Free Desktop Dictation Webinar on Monday by Jeff Krause

My friend Chris Hanley from Gurndig Business Systems will be doing a free webinar entitled “Have You Forgotten About Desktop Dictation?” on Monday July 12 at 12 Eastern. The webinar is sponsored by the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) as part of their monthly ILTA Vendor Product Briefing series.

Session Description: Everyone has a mobile phone. How many of you have entirely given up your desk land line phone? Not many! Your phone is an essential office tool, just as desktop dictation should be. Most lawyers have a portable dictation device, and have not been exposed to the advantages of desktop dictation, which has also entered into the digital age.

Topics will include:

Why dictate via desktop
-Editing a review advantages
-Wireless desktop dictation with the Digta CordEx wireless microphone
-Integration with office workflow platforms
-Use of Speech Recognition to compliment dictation
-Options when mobile dictation is required

Join Grundig Business Systems to learn how other firms are benefiting from multiple dictation input methods, including dictating directly into your computer. Don’t give up the desktop!

RSVP to Chris Hanley at christopher.hanley@grundig-gbs.com. Join the session at http://www.webdialogs.com/join, code 20306, 1-888-289-3928, code 20306.

Sticky Keys in Time Matters Notes? by Jeff Krause

Here is a Time Matters tip that will make you scratch your head.

I received an e-mail today from a client who thought she was going crazy. She described unusual behavior that was occurring while she typed Time Matters notes. Specifically, she described times when the Cap Lock key seemed to be pressed even though she did not see any indication of it and could not turn it off. At other times, she could not type numbers.

She is not crazy. I have seen similar behavior. In my case, I most commonly experience the Ctrl key being locked. Of course, since Time Matters has many keyboard shortcuts that start with the Ctrl key, this can be a problem. For example, Ctrl-Shift-T will create a new ToDo. If Ctrl is locked and you try to type a sentence starting with the word “The,” you are going to add a ToDo because Time Matters sees the Shift-T as Ctrl-Shift-T. I don’t know what causes it. I cannot make it happen on queue. All I know is that I see this from time to time and only while typing Time Matters notes. Time Matters notes are rich text so they are different than other parts of the program. I have always associated it with hitting Enter twice to start a new paragraph but, again, I cannot do it on queue.

I DO know what fixes it. There are actually two things. A reboot will do it and I am sure this is what most people do. However, in researching this issue it occurred to me that this behavior is very similar to Windows Sticky Keys being turned on. Sticky Keys is a function that was designed for disabled persons to be able to hit key combos (like Ctrl-Alt-Delete) one key at a time. The toggle for turning Sticky Keys on and off is to hit the Shift key 5 times in succession. Guess what? Hitting Shift five times also stops this from happening in Time Matters notes. I have no idea whether this is on any known issue list. It might even have been addressed in Time Matters 10. But, if it is happening to you, now you know how to fix it.

Moving Your Existing Documents Into Time Matters by Jeff Krause

I am doing a little desktop cleanup today. I found a set of instructions I had put together for a client regarding how to move documents from their old Windows based system into their new Time Matters document management systems. Since this subject comes up all time, it seemed like a nice opportunity to write a white paper.

The resulting white paper is only a few pages long but describes the process of either linking or moving legacy documents to Time Matters. If you link the documents, they remain in their original location but are visible from Time Matters. If you move the documents, there is an extra step but the documents will be in the same location as the rest of your new Time Matters documents.

The new white paper is available on my website. Just visit http://www.krausepm.com/resources/articles2.shtml.

Starting a New Law Practice? Learn Something About Business! by Jeff Krause

What a great turnout for Considerations for Starting a Law Practice! Sold out room plus a lot of walk-ins. Nice to see so many people turn out on a rainy Saturday in southeast Wisconsin. I just finished speaking on File Management. Of course, I missed the memo asking for list of my top ten tips for starting a law practice but, then again, I have a blog and have the ability to throw out tips any time I want. So here goes.

