Seth Rowland

Website Redesign

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Every other year I assess our firm’s web-presence and look at the state of technology.  My goal is to build a website that is informative, describes the products we support, and gives useful comparative and illustrative information about those products. Two years ago my interests were wide ranging, but the core of our business was HotDocs, GhostFill and Time Matters.  Since that time, our skill set and product offerings have expanded, as well as our staff.  We now have significant programming and database management capabilities by virtue of the inclusion of Steve Stockstill and Marc Wexler in our virtual offerings, and have engaged our partner Holly Humphreys in several billing engagements.

We have entered into the web-development business with a new offering coming out in the 4th quarter through our partner businesswebsitedesigners.com.au that addresses the needs of lawyers interested in both social media and document automation. We have diversified our offerings of practice management solutions to include AdvologixPM and Amicus Attorney Premium Edition.  We have built solutions with Exari document assembly and DealBuilder, now offered on a SaaS model as ContractExpress.  And we have partnered with NetDocuments to provide cloud-based document management.  And so, our website, as comprehensive as it is, is hopelessly out of date.

We plan to be dividing our website along product lines, with offerings describing in detail each product we support and our twist as to which of you they will best serve.  We will also be providing some feature comparisons between competing products to help you decide which features are important to you.  This will not happen overnight, but will be a work in progress.  Also, we will be offering this blog feed, alongside the feeds of vendors and opinion leaders in a new website (more on that at a later time).

So please, bookmark this website and comeback often, or enable your RSS reader.  There is more to come.

Credenza, Houdini, AdvologixPM, RocketMatter, Clio, TimeMatters 10 & Amicus 2010

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Wow!!!!! The marketplace for practice management software has exploded this year.  They must have added something to the water that programmers drink (they do drink , don’t they?).

Well, yesterday, Gavel & Gown released Credenza (Click for more info).  Now you can have your Outlook and your case management; no synchronization, no exchange.  Rather, you now have FILES within Outlook.  A $9.95/month subscription is the cost.

Meanwhile, I am currently reviewing HoudiESQ. This system is a web-based practice management system designed by Frank Rivera (who architected Time Matters World Edition). It is offered on either a SAAS (Software as Service) or self-hosted basis. What is different is that it entirely redesigns and rethinks the interface for a practice management system.  Stay tuned for my review in Technolawyer later this month.

Not to be outdone, LexisNexis has released Time Matters 10 (on an all-SQL platform).  Apart from major improvements in stability and access speed, the system includes Desktop Extensions.  These widgets give you a window into Time Matters on your desktop and could change entirely the way you work with your practice management system.

Gavel & Gown, with the release of Amicus 2010 Premium Edition, has produced a solid, stable product.  While continuing its focus on “separate offices”, the Premium Edition, centralizes the data on a single SQL Server (full SQL Server 2008 Standard is included with the license) and added extensive customization in the form of custom pages and custom records.

On the SAAS front, RocketMatters, Clio and newcomer AdvologixPM are coming into their own.  Each have been progressively adding features to fill out the requirements of a robust practice management system.  Clio and RocketMatter have expanded their billing and trust accounting features. AdvologixPM, with its support for extensive customization, has released a new document automation module that lets you launch full document packages, populated with data from the Force.com platform.

So what is going on?  For several years nothing happened in Practice Management.  Many vendors “treaded water”.  Some vendors exited.  Few new players entered the market.  And existing products pretty much stayed the same. There was no excitement, no ferment.  Something is clearly happening.  And it may not be good for established vendors unless they respond to the new environment and try to generate buzz and excitement about their products.  The SAAS products are looking at a complete redesign of the way practice management is done (anywhere, anytime, any platform) that reflects the new business reality.  The SAAS products also are looking at entirely new interfaces and windows into your practice data.

How can the SAAS developers do it?  There are two answers.  First, the SAAS developers control the software and the hardware.  In a hosted environment, the developer can make instant improvements.  There is no need to wait for the “long-tail” of users to upgrade; no need to support multiple platforms, legacy software and legacy hardware.  The host is the platform.  And that makes the SAAS developers much more nimble.

The second reason, perhaps, is more significant.  And that is the pricing model.  SAAS is “cheap” on the start-up, and expensive in the long run.  It is very easy and cheap to get started with Credenza, RocketMatter, Clio and AdvologixPM.  Once you have signed on, you will keep paying so long as you use the platform.  That means that there will be ever-increasing revenue for the SAAS developer so long as it continues to innovate; with the more innovation leading to more sales, and further increases in revenue. This is a “win-win” situation.  The SAAS developer wins by the “monthly” vote by the end-user paying their fee.  The user wins by having that vote courted with constant innovation.  By contrast, the up-front software sale with nominal maintenance produces a “disincentive” to constant innovation; once you reach market saturation in your segment, the revenue actually decreases.

