For accounting, try Quicken or QuickBooks <http://www.quickbooks.com>. With check software, you can write checks in Quicken or QuickBooks and print them out on checks you print yourself. Why pay a check printer?
Cost: $250.
H. Presentations
For static presentations in which all you want to do is run through the same "slides" over and over, Microsoft's PowerPoint (included in MS Office) works fine. You can easily put documents, photos, sound, and video into slides which will advance just like in a slide projector.
But PowerPoint is of limited use for dynamic presentations; that is, if you want to take a document and enlarge portions, compare documents, or highlight portions on the fly. For that, I recommend Sanction from Verdict Systems <http://www.verdictsystems.com>.
Sanction costs hundreds or thousands of dollars less than similar software. After scanning in a document, you can easily enlarge the most important paragraph, have an expert insert an arrow pointing to the break in your client's bone, or highlight the president's marginalia. With another click, you can save the new document, with the original unchanged. Add a projector or big-screen television, and you can easily move between documents or photos in a presentation to a jury.
Sanction enables you to track which exhibits have been entered into evidence, save parts of documents on which witnesses or experts have written, and print those documents for the record. You can even scroll a deposition transcript alongside a video of the deponent. The Department of Justice purchased Sanction for all of its U.S. Attorney offices for trial presentations.
Cost: $395 for Sanction I; more for Sanction II.
I. Scanner software.
I like PaperPort, sold by ScanSoft <http://www.scansoft.com>. It uses a folder system, similar to Windows Explorer. It's easy to scan, annotate, and manipulate documents.
I use PaperPort and its FormTyper function to scan in discovery I have to answer. I drop the document into FormTyper and type my answers to discovery directly onto a scanned image of the original. Saves my staff from retyping interrogatories. If there's not enough room to answer, I just attach a sheet (as the Rules allow).
Most scanners will come with document-management software. If you don't get PaperPort and want it, you can usually pay a modest price to switch.
For OCR, I use a program from a Russian company, Abbyy, called FineReader <http://www.abbyy.com>. FineReader has the best OCR accuracy of any program I've found (OCR takes an uneditable scanned image, like a page of discovery, and turns it into a document which you can edit in your word processor). One of the best things about the program is it can export OCR'd documents into Word or WordPerfect and save all the formatting.
However, I don't do a lot of OCR. I find OCR unnecessary and a waste of resources. If I need to be able to search for a document, I save the image and use PaperPort's ability to list keywords to identify a document.
Cost: $198 (for both programs).
J. Miscellaneous
1. DtSearch
This little gem will create an index of words in a list of documents, directories, or drives you specify. You can then conduct Boolean and "fuzzy" searches to find that one document you need. It will search across document types, and displays results in context.
DtSearch can even create an index of deposition transcripts or your summaries. You can then search for "car w/5 red light w/3 corner" to find which witness was standing on the corner and saw the red light. Or, it will find the Complaint in which you alleged fraud, unfair trade practice, breach of contract, and punitive damages. Can't remember which Complaint had a claim for abuse of process? DtSearch will find it. Works better and faster than the Windows Explorer or WordPerfect's find functions. If you look closely, you'll find that many programs use DtSearch's engine to power their own search functions.
Cost: $199.
2. Internet Explorer 5.5; Outlook Express; AdPurger
Why use these programs? They came with my computer, and they're all I need. They work well, so I'm not going to upgrade unless I have to do so. And they're free.
I use AT&T as my dial-up provider. It costs $20/month for unlimited access. I have a host for my Web site, also at a cost of $20/month. Ask for recommendations for a Web hosting ISP. I use adSight.com <http://adsight.com> because their Webmaster was the quickest to answer my questions when I sent e-mail to several Web hosting services. I like good service.
Want to speed up your Internet access, eliminate pop-up ads, and reduce other tricks by advertisers that slow down your pages from loading? Try AdPurger, <http://www.adpurger.com>. This great little program costs about
$13.
Cost: $13, plus $40/month ($480 a year).
3. Legal research
Surprise, you're not limited to LexisNexis or Westlaw!
For North Carolina statutes and case law, as well as the U.S. Code, I use West Group's CDs. I want the disks so I can take them with me on the road and to court. I often conduct legal research during trial breaks, or at counsel's table when arguing a point of evidence.
For federal cases and for states other than North Carolina, I use VersusLaw, <http://www.versuslaw.com>. For $9/month (yes, nine dollars per month), I get unlimited access to every state and federal appellate court. The drawbacks? The search engine is limited, there are no hyperlinks between cases, and you have to return to the search results list to get to the next case. But you can't beat the price.
Cost: About $600 per year.
Total Cost For Software: $2,978, plus $1,080 per year.
