Archive for December, 2007

Practice Tip: Market Your Law Firm on CD

December 12, 2007  (Jeffrey Kabbe)

Law firms are increasingly making use of compact discs (CDs). Many CDs are only used internally at a law firm. Often, though, a CD is sent outside the law firm – to a client, opposing counsel, or a third party. Law firms that use standard, branded CDs are missing out on a great marketing opportunity. Printing your law firm’s logo and a description on a CD (or DVD) label makes a great impression.

It has never been easier to print to a CD label. In my wife’s practice, we use DiscCover to design the labels. Another good option is DiscLabel. DiscLabel seems to have a few more features, but DiscCover does everything I need it to do.

In the past, I used Avery adhesive label sheets. I always had two worries with the adhesive labels. First, getting them centered was a struggle (and nothing looks worse than an off-center label). Second, the adhesive labels are quite thick and make the CD much thicker than a normal disc. I was always concerned that the label would gum up the CD drive. Maybe it wasn’t a realistic concern, but the thickness of the label was too much for me to ignore. Those worries are gone now that we print directly onto the discs. Our printer is an HP Photosmart D5360 Photo Printer. I haven’t used many HP printers recently because I don’t like installing all the software that HP forces you to install to get their drivers. Mac OS X Leopard, though, comes with a driver for the D5360, so no install is needed. Special CDs are needed when you use a CD printer like the D5360.

Having a custom label costs a little more than using generic CDs, but the end results are stunning. Clients are very impressed when they receive a copy of their files on CD with the law firm logo and the client’s name printed neatly on the label. Even opposing counsel and third-parties will take notice. Little things like this make you look more professional and raise the prestige of your law firm.

Mac Software Highlight: Leap

December 10, 2007  (Jeffrey Kabbe)

I’ll admit it – I am a sucker for Finder replacements. I have Pathfinder, which I mostly use, and Forklift. Forklift is also an FTP program, but I primarily use it as a file manager (albeit occasionally) because I have Transmit for FTP. Yep Software (makers of Yep, which I have discussed before) are coming out with a new program called Leap (it is currently in a public beta release). Yep Software is billing Leap as a Finder replacement. For that to happen, though, you will have to totally rethink the way you use and look for files.

The main window of Leap has three parts: a sidebar, a filter panel, and a file list. Leap shares many similarities with the Leopard Finder. Finding a file starts by choosing a source from the sidebar. The sources are grouped into categories (Library, File Types, Places, and Search). Once a source is chosen, the file list will display all of the files that match the criteria for that source. If there are too many results, the list can be narrowed by choosing one or more options from the filter panel and/or using the search field. The file list defaults to an icon view with a live preview, allowing you to quickly find the file you are looking for.

The most powerful feature of Leap is the ability to add custom tags to your documents. Tags are labels that describe the contents of the file or how you would use the file. Leap allows you to easily add tags to files, and then filter your results by the tags associated with those files. None of this is anything that you can’t accomplish through the Finder in Leopard. However, working with tags in the Finder is clumsy and slow. Leap, on the other hand, is designed around custom tags. Leap has many ways to add and edit tags, including drag-and-drop and the info panel.

Many of Leap’s features don’t translate perfectly to the world of law. Some practice areas, though, will value Leap more than others. For example, lawyers in practice areas with thousands of client files – like estate planning – will often organize their files in a specific folder hierarchy. In this situation, Leap doesn’t add much. On the other hand, litigators can generate thousands of research documents and pleadings that will likely be scattered throughout the file system. Leap can be very helpful in that environment.

Leap’s custom tagging and search capabilities could be a real benefit in enabling the reuse of previous work. A litigator may want to use one set of tags to describe the kind of document (e.g. letter, pleading, research file) and another set of tags for practice areas (e.g. civil procedure, trademark, copyright). By using tags of varying detail, you can create a highly-structured repository of information without worrying about what directory a particular file sits in.

Starting to use Leap seems pretty daunting. Some of the features, particularly custom tags, won’t be very helpful in the beginning because none of my files will be tagged when I start using Leap. So leap requires a commitment, and a little bit of faith that using it will become better over time. I am still undecided, but I will certainly give it another look once the final version is released.