Despite the groans from the current users, LexisNexis has got it right with its new AMP or annual maintenance plan.  In doing so, they follow the example of PC Law and STI/Tabs.  The hope is that LexisNexis uses this annualized revenue and maintenance to “innovate and improve” the product steadily and attract new users, rather than simply extract the profits from its existing user base.  It is this transition to software as a service (whether on a desktop or in the cloud) that represents the future of practice management.

Dcoument Assembly on the Move – Contract Express

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I have never been more optimistic about the future of document assembly than today. After years of retrenchment and stagnation, the market is full of new energy and ferment.  HotDocs is under new management, but it is not clear what direction it will be taking.  On the desktop, XpressDox has been launched by key developers formerly of Korbitec, developers of GhostFill. At $150/user, a free full-functioning trial downloads, a full powered syntax markup that requires NO component file and automatically determines relevance, there is some real new energy on the desktop level.

Read moreDcoument Assembly on the Move – Contract Express

Sales vs Consulting – The Cost of Independence

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What is the role of the “independent consultant”?  And should the “independent consultant” be allowed to benefit from a “sale” based on his/her independent recommendation?  Software vendors with “reseller” programs have always wanted a “free sales force” of consultants who offer their software “exclusively”; no salary, no benefits, no costs. These consultants are “paid” by the vendor in the form of commissions on sales (often narrowly defined) or referral fees and access to NFR copies of the software.  And yet, the questions arises, when one vendor demands exclusivity, what is the “price” for independence.  This article looks at the price and the benefits of an in independent non-exclusive consulting program to clients.  Some of the arguments are obvious, but they bear restating.

Read moreSales vs Consulting – The Cost of Independence

Demise of D3 – Custom Tags vs. Markup Language

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D3 from Microsystems has flown under the radar for years.  I mentioned it in a Technolawyer review of document assembly products several years ago.  It was a powerful “clause-based” system that enabled and integrated well with advanced Microsoft products, included Exchange Server and SQL Server.  It was sold by Microsystems out of Chicago and was popular with large firms looking to extend the power of macro-suite products without leaving the Microsoft environment.  The product was in fact embedded in a task panel in Microsoft Word.  Well, as you can see in the release below, copied from the Microsystems web-site, a recent change in MS Word has rendered the product inoperable, and Microsystems is withdrawing D3 from the market.  The reason, custom XML tags that a recent Microsoft product change (required by an anti-trust settlement with the European Union regulators) removed from the product, on which D3 depends.  This is not the first time that changed by a word-processing vendor caused document assembly products to “die”.  WordPerfect was notorious in earlier versions from regularly updating its macro language, rending macro-based suites based on one version inoperable on upgrade.

Microsoft Removes Custom XML Code from Office: D3 and Legal TemplatesPlus Discontinued

Downers Grove, IL – January 27, 2010 Microsystems announced it will discontinue development of D3 and Legal TemplatesPlus as a result of Microsoft’s decision to remove Custom XML code from Office. Microsoft made this decision following the ruling from the i4i infringement lawsuit.  DocXtools, Microsystems’ core product, is not affected by this decision.

Although D3 and Legal TemplatesPlus offered distinct competitive advantages and benefited from strong client demand and adoption, a significant portion of the functionality in both products was rendered inoperable in versions of Microsoft Office sold after January 10, 2010.

Microsystems evaluated various alternatives including redeveloping both products, but determined a feature equivalency could not be attained with the technologies and methodologies available today and the development work would likely result in an overall inferior solution for customers. In addition, it would require that little if any resources could be used to focus on our core product, DocXtools. Furthermore, no acceptable transition between existing D3 and Legal TemplatesPlus solutions and any new technology exists. This result would have imposed considerable migration issues on our customers.

Last year, DocXtools accounted for over 85% of Microsystems revenue. In contrast, licenses of D3 and Legal TemplatesPlus accounted for approximately 10% of revenue. As a result of these changes, development, sales and support staff related to D3 and Legal TemplatesPlus were reduced. Moving forward, DocXtools is supported by 45 people; 35 of those positions are comprised of development, support and document experts.

