMacLawyer), was recently interviewed by Heidi Alexander on The Legal Toolkit to discuss “Making the Transition from PCs to Macs in Your Law Office“. Jenny discusses her switch from a PC law office to one using exclusively Apple products, and she shares her thoughts as to how easy it is to switch, some of the resources available to those considering making the move, and what software that we use at The Stevens Firm, P.A. Family Law Center.

The Legal Toolkit is one of the leading legal technology podcasts, and if you don’t already listen to it, this would be a great episode to begin doing so. Click here to listen.

Take Control of Your Email with Boomerang

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boomerangWhat if you could take control of your email? You determine when emails appear in your Inbox or when they were sent to your recipients. What if your email could automatically remind you if don’t hear back from a recipient?

All of this – and more – is possible thanks to Boomerang, a plug-in for Gmail and Outlook that can help you transform from email novice to email ninja in no time. This plug-in helped me reduce the average number of emails in my Inbox to less than 10 (down from a number that I’d be embarrassed to mention).

It is not an understatement to say that Boomerang is one of the best and most helpful applications that I have ever found. It enables me to control my email instead of it controlling me. Boomerang has many more features than I can cover in this article, so please visit their website to learn what all it does and to view demonstration videos. However, I have highlighted some of the best features below:

boomerang 2Make emails reappear. One of the best features of Boomerang is its ability to take emails from your Inbox and then make them reappear at a later time. For instance, if you receive calling instructions for a meeting next week, you can set it to return 15 minutes before the start time instead of allowing that email to clutter your Inbox in the interim. You can even add a note to the email to remind you why you wanted it to be returned.

Send emails later. You can schedule an email to be sent at the perfect time. When you finish writing the email, the “send later” button enables you to determine exactly when the email will be sent. Even better, you can specify the desired time in many different ways, whether that’s “in 10 minutes”, “tomorrow morning”, or at a specific date/time (12/03/14 at 5:34pm).

Remind you to follow up. You can tell Boomerang to return an email to your Inbox if you don’t receive a reply within a specified time, if the email is not opened within a designated time frame, or if you just need to see it again as a reminder. It also enables you to get “read receipts” and track when emails have been opened – even in Gmail, which doesn’t provide this functionality natively.

Rocket Matter Releases iPad Edition

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Rocket MatterRocket Matter created the first cloud practice management software for the legal community in 2008, and since then it has become the premier total law firm management software in the cloud. My law firm has used Rocket Matter since the day it launched, and we couldn’t be happier with it.

However, the folks at Rocket Matter are not ones to rest on their laurels, as evidenced by the numerous new features and refinements rolled out in recent years. Now, they have released their new iPad edition, and they are once again leading the way with the first and only tablet platform for today’s busy, mobile lawyers.

portriat-1This release (shown at right) heralds a new era of legal practice management software with a dedicated tablet platform that’s fast, easy-to-use, and accessible both online and offline. Lawyers can now enjoy legal iPad software that delivers incredible productivity gains and at the same time has the beauty and the simple elegance of the iPad itself.

Larry Port, Rocket Matter’s CEO, says

We’re excited to announce today our evolved platform and sleek new look. The Rocket Matter iPad Edition is not just a mere ‘app’ – it’s an entire tablet-based solution that ties into Rocket Matter’s cloud data storage. We’ve carefully watched how lawyers, law firms, and bar associations have all eagerly embraced the practical advantages that tablets can provide. We took these observations, combined them with direct suggestions from our lawyer partners, and did what we do best: built software that is simply unmatched in legal practice management.

You can learn much more about Rocket Matter’s iPad edition and see a video of it in action here. Lawyers with Rocket Matter subscriptions will be able to download the iPad Edition from the Apple iTunes store starting today.

Small PDF Solves Most of Your PDF Needs

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Lawyers all work with PDFs on an ever-increasing basis, and we will only do so more in the future with the advent of electronic filing.  Small PDF is an online “one stop shop” for almost all of your PDF needs (for free), including:

  • small pdfCompress PDF – Dramatically reduce the file size of your PDF
  • Merge PDF – Combine several PDF files into one single file
  • Split PDF – Create a new document from selected pages
  • Word to PDF – Convert your Word documents to PDF format
  • Excel to PDF – Excel spreadsheet conversion to PDF
  • PPT to PDF – Converting PPT presentations to PDF files
  • JPG to PDF – Convert images to PDFs exactly the way you want
  • PDF to JPG – Convert pages to images or extract pictures from your PDF
  • Unlock PDF – Unlock (some) password protected files

If you want to learn more about what Small PDF can do for you and your practice, visit SmallPDF.com. It’s easy to use, and remember – it’s free!

The Mac Lawyer at SC Bar Solo and Small Firm Conference in Greenville

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SC Bar SSF 2014

The South Carolina Bar’s Solo and Small Firm Conference is being held in Greenville this Friday, and its theme is “Reinventing Your Small Firm Practice: Strategies and Solutions.” We’ll investigate the latest trends in technology and explore alternatives to traditional law practices.


Ben Stevens will be giving two presentations at this conference:

  • Are You Mac-Curious? If Not, You Should Be!
  • Amazing Apps, Practical Practice Pointers, Terrific Tech Tips & Wonderful Websites

If you haven’t made plans to attend, you should. If you do attend, please find me and say hello.

