Newsletter- Small Business Accounting Software - Rhode Island
Please Note: This newsletter was originally published in 2008. Some of the links may not be up to date.
The Profit Point Group Newsletter
Each New Year brings fresh hope that we will become more organized and efficient in our legal practices. Sometimes we succeed. But more often we engage in needless wheel spinning. To get traction, try to approach organization and efficiency in small steps. Incremental changes are the easiest to implement and have the greatest chance of success.
In this issue, we will discuss several technology- related New Year's resolutions for law firms. They are simple and generally inexpensive. But they do require commitment. And no commitment works like commitment from the top. These changes will work best if everyone from senior partners on down take them to heart.
Give these a try. Not all of them will work in every firm. But they do provide a good starting point for thinking about how you can use technology to become more organized and efficient.
End the Tyranny of the Inbox
Email may be the "killer app" for lawyers, but the volume of email received by many lawyers is a true productivity killer. Sorting through the spam and separating the legitimate messages from the dreck is a true challenge.
Spam filters can help. Nearly every major software security company (Symantec-Norton, McAfee, etc.) sells a spam filtering program. If you use Microsoft Outlook 2003, it has its own spam filter called the Junk Email Filter, that can reduce the number of obvious spam messages you receive. A good third party spam filter for Outlook or Outlook Express is Cloudmark's Desktop. The annual subscription price for a single-user license is $39.95. For larger firms, another approach is implementation of a "challenge and response" system which intercepts incoming messages and sends a return message to the sender asking them to respond in a specified way that is difficult for spam mills to automate. If you send email to many medium or large law firms, you have probably encountered challenge and response systems. They are annoying for the sender the first time, but after the initial "handshake" verifying the legitimacy of the sender, subsequent messages get through without a problem.
Once you have reduced the amount of spam coming into your inbox, set up rules or filters in your email program to automatically route certain non-critical messages (such as those from email discussion groups, retailers, or professional organizations) to other folders for later review. Or you could create a second email account for personal (non-firm and non-client). Provide only that email address to the many people, organizations, sites and services requiring an email address. Then you can jealously guard your business email address and provide it only to those who absolutely need it. All mail to your personal account can be forwarded to a separate folder for review at your leisure.
Finally, manage your time devoted to email wisely. Constantly monitoring you inbox will kill productivity. Set aside a half hour at the beginning of the day and a half hour at the end of the day to response to messages. If you don't have time to respond to a message or otherwise deal with it, move it from your inbox to a special folder dedicate to messages requiring further attention. Then, when you have some additional time, take care of the messages in that folder. The goal is to have an empty inbox at the end of the day. That will be a difficult goal to achieve, but it is a worthy aspiration.
Forget Faxing
Faxing is an ancient technology whose time has come -- and gone. Faxing is much more time consuming and much less efficient than emailing. There are law firms still printing documents so they can be signed and manually inserted into a fax machine to be sent. After a significant degradation in image quality (not to mention the expenditure of staff time at both ends of the transmission), the document arrives at the desk of the recipient. It is increasingly likely the recipient will have the fax scanned to PDF format for storage in a document management system on his or her firm's network. In fact, the sender may do the same. Why create a paper copy at all?
With Adobe Acrobat (the full version, not the free Reader program), or with a variety of free (CutePDF) or low cost (PDF Create!) software, it is easy to create ready-to-email PDF documents from any Windows program, including Microsoft Word. In fact, all recent versions of WordPerfect, along with the latest version of Open Office, have the ability to make PDF copies of any document created with those programs. Printing a document to sign it is also passé. A digital copy of the sender's signature can be made and inserted into any word processing document before it is converted to PDF and emailed.
While there are some security concerns associated with having a digital copy of your signature too widely available on your firm's network, the reality is that anyone receiving a document or correspondence signed by you can scan that document and make their own digital copy of your signature. As with most modern security concerns, it is more a people problem than a technology issue.
Enter Your Own Time
Nearly all law firms use time and billing software. All leading time and billing programs are network enabled. That means that the lawyer (or other time keeper such as a paralegal) can enter time directly into the time and billing database using the computer sitting on his or her desk. Developing the discipline to immediately make entries into the firm's time and billing software as soon as a task is completed nearly always increases the amount of billable time captured by a lawyer or paralegal.
It is wasteful to hand-write time entries on tear- off or photocopied sheets which are then forwarded to a staff member to be keyed into the time and billing software. Something is always lost in the translation, not to mention the unnecessary use of staff time when most time and billing programs make it fairly easy for a lawyer to create a time entry, assigned it to the proper client and matter, and enter a proper description. A practice management program linked to a time and billing program makes this process even easier as time entries can be created directly from calendar entries, telephone call notes, or emails messages.
Perhaps most importantly, when lawyers enter their own time the monthly bills can go out on schedule. If the lawyer contemporaneously makes time entries directly (or via a practice management program) into the software, there is no need to play catch up at the end of each month as a busy staff member keys in a mountain of hand-written time slips. We've seen solo practices and small firms virtually shut down the last few days of each month while their primary (or only) staff person drops everything to enter a month's worth of accumulated time slips into the time and billing program. There is no need for a crippling last- minute rush if time keepers enter their own time into the program.