“Certainly we are disappointed about the difficult decision we had to make, but we are also energized by the ongoing success of DocXtools, a product that has been in the market for 11 years. In 2009, we added many new DocXtools customers and 93 customers entered into new or extended license agreements. In 2010 we expect to continue to grow our 249 firm install base as more organizations strive to improve efficiency and client service by deploying new DocXtools functionality out to lawyers and secretaries.” said Tom O’Sullivan, Chief Executive Officer.

The lesson and one to bear in mind:  close integration and embedding of a product into a word-processor, can have major consequences when the word-processing vendor “upgrades” or in the case of “D3” downgrades.  Far superior is the use of an interpreted markup language that is independent of the wordprocessor that is run through a document assembly engine that sits OUTSIDE the wordprocessor.  Exari, DealBuilder/Contract Express, GhostFill, DocXpress and HotDocs use such a markup approach. They can work with Word documents, as well as RTF documents.  Their approaches all differ in how they manage and store the component data.  But they all share the fact that they are NOT dependent on any particular version of the word processor and thus not subject to sudden obsolescence.

Sixth Sense Device – Out of the Box Computing

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Imagine a world where the “digital world” merged with the “physical world”.  Combine a mini-lcd projector, a ccd camera, a cell phone, and a micro-processor in a device the size of an iTouch.  And then add software that support “multi-touch gestures”.  What you get is the vision of Pranav Mistry (a MIT professor) for what he calls a “sixth sense” device.  Check out the video presentation on TED.com (or click on the link below in the article).

The vision of Pranav is mind blowing.  Imagine projecting a number pad on your hand and dialing your phone with your fingers.  Imagine converting a blank piece of paper into a gaming device.  What he has done is expand the vision and role of computers beyond the “devices” into something that is ubiquitous and integrated into the real world.

The implications of his breakthroughs, and whether they are “ready for market” can be debated. But you need to see these videos to regain the “gee wiz” about computers. He gives new meaning to “gestures”.  Just as the invention of the mouse and the GUI (graphical user interface) revolutionized computing in the last 3 decades, so to will the gesture technology put into concrete form by Pranav revolutionize computing in the next fee decades.  Check it out.

Check it out yourself

About the Sixth Sense Device and presentation at TED.COM

Inbox backwards – XOBONI – The Ultimate Exchange Addon

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If you use OUTLOOK or EXCHANGE, you must get XOBNI.  That is inbox backwards.  And it works that way.  It turns your inbox upside down.  From a morass of emails and other crap, XOBNI brings order.  And it does this without you providing any organizing principle.  No need for folders and rules etc.  Rather, there is a simple search box.  It indexes your inbox.  It creates profiles of all your senders and recipients.  It pulls their data automatically from LinkedIn, Twitter, Hoovers, Facebook and other social networking services.  It shows the relationships between that person and ALL your other contacts.  It takes your emails and threads them together in conversations (remember GMAIL).  And it exposes and makes searchable ALL attached documents.

So what is the cost … well FREE.  The free version should be adequate for most people.  For $35 you get a little more.  If you are looking for a needle in a haystack, XOBNI is your metal detector.  It sorts the chaff and out comes the needle.  Want to know who knows whom.  Use this handy little sidebar.

Try it.  You’ll like it.

Google Scholar – Finding the Laws That Govern Us – A Challenge for Lexis and Westlaw

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After several years in Beta, Google Scholar has been launched.  For years, “web-based” services have been nipping at the heels of Lexis Legal Research and Westlaw Legal Research.  Several states have put their case law and statutes on line; so have the federal government.  Some ventures have tried to harness the “free databases” and build usable front end search module.  The result has been a patchwork of “data”, sufficient for the “common man” but lacking in depth, scope and comprehensiveness to be used by attorneys.  There was always the risk of missing the latest slip opinion, amendment, or missing the back information about the statutory and regulatory enactments.

With the release of Google Scholar, a new and very well funded player has entered the arena:  Google.  Armed with billions of dollars and a mission to “do good” while also making money, Google has brought its vaunted search engine to the area of law and statutes.  Read the quoted release below and check it out. The search engine options are still fairly limited, but the scope of the database is enormous.

As many of us recall from our civics lessons in school, the United States is a common law country. That means when judges issue opinions in legal cases, they often establish precedents that will guide the rulings of other judges in similar cases and jurisdictions. Over time, these legal opinions build, refine and clarify the laws that govern our land. For average citizens, however, it can be difficult to find or even read these landmark opinions. We think that’s a problem: Laws that you don’t know about, you can’t follow — or make effective arguments to change.