Solo & Small Firm Conference Is Coming to Greenville

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SC Bar SSF 2014Each year the Solo & Small Firm Conference is the place to be for all SC attorneys who are solo practitioners or practice in the small firm setting. From networking to marketing to picking up tips on how to incorporate the latest technology into your practice, you’ll find it at the Solo & Small Firm Conference.

This year’s theme is “Reinventing Your Small Firm Practice: Strategies & Solutions” and it will feature three tracks of programs allowing you to completely customize your conference experience.  With topics such as “Cloud Computing: The Good, The Bad, and The Ethics”; “A Systems Approach to Small Firm Practice”; “Are You Mac-Curious? If Not, You Should Be!” and “Essential Skills & Strategies for Legal Research” (as a sampling) – it is sure to be an information-packed day which will measurably improve your practice.

The special guest speaker, a friend of our firm, and a nationally known author and speaker, Nerino Petro, is a regular contributor to local, state and national publications and has a wealth of knowledge to share with all SSF Conference attendees. He will be presenting three separate sessions, as well as joining the always popular Tech Tips & Practice Pointers panel at the end of the day along with other featured speakers, Courtney Kennaday, Dave Maxfield, Ed Walters, and our own, Ben Stevens.

The early bird registration for this fantastic seminar starts at $205 for Section Members and $230 for Non-Section Members, but this special rate ends September 5, so register now (Click Here for Registration Information).

How Lawyers Can Use Circus Ponies NoteBook in Trial

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Circus Ponies NoteBook is a unique productivity tool that can be used in many different ways.  My good friend, Kern Lewis, a trial attorney in Grapevine, TX, has used this program for several years to help organize his cases and present them at trial.

Kern recent conducted an hour long webinar to demonstrate his techniques, and he was kind enough to record it and allow me to share it with my readers.  I have uploaded the video to YouTube, which you can view here or below.

Kern has also been generous enough to share his NoteBook template referenced in the video.  You can get your own copy of Kern’s sample template by emailing me and asking for it.

I want to extend my heartiest thanks to Kern for his time and effort in producing this video and also for his willingness to allow me to share it with my readers.  If you are interested in learning more about Kern’s practice, I encourage you to visit his firm’s website WarriorsForJustice.com.

Document Tagging 101

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document taggingThe folks at CHL Software know a thing or two about document management. Their product, Doc Moto, is one of the leading document and email management programs for Macs. They published the following article about document tagging, which they have allowed me to share with my readers: 

FIND WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR USING ACCURATE DOCUMENT TAGGING — A NEW INNOVATION IN DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

Remember that U2 hit, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For“? The song isn’t actually about document management in law firms, but read the lyrics and it very well could be.

The inclusion of full-text searching in the Mac and Windows operating systems has actually set document management back. The problem with these tools is that they find too much. Accordingly, purely searching the content of your documents doesn’t help find the specific matter and specific document you’re looking for.

That’s why document tagging is so important. What’s document tagging? Continue reading because it’s a major innovation for legal document management.

Just about a year ago we received a support question from one of our biggest law firm clients that really surprised us. “Does DocMoto support file content searching?” Well of course it does, but the firm didn’t see the feature because of a setting in their system. Shockingly, they had been using DocMoto for over a year and had never noticed they didn’t have content search available. So we asked them why. The answer, “Content searching doesn’t help that much since all our matters are very similar. That’s why we use tagging.”

DOCUMENT TAGGING 101

In DocMoto parlance a tag is a label. Lawyers and their staff apply (or stick) tags to documents to effectively categorize their documents (including email). A document can have as many tags (or labels) as necessary.

The Problem With Simple Keywords

I know what you’re thinking. Mac-based firms have a number of tools that support tagging. Even Apple’s own Finder does in OS X Mavericks. But the problem with almost all of these tools is that the tags are really just lists of keywords. Allowing users to add totally free format lists of keywords might work in a true solo practice (one lawyer), but as soon as more users exist you need much more control.

Give a Tag a Type

The first step to improving the power of a tag is to give it a “type.” DocMoto supports three basic types — “text”, “numbers” and “dates.”

When a tag has a type searching becomes so much more powerful. For example if a tag is a date, and is a “review date” it is a simple task to find “All Contracts for Review This Month,” or “All Contracts Overdue.”

Choose Your Tag Values From a List

The second step to improving the quality of tagging is to make sure users can only choose values from a predefined list. This guarantees that only tags with known values are in DocMoto. It ensures consistency throughout the practice and removes any problems with spelling, abbreviation or other inconsistences.

There Is Still Room for the Free-Format Tag

Of course there are always some tags that really must be free format. A “Comments” tag for example. Naturally DocMoto supports these as well, but they are your last resort for miscellanea, not your sole tool.

Collecting Tag Data From Your Users

It’s one thing to set up some powerful and consistent tags, but how can you ensure your users complete them? DocMoto takes a very simple but powerful approach — it asks users to enter tag information at the point of adding or checking back a document. DocMoto doesn’t want to overburden busy users, so tags can be marked as mandatory or optional, and the tag set required can be varied easily from one folder to another.

NOW YOU CAN FIND YOUR DOCUMENTS

What does your firm get from tagging. Well you can find documents very fast (e.g., while you’re on the phone with a client or in court). For law firms that matters. It improves efficiency and can even help you win a case!

DocMoto is a professional level document management system designed for law firms using Mac or that want to switch to Mac.

Tagging is just one of many features that attracts law firms to DocMoto. You can learn more about the features and benefits of this program at the following links: