* Multiple recipients: If you send copies of your mailing to various persons, then you can just add their email address to the email you are sending and when you click on the "send" command, everyone will get an electronic copy of your message. This, to be sure, assumes that those you are communicating with not only have an email address, but use it.
* Mailing lists--Bar Association activities: As noted above, you can send copies of email to multiple recipients. Now, suppose you are involved with a 50-member committee at the Illinois State Bar Association. Not only do you want to communicate with your fellow members regularly, but you may have an urgent matter come up that requires immediate attention and part of what you want to communicate to them is the content of a multi-page document. Assuming it was a big enough document, it might cost you (or the ISBA) a dollar per mailing if you sent the letter and document via U.S. Mail. But, with electronic mail, you can create a mailing list on your computer (just type in all the names and email addresses of the folks on your committee once and name the file something you will remember as the email mailing list), attach the document, and send it off to all 50 committee members. Imagine, if you will, that your staff is very busy getting that appellate court brief ready for filing at 4:30 p.m. today and you also have to get that letter off to committee members! If you try it the old fashioned way, you will be printing and collating copies of the document, the cover letter and envelopes, affixing a total of $50 in postage to the 50 envelopes and then taking those 50 envelopes to the mailbox. You tell me which is best.
* Discussion Groups: Now, once you get the hang of email and begin to use it, as you should, then you quickly tire of so-called "ListServ" technology and want software that is much more robust then what most bar associations presently use. A discussion group, or "forum" or "conference," is a "threaded discussion" on a given topic. You can create as many discussion groups as you want and the comments and entries made by participants in the forum are kept as a permanent part of the "discussion." Thus, if you learn about a super discussion that has been going on for some time, all you need to do is dial-up into that group discussion and read the messages from day-one. Discussion groups can be private or public or a little of each. Discussion groups are the ultimate in the sharing of information and thinking and collaboration "from any place at any time" and although technology to do this has been around for two decades, it is now just coming into its own because of the powers of the Internet.
* Ease of use: Nothing is easy the first time around. Think about when you put on your first pair of ice skates or roller skates or the first time you got behind the wheel of a car. Well, email is a lot like that...intimidating and scary the first time around if you try it on your own. Beginners are well advised to sign up for AOL (America OnLine) as the AOL software is very easy to use. Even so, have a friend or spouse or your eight-year old show you the ropes the first time or so...you will be amazed how simple and easy it is to use email, both the creation and sending of email and replying to email others have sent to you.
* Communicating with family and friends: It's hard to find time to write letters to friends and family and often, its not easy to get someone on a voice telephone call. However, with email, you can be in close communication daily, if you wish. I recently received a very nice "thank you" from one of my grandchildren in Gilbert, Arizona, for a financial contribution I had sent for the purchase of her new horse. Fun, easy and brings a smile to your lips and a warm feeling to your entire person.
* Communications with clients: More and more of our clients grew up with computers, and they are as natural to use, to them, as a toothbrush to brush your teeth. Particularly if you are a trial attorney and often have extensive time periods when you are not available, such as when attending back-to-back depositions or on a multi-day trial, your clients may get a bit concerned that they have not heard from you for some time. But, after the day's trial efforts and when you are finally at home and getting ready for the next day, why not dial-up, get your email, and send a few fast replies...perhaps at midnight...just to let your client(s) know you are thinking about them and when you can and will contact them? Talk about letting clients know you are really interested in them.
* Your image as a lawyer: Would we go to a dentist that did not have the latest equipment and facilities? Would we go to a mechanic to fix our automobile who doesn't use the latest in computerized testing facilities? Will folks go to lawyers who they perceive may not be using the latest and best technologies to handle their cases? If you have email, your clients will know you are "with-it," up-to-date, and using all the latest technology to work on their matter. This is especially true when it comes to being on the Internet.
* Marketing your law firm: Once on the Internet with email, you will learn just how valuable email is and how simple it is to use it. Once you get that far...it's like going from high school to starting college...you will understand why so many of your fellow attorneys are creating "Home Pages" on the Internet. There has never been a more cost effective, low cost, mass marketing and publishing and communications device like the Internet. But, like graduation from high school before going to college, you must "go to school" with email and then "graduate" to a web site on the Internet.