Starting today, we’re enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in. For example, go to Google Scholar, click on the “Legal opinions and journals” radio button, and try the query separate but equal. Your search results will include links to cases familiar to many of us in the U.S. such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, which explore the acceptablity of “separate but equal” facilities for citizens at two different points in the history of the U.S. But your results will also include opinions from cases that you might be less familiar with, but which have played an important role.

We think this addition to Google Scholar will empower the average citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that govern us all. To understand how an opinion has influenced other decisions, you can explore citing and related cases using the Cited by and Related articles links on search result pages. As you read an opinion, you can follow citations to the opinions to which it refers. You can also see how individual cases have been quoted or discussed in other opinions and in articles from law journals. Browse these by clicking on the “How Cited” link next to the case title. See, for example, the frequent citations for Roe v. Wade, for Miranda v. Arizona (the source of the famous Miranda warning) or for Terry v. Ohio (a case which helped to establish acceptable grounds for an investigative stop by a police officer).

As we worked to build this feature, we were struck by how readable and accessible these opinions are. Court opinions don’t just describe a decision but also present the reasons that support the decision. In doing so, they explain the intricacies of law in the context of real-life situations. And they often do it in language that is surprisingly straightforward, even for those of us outside the legal profession. In many cases, judges have gone quite a bit out of their way to make complex legal issues easy to follow. For example, in Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court justices present a fascinating and easy-to-follow debate on the legality of internment of natural born citizens based on their ancestry. And in United States v. Ramirez-Lopez, Judge Kozinski, in his dissent, illustrates the key issue of the case using an imagined good-news/bad-news dialogue between the defendant and his attorney.

We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the work of several pioneers, who have worked on making it possible for an average citizen to educate herself about the laws of the land: Tom Bruce (Cornell LII), Jerry Dupont (LLMC), Graham Greenleaf and Andrew Mowbray (AustLII), Carl Malamud (Public.Resource.Org), Daniel Poulin (LexUM), Tim Stanley (Justia), Joe Ury (BAILII), Tim Wu (AltLaw) and many others. It is an honor to follow in their footsteps. We would also like to acknowledge the judges who have built this cathedral of justice brick by brick and have tried to make it accessible to the rest of us. We hope Google Scholar will help all of us stand on the shoulders of these giants.

Join me on LINKEDin.com and add your comments to the Virtual Lawyer Group.  BTW:  The URL is Scholar.google.com

A Fresh Start for HotDocs

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This week LexisNexis divested itself of the HotDocs software group.  It sold the assets the group to Capsoft UK.  In a post on LinkedIn, titled “Capsoft Buys HotDocs Software Business from LexisNexis,” Loretta Rupert, Senior Director of Community Management wrote:

LexisNexis is divesting HotDocs to its leading global distributor Capsoft. This divestiture is in keeping with the LexisNexis strategy to provide a family of complementary products in the legal market. HotDocs is a very popular product with many satisfied customers but no longer fits with the Practice Management product line. The sale to Capsoft allows HotDocs customers to benefit from continued support and product development to meet their evolving needs.

Capsoft is the largest distributor of HotDocs software globally and has over 13 years experience with the technology. As LexisNexis continues to transform its lineup of offerings to focus on the company’s core competencies, Capsoft is singularly equipped to maintain and enhance HotDocs software and support for you.

LexisNexis is retaining its Hot Docs Automated Forms business that utilizes HotDocs Player and unique LexisNexis content. To do this, LexisNexis is licensing HotDocs software to support Automated Forms and to resell the HotDocs software in certain markets.

The official Press Release is quoted in full below: Official Releae

EDINBURGH, Scotland & NEW YORK, Nov 17, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) —-Capsoft, a leading international provider of document automation software and services, and LexisNexis, a leading global provider of content-enabled workflow solutions, today announced the sale of the HotDocs(R) software business to Capsoft. Financial terms of the purchase were not disclosed.

Through retention of its Automated Forms group, LexisNexis will continue to provide HotDocs-enabled forms and precedents with solutions such as Lexis(R)PSL, LexisONE(R), lexis.com(R), Lexis(R)Library, LexisNexis Total Practice Advantage(TM), and other LexisNexis(R) Automated Forms sets.

