Document Assembly & Case Management Blog

A new frugality is sweeping the country.  It is posed as a movement towards thrift, a response to the downturn in the economy. But I want to posit that it is a movement towards self-reliance and an assertion of control over one’s fate.  If one can no longer rely on the big law firm or the big corporation for sustenance; if one can no longer rely on appreciating home values; if one can no longer on growing 401(k) plans; then one must rely on oneself.  And so as I prepare the beds for my vegetable and flower gardens, I think about the implications of this movement.

In the next few weeks, my reviews of CLIO and RocketMatter will appear in Technolawyer, with copies on this site.  I don’t want to give away the results, but I want to comment more generally on the development goals of cloud-based offerings versus client-server offerings.  To some degree, I have dealt with that tension in my development and advisory role in the creation of Wealth Transfer Planning and its unique front-end for HotDocs.  It is this balancing act between simplicity and sophistication, between stability and customizability, that marks really good software. CLIO and RocketMatter are following in the footsteps of the two giants of software development. 

Over the past week, I have dabbled my toes in the world of social networking.  I have not yet activated my facebook profile (bashasys) or sought my “friends”, but I have looked as some of the more narrow market social networking tools.  The problems is that many of the tools are TOO open.  That means lotsa people to follow, lotsa posts to sift through, and oodles of time to waste. For that reason, my recent discovery of “groups” in a number of these sites heralds a change in my opinion of them.

A few days ago I decided to check out the new enhanced Group Management tools at LinkedIn.  A year ago, I put up my CV on LinkedIn.  Over time, I have dutifully built my network, making occasional invites, and accepting other invites. I set up a group for HotDocs Wizards --LinkedIn Group: HotDocs Wizards about a month or two ago.  Out of the blue, we actually got two job postings.  Just a few days ago, I started up The Virtual Lawyer—LinkedIn Group: The Virtual Lawyer and this time I was able to see the potential of LinkedIn.

As part of the HotDocs Wizards group on Linked in, I have now made my blog, Document Assembly (and Case Management) available on Linked In.  For those who don’t know about LinkedIn groups, the HotDocs Wizards group is a place where REAL HotDocs developers can meet to share ideas and even business prospected.  In the past two weeks, I have been asked to post two job offerings to the group.  It may be that is only a trickle, but enough trickles turn into streams, and streams feed into rivers.

Rose Rowland, Developer and Trainer for Basha Systems adds her thoughts on customer service in an interconnected world.

There is not much to write at the present time, but rather, a heads-up of something coming down the pike.  Bob Butler, former CEO of DataTXT (aka Time Matters Software) has gone public with a new venture called BestThinking.com.  The website has been in development for a while and has just been launched.  It promises a blending of the best social networking in Linked-In and Facebook, along with the social ranking in Diggs, and the collaboratively edited content of Wikipedia.

I have recently noticed a number of attorneys and software vendors getting “Twitter” personas ... see www.twitter.com. So I got one for myself.  I can be reached via @bashasys.  I had a long drive up to Montreal with time to kill on my new Blackberry Storm (Rose was driving).  And so I enrolled in Twitter and began to Twit (yes… that is a new verb that I cannot claim credit for). And here are some of my thoughts after a week of Twittering.

“I’m not a gambling man.  So when I make a bet, I am just earning money” ... Me.

Over the past few years, I have been following the evolution of the “Web” and thinking about the purpose of corporate and law firm websites.  What role does and should the website play in the business of a law firm or a professional organization.  At Basha Systems, we have built Bashasys.com, a marketing website to explain the services we offer and our products.  To that website we have added vertical market specific subdomains: Estateplanning.bashasys.com, a place for Estate Planning and Elderlaw attorneys, probateforms.bashasys.com, http://forum.nebar.com/EE/, a website for Nebraska probate attorneys, to support our Probate Systems V, bashasys.info, hotdocstips.bashasys.info, a blog of tips, techniques and tricks for HotDocs users, and bashasys.org, an automated support site.  We are in the process of reorganizing and restructuring these sites to (1) make them easier to navigate, (2) easier to maintain, and (3) more current. We are adopting Web 2.0 technology to turn these websites into dynamic community resources