* Stepping stone to more technology: Similar to the point immediately above is that once you get over the intimidation of touching a keyboard and understanding how to operate one program (the email program), then you see bright lights at the end of the "learning to use a computer" tunnel. You realize that learning to use a computer "isn't that bad" and that you can do it...and the light-bulbs being to glow new and bright as to all the other computer-based resources you could be using for your law practice.
Perils of email
However, with all these "goodies" there must be some problems and concerns, and to be sure, there are. Here are a few concerns for you to be aware of, but not to the point where you fail to join the revolution that is happening now and may be leaving you behind if you do not join it now.
* The learning curve: As with body building, "no pain, no gain." If you have not yet put that first "pinky" on a computer keyboard, then today is the day to start. Today, given the wonderful, graphical interface on Windows, Macintosh, Unix and Linux based computers, the need to deal with lots of so-called "key-board" commands is non-existent. In fact, by learning to use the "mouse" and the always-there "pull-down" menus and then some of what is covered when the pull-down menu "pulls-down" may be all you need to begin your email experiences. Have an office-mate, or again, your spouse or child or grandchild guide you through the process. But for the typing skills, you may be sending email in short order.
* Act in haste, repent at leisure: Early in my career as a lawyer, a client questioned one of my bills for services rendered and I dashed off a very angry letter to the client. A couple of days later, the client called me and invited me to his office. He really did not want me to quit and so we talked about the bill, we discussed it, and, as he was much older then I was (in a time when younger folks paid a bit more respect to older folks), he had a couple of suggestions for this young and up-and-coming lawyer: a) never send out a letter when you are angry, and; b) the best way to prevent a mistake is to put that angry letter into your drawer overnight and read it again when you come to work the next morning. If you still feel the same way and think it judicious to send it out, then do so, but the overnight cooling-off period would probably mean that 99 out of 100 such letters will end up in the garbage can. What this means when you have that common, knee-jerk reaction to respond to email, is that the cooling-off period does not exist. So, one should keep this story in mind and always be aware that your words will be received by someone, stored on a computer, printed out and perhaps be an embarrassment to you for a long time to come.
* Misdirected email: True confessions time. I've been a power-user of email for about 15 years now and I can recall only two misdirected emails. To be sure, we've all heard horror stories about misdirected faxes, but misdirected email is a problem of recent years. In one case I added a person to the "cc" who had nothing to do with the email in question and in another...well, what happened is that I got email from a ListServ member that appeared to come directly from the member. What I did not notice was that the email, although noting the members email name, failed to make it clear to me that the email from the member came via the ListServ. When I clicked on the "reply" command and went to great lengths to provide information on a given topic that had nothing to do with the topic of the ListServ, I accidentally sent the whole reply to the entire list! And, boy, did my friends on that ListServ let me have it, in good humor, to be sure. Now, imagine if my response had been very confidential or if I had something not-so-nice to say about a common acquaintance! Then, there would have been some "damage." So, it can happen that email is misdirected. There are ways to deal with this problem, particularly with a very complete mailing list of email messages that are input into your email software on your computer, either by you or a staff person and very thoroughly proof-read--by you. For now, it is important to know that care must be taken. Patience is truly a virtue here, so check out those incoming messages to make certain just whom you are replying to.
* Confidential email and attachments: The American Bar Association and most state bar associations state that, ethically, lawyers need not encrypt email messages or document attachments. My view is that if the transmission is really, really confidential then you must encrypt. Encryption software and encryption services on the Internet now exist to make this not-so-difficult; however, the point here is that because Internet-based email can be intercepted, from time to time encryption may be an excellent idea.
* Privacy and availability: In a world with fax machines, roaming cellular phone and beepers, it gets harder and harder to have any time to yourself. Once you add email, and most lawyers have computers at home, your privacy is almost non-existent--if you allow that to be the case. Early on, let your clients or others who you communicate with via email know that you do have and use email, but not to the point where you let it disrupt your practicing law or your life--even lawyers are entitled to some privacy and personal time.
* Putting your fingers on a keyboard: Yes, you will have to put your fingers on a keyboard, but, here I have no tolerance for argument...get over it! Until voice recognition gets a bit better, keyboards are here and you need to learn to use them.
Email adoption is here
Remember fax about 1988? I was at a bar association annual convention in 1988 and fax was just getting a foothold...the most common questions at that convention were three in number: 1) Do you have a fax? 2) Why? 3) Who else do you know who has a fax and that you can communicate with?
