Office Sweet: Learning How to Use Outlook, Word, Powerpoint and Excel

This post was researched and written by former LOMAP intern, Norman Murray, a Suffolk University Law School student now interning with the New Hampshire Public Defender.

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Lawyers tend to spend a good deal of money on hardware and software for their offices. They also spend a lot of time using that software, especially productivity suites, like Microsoft Office; most attorneys, within the Office Suite, spend most of their time in Outlook, Word, PowerPoint and Excel, and probably in that order. And yet, despite the money and time that attorneys spend on these products, few lawyers invest in training (themselves or their staff) on how to use these most important business applications. Some, having gained a rudimentary understanding of, what become, comfortable programs, never seek an upgrade; and now, attorneys using Microsoft Office 2003 are being passed by, with Microsoft’s releases of versions 2007 and 2010. For law firms purchasing new computers, many will come loaded with a newer, and probably the newest, version of Office. But, both Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 look and feel different from Microsoft Office 2003, mostly due to the introduction of the Office ‘ribbon’.

Attorneys, then, would do well to take advantage of some excellent (and, FREE) training resources, that will serve to enhance their productivity within the existing, including the new, programs.

Microsoft (to the rescue) has provided free, downloadable and customizable versions of Office 2010 training courses, here. But, wait, there’s more: Similar trainings exist for Office 2007 and for Office 2003, as well. In addition to these compact training sessions, full versions of the courses, including self-assessments and interactive practice tools, are available online, here.

Supplementing the resources available from Microsoft, are those directed at attorneys. Ben Schorr’s “The Lawyer’s Guide to Microsoft Outlook 2007” and “The Lawyer’s Guide to Microsoft Word 2007” are available for purchase, through the American Bar Association, or for borrowing, through LOMAP’s Lending Library, assuming availability.

Dude, What does mine say? Sweet-uh.*

*This last being mine. Ed.

Not Just a Passing FAD: Email Alerts Make It Hard to Forget Attachments

Last week’s Massachusetts Bar Association Lawyers E-Journal Law Practice Management Section Featured Practice Tip comes from LOMAP. Last week's Tip offered a solution for the pesky problem of forgetting email attachments.

Read the Tip here.

Audiophile: Loving Smaller Audio Files

Audio files, whether wav, mp3, or otherwise, of any significant length, are inconveniently large. Apparently, audio files can be up to 10MB per minute. That’s huge. Like us, you may have struggled with files that are too large to email, or too large to post on a group site. Sometimes, you might be content to circumvent the issue by using a dropsite, or a file-sending website, like sendthisfile and yousendit. But, that is often the less convenient option. And apart from trying to share them, large files are often undesirable for wasting storage space.

I was going to try to provide some type of summary about audio compression. I was going to do that right here. Buuuut, I think your understanding of the information provided by the ever-informative and hopefully accurate Wikipedia, is probably as good as mine.

Awhile back, I was excited to have discovered a very simple compression process. However, in my experience, that process does not compress the files by any substantial degree. Nonetheless, every file is different. So, there may be better luck to be had with this method, in which case it would be worth sharing it, here:

- From Windows Explorer, right-click on the audio file you intend to compress.
- Select “Properties”.
- Click the “Advanced” button.
- In the new window, select the checkbox to “Compress Contents to Save Disk Space”.
- Click “OK”.
- In the original window, click “Apply”, and then “OK”.

Done. But, as an example, I performed this routine on a 334 MB file, and this reduced its size to 311 MB. Such reductions would certainly add up, from a storage space standpoint; however, that 23 MB, or 7%, difference doesn’t help much if you’re trying to share the file.

Fortunately, there are programs that reduce audio file sizes by a much greater percentage. Mp3 Quality Modifier decreases the bitrate of the audio file, making it smaller. It offers four levels of quality. I used it to reduce an audio file by 63%, and found the quality level to be just fine. Once installed, the program is easy to operate, and, in my experience, did not take long to process. Once the program is open, you just add your file(s), configure the compression by selecting the quality level under “Presets”, click “Process”, and choose where you want to save your new, much smaller, audio file. And, yes, this program is free.

If your only purpose in compressing audio files is to save a little disk space, and you have a lot of audio files, the compression process in Windows may very well suffice. But if you intend to share audio files easily, without use of file-sending sites or dropsites, there appears to be no way around downloading a program that will seriously reduce the size of your audio files.

Your Pad or Mine: The Rapture Comes for Traditional Computing Devices

Now, I’m not one for bold predictions. I mean, yeah, they can provide your fringe church of the heart with a short-lived marketing bump and budgetary boost; but, that’s only until they prove you to be a jackass. Just ask this guy.

