Let's discuss a really powerful free tool that you may not yet be using. I hope this blog post will convince you that you need to set up a free online document repository.

I have been finding many interesting uses for Dropbox and have encouraged others to sign up. Dropbox offers 2 GB of online storage for free. (Although with a few referral credits from blog readers, my free Dropbox account is up to 8 GB.) Recently Box.net increased its free online storage from 1 GB to 5 GB and business accounts now start at 500 GB. Just this week SugarSync increased its free storage from 2 GB to 5 GB. Drop.io used to offer the abillity to create many free document drops. But I say "used to" because Facebook just bought Drop.io and is shutting it down. So look for the future announcement that Facebook will be offering a document repository in addition to its photo albums.

I've also had many lawyers asking me recently what "the cloud" really means. I think the possibilities are starting to become interesting to many. Let's set aside lawyers and client files and confidentiality for a minute and talk about something simple–like pizza.

I've told many people that the above services are so neat because they synchronize your documents so you know a synchronized document is the current version of the document. It also saves you the trouble of e-mailing a document home to work on it or keeping it on a flash drive. But let's say you only work on one computer ever and you've made a decision never to ever store any business or client document in the cloud.

That's where pizza comes in. Two new "pizza by the slice" places have opened in my home town. They are located not very far from me, almost facing each other across Main Street. As I was picking up some pizza from one I asked the manager a few questions, like delivery charges and such. I took a paper menu from the counter. It turned out the pizza was good and I might order from them again. I went to put the paper menu in the "paper junk drawer" in the kitchen. It was stuffed full with menus and manuals. The manuals reminded me of another plan I had not yet put into practice.

So instead I put the menu in the home scanner and scanned it to PDF. named it SandrosPizza.PDF. created a new folder c:/MyDocuments/MyDropbox/Menus and saved the file to it. I scanned a couple of other menus from the drawer and placed the files there too, just to get into the rhythm. So now those files will be available from my Dropbox subfolder on my computer or by logging into the Dropbox site from any computer. But that's not the point. I could locate it in the drawer at home and the restaurant has a website. The point is the synchronization with my iPhone (or any popular smart phone.) So now i can get to the menu whereever I am if I have my phone, whether that means calling in from work before I leave to pick up food on the way home or just not having to get up and rummage through the drawer to find it. I can, in effect, have a file cabinet's worth of documents that are easily accessible from my phone.

It's not a perfect system to read a menu from an iPhone screen, but it is doable. Of course if it was a 20 page document I had saved to my online Document Repository, i'd read it on the computer or the iPad which also has a Dropbox app. Menus are not really the best example anyway as restaurants often have websites with the menus online, often in PDF format.

You may not want your tax returns or medical records in an online repository. That's your call. But think of all of the documents you could store there that you might want to access from your phone and you'd definitely like to have out of the way. For your children, there are school directories, sports team information and schedules, special events and assignments, just for one set of examples. Every new product comes with a manual. why not just go to the web site of the manufacturer and download to the PDF of the manual for your product to your drop? Sure it will probably be still there online sixteen months from now when you need it, but why not keep it where you can grab it is seconds.

All of these documents don't even fill up your phone. Unless you specify otherwise they are just links and the document loads in a few seconds when you click on the link.

There are lots of tools you can use, but at a minimum you need one of these free online document repository accounts and a scanner. It is better if your scanner can scan in duplex (two sides at a time) mode. It is better if you own a PDF management tool like Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat reduced the size of the menu file from almost 2 megabytes to about 750 KB and would have OCR'd it if needed. But think of the fact you can get from two to five GB for free and 1024 megabytes equals one GB. That's a lot of documents! (Of course, if you start uploading lots of photos, you could fill up your alloted space pretty quickly.)

Of course if you really start scanning many documents, you might fill up your free space after a year or so and have to start paying the small fees. I assume that is what the vendors are hoping.

If you do not use your scanner much, you may want to invest the time to set up a "scan to drop" setting so you can just scan everything to a My Scans folder under the Dropbox folder on your computer. Then you could just feed things into the scanner and only periodically do the clean up work of changing them from that location to the proper location with a proper file name.

These repositories also make it easy to share documents. Basically you can copy a link to a single document that allows someone to download that one document without granting them complete access to your repository. Just recently I was tied up in a meeting so I copied the link to the document that was due that day and used my iPhone to e-mail it to my assistant wth a note to review it and suggest any changes. When I got back to my office, her edits and suggestions were in my inbox. Once you have this set up, you will find your own uses, like Grandmother asking when the next grade school basketball game is and you responding by e-mailing her the complete schedule or a lawyer keeping blank new client information sheets and other documents to easily e-mail potential clients from the smart phone outside of normal office hours.