Those were interesting questions about fax machines in 1988. Today, however, there are millions of people and organizations with email addresses. If you have a fax machine in your office and/or home, you should also have a computer, an email address and you should communicate via email. Remember, have a friend or child or grandchild help you and you will be amazed at how easy it is to be a telecommunicating lawyer.
WordPerfect® Law Office 2000 Suite from Corel Corporation
By Paul Bernstein
The WordPerfect® Law Office 2000 Suite came to market earlier this year. For lawyers in small and mid-sized law firms, this is a perfect product for their law office.
Some background about the WordPerfect Suite
Even before getting into the make-up of the Corel Suite, it is important to know several things:
1. WordPerfect (Corel) publishes the world's only Legal-Specific Office Suite. Yes, Microsoft does not publish a legal-specific office suite.
2. WordPerfect has been a friend of the law office for many years, and so, the present suite of products is nothing new for those familiar with WordPerfect.
3. We hear that many law firms are converting from WordPerfect to WORD. Exactly why that is true is beyond my ability to comprehend, particularly given that WordPerfect has always had the "reveal codes" capability (you can see and change or delete the coding that creates indents, bolds, underlines, fonts, font sizes, etc.) whereas WORD has never had a similar resource and to this day does not have anything comparable to "reveal codes." For lawyers who type their own documents, "reveal codes" is indispensable. I have tried to reformat WORD documents, but WORD seems to have a mind of its own and won't "listen" to this lawyer. And, so, where's Alan Pearlman when you really need him?
What's in the Legal Suite from Corel? WordPerfect for starters
The Corel Legal Suite 2000 is a series of products. First and foremost, to be sure, is WordPerfect, the leading word processing program in the legal profession. Version Nine makes it even easier to add graphics, charts and table to your documents. And, as noted above, "reveal codes" are present. In addition, the new version has a variety of enhanced Internet features that let the user create one document and publish it on paper, in electronic media or on the World Wide Web. Neat! And, essential in today's world.
The Legal Suite contains a series of additional products that are specific for the legal profession and include the following.
HotDocs 5.1 for document assembly
HotDocs has been the leading document assembly software product on the market for several years now. Indeed, the ability to take client-specific information and merge that data into standard text files is the greatest time saver of all for lawyers. But, although WordPefect has an excellent mail-merge capability, allowing data to be merged into standard documents the law firm creates, HotDocs goes many steps more to make such merge capabilities easier to use and at the same time, more powerful and flexible.
HotDocs helps the lawyer create re-usable document templates--standard documents--in WordPerfect Version Nine. These templates can be saved into a library and even shared among others in the law firm. Then, when information is entered into HotDocs or other database-type programs, all that client-specific information can be merged into real-life documents in seconds! One has to see it to believe it....and even huge documents of 50 pages or more of single-spaced text can be completed in seconds!
HotDocs has been an integral part of the Corel Legal Suite for some time and we now have the use of the more recent version of this leading product.
Amicus Attorney IV organizer edition
Amicus Attorney is, by far, one of the leading case management software products on the market today. First created on the Macintosh platform, Ron Collins, a Canadian attorney and founder of Gavel & Gown Software, the publisher of Amicus Attorney, took the fantastic graphics of Amicus Attorney on the Mac, and successfully brought the product into the more popular Windows environment. Today, Amicus Attorney is one of the most successful case management software products.
The latest version of Amicus Attorney is Version IV, the product coming in single user and multi-user, client-server versions. The product bundled with the Corel Suite is the single-user version. Amicus Attorney lets you organize and streamline your practice by client matter and is as easy to use a case management software product as there is.
Amicus has a file-management function that maintains all active files and actually reminds you when files need to be updated or when you haven't done anything on a file for a pre-determined time that you select. The calendar is intuitive and looks very much like your DayTimer or hard copy calendar.
Many attorneys I know literally "live" with their Amicus Attorney product running all the time. You can enter notes of conversations with opposing counsel, your client or whoever you happen to be talking to, you can keep and make time entries right in Amicus Attorney, and Amicus Attorney works flawlessly with HotDocs and WordPerfect. So, the data you enter into Amicus Attorney is the field-oriented information that is needed when you complete a document.