(One thing I am grateful for is that the timing of my recent vacation coincided with all of this apocalyptic fervor, which (the latter) I was very glad to miss out on. What a time to disengage the grid, eh? For those of you still concerned for the arrival of the end-times, I can tell you this much, fairly definitively: While my guess would be that the actual apocalypse would be a weather-related disaster (especially when the sun explodes) or would involve weather-related disasters (see Book of Revelation for a popular rendition of a rapture story; but, note that we did recover from the Great Flood), weather-related disasters, taken as a predictive chain of events, are not harbingers of the apocalypse. There have been weather-related disasters/natural destructive phenomena occurring since time in memoriam: witness the Galveston Hurricane; the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius and Krakatoa; and, the New Madrid and Lisbon earthquakes. Furthermore, our modern disasters are far less deadly than historical disasters, given scientific (related to prediction and joined warning systems) and medical (including the existence and application of modern disaster response teams) advances. While any disaster affecting or taking human life, in any degree, can properly be described as tragic, none of these occurrences represent predictors, or sets of predictors, of the apocalypse. Rather than turning sad eyes to the potential end of our humanity when catastrophe strikes, our better efforts are those reflecting upon our prevailing humanity, those turned to assisting persons and communities in present need. To that end, you can contribute to the recovery efforts in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, here; to those in Joplin, Missouri, here; and, to those in Springfield, Massachusetts, here.)

Now, back to more silliness: Yeah, I’m not one for bold predictions . . . But, I do think that the rise of the tablet device (“modern” tablets, I mean (and not those fold-over laptops), as represented, most prominently, by the Apple iPad, the Motorola Xoom and the Blackberry Playbook) signals the end of traditional (laptop/desktop) computing. At this stage of the gaming, I think that most folks still see the tablet devices as adjuncts to existing technologies, as a smartphone (or, perhaps more appropriately, a netbook) is to a laptop; but, I think that the case is clear that the tablet is a replacement for traditional devices, rather than a new entry upon the roll of essential business technology. The tablet is the bridge between laptop and smartphone, and will likely end up replacing both devices. Since the use of tablets has become a major trend within popular culture, it is only a matter of time before the devices become primary within workplace settings, where employees, and, eventually, decisionmakers, will seek, and determine, to compute in the office in the same ways that they do at home, for familiarity’s sake. (It is true that business follows culture, and not the opposite; and, this is especially true in the legal field, even though most lawyers follow culture only at a great distance.) Only as tablet devices become accepted as primary business machines across the majority of professions will most lawyers begin to take notice. One day (relatively soon, I think), the attorney using a laptop in his office will be viewed as a dinosaur, in much the same way that, today, the attorney keeping an old DOS machine around to run his homegrown practice management and related systems is viewed as a dinosaur. Now, this is not to say that all attorneys are presently deeply engaged in missing the boat. (If I had a boat, I’d be on it.) There are some very savvy lawyers out there, who are on the leading edge of technology, and who heavily use tablet devices within their practices; of course, very few attorneys use tablet devices as a primary computing option, and none of those, that I know of, who do, have consequently given up their laptops. But, I think they all will. And, while I would not advocate lawyers dumping all their other devices (at this time), and moving to a tablet exclusively, I think that we’ll get to that point over time; and, the run-up may be shorter than you think. Therefore, even if lawyers aren’t switching now, or, perhaps more likely, aren’t adding tablets to their arsenals as yet, they should be aware of the prevailing uses of tablets and trends respecting the uses of such devices.

