Legal Commentary

Be Aware: Copying machines can have hard drives and store copies - That?s potential out-of-the-box discovery

Posted on March 03, 2010
Did you know that some copying machines have hard drives and store digital copies of the copies they have made? Or that the hard drives could even contain 25,000 copies that have been made? Copier + Hard Drive: A Dangerous Combination. Lawyers are used to discovering e-mail, but now what about using discovery to find copies [...

How to use Adobe Acrobat as a typewriter to fill in forms

Posted on February 01, 2010
I suspect many law firms have typewriters squirreled away somewhere just to fill in forms. Ross Kodner, computer guru extraordinaire, has an article about how Acrobat Standard, Professional or Professional Extended editions can be used as a typewriter to fill in those forms...

Using Facebook, MySpace and Google to collect on judgments

Posted on September 01, 2009
How about this? The I.R.S. and state tax people are using Facebook and MySpace to collect on back taxes. There are a number of recent articles on the topic, including one from the Wall Street Journal entitled Is “Friending” in Your Future? Better Pay Your Taxes First...

A creative way to use Google street views: Using it to find a cheaper hotel room

Posted on May 29, 2009
The ABA Techshow was recently held at the Chicago Hilton located at 720 South Michigan Avenue. Even though the ABA got a discount on the normal room rate, it still cost attendees $199 per night. While I was at the conference, I started speaking with someone who was attending who could not have afforded that rate...

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How to have the Post Office automatically update you on people?s new addresses

Posted on May 25, 2009
What happens when you send a letter to someone and that person has moved? Your letter will automatically get forwarded for the first 12 months after the service. But you won?t get the person?s new address. Here?s how you can have the Post Office automatically send you the new address: Just place “Address Service Requested” on [...

More sites for finding info on jurors, lawyers, and others

Posted on April 22, 2009
I wrote earlier about using pipl and other sites for finding information about potential jurors and others — including discovering what federal and state political contributions they had made and which parties or candidates received their contributions...

Selecting mock juries and focus groups: A very out-of-the-box approach

Posted on March 30, 2009
The normal approach to selecting members of mock juries and focus groups is to try to obtain a cross-section of the community in which the case is going to be tried. I recently read an article about how one plaintiff lawyer purposely does not pick a representative group when he selects people for his mock juries [...

Selecting mock juries and focus groups: A very out-of-the-box approach

Posted on March 30, 2009
The normal approach to selecting members of mock juries and focus groups is to try to obtain a cross-section of the community in which the case is going to be tried. I recently read an article about how one plaintiff lawyer purposely does not pick a representative group when he selects people for his mock juries [...

How to find information about potential jurors and others ? including info about their political contributions

Posted on March 21, 2009
Do you want to find information about potential jurors and others? Here?s where at no cost you can search multiple sites with one search: Kim Komando (that?s really her name — her site is Komando.com) has listed sites in which you can search social networking sites simultaneously...

How to find information about potential jurors and others ? including info about their political contributions

Posted on March 21, 2009
Do you want to find information about potential jurors and others? Here?s where at no cost you can search multiple sites with one search: Kim Komando (that?s really her name — her site is Komando.com) has listed sites in which you can search social networking sites simultaneously...

Here?s an out-of-the-box way for unemployed attorneys to get new clients

Posted on March 19, 2009
There are now all sorts of articles about how lawyers have lost their positions. Carolyn Elefant has detailed the problem in Legal Blog Watch as has Bruce MacEwen in his Adam Smith, Esq., whom she cited. As they noted, some out-of-work attorneys have started volunteering to do pro bono work as a way to keep busy and to keep their morale up...

Here?s an out-of-the-box way for unemployed attorneys to get new clients

Posted on March 19, 2009
There are now all sorts of articles about how lawyers have lost their positions. Carolyn Elefant has detailed the problem in Legal Blog Watch as has Bruce MacEwen in his Adam Smith, Esq., whom she cited. As they noted, some out-of-work attorneys have started volunteering to do pro bono work as a way to keep busy and to keep their morale up...

Out-of-the-box uses for Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Posted on March 12, 2009
 All of us ? or at least most of us ? have heard of Dragon NaturallySpeaking and its use as voice recognition software in law offices.  But there are many more uses for Nuance Corporation?s Dragon!!  Uses outside of a law office I read a while back about how a husband whose wife was deaf was using Dragon to [...

Out-of-the-box uses for Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Posted on March 12, 2009
 All of us ? or at least most of us ? have heard of Dragon NaturallySpeaking and its use as voice recognition software in law offices.  But there are many more uses for Nuance Corporation?s Dragon!!  Uses outside of a law office I read a while back about how a husband whose wife was deaf was using Dragon to [...

You can insert videos and sound into PDF documents!!!

Posted on March 07, 2009
I was reading Ross Kodner?s blog and he described a CLE presentation he had seen where David Ferrell, an attorney, had shown a sample PDF demand letter that had video included in it. Here?s Ross?s accolade: In a demand letter related to personal injuries suffered by a Chinese melamine-laced formula poison infant, the video that popped up [...

You can insert videos and sound into PDF documents!!!