For example, let's say you create an entry for a new client's matter with information as to opposing counsel. Now, having entered the data into the Amicus Attorney case management software program, you want to prepare a letter to opposing counsel noting that opposing counsel has not yet responded to the Interrogatories you sent out over 28 days ago. With just a couple of clicks of the mouse (assuming you have a standard letter in HotDocs for this purpose), you can create that standard letter, send the letter to your printer and log a copy of the outgoing letter into the matter that relates to this particular client. Powerful! And, what a time saver! And, at the same time, you can enter an diary notation to remind yourself about filing a Petition for Sanctions should opposing counsel fail to respond in a timely fashion to this notice.
The Suite also has a more-then-adequate time and billing module built right into it.
Deal Proof™ SE
Deal Proof is a remarkable product in its own right. It allows you to edit, proofread and review complex documents. Lawyers using the product can't say enough about it.
WestCiteLink™ 2.2
WestCiteLink 2.2 quickly finds and marks legal citations within a WordPerfect 9 document and, then, automatically, generates a Table of Authorities. With this latest version, you can also search for citations within footnotes and endnotes.
The product marks citations with hyperlinks to corresponding documents on the Web through WestDoc™ or westlaw.com. The product also automatically sorts Tables of Authorities into standard categories, including federal and state cases, statutes, rules, regulations and other authorities. Plus, it combines federal and state citations into merged categories.
As an extra bonus, those who purchase shrink-wrapped copies of WordPerfect Law Office 2000 are entitled to 10 free online document retrievals from WestDoc (valued at approximately $100).
This product alone, for those of us who need Tables of Authorities, is worth the cost of the entire Suite alone.
NexLaw™ 9
NexLaw supplements your WordPerfect 9 menus and toolbars with legal-specific tools that make creating, filing, printing and faxing documents a breeze. You can store and retrieve up to nine related documents as a group under a single file name. (What a resource when preparing your standard discovery documents such as a Deposition Notice, Notice To Produce, Interrogatories, Request to Admit and the like.
You can save the cost of stationery by creating professional-looking stationery and forms with eScribe™ Electronic Forms. And, you can fax documents directly from WordPerfect 9 using the Fax button on the toolbar.
Lexicon From Blacks Law Dictionary® (6th Edition)
This program adds more than 14,000 legal-specific words to WordPerfect 9's spell checker.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking™ Standard 4.0 for WordPerfect
Everyone is talking about speech technology, and you will be amazed at just how far voice-to-text software has come. With a bit of training of this product that also comes bundled with the Corel/WordPerfect Legal Suite Version 9, you can actually create documents by speaking to your computer. This product will also enter data into Quattro Pro® 9 spreadsheets.
It takes time and patience to get speech software to work acceptably well, although you will be amazed at the get-go at just how accurate it is...and I can tell you that every lawyer I have talked to or exchanged email with, that has given Dragon NaturallySpeaking a fair trial and really worked with the product to have Dragon recognize the speaker's voice is absolutely thrilled with the product and wonder how they ever got along without it. And, as noted, it's all a part of this suite!
More and more to this suite
Having focused on the products that are a special part of this special legal suite of products, we haven't even mentioned the basic products that are a standard part of the Corel Legal Suite. They include:
Quattro Pro® 9, a very powerful spreadsheet program
Corel® Presentations 9, very much like Microsoft's PowerPoint
Corel CENTRAL™ 9, a full-featured Personal Information Manager (PIM).
Trelix® 2, a product that quickly organizes documents and publishes them to the Web without your knowing any HTML coding.
Paradox® 9, an easy-to-use but very powerful relational database.
And, of course, there is good, old WordPerfect.
You can probably tell that I am a fan of Corel and WordPerfect. Happily, Corel seems to be doing well financially and therefore can not only continue to improve and enhance the only legal suite of products in the world, but also serve as a competitor to Microsoft, so that prices are kept on a competitive level.
I've had to learn to "live" with WORD, but I can tell you that except for a demanding client or publisher, I always revert to WordPerfect. I am learning more and more, every week, about using all the parts of the legal suite and I could not survive without the ability to use "reveal codes" to see why the heck a document just doesn't look right or look the way I want it to look.
The Corel Legal Suite even comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee! If you are a present WordPerfect user, you should upgrade to this product.
I would suggest you talk to your local Corel representative or visit the Corel web site at www.corel.com for current pricing information.
Editor's note: The opinions expressed in this article belong solely to its author and do not necessarily represent those of the ISBA or the LOE section.