Last time I went on a long vacation, and came back (I always make that mistake), I wrote about getting off the grid; this time, I’ve returned to write about getting back onto the grid, even when you’re away--or, perhaps more appropriately, “ even when you’re out of the office”. (Don’t worry, I didn’t do any work when I was on vacation: the only app I downloaded (my first app ever, I might add) was ESPN’s Fantasy Baseball manager.) So, yeah, I’m not a tablet guy; I’m a laptop guy. (I’m not a Kindle guy, either. In fact, I had a massive book with me on the trip (“Mark Twain’s Autobiography, Volume 1”). And, if this isn’t a commentary on the modern world, I don’t know what is: the fact of my carrying a rather large book led to much scrutiny of said book by TSA personnel. Really? When did paper books become unusual, and potentially destructive, objects? But, I’ll save much of my griping about the state of 2011 America for another time.) Even though I only play a technologist online, I do make it a point to experiment some with any of the devices and computer programs I talk about at the blog, here; and, this case is no different. Truth in advertising and all, you know. So, I recently got an iPad. Excuse me: I recently got an iPad, which is now my wife’s iPad. (I get to look at it every now and then, though.) Thus, we are talking about a combination of impressions here, mine and her’n. Leading my above thesis is the underlying notion that, even for the relatively limited amount of personal computing we did while away, the iPad was uniquely effective, even as much as I hate to say it, with Apple’s whole, silly, if-you-don’t-have-one-you-don’t-have-one advertising campaigns making me nauseous. I have found that the iPad, and likely other tablets on the market (I’ve seen the Blackberry Playbook in action; and, I like it better than the iPad; but, I guess the initial sales numbers have been disappointing; this certainly casts some serious doubt on my future as a prognosticator, and is making me rethink a potential career change to necromancy), too, combine the best features of laptops and smartphones, making those other devices essentially obsolete, as soon as people figure out/are led to fully believe that the game is up. Laptops are portable; tablets are more portable: lighter, easier to tuck away, less susceptible to search at airport security (sorry books). Laptops have tactile keyboards attached; and, smartphones have tactile or on-screen keyboards that are too small; but, tablets, with larger screens than smartphones, have on-screen keyboards (that laptops don’t have, meaning the elimination of a piece of equipment, if you’re comfortable typing on the screen) that are easier (than smartphones) to type on and that reveal enough of the screen to see what else you’re doing. (I found great facility in typing on the iPad on-screen keyboard, and the clicking sound when you type made it feel more “real” to me--but, if you don’t like the on-screen keyboard, you can get one of those unobtrusive roll-up keyboards, that are easy to carry along, too.) I feel like apps have become predominant, not only because some of them are effective one-use tools (a historical example) and because some of them are apparently awesome games, but also because navigating non-mobile websites on smartphones is horrendous, and, for the most part, mobile sites kind of suck, too, leaving out much content, and being, themselves, difficult of maneuver. The tablet device offers the best of both (all) worlds, and allows for most effective movement within traditional websites (bigger screen plus the application of the touchscreen pinch-and-expand feature common to smartphones) and apps (truncated versions of websites/web applications), with only one device, meaning that there’s really no need for mobile sites anymore (save for use with smartphones . . . which are becoming obsolete, remember?). One consistent objection I have heard to primary tablet usage respects the position that these devices are not document drafting workhorses; but, I found typing on the iPad to be so easy that it did not differ appreciably from the way I work with a traditional computer. As to productivity software, while the full Office Suite has not yet been made available on the iPad, and the Apple software does not answer for busy business uses, Documents to Go and Office 365 provides a level of Microsoft Office functionality for iPad; besides, it’s only a matter of time before a full version of Microsoft Office becomes available on the iPad; for that matter, it’s probably only a matter of time before Microsoft releases its own tablet, especially if tablet sales continue to outpace PC sales. As several original gangsters have said, It’s All About the Benjamins . . . baby. As to storage, the top-end iPad has 64 GB of space, or, almost 1.3 million pieces of converted paper; that’s enough for most firms, especially for starting and small firms, which are those most likely to be using iPads in the practice; for those monolithic firms, iPad use will likely be tied to servers for document access (unless Apple’s recently announced iCloud, and/or other data storage products take hold sooner rather than later), freeing more space on individual devices for the aforementioned Angry Birds, and also Fruit Ninja. No device is fully secure all on its own, of course; and, the iPad is no exception. Business users should adopt and apply security protocols for iPad in much the same ways that they would have for traditional PCs, especially as iPads are getting more and more market share, and are, thus, becoming the more attractive targets of hackers and purveyors of malwares. (The iPad does offer 256 bit encryption that cannot be turned off by users.) Here is a list of ten tips for keeping your iPad safe. You can apply a password to your iPad, just as you can for your traditional PC. iPad lock and security cable systems are also available, for when dealing with those opportunistic, traditional-style sneak thieves (the worst kind of thieves). The iPad further eliminates the need for the talking part of a smartphone. Using the Skype app, and purchasing a nice headset, can generate a replacement for the traditional phoneline; and, the yoked access to the web means that the rest of your smartphone becomes part of just another relic, to boot. Now, you may have noticed that I’ve devolved, in the latest quarter of this post, into talking solely about the iPad; and, there are several reasons for this, some of which follow: I’ve only really used the iPad, out of the new tablet products; the iPad was the first and is the market leader among the new tablets; the iPad is the most mature new tablet product; the iPad is very shiny. Only two of those are true. If you’re a lawyer, and want to use the iPad more effectively, you may want to check out Tom Mighell’s “iPad in One Hour for Lawyers”.