Take some time to try this out now as it probably represents your future document filing system for your personal papers. You may fnd that you can set this up in less time than it took to read this post.

 

The November 2010 Oklahoma Bar Journal has a Law Office Management and Technology theme and we're happy to share them with you whether you are a member of the Oklahoma Bar Association or not. So pass along this link to someone you think might be interested and settle in for a lengthy session if you decided to read them all.

In order that they are included in our publication:

Surely there is something interesting in this group of articles for every practicing lawyer. I encourage you to read them all and pass this post along to others who will enjoy them.

 

Courtney Kennaday loves her Droid HTC Incredible. I still like my iPhone. In our Sites for Sore Eyes column this month, Do You Have an Appetite for Apps?,  we discuss a select few of our favorite apps for our respective phones. New apps hit the apps stores every day it seems and these are just a small sample of the apps now available. These are the ones we use all the time.

WARNING: If you read this blog post you may find that you have to buy a VuPoint Magic Wand™ Portable Scanner. I mean, first of all, what lawyer hasn't wished for a magic wand before, particularly in certain courtrooms and depositions? 

But seriously, the VuPoint Magic Wand™ Portable Scanner is a great tool for many, many lawyers. It is very affordable at around $80 street price. Portable scanners are very nice tools, but a cordless battery-operated portable scanner that works independently of the computer for under $100 is a great tool. Watch the demonstration video here. How handy is it to be anywhere (court clerk's counter, taking a statement in the home of a witness, looking at a magazine) and think "oh, I'd like a copy of that" and be able to do it almost instantly without booting up a computer.

I mentioned it to a few colleagues and one of them, a Legal Aid lawyer, bought one and has already scanned about 200 pages of police reports in just the last six weeks or so. He loves the Magic Wand. Of course, there is a cord to plug into your computer to transfer the scanned images there. It comes with OCR software included, but I have to confess that I just transferred the PDF files to my computer and OCR'd them with Adobe Acrobat. A microSD card is required, along with two AA batteries. It will scan in color or black & white, at 600 dpi or 300 dpi. But truly, this is a stunningly simple gadget that does just what it is supposed to do at a price every lawyer can afford. It should be a great addition to your laptop bag or briefcase.

Here's the fact sheet with all of the details. Best Buy and Walmart supposedly carry them, although I know of no one who has actually seen one in stock. FTC Blogger disclosure: They are going to have to physically come and pry my review copy out of my hands to get it back. 🙂

No one is more surprised than me that I am featuring Windows 7 as a cool tool. I hated the early versions of Vista with a passion and still don't like it. I've always tended to not care about operating systems. I just wanted an OS to run my applications. But Windows 7 delivers on the broken promises of Vista. If you are still using Win XP, you should understand that you have an upgrade path. (Although if you have an old computer with XP, it probably makes more sense to buy a new PC with Win 7 preinstalled.)

I won't go into all of the great features here, but the Federated search is really impressive, particularly for those of you who never used a third party desktop search tool like X1 or Copernic. Pinning the most commonly used applications to the Taskbar is a nice timesaver. Even the old Windows Calculator has a face lift; now it does many kinds of unit conversions (temperature, weight, area, and eight others), date calculations and amortization of loans.

I have to confess that I probably wouldn't be using Windows 7 yet if my Executive Director hadn't asked me to do a presentation on it at the annual meeting of the National Association of Bar Executives in August with Catherine Sanders Reach of the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center and Nerino J. Petro, Jr., the Practice Management Advisor for the Law Office Management Assistance program of the State Bar of Wisconsin. As a result of that presentation Nerino prepared Windows 7 Resource Links that are Useful. I strongly suggest you visit that resource.

There is a nice collection of articles in the PC World Windows 7 Center with numerous free articles like 10 Tips That Make Windows 7 Simpler and Windows 7: The Top 10 Hidden Features.

Ellen Freedman points us to a free 50 page guide to Windows 7 from Gizmo.

And for many of you lawyers still using Windows XP, will want to read Scott Basset's post on why you probably want to buy Windows 7 Professional Instead of Home Premium.

If you are moving from XP, there will be some re-training. If you are moving from Vista, there will be happiness. "Upgrading" from Vista isn't easy as a removal of the old OS and a clean install is required. But i really think most every Windows users will like Windows 7 — a lot!