Total Cost For Hardware: $4,630, plus $1,080 per year (As described in Part 1).
Total Hardware And Software: $7,608, plus $1,080 per year.
Thus, the total initial outlay for hardware and software for one lawyer and secretary is $8,688 for the first year, with about $1,080 per year in recurring costs for Internet access, Web hosting, and legal research. You should budget $500 to $750 per year additionally for software and hardware upgrades, including the replacement of computers every two to three years.
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1. This is part 2 of a three-part article. Read Jeffrey's advice on hardware in Part I, published in Vol. 10, No. 1 (Oct. 2002) of the newsletter of the Standing Committee on Legal Technology.
This article originated in The TechnoLawyer Community, a free network of e-mail newsletters through which legal professionals share information about legal technology and practice management issues, products, and services, often developing valuable business relationships in the process. To join The TechnoLawyer Community, visit the following Web site: www.technolawyer.com.
Jeffrey S. Lisson is a 1985 graduate of Austin (TX) College, and a 1992 graduate of Wake Forest Law School. He is a solo practitioner in Winston-Salem, specializing in criminal defense, personal injury, product liability, and federal statutory causes of action. He is licensed in both North Carolina and Texas. Before law school, Jeffrey was a newspaper reporter for five years. You can contact Jeffrey via e-mail (jlisson@lissonlaw.com).
The virtual courtroom--An update
By Rick Turner, COLT Chair, and Sanford Morganstein, Illinois Information Technology Corp.
Imagine sitting in your office, contemplating matters to complete in pretrial discovery in a case pending in a county three hours away. However, within a matter of minutes as opposed to hours you're connected via a telephone conference call and the Internet to the judge and clerk in that courthouse downstate as well as with two other attorneys from different ends of the state, interacting with the use of documents pasted up through document uploading features, and moving the case along towards trial. In the process, you have saved yourself and your client (if you have been retained on an hourly basis) six hours of driving time. This is the dream that Loren Golden outlined at the outset of his administration as ISBA President. Members of the Committee on Legal Technology, as well as other bar leaders from across the state, along with the assistance of Sandy Morganstein, of Illinois Information Technology Corp., have been meeting over the summer and into the fall. As can be expected, all meetings of the committee use the same technology that will be used in the Virtual Courtroom. The idea is to get practicing attorneys used to the Virtual Courtroom metaphor and to work through new opportunities for efficiency. Things are moving forward and it is the hope of the committee assigned to have pilots in place in downstate courtrooms shortly, with the assistance of receptive judiciary and clerk's offices in those counties.
There are two components to the Virtual Courtroom:
(a) an audio conference call in which the parties may communicate verbally with each other, the judge and the clerk; and
(b) an Internet Web page where attorneys may see the schedule for the court's call, send documents such as notices, motions and proposed orders to the court for the parties to see and work on.
In addition, the attorneys may use a "chat" feature to communicate without taking the time of the court or the clerk. Or, the parties may use the separate "chat" feature to upload a proposed order for the clerk to review and present, in line, to the judge for approval and electronic signature. For the pilot, at least, the court will create a printed version of the document which will then be signed and filed according to traditional methods.
Attorneys will access the audio conference by dialing a telephone number associated with the audio conference provider. That number will be provided to all interested parties. Once the telephone number is reached, an attorney appearing virtually will enter a code associated with the specific judge and courtroom, to be linked to that courtroom.
Attorneys will access the Internet portion of the Virtual Courtroom by clicking on a link permanently associated the specific Virtual Courtroom. The first time the service is used from a specific computer, the system will perform some compatibility tests with the attorney's computer configuration. After that, attorneys will enter a code to gain access to the Web pages containing the schedule for the court's call, the chat features and document uploading.
The pilot program will try to qualify at least two different vendors of services (audio linked to a simultaneous Web conference) so that different vendor tools, facilities and perhaps most important, support, can be evaluated.
Once our pilots are up and running, we will share the various telephone numbers, Internet links and codes with all interested attorneys, who then may simply choose to log in and monitor the Virtual Courtroom. Participation will require an introductory fee, to be based on a modest fee schedule which, comparatively speaking when looking at travel charges, will be much more cost-effective in most instances than getting in your vehicle to travel up to several hundred miles to attend a court call.
Minutes of the meetings of the committee are available from ISBA staff liaison Doug Barringer (Dbarring@ isba.org). Sanford Morganstein of Illinois Information Technology Corp. is facilitating the meetings (Sandy@ technologycorp.net). More information on the success of the pilot programs, as well as any shortfalls, will be discussed in future newsletters. It is the hope of all members of the committee that this technology will, indeed, draw members of the State Bar and Judiciary together electronically and allow for more efficient and cost-effective administration of justice. Your input, in the form of questions or comments, would be appreciated.