As to features lacking, and as to bells and whistles yet unrung and not whistling (some of which prevailing issues are mentioned above), I think that, as the tablets will come to, increasingly, dominate market share and usership, business necessaries will be added. But, even stripped of some important business functionality, it’s clear that the iPad, and tablet devices like it, represents a neater fit for our present, and probably near-future, living and working conditions. And, while I don’t necessarily believe that the iPad will kill the PC, as some have said, I do believe that the iPad has spawned a new generation of tablets that will, in combination, end up killing the PC, or, at least, banishing it to obsolecense, like Beta. You beta, you bet.

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Liner Notes

I’ve recently discovered a hole in my musical tasting menu (one of many, of course--just the first I’ve let you know about): I don’t know much about Hawaiian music. Having recently road tripped through Kauai and Maui for a couple of weeks, this was painfully obvious to me, as I couldn’t recognize any of the music, anywhere. (I found a lot of it to be insipid, honestly; so, I guess I’m just an uptight New Englander, at the base of my soul.) Though, I have brought the shine of the sun back along with me; so, you’re welcome. Instead of learning about traditional, or even modern, Hawaiian music (I was not subliminally inseminated by all of the large-form posters, promoting up the new Hawaiian genre, stuck all over the islands), I took the lazy man’s route, and just started thinking of songs that sounded like/reminded me of Hawaiian songs/Hawaii; songs like these:

“Somewhere Over the Rainbow/It’s a Wonderful World” by Israel (“IZ”) Kamakawiwo’ole

“Tiny Bubbles” by Don Ho

“Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride” and “He Mele No Lilo” by Kamehameha Schools Children’s Chorus and Mark Keali’I Ho’omalu from the “Lilo & Stitch” soundtrack

“Taylor” by Jack Johnson

“Mele Kalikimaka” by Bing Crosby

“Makin’ Wickey-Wackey Down in Waikiki” by The Moonlighters

“The Magnum P.I. Theme” by Mike Post (You know you’re the king of television theme songs when Pete Townshend writes a song titled after the fact.)

“Rocking Chair in Hawaii” by George Harrison

“The Hawaii Five-0 Theme (original)” by Morton Stevens

“Blue Hawaii” by Elvis Presley

“Perfect Day” by Hoku

Nah, I’m just playin’ though, Hawaii. I have mad respect and love for your music. Now, if some noble Hawaiian out there would like to draft a little “Liner Notes” segment covering “real” Hawaiian music, I would certainly be delighted to publish it as a full apology.

Or, we can all just read this. Seems legit.

Guest Post: 5 Technologies That Help Law Firms Respond to Fee Pressure

Since I have spent far too much time blathering on at this blog about technology that I know very little about, I’d say it’s high time we provide another expert opinion. To that end, we are very pleased to have the following guest post, on technologies that help lawyers address fee pressure, from Daryl Rinaldi. This, his second post for us, is a return engagement for Daryl, who is the owner of GizmoFish, LLC, an IT support company serving the greater Boston area, and handling the IT needs of several law firms. To learn more about GizmoFish’s services, click here. For questions respecting Daryl’s below post, he has been crazy (like a fox?) enough to provide his direct contact information, for follow-up questions, and as follows:

Email: drinaldi@gizmofish.com/Phone: (866) MY-GIZMO ext. 4

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As an IT support company with a number of law firm clients, we know that price pressure on legal fees is increasing. Technology is not a panacea, of course; but, strategic use of technology can definitely help your firm to operate more efficiently than your competition. Below appears my list of the top five technologies that can help you respond to fee pressure; you should either already have these sorts of systems in place, or you should be seriously considering their application within your environment.

(1) Collaboration Tools. Your clients will no longer pay traditional legal rates for things that can be done by non-lawyers. Further, with the advent of fixed pricing models, you have your own incentive to use non-lawyers whenever possible. So, with paralegals, administrative assistants, outsourced specialists, and, of course, other lawyers all working on matters in conjunction, collaboration tools go from ‘nice-to-have’ to a ‘must-have’. A popular collaboration tool is Microsoft SharePoint. Most attorneys are at least vaguely familiar with SharePoint. The good new news, however, is that Microsoft Office 2010 has improved integration with SharePoint. Other collaboration tools range from the really simple, like GoogleDocs and Microsoft Office Live, to the more complex, like DropBox and PBWorks.