Automate Document Creation
This is much easier than it sounds. While state-of-the-art document assembly programs such as Hot Docs are great, they do require a non-trivial investment of time to learn and implement. If all you have is a modern word processing program like Word or WordPerfect, you can create templates for your most frequently used documents. If you have a practice management program such as Amicus Attorney or Time Matters, you can do even more. All leading practice management programs allow you to easily create master documents or forms that will automatically insert client or case specific information directly into your word processing documents.
Start small. Pick your ten most frequently used documents or forms. Clean them up so that they are the best they can be. Then save them as Word (.dot) or WordPerfect (.wpt) templates. Store them in a shared folder on your network so everyone is using the same form. If it needs to be updated later, you need only change the shared template, not individual copies on everyone's PC. You can get a little fancy and use WordPerfect's "merge" functions or Word's "form" functions to speed entry of case or client specific information into each new document. Saving your forms as templates gives you the added benefit of protecting your master documents and forms from accidental overwrites. If you currently save your standard forms as ordinary word processing documents (.doc in Word or .wpd in WordPerfect), you know how easy it is for someone to overwrite the original by forgetting to use File>Save As instead of File>Save. That is not a problem if you create new documents from templates. The document on your screen is not your original template. It is only a copy.
Purge the Day Planner
Yes, your standard day planner with its zippered leather cover is elegant (or not depending on the number of yellow sticky notes, unpaid bills, and other documents stuffed between its pages). But it is not very efficient. It can be bulky, you have to update it manually when your schedule changes or a frequent contact gets a new telephone number or email address (keep a bottle of correction fluid handy), and what happens if you lose it? Worse yet, if you've been out of the office in court or depositions for a couple of days, your calendar and that kept by your assistant back at the office can look very different. Getting them back into sync can take valuable and otherwise billable time.
Whether you use a practice management program or keep your calendar in Outlook, a personal digital assistant or PDA, also called a handheld computer (which is perhaps the more accurate term), will automatically track changes in your calendar, contact list, to do's, and more. A simple digital synchronization, which typically takes only a minute or two, will update both your PDA and the information kept on the office computer system.
And don't forget the added benefits of even the simplest and least expensive PDA. Most have enough storage capacity to keep readily accessible copies of the rules of evidence, procedural rules, and key statutes and case law affecting your area of practice in addition to your calendar, contact, and to-do list.
Call The ProfitPoint Group before buying a PDA. We can help you choose the best one for your needs that will be compatible with the software you already use.
Get Serious About Backups
Ok, we know this is about the tenth time this topic has been mentioned in one of our email newsletters, but from what we see in the field, too few lawyers include securing their data from accidental loss in their New Year's resolutions.
Don't rely on tape backup systems. External hard drives, whether USB 2.0 or Firewire, are much faster and more reliable than tapes. And given the high cost of tape backup drives and the need to replace tapes once or twice a year, hard drive backup is much less expensive than tapes.
But as with anything this important, a certain level of discipline is required. If you use rotating external hard disk backups, someone must reliably take one of the disks off-site each night in the event there is a fire, hurricane, theft, or other disaster at your office that destroys everything. Trust this task to yourself if you are the owner of your firm (after all, you have the
Even a rotating external hard drive backup system is not enough. As we saw with the 2004 and 2005 hurricanes, your home (or other storage location for your off-site backup) could be destroyed along with your office. You need secure and fully automated on-line backup of your crucial data. We work with Connected Corporation, a leader in the field,
Another important disaster recovery tip is to go through that cardboard box at the bottom of your supply closet. You know, the one with the original install CD's for all of your critical software. Place those install CD's, along with any required CD installation keys or license numbers, is a CD binder (available at most computer and music stores). Keep it in an a safe location.
Just a reminder: Don't distribute the backup copies of your install CD's unless needed to restore systems on which the software is already licensed. Software piracy drives up costs for everyone.
Conserve Energy
After the disastrous hurricanes the last two years, not to mention conflict at the international level, energy costs are high and are likely to remain there for a while. Using less energy is not only good for the firm's bottom line, it is patriotic. It seems that the more we rely on technology, the more energy we use. But there are techniques to reduce your energy consumption.
Older CRT (cathode ray tube) computer monitors consume more energy than new flat panel LCD monitors. Switching to LCD monitors will not only make your eyes very happy with the sharper non- distorted image, it will reduce your energy consumption.
Windows XP has a number of power settings (Settings>Control Panel>Power Options) which allow you to turn off your monitor, hard disks, or even send your computer into a low power "standby" mode after a certain period of inactivity. If you have five or six computers in your small firm, adjusting these settings to save energy could make a real difference in the long run.
Another way to save energy is to power down those annoying "wall wart" AC adapters that seem to run everything from cell phone chargers to PDA's and USB hubs. In the aggregate, they can use a significant amount of energy. Plug them all into a power strip, or better yet a surge suppressor that has a switch permitting you to turn them all on or off at one time. Turn them on when you arrive at the office and off when you leave. Look for the Trident Design Power Squid if you need a power strip or surge protector ideally suited for those bulky wall wart adapters.
Perhaps the most effective way to save energy is to work (and allow some of your office staff to work) from home when it will not impair the firm's ability to service clients. You'd be surprised how much can be accomplished over the telephone and through the use of Internet-based remote access and control services like GoToMyPC and LogMeIn. With high speed connections on both ends (home and office), it is almost like being there, but without a 20 mile commute at around $3 per gallon of gas.
If you would like to explore the many possibilities for remote access and control, call The ProfitPoint Group.
401-658-0772