Legal Marketing Tips And Strategies | Legal Practice Pro » Legal Technology

4 Microsoft Word Hacks To Make Your Law Office Run More Smoothly

Deborah Savadra — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:00:43 +0000

I’ll bet Microsoft Word and Outlook are tied for the “most critical Microsoft Office application” award at your firm. So, following up on our earlier “Outlook Hacks” post, here are four Word tricks to smooth out your day.

Make templates (lots of templates). If you have a document type you produce frequently, make a pre-formatted template for it. It’ll make subsequent documents a breeze.

Start off by taking a recent example and stripping out all of the client-specific information. Now, click File, Save As (in version 2007, click the Microsoft Office Button in the upper left-hand corner and choose Save As; in version 2010, go to the File tab and choose Save As), then choose Document Template (either in the drop-down at the bottom of the following dialog box or in the menu, depending on what version of Microsoft Word you’re using).

My advice? Start with simple templates (letters, basic pleading formats) and try more complex forms (like appellate briefs) after you gain experience. A little time invested here can save lots of work later.

Use Styles to standardize paragraph formats. Don’t waste time formatting your headings and other paragraph formats one by one. Use Styles to standardize them instead.

You can access this feature either using the Styles & Formatting Pane (in versions 2002 and 2003) or on right-hand side of the Home ribbon (in versions 2007 and 2010). This feature is particularly powerful combined with templates.

Use AutoText for boilerplate language. Sure, you can repeatedly cut-and-paste that whole “objects to this discovery request on the grounds that yada-yada-yada” thing, but that’s almost as bad as retyping, isn’t it?

Instead, pop that boilerplate into AutoText (found under Insert, AutoText in 2002 and 2003 and on the default Quick Access Toolbar in versions 2007 and 2010). You can configure this so that, when you type the first few letters of this phrase, you can insert the remainder by simply pressing Enter when prompted. Sweet!

Customize your toolbars. If there’s a feature you use a lot in Microsoft Word (or any Microsoft Office application), add it to a toolbar for easy one-click access.

In versions 2002 and 2003, you can click on the down arrow at the end of any toolbar, choose Add or Remove Buttons, Customize to get what you need (and ditch what you don’t).

In versions 2007 and 2010, you can add any commands you need to the Quick Access Toolbar to. The easiest way to add one? Find it on the appropriate tab, right-click it, and choose Add to Quick Access Toolbar on the shortcut menu that pops up. Or you can add several at once by clicking on the down arrow at the end of the QAT (the “Customize Quick Access Toolbar” button) and selecting More Commands.

Image credit: Daniel F. Pigatto (via Flickr).

Deborah Savadra specializes in helping law firms use Microsoft Office applications. Her blog http://legalofficeguru.com features video tutorials on solving common Microsoft Office problems. You can follow her on Twitter at @legalofficeguru.

A Virtual Lawyer And On-The-Go iPhone Dictation

Jay Fleischman — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:00:39 +0000

In the old days, lawyers had a Dictaphone or some such device, complete with a little hand-held microphone, for dictation. They’d sit at their mahogany desks and ramble into a recorder, then pass the tape to their “girl” (yes, that’s what they were called back then – haven’t you ever watched “Man Men”?). The lawyer would promptly retire to the gentleman’s club for a martini or six, then golf the rest of the day.

Later on, we got hip to technology. Lawyers tossed out the Dictaphones (and started getting sued for chasing their secretaries around desks – rightfully so, I might add) and began using mini-cassette recorders for their dictation. Then it was an electronic recorder with a USB hook-up for their computer.

Now we’ve got something better. An iPhone and a freebie app from the folks who brought us Dragon Dictate.

Nuance Dragon Dictation for iPhone lets you tap the little Record button, start talking, and then tap when you’re finished. The app turns your words into text that you can use for an e-mail, a text message, or the contents of your iPhone’s clipboard.

Make a mistake? No worries, just tap the error to bring up a list of suggestions. Only bad part? You can’t use it offline.

Equally amazing: Dragon Dictation is free, at least for now.

Here’s a video. If you’ve got an iPhone, go grab this app before they start charging big money for it.

Photo courtesy of rpujols.

Creating Screencasts With CaptureFox

Jay Fleischman — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:00:01 +0000

How often do you need to show someone how to do something on your computer, and find yourself going through a painstaking process of trying to explain exactly which button to press … and where each button appears on their screen?

For years, the solution was a screencast. I personally use Screenflow for my Mac to record audio and video for my members-only site and tutorials, and most people with a PC use Camtasia.

But what if you want a “quick-and-dirty” screencast and don’t feel like shelling out the extra bucks?

Enter Capture Fox, a Firefox extension that does nicely in a pinch. Capture Fox Movie records your screen frame by frame. You can also record your voice.

The downside is that the output is in AVI format, which may prove slightly limiting to some. But it’s free, pretty simple to use, and does the trick when you want to show someone how to do something on their screen.

Here’s the video to watch Capture Fox in action:

Google Chrome For Mac Makes The Untethered Lawyer Happier

Jay Fleischman — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:54:17 +0000

For the past few weeks I’ve been suffering from PC envy. As a Mac user I’ve been very happy with my choice, and dutifully snicker when my PC-using friends experience problems with their computers. There’s a certain glee in it, and it’s my right as someone who has paid about double what a typical PC user does for a similarly-equipped computer.

My wife’s desktop died awhile ago, and she wanted a laptop. Windows user to the core, she didn’t feel like getting into whole cult of Mac users. No worries, I love her anyway. I picked up a Dell laptop and it arrived about two weeks ago.