Many readers are familiar with New Orleans lawyer Ernest Svenson, aka Ernie the Attorney, and his well-known blog. I really like his 10 Tech Rules to Guide Users. (The paper is linked from his post.) It barely mentions specific products at all, but just covers concepts and attitude. I think you will enjoy and learn from his paper. In particular, I am more interested than ever in the idea of knowing everything you can do from a smart phone. 

Along that same line today, I received a press release from X1 about X1 Mobile Search for iPhone, an app to be released later this month. I've used X1 desktop search for years. Now there is about to be an iPhone app that will let you search your entire desktop machine from anywhere via your iPhone. Now I haven't used a desktop machine for years, but the idea of being able to retrieve any document, old e-mail or other file from your desktop to your iPhone is very interesting. For desktop users, this idea fits right in with a couple of Ernie's rules.

I think one of the most important practices for lawyers is discussing client expectations and making sure that new clients have reasonable expectations. A client with unrealistic expectations is probably not going to end up as a happy client, no matter how good the results. Lawyers want to achieve good results and also produce satisfied clients who will return for more legal work in the future and perhaps refer other potential clients to the lawyer.

But one South Carolina law firm has decided to use its web site to make certain their potential clients have realistic expectations about the firm before they even schedule an appointment. Check out the Client Expectations (Realistic or Unrealistic) section of their web page. Some people may be put off by the blunt language with statements like "We do not work on the weekends and do not provide emergency numbers for the weekends" or "Do not think we are perfect.  We make mistakes."

But if you read the entire expectations page, there is a good deal of good general advice about family law. It seems like they have made a strategic decision to say "If you are going to a high maintenance client, you're probably not going to be happy with us and we're probably not going to be happy with you."  Read it and judge for yourself. But one thing is certain. They have achieved the distinction of not having the same content of every other law firm's web site.

The tools featured under "Cool Tools" will be primarily those that i have test-driven personally. But Scott Bassett's Verizon 3G Mobile Hotspot Service Mini-Review is well-written and this service really is a cool tool. The $20 per month charge is quite reasonable. Since he was trying it out at the same conference i was attending in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I figured I probably walked through his wireless cloud at some point. So i had some contact with the tool. But seriously, this is a nice review and one of the really nice features of the Droid X is this ability to call the provider and turn on the wireless capability to provide Internet access to five devices on demand. Of course, depending on your plan, you might incur additional data charges if you provided service for four or five devices for a lengthy time.

On Friday I did six presentations for the 2010 Michigan State Bar Annual Meeting and Solo & Small Firm Institute. The opening keynote was Keeping Them Satisfied -Exceeding Client Expectations Every Day, which was followed by a workshop on the same topic with audience participation. The next two presentations were taken from the books I have co-authored for the ABA – How Good Lawyers Survive Bad Times and Winning Alternatives to the Billable Hour. Next was 50 Tips in 50 Minutes with Barron K. Henley and Hon. Donald H. Passenger, a Michigan judge. As usual, I picked up a couple of tips from my fellow tipsters, which I will share in this space sometime soon. The final presentation was How Not to Commit Malpractice with Your PC. I haven't done that program in a while and as I updated it I reflected that it probably should be called How Not to Commit Malpractice with Your PC or Smartphone.

I want to thank my hosts from ICLE and the Michigan Bar. I got to have dinner the night before with Diane Ebersole and JoAnn Hathaway, my colleagues who work at the Michigan Bar Practice Management Resource Center. Grand Rapids is a beautiful city. The weather was great and downtown was hosting an arts festival that had thousands of people on the streets. I wish there had been more free time to wander through the art. I met a lot of great lawyers from Michigan—and I even made it back in time to be seated in front of the TV for kickoff of the OU-Texas game. A great road trip.

I'll be spending the day tomorrow speaking to impressionable young lawyers, along with some more experienced lawyers. The Oklahoma Bar Association is putting on our free program Opening Your Law Practice in Tulsa, with the Oklahoma City session scheduled next week. We do one program in the spring and these two in the fall. (We renamed our New Lawyer Experience Program to this more accurate title as about 1/3rd of the attendees were veteran lawyers, retiring judges and the like.) You can read more about the program here and see the complete schedule here. To my fellow bar association executives, you really need to offer one of these programs if you do not. In these economic times, many young lawyers are opening a law office directly out of law school, whether they intended to or not. If you help them with this major challenge, they will not forget it in the future.