Pogue Unleashes Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual

December 7, 2007  (Jeffrey Kabbe)

Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual is finally out. Written by David Pogue, the New York Times technology columnist, The Missing Manual series of books for the Mac are a great resource for novice to intermediate users of Macintosh computers.

When I bought the Missing Manual for Panther (two versions of Mac OS X ago), there was only one version of Mac OS X: The Missing Manual. Now there are two. The first, Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual covers the operating system in great detail and has introductions to the iLife applications – iMovie, iDVD, and iPhoto (for which Pogue also wrote separate Missing Manual books). The second book in the series is Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Leopard Edition. This book is for someone who has just made or is thinking about switching from Windows to the Mac.

When I bought my first Mac, I had used one at the Apple Store a few times, but I wasn’t exactly “fluent” with my new computer. Reading The Missing Manual helped me get the most out of my Mac. It really was a great book. Given the consistent high quality of Pogue’s books, I trust that the Leopard versions will be equally useful.

Apple to Introduce Sub-Notebook at Macworld

December 6, 2007  (Jeffrey Kabbe)

Rumor has it that Apple will be introducing a sub-notebook at Macworld San Francisco in January. The new device will supposedly be ultra-thin (on account of not having an optical drive) and sport a flash memory drive. Flash memory is more expensive than a traditional hard disk drive, but it is faster and uses less power (spinning a disk 600 times per second uses a lot of power). The best news is that the entry price point will apparently be about $1500. Still, I imagine that a fully-loaded model will still run at least $2000, if not more.

I am eagerly awaiting the opportunity to buy a new sub-notebook. I currently use a 15″ MacBook Pro. Before that, though, I had a 12″ PowerBook (which, I have on good authority, will bend when you drop it from a height of four feet onto a wood floor). After using a 12″ PB, I barely consider my MB Pro a “portable.” I can technically take it places, but it always feels like I am carrying luggage with me. I barely noticed my 12″ PB. I also have a very sleek backpack from my 12″ PB days that I hope will be big enough for the new sub-notebook. I normally try to avoid first-generation Apple hardware, but I think I might make an exception in this case.

Mini-Review: Bento

December 2, 2007  (Jeffrey Kabbe)

I wrote in a previous post that I planned to put Bento through its paces. Today, I finally got that chance. I walked away impressed with Bento, but still wanting something more.

Our initial plan was to use Marketcircle Daylite for my wife’s law practice. We have started to implement Daylite, but aren’t so far along that we won’t switch to something else. When Bento came out, it looked like it would do everything that Daylite can do plus a few things we need that Daylite can’t do. Bento seemed like a good candidate to replace Daylite because we don’t anticipate needing the multi-user features of Daylite. The main drawback with Daylite is its apparent inability to link files to contacts and projects. Bento can do this easily with its file list data type.

Bento has its drawbacks too. To my eye, Bento’s critical failing is its lack of a record summary feature. Bento is great at creating, editing, searching, and sorting records. That’s useful, but it’s not enough. The most powerful way to use your data is to analyze and summarize the data. But, Bento’s focus is records and the ability to combine information from those records is quite limited.

For example, Bento lets me create projects and associate tasks with them. Viewing the projects list in Bento will show me all my projects, even the ones that are no longer active. Using a smart collection, I can view only the active projects. My view of the data is limited, though, to a traditional record view. I can’t, for instance, see a list of all the active projects and detail about the currently-pending task for each project. Bento also won’t show me a list of all the people I am supposed to call today, along with the reason for the call and the person’s contact information.

It’s apparent that what I need for my wife’s law practice is something more sophisticated than Bento. That “something” will probably be Filemaker Pro. The disadvantage with Filemaker Pro is that it doesn’t naturally integrate with Address Book and iCal. Like most things, that can be solved with money – by buying a set of pre-built commercial templates.

We will probably spend that money. Managing the client relationship is too important to risk messing it up by being cheap. Bento still looks like a very interesting product. It just looks too lightweight to handle the daily grind of a busy law practice.