(2) Office 2010. Office 2010, referenced just above, is a real improvement over Office 2007 (and especially over Office 2003). By way of example, Outlook 2010 now offers you the option to see your emails as conversation threads. (Of course, GMail has been offering this feature for years; and, Outlook’s adoption of conversation-threading may be a response to Google's forays into the business world.) So, rather than having a separate email for every back-and-forth in a long email chain, Outlook 2010 just shows you the most recent email in the chain, and includes the content of all previous conversations within that latest main message. This one feature alone significantly reduces inbox clutter. And, speaking of SharePoint integration, not only can you now automatically save documents directly to your SharePoint site, but Microsoft has also added a co-authoring feature. (Of course, Google Docs has been offering the same feature for quite some time now. Are you noticing a pattern here?) This means that you and your colleagues can work on a document at the same time, and from anywhere; and, all changes can be reviewed in real-time. This is a big time-saver, since it eliminates the traditional editing process, involving the emailing of revisions back and forth.

(3) Document Management. Law firms are embracing document management, and with good reason: this is the area that could have the largest impact on your operational efficiency--not to mention that clients now expect you to provide instantaneous access to any piece of information about their case(s). Implementing a document management system is not a trivial project, however. If you are still relying on paper files, or even just a manual system of filing documents in directories with folder naming conventions, you are, or soon will be, at a competitive disadvantage. LOMAP has previously posted to this blog on document management, here. They’ve also written on a particularly robust document management system, NetDocuments; that posted review may be accessed here.

(4) Virtualization. Virtualization is the running of multiple servers in software on one physical server, in much the same way that you run multiple programs on one computer. The cost savings in moving to multiple virtual servers over buying multiple actual servers is an immediate boost to the bottom line. However, the real cost savings are linear, and keep coming. If set up correctly, a virtual server infrastructure significantly reduces ongoing IT maintenance costs and improves network stability and up time. Truly virtualizing desktops is a technology that is coming on, but that is not yet widely embraced. However, law firms are making use of Terminal Services (or Citrix) which give you most of the cost and maintenance benefits of truly virtualized desktops, but which is also a proven, “here and now” technology. Moving to a terminal services (or Citrix) desktop environment not only significantly reduces maintenance costs, it also doubles the useful life of desktop PCs and allows you to buy less expensive, “thin” clients, that are half the cost of a full PC.

(5) Windows 7. Windows 7 is a huge improvement over Windows XP and Windows Vista. (I’ve previously addressed, at this blog, some of the security upgrades to Windows 7.) It’s more stable; it’s faster; and, it has productivity and user interface improvements that absolutely work. Face it: Computers are cheap. Now, I don't mean to sound flip about spending money; but, if you amortize the cost of a new PC over a 3-year useful life, the monthly cost is trivial. And, if you think about how much time your attorneys spend on their computers, even a small improvement in speed and productivity makes it worthwhile to invest in good, up-to-date hardware, with a good operating system, like Windows 7.

Tagalongs: Twitter Hashtags Amplify Conference Experience

This week’s Massachusetts Bar Association Lawyers E-Journal Law Practice Management Section Featured Practice Tip comes from LOMAP. This week's Tip covers the efficacy of hashtagging for legal conferences and events.

Read the Tip here.

Disaster Recovery Resources for Lawyers Affected by Recent Tornadoes

With western Massachusetts experiencing tornadoes and significant related damage last night, following those tornadoes hitting Joplin, Missouri and Tuscaloosa, Alabama, not even two weeks earlier, we feel that it is appropriate at this time to republish disaster recovery resources for lawyers and law firms, in the hope that these resources may be useful for those western Massachusetts attorneys affected by last evening's weather damage.

Here are the resources:

The American Bar Association provides substantial resources for disaster planning and recovery for law firms. (Scroll to the second heading on the page.)

The Law Office Management Assistance Program of the State Bar of Wisconsin offers some great resources through Practice Management Advisor Nerino Petro’s blog: see here, here, here and here. Wisconsin also provides a disaster resources page.

Dan Pinnington, Director of practicePRO at the Lawyers’ Professional Indemnity Company (LAWPRO) in Toronto offers much information for managing practice interruptions.

Laura Calloway, Director of the Practice Management Assistance Program at the Alabama State Bar points to Alabama’s P-MAP Disaster Recovery Kit.

Beverly Michaelis, Practice Management Advisor at the Professional Liability Fund of the Oregon State Bar checks in with a post-disaster checklist and an article respecting methods for protecting your firm from disaster.

The Oregon resources, as well as a more generic listing of resources, including some of the above-mentioned, but more, are available at this drop site.

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If you have been fortunate enough to have been left unaffected by the recent tornadoes, consider donating to those who have not been so lucky, via the Red Cross.