Law firms, banks, insurance companies, government agencies and other large businesses use HotDocs document assembly software to quickly and efficiently generate customized documents such as contracts, sales proposals, government and court forms, legal documents, loan applications and medical forms. The technology streamlines these processes to deliver faster document creation, lower costs, improved document accuracy and a valuable knowledge base of an organization’s most critical documents.

Over the past 13 years, Capsoft has been distributing and implementing HotDocs software in some of the largest law firms and financial institutions in the UK, Europe, Australia, and the Pacific Rim.

Russell Shepherd, CEO of Capsoft, said, “For Capsoft, this is a natural progression and one that I am very excited about. As an established distributor of HotDocs, we know the product inside and out and are extremely well placed to invest in the continuous development of both the software and the support offered to new and existing customers across the world. I look forward to enhancing our longstanding relationship with LexisNexis through the ongoing provision of HotDocs software.”

“As LexisNexis continues to transform its portfolio of offerings, we believe that Capsoft—as the largest distributor of HotDocs software globally—is singularly equipped to maintain and enhance HotDocs software and support for that product’s customer base,” said Alison Manchester, vice president of content management services at LexisNexis.

About LexisNexis(R) LexisNexis(R) (www.lexisnexis.com) is a leading global provider of content-enabled workflow solutions designed specifically for professionals in the legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting and academic markets. LexisNexis originally pioneered online information with its Lexis(R) and Nexis(R) services. A member of Reed Elsevier (NYSE: ENL)(NYSE: RUK) (www.reedelsevier.com), LexisNexis serves customers in more than 100 countries with 18,000 employees worldwide.

About Capsoft Capsoft is a privately held company based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The business was formed in 1996 to provide document automation services to large corporations and law firms. Capsoft now provides software and services to hundreds of law firms across the globe, and provides business critical software and services to many large corporations, including some of the largest banks in the world.

SOURCE: LexisNexis

By The Lake – Dog Training

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In our last home, we had a postage stamp sized back yard.  With a wooden pike fence on one side, a hedge on the other, and a wire mesh fence on the third, as well as a gated driveway, we had the dog contained. Chloe, a border collie/pointer cross, weighing in at 70 pounds could do 3 full circuits of the backyard before you could count to 60.  And so, each morning, each afternoon and each night, she bolted out the back door at mach speed to reign terror on any wooded creature that dared to cross our threshold.  It is all different now.

She Escapes, Again and Again

Here, by the Lake, we are on a level wooded lot with a large front lawn, and a larger back lawn.  There is a barrier, some might call it a fence on north and south sides of the yard.  Such barrier, however, to Chloe is aspirational.  For within five short minutes, she had escaped through a gap large enough to drive a tractor through.  In fact, the purpose of the gap, was likely to bring lawn mower tractors through.  In the first week in residence by the lake, I have gotten to know several of my neighbors.  First they would see the blur of black and white that was Chloe charging.  Then they would hear the long drawn out command: “Chloeeeeee … come baaaaaack!” repeated a few times and increasing volume.  Next, they would see me marching across their private back yards, leash in hand, scowling … What an introduction!  Luckily, Chloe is a very friendly happy dog, and not the menacing type.

A Solution … Or a Start at a solution

And so, after a week of this I moved on to the next phase.  My first thought was to patch the fence.  One square acre of land.  That’s a lot of fence.  And with a dog that runs at light-speed, rapidly patrolling the perimeter, and also a dog who could dig a hole deep enough to sink a tractor in minutes, I was hesitant to try.  If I didn’t succeed, I would hear from my new neighbors.  Moreover, I would be working on their border.  If I put up an “ugly patchwork fence”, I would actually be invading their site-line and marring their property.

With this concern in mind I saw an advertisement for PetSafe(r) Pet Containment System.  For $200 I could bury a radio-transmitting wire around my property.  I could then administer electroshock therapy on my rambunctious dog.  Home Depot had the equipment.  Shortly after buying it, my wife found an advertisement that heralded $200 for a fully installed system, training included. I was ready to return my system to Home Depot, but decided to check the advertisement.  On closer reading, it turned out to be “$200 off” which consisted of a $100 discount on hardware and $100 discount on training.

And so … I went ahead with my plans, laying out 600 feet of yellow wire, connecting it to electricity, and determining the radio-frequency border-width.  I then took my son Itzak around, electronic RF collar in hand.  We approached the border at 10 foot intervals to determine at what point the collar would indicate the “zapping point”.  With 50 flags in place, it was time to take out the dog.  I read the training manual.  I armed myself with the tastiest liver treats …

…. More later ….