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Avoid Waiting on Hold via FastCustomer

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Ben Stevens Posted in Apps, Did You Know?, Office Management, Online Resources, Product Reviews

Do 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.

Where to Find the Best App Deals

Posted on December 23, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Apps, Online Resources

Santa told me that there’s a good chance that you may be receiving some iTunes gift cards for Christmas. Knowing that you will want to be a savvy shopper and get the most bang for your buck, we compiled a list of sites that are known to have regular sales. Check these out these sites for the best app deals, and let us know in the Comments if you have other favorites of your own:

AppShopper – Notifies you which apps (both iOS and Mac) are on sale each day and allows you to create wish lists containing the ones that you are most interested in.

AppSaga – Lists apps that are available for no cost, which includes Apps Gone Free (apps that are temporarily available for 100% off).

iOSnoops – Features lists of price drops, apps that are free for a short time, new apps, etc.

App Store – Apple’s old reliable offers one free app per week.

Put Items in Pocket and View When You’re Ready

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Apps, Did You Know?, Offline Resources, Online Resources, Technology

Pocket (formerly Read It Later) enables you to save things that you find online to review later. The most common use is to save articles, videos, recipes, and other items of interest to read when it’s convenient for you, even if you don’t have internet access (like when you’re on an airplane). You can send items to Pocket through plug-ins for most web browsers, numerous apps, or even via email. Follow the lead of the over 12 million users who have saved over 1 billion items to Pocket.

2014 Black Friday Predictions for Apple Products

Posted on November 25, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Online Resources

Contrary to what many people think, Apple items do go on sale, and Black Friday is an especially good time to snag a deal on an iDevice.

So what’s the best way to get Apple goodies on sale? Rule number one: Do not buy from Apple. Rule number two: Check out the article from DealNews before you buy.

Some of the highlights of their Black Friday predictions for 2014 include:

MacMall, Walmart, and Best Buy offer better deals on Black Friday than buying directly from Apple.
The recently debuted iPad Air 2 will likely see deep discounts on Black Friday from certain retailers, and iPad minis could see discounts of $50 as well.
Black Friday is usually the best time to buy a new MacBook Air, with retailers often shaving $200 off the latest model’s price.
Certain carriers may offer discounts of up to 50% off the subsidized cost of the new iPhone 6 with a 2-year contract, but the discounts on the iPhone 6 Plus will not be as steep or numerous.

You can learn more about what to expect at DealNews, and you should consider subscribing to the DealNews Select Newsletter to get a daily recap of all of their deals or downloading the DealNews app.

Take Control of Your Email with Boomerang

Posted on November 19, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Apps, Office Management, Online Resources, Product Reviews

What 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:

Make 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.

Small PDF Solves Most of Your PDF Needs

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Office Management, Online Resources, Technology 5 Comments

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:

Compress 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!

How Lawyers Can Use Circus Ponies NoteBook in Trial

Posted on July 22, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Guest Posts, How Do I ...?, Office Management, Online Resources, Software, Technology 28 Comments

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.

Free Webinar: How Lawyers Can Use Adobe Acrobat Like a Pro

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Office Management, Online Resources, Software, Technology

All attorneys need to know how to use and work with PDF documents. In the practice of family law, this is a must. Adobe Acrobat is the dominant player in the PDF arena, and it is therefore the one that most lawyers will use.

There is a free webinar available to help lawyers learn how to get the most out of and use Adobe Acrobat like a pro – Adobe Acrobat: The Paperless Secret Weapon, presented by Catherine Sanders Reach, Chicago Bar Association’s Director of Law Practice Management and Technology.

Catherine is an expert in this area, and you can access this free webinar by clicking here.

Facts About Cloud Computing for Attorneys

Posted on June 19, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Did You Know?, Office Management, Online Resources, Security, Technology

Cloud computing can, without a doubt, help attorneys be more efficient, productive, and profitable. The software that my firm uses is almost entirely cloud-based, with the “big three” being Rocket Matter for case management / time & billing; Google Apps for Business for email; and Quickbooks Online for accounting.

I have given presentations all across the country about the benefits of cloud computing for attorneys, but despite my advocacy for this technology, some lawyers are still skeptical, suspicious, or fearful of implementing cloud computing in their law practices. I found the following statistics, which may help ease some of those lingering concerns that have prevented them from taking the plunge:

• A survey of over 3,500 IT decision makers from a variety of enterprises revealed that 82% of the companies saved money and cut costs, with 80% seeing improvements within the first 6 months of adopting the cloud.

• 90% of IT decision makers found improvement in at least one of the following areas of their IT department: efficiency, quality, and security.

• Banking has the most activity in the cloud (64%), which is even more than social media (58%), photos (29%), and file sharing (19%). In fact, cloud demand for banking almost doubled in 2013 with the introduction of mobile banking.

• Over 50% of the United States government is in the cloud, and experts say it is the biggest cloud user in the world.

Source: “7 Statistics You Didn’t Know About Cloud Computing” by Maria Santacaterina.

Rocket Matter Now Features Evergreen Retainers

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Office Management, Online Resources, Product Reviews, Software, Technology

Rocket Matter has long been the best case management software for attorneys (bar none), but today, it released a new feature which takes things to an entirely new level – Evergreen Retainers. This feature will enable attorneys who do hourly billing (like me) to be exponentially more productive and efficient. I have used evergreen retainers in my family law practice for years, and having this process automated is literally a dream come true.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, evergreen retainers are an amount that a client is required to maintain in the attorney’s trust account until the case is concluded. Invoices are generated each month and paid from the trust account, with the client then replenishing the amount disbursed whenever the trust balance dips below the mutually agreed upon amount.

This enables the attorney to maintain a source of working funds to ensure payment for the services rendered, and it significantly decreases the headaches of unpaid bills, collections, and write offs. Without a doubt, I believe that requiring evergreen retainers in my family court cases was one of the best things I ever did for my practice (along with beginning to use Rocket Matter over six years ago).

“Law firm realization rates have been declining, and Evergreen Retainers are another tool for attorneys to minimize their economic risk,” says Larry Port, CEO of Rocket Matter. “Our clients asked for the flexibility to set up Evergreen Retainers, so we worked with them to design a system that would accomplish their objectives.”

This new release also features two new analytics reports and numerous behind the scenes optimizations, which have resulted in a speed increase of over 60% across the program. If you want to learn more about these new features, you can view the short video below or visit Rocket Matter’s website.

Rocket Matter Evergreen Retainer from Rocket Matter on Vimeo.