Illinois Integrated Justice Panel finishes work!
By David Clark, Newsletter Editor, Standing Committee on Legal Technology
The governing board authorized by Gov. George Ryan last December is putting the final touches on the Strategic Plan to be submitted to both the governor and the state Legislature. The Plan outlines the issues attendant to integrating the data and systems of those involved in the justice system. Recommendations contained within the document address the need for disparate systems to communicate with each other to minimize redundant data entry and provide authorized access while preserving privacy and confidentiality of records.
"I suspect the Plan will be available to those interested in the electronic sharing of justice data some time in January after the report is submitted," said Col. Ken Bouche of the Illinois State Police in a recent meeting. "We need the cooperation of all stakeholders in making this Plan a reality."
The Strategic Plan will foster data exchanges between law enforcement, courts, corrections, judiciary, prosecutors, defense and court services in electronic form and in most cases, in real-time. This initiative is intended to be far-reaching as to encompass the entire state. Some of the significant issues addressed in the Plan include: standards and regulations, privacy, infrastructure, biometric identification, funding and systems integration promoting one-time entry and many-time use.
The ISBA is working on another effort to bolster electronic courtrooms and is expecting to launching test sites beginning in January with civil courts exchanging documents electronically and docketing electronically in a virtual courtroom. Knox and Kane counties have been spoken of as beta test sites.
It is envisioned that while these two approaches have different objectives, they are linked inasmuch as both foster data exchanges electronically and offer methods to speed the judicial process and unburden the court system.
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David Clark is the Senior Partner in a consulting firm, Clark & Partners in Dundee, Illinois. He can be reached by e-mail, dmclark@clarkandpartners.com, or phoning 847-220-5246.
Scanner clean-up techniques for WordPerfect and Word
By Marilyn Monrose, Legal Word Processing "Doctor"™
WordPerfect Techniques
Cleaning up scanned documents in WordPerfect is fairly easy once you know what to look for. Even though OCR technology has improved a lot over the years, there are still some things it can't do and being that WordPerfect is a code-driven program, some unexpected problems are always likely to turn up. Following the steps below will make cleaning your scan jobs easier.
Remove all codes. Many WordPerfect scans tend to repeat the same codes over and over on every page and paragraph (i.e., tab sets, line spacing, paper size, left and right margins, etc.). This makes clean-up slower than it should be. The best thing to do is get rid of all of the most common codes that show up in a scan and reapply them where they belong later. There are two ways to do this, using (1) Find and Replace; and (2) Paste Special.
Find and Replace. This method can be a bit tedious, but it gets the job done. (1) Press <Ctrl+Home> to go to the beginning of the document. Click <Edit>, <Find and Replace>, place your cursor in the <Find> box. Hit <Match>, <Codes>. (2) Search for the "Tab Set" code in the <Codes> box, then hit <Insert and Close>. (3) Leave the <Replace> box blank, then hit <Replace All> and <OK> when complete. (4) Repeat the above steps again and replace the following codes: Lft Margin, Lft Margin Adj, Lft Hzone, Left tab (all), Rgt Margin, Rgt Margin Adj, Rgt Hzone, Right tab (all), Paper Sz/Typ, Hpg, Font Size, Header A, Header B, Footer A, Footer B, HAdv, Pg Num Pos, Pg Num Set, Line Spacing, Para Spacing, and Para Style. And any others that usually show up in your scans.
Paste Special. This is the easiest method by far, but doesn't always catch everything. (1) Press <Ctrl+A> to select the entire document, then press <Ctrl+X> to cut the text. Click <Edit>, <Paste Special>, and <Unformatted Text>. Hit <OK>. Your document shouldn't have any codes, but you should do a thorough check to be on the safe side.
Remove all tilde (~) characters. The tilde is a common character that pops up in scans all the time. To remove tildes from a document perform the following: (1) Press <Ctrl+Home> to go to the beginning of the document. Click <Edit>, <Find and Replace>, type a "~" in the <Find> box. (The tilde is located next to the "Number 1" key at the top of the keyboard.) (2) Leave the <Replace> box blank, then hit <Replace All>. Hit <OK>.