Posted on March 07, 2009
I was reading Ross Kodner?s blog and he described a CLE presentation he had seen where David Ferrell, an attorney, had shown a sample PDF demand letter that had video included in it. Here?s Ross?s accolade: In a demand letter related to personal injuries suffered by a Chinese melamine-laced formula poison infant, the video that popped up [...

If you?re a lawyer with an iPhone, you need to see the blog iPhone J.D.

Posted on February 09, 2009
Jeff Richardson, like me a New Orleanian, has a blog that is invaluable for lawyers who are iPhone users. Jeff’s blog is iPhone J.D. — Lawyers Using iPhones, and he includes — with lots of screen shots – detailed postings of new apps and other useful info for attorneys...

If you?re a lawyer with an iPhone, you need to see the blog iPhone J.D.

Posted on February 09, 2009
Jeff Richardson, like me a New Orleanian, has a blog that is invaluable for lawyers who are iPhone users. Jeff’s blog is iPhone J.D. — Lawyers Using iPhones, and he includes — with lots of screen shots – detailed postings of new apps and other useful info for attorneys...

Lawyers can be mechanically creative

Posted on February 06, 2009
The New York Times recently had an article on techniques people use to show they were busy so they wouldn’t get fired: “Working Hard To Look Busy.” A lawyer in the New York office of an international firm had a creative approach. Perhaps putting aside other issues, he wanted to have the lights in his office on in the [...

Lawyers can be mechanically creative

Posted on February 06, 2009
The New York Times recently had an article on techniques people use to show they were busy so they wouldn’t get fired: “Working Hard To Look Busy.” A lawyer in the New York office of an international firm had a creative approach. Perhaps putting aside other issues, he wanted to have the lights in his office on in the [...

Out-of-the-box marketing: Listing fixed fees for writing appellate briefs

Posted on February 03, 2009
We?ve all heard about setting fixed fees for certain kinds of litigation. But this is the first time that I?ve seen a site in which an appellate firm lists a schedule of its fees for certain kinds of work. For instance, the firm, The Bartlett Law Firm, APLC,  lists its fee for writing a principal brief [...

Out-of-the-box marketing: Listing fixed fees for writing appellate briefs

Posted on February 03, 2009
We?ve all heard about setting fixed fees for certain kinds of litigation. But this is the first time that I?ve seen a site in which an appellate firm lists a schedule of its fees for certain kinds of work. For instance, the firm, The Bartlett Law Firm, APLC,  lists its fee for writing a principal brief [...

Do you suffer from "Nomophobia"?

Posted on April 02, 2008
London's Daily Mail just reported about it in a headline: "Nomophobia is the fear of being out of mobile phone contact - and it's the plague of our 24/7 age." The article continues: "Millions apparently suffer from 'no mobile phobia' which has been given the name nomophobia...

Do you suffer from ?Nomophobia??

Posted on April 02, 2008
London’s Daily Mail just reported about it in a headline: “Nomophobia is the fear of being out of mobile phone contact - and it’s the plague of our 24/7 age.” The article continues: “Millions apparently suffer from ‘no mobile phobia’ which has been given the name nomophobia...

Do you suffer from ?Nomophobia??

Posted on April 02, 2008
London’s Daily Mail just reported about it in a headline: “Nomophobia is the fear of being out of mobile phone contact - and it’s the plague of our 24/7 age.” The article continues: “Millions apparently suffer from ‘no mobile phobia’ which has been given the name nomophobia...

A suggested blog: A blog that reports cases that hold laws or rules unconstitutional or invalid for some other reason

Posted on March 05, 2008
This is an out-of-the-box suggestion for a new blog — one that I think will interest many readers, and it’s free for the taking. By way of background, one way of coming up with solutions in your practice is to have many ways to jog your thought processes...

A suggested blog: A blog that reports cases that hold laws or rules unconstitutional or invalid for some other reason

Posted on March 05, 2008
This is an out-of-the-box suggestion for a new blog, one that I think will interest many readers, and it’is free for the taking. By way of background, one way of coming up with solutions in your practice is to have many ways to jog your thought processes...

Jott — A great way to send an e-mail just by dictating it

Posted on February 14, 2008
Jott is a wonderful free service that lets you send an email by dictating it as a voice message. You can even use a plain old cell phone that doesn’t have regular Internet capability. You sign up with Jott and then, on your computer, enter the names and email addresses of those to whom you might want to send messages...

An out-of-the-box way to find someone?s hidden bank accounts

Posted on February 02, 2008
Do you remember that Sherlock Holmes solved a crime because of a dog that didn’t bark? Well, in one case reported by CaseMap, an investigator entered all of a husband’s checks into CaseMap’s case preparatiion program. Here’s how, in that out-of-the-box way, the payments that didn’t show up led to the investigator’is discovery of the husband’is [...

Metadata in photos: There’s a lot of hidden information in digital photos

Posted on January 03, 2008
You’ve probably learned about all the metadata that can be found in word processing files. The metadata may show when a document was created, what editing changes were made, and all sorts of other potentially valuable information. I recently learned that there is also some extremely valuable information hidden away in the digital version of digital photographs...

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