One of my greatest joys is setting up new computers, unpacking boxes and tossing out manuals in favor of playing around under the hood. This was no exception. Plus, I got to take a spin with Google Chrome, the browser said to be the best thing in browsers since Netscape first came to town.

I was impressed at the speed and stability of this browser, the way it rendered pages quickly and easily. Firefox isn’t nearly as quick as Chrome, and neither is Safari. IE? Oh come on, now.

Why didn’t I load up Chrome on my Mac?

Uhm. Well. Uhhhh.

OK, you got me. No Chrome for Mac. Yeah, stop smiling at me like that.

Anyway, this past Tuesday Google finally released Chrome for Mac. It’s a beta version so it’s still a bit leaner than what I get on my wife’s Windows laptop, but I’m happy for now. Google says they’ll beef it up by the end of January, and I’m pulling for them.

What Does Google Wave Mean For Lawyers?

Jay Fleischman — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:58:06 +0000

I’ve been fortunate enough to snag a tough-to-come-by invitation to Google Wave, and have been playing with it for about a week now. Due to the fact that only a precious few invitations have come from the Wave HQ, my contact with others has been limited. Still, it has not dulled my interest in this remarkable new platform.

Before diving into the Wave (no pun intended – until now) I want to be clear on something. Nobody knows what this platform will be, nor the uses that will ultimately shape it. We can only suspect that Google put a lot of time into trying to come up with some ideas for use, if only because it threw a considerable amount of developer power behind it.

What’s odd is that some pretty high-profile tech and social media folks have effectively written off Wave – Robert Scoble essentially called it worthless. But what they fail to note is that Wave is merely a platform on which to build interesting tools and use accordingly. It’s a good idea to bear in mind that platforms such as Twitter started out as one thing and then became what the world wanted. So, too, with Wave. It’s there, but it’s up to the world to decide what to do with it.

What Is Google Wave?

The first thing we need to understand is Google Wave itself. Billed by Google as “a personal communication and collaboration tool,” it’s essentially a web-based platform that lets you merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking in a single document – called a “Wave.”

Huh?

OK, think about this for a minute. You send me an email. I respond with a voicemail. You miss my call and shoot me an instant message. We finally get together on Twitter and decide to work on a pleading together (you’re helping me because I’m clearly headed in the wrong direction). Rather than email it to you, we work on it at the same time on the same screen.

None of this is new. Except for one major change.

If we’re using Google Wave, we can do all of this stuff on a single screen and keep our disparate conversations together.

Cool, huh? OK, let’s take it one step beyond (cue the ska music).

We’re working on this pleading and decide to get another set of eyes. You reach out to your colleague and ask for help. Colleague agrees and joins our Wave. In so doing, the colleague gets to see each and every communication we’ve had on the subject because the new addition can scroll through the entire history of the Wave.

No more looking in a million different places to cobble together an understanding of a subject, conversation, etc.

Still confused? Here’s a pretty good video to check out on the subject:

Google Wave For Client Communications

You’ve got a new client who wants to talk about a legal problem. So you open up a new Wave to get a sense of the issues. Client shows you some documents, points you to a website for more information, and you realize there’s something going on. You add one of your staffers and another lawyer to the Wave so they can provide insights.

Once you decide to work on the matter, you give the client the retainer. Client signs electronically and gives it back to you.

All through Wave.

That night you can’t sleep, so you’re researching the issues. You pop back into the Wave and put up your findings. Everyone else is blissfully asleep, but the Wave rolls on in their absence. When they log back onto the Wave, it will be there for them to comment on, update, add to, and the like.

And once you’re done, you simply save the Wave to your files. A full electronic record of client communications, right there at your fingertips.

Every time you interact with the client, you update that client’s Wave.

Google Wave As A Possible Boon To Virtual Law Firms

Take the above example and move everyone out of the office. You’re at home in Texas, the assistant best matched to the issue is in California, and the other lawyer you want to work with is on vacation in Jakarta. The client is in Chicago.

With Wave, it could be all in one place. Every communication, interaction, thought, citation, pleading, idea … it’s all limitless.

Your social media outlets, emails, voicemails, notes, wikis, ideas, phone records, podcasts, PDF files … all in one place. The ultimate collaboration.

It Could Be This, Something Else, Or More.

The truth is, what I’ve outlined above is nothing more than a bunch of guesses about what Google Wave could be – not what it is. As Mitch Joel said in his insightful post on the subject:

At first glance, if something is new and unique it’s going to immediately cause us to recoil or shrug our shoulders. Nobody wakes up in the morning and wants their existing patterns changed (don’t believe me? try moving the coffeemaker to a different location in your office every morning and let me know how long you live). After the shock and awkwardness of the newness, and as people settle into a more regular routine with their new applications and platforms, that’s when the “a-ha!” moments start to happen.

Before you go drowning Google Wave, give it a moment to really sink it before passing judgement on it. Inevitably, we all wind up back-peddling on those initial reactions as we begin to realize that the reasons we were chastising it are the exact same reasons that make it so innovative, new, different and relevant.

The true test of Google Wave will come not now, not in 6 months, but only after we’ve all had access to it for a little awhile and have figured out how we want to play with it. It took awhile for Gmail to catch on (threaded conversations confused the heck out of a lot of people). Twitter is still a mystery to most lawyers.

One thing’s for sure, though. Google Wave is a game-changer. The way we communication is evolving, and it’s important for all of us to recognize the opportunities that may present themselves with these new platforms. Our task is to investigate the platforms, spend some time thinking about them, and resist the urge to discount them as tools for our law practices.

For some Google Wave basics, check out Lifehacker’s post on the topic.