Insert two spaces after periods. Scan documents always seem to have one space at the end of a sentence, when there should clearly be two spaces. A neat trick to use to place the extra space there is to insert two "@" signs after each period, then replace them with two "spaces." (1) Press <Ctrl+Home> to go to the beginning of the document. Click <Edit>, <Find and Replace>, then type a period (.) and hit the spacebar immediately after in the <Find> box. It should read as "<.><spacebar>." (2) Type a period (.) and two @ signs immediately after in the <Replace> box. It should read as "<.><@@>." Hit <Replace All>, then <OK>. (3) Go back to the <Find> box and delete all the contents. Type or copy the period and two @ signs in the <Replace> box here. Now click inside <Replace>. (4) Type a period and two spaces immediately after each other. It should read as "<.><spacebar><spacebar>," then hit <Replace All>. Hit <OK>, then exit. The document will now have two spaces after each period. The only negative is that if you happen to have any names that include middle initials (i.e., James E. Thomas) it will add extra spaces to those as well. So you're going to have to go back and fix these later. You're probably saying "Why didn't we just add the extra spaces from the beginning?" Well, sometimes this creates more than just two spaces and doesn't always work. Using the @ signs (or basically any character you want) ensures that you'll have the correct spaces that you desire.
Deleting hard returns found at the end of each line in a paragraph. This happens with a lot of moderate-to-bad scans and can be a pain to remove. You have to select all the lines in the paragraph (except the last one) and replace the paragraphs with single spaces. (1) Highlight all of the lines in the paragraph, except the last one. Click <Edit>, <Find and Replace>, then <Match>, <Codes>. (2) Search for the hard return code "HRt" and add it to the <Find> box. Go to the <Replace> box. (3) Insert another <HRt> code, then press the <spacebar> once. It should read as "<HRt><spacebar>." Click <Replace All>, then hit <OK> to accept the changes. Hit <Close>. Note: If you use paragraph styles, then this would be a good time to apply them.
Replace double hyphens (--) with Em dashes (CC). Even though OCR technology is getting better, they still have a hard time reading em dashes for some reason. (1) Press <Ctrl+Home> to go to the beginning of the document. Click <Edit>, <Find and Replace>, then place your cursor in the <Find> box. (2) Type two hyphens in the box, then click inside <Replace>. (3) Press <Ctrl+W> for the Symbols box. Search for <Typographic Symbols> in <Set> and type "4,34" in the <Number> box for the em dash (-) character. (4) Click <Replace All>. Hit <OK>, then exit.
Apply widow/orphan control. You want to make sure that the widow/orphan feature is turned on so that you don't have multi-line paragraphs with single lines at the top (widow) or bottom (orphan) of the page. (1) Press <Ctrl+Home> to go to the beginning of the document. Click <Format>, <Keep Text Together>, and check <Widow/Orphan Control>, then hit <OK>. You only need to this one time and it should always be at the beginning of the document.
Initialize the document font. The main document font should be set before any real clean-up is done. Scan documents will sometimes have different font types scattered about that will need to be rectified. For WordPerfect 9:1. Click <Format>, <Font>, and choose the <Font>, <Size>, and <Appearance> that you want. Click <Settings> at the bottom of the box and choose "Set face and point size as default font for this document." Hit <OK>. For WordPerfect 8:1. Click <Format>, <Font>, and choose the <Font>, <Size>, and <Style> that you want. Click <Default Font>, then hit <OK> twice. The document's default font is now set. So whatever text you type or copy here (providing you use <Edit>, <Paste Special>, <Unformatted Text> when copying), from now on will be what you established in the default font menu.
Spell Check! Always, always perform a spell check on all of your documents whether they're scans or not. Well, that's it. Scanner clean-up should go a lot faster now!
Word Techniques
You've probably had your share of badly scanned jobs and hated it when you had to clean them up so that they could be formatted properly. Luckily, as OCR software learns how to read text better, it cuts down on the amount of clean-up you have to do. But every now and then, the horrors still manage to make their way through. Below are some tips to help you clean up your scans better.
Remove all tabs. Sometimes, tabs are embedded in between the words of some paragraphs. The only problem is that you can't see them, because they resemble the "space" character that separates the words. The best way to handle this problem is to search for all of the tabs in the document and replace them with spaces. (1) Press <Ctrl+Home> to go to the beginning of the document. Click <Edit>, <Replace>, then hit the <More> button. (2) Place your cursor inside the <Find> box, then click <Special>, and select <Tab Character>. A "^t" will appear in the box. Click inside the <Replace> box. (3) Press the <spacebar> once, then click <Replace All>. Hit <OK>, then exit.
Remove all tilde (~) characters. The tilde is a common character that pops up in scans all the time. To remove tildes from a document perform the following: (a) Press <Ctrl+Home> to go to the beginning of the document. Click <Edit>, <Replace>, then type a "~" in the <Find> box. (The tilde is located next to the "Number 1" key at the top of the keyboard.) (b) Leave the <Replace> box blank, then click <Replace All>. Hit <OK>, then exit.
Insert two spaces after periods. Scan documents always seem to have one space at the end of a sentence, when there should clearly be two spaces. A neat trick to use to place the extra space there is to insert two "@" signs after each period, then replace them with two "spaces." (a) Press <Ctrl+Home> to go to the beginning of the document.