If I could give one tip to someone thinking about starting a law practice it would be this very broad one - learn something about business and apply what you learn in your business. As lawyers, we help people every day with the transactional side of business. We help our clients setup businesses and perform mergers. We draft complex agreements related to all kinds of things. However, when it comes right down to it, many lawyers know almost nothing about how a business actually runs and it shows in their own “business.”

Learn about how a business works and what makes a business successful. Successful businesses run on systems. Does your law office? Successful business owners can tell you exactly where their leads are coming from and how many leads they generated, how many of those leads became clients, how much those clients spent on average and how much the business spent on everything from office supplies to client entertainment. Can you?

I would not even try to count the number of books available on Amazon.com related to business. Any bookstore is full of them. Make it a point to read at least one every month. If you are just beginning to expand your business knowledge, try Michael Gerber’s E-Myth or E-Myth Revisted. Constantly work to expand your business knowledge and your firm will be the better for it.

Client Intake Part III - Phone Inquiries by Jeff Krause

This is the third in a series on client intake. I will focus on some of the reasons why it makes business sense for a law firm to develop and use a client intake system as well as how a practice management system can help make the whole process much easier.

Earlier this week I wrote about defining a process and information gathering. Related to both of these topics is how you handle phone inquiries. In a sense, this is pre-intake information. However, it really is the beginning of the file intake process – at least you hope so. Much of the information you want to collect gets asked verbally during the initial phone inquiry. Are you capturing it?

Here are some thoughts on phone inquiries (or any sort of initial inquiry for that matter). First, you need someplace to record all of the vital information. A simple way to record and track this type of information is in a spreadsheet or database but a practice management system makes it even easier. Second, you need to make the process easy so that people can do it quickly and not consider it as more of a time waster than a time saver. A simple form that everyone can access from their desktop is great. Third, you need a way to efficiently distribute the inquiries to the proper person and each person needs to know how to process the inquiries. This gets tricky in a home grown system using spreadsheets because the file may need to be updated by several people at the same time.

Once again, all of these steps are easier with a practice management system. Time Matters, for example, allows you to customize phone call forms, deliver an instant message to the appropriate attorney and provides a place for each attorney to organize and process their calls. Both PracticeMaster and PCLaw have a phone call form that allows you to record critical information about your calls. If you use one of those products, find the phone call feature and give it a try.

On April 15, 2010, I had the pleasure to do a nationally broadcast webinar entitled Best Practices: Client Intake. The webinar was sponsored by LexisNexis and a recording of the webinar will most likely be made available on the Legal Business Community site. Try searching the recording there as I do not have a link as I write this post. I also invite you to download a white paper from my website describing how to apply some of these client intake methods in Time Matters. That white paper can be found at http://www.krausepm.com/resources/documents/ClientIntakewithTimeMatters.pdf.

Updating Billing Matters for 2010 Mileage Rate by Jeff Krause

In case you were not aware, the IRS has changed the mileage rate for 2010 to .50 per mile. Here is the process for changing (or adding) this rate to Billing Matters.

I setup Mileage as an Expense item under Billing Codes. File, Setup, Codes, Billing Codes. If you don’t already have a mileage bill code you can add one here. If you already do, simply adjust the unit price. Either way, refer to the illustration below.

Billing Matters Mileage Bill Code

I will post a description of how to do this in PCLaw later today or tomorrow.

Some Thoughts on Dual Monitors by Jeff Krause

Interesting post and lots of comments on dual monitors from Randall Ryder and others at Lawyerist.com. Mr. Ryder tried dual monitors and did not find it to be more productive. This seemed like a good opportunity to share my own thoughts on dual monitors.

I moved to dual monitors about two and a half years ago when I started Krause Practice Management. Honestly, I cannot imagine going back. At one point, one of my (originally 17 inch widesreen) monitors stopped working. After one day of being back to one monitor, I ordered two brand new 22 inch widescreens as replacements.

My typical dual monitor layout is to have Time Matters and Outlook on Monitor 1. I rarely view them both at the same time, toggling between them when I need to. On Monitor 2, I have everything else, which often includes Word, Excel, QuickBooks and ScanSnap Manager. Internet Explorer may be up on either screen depending on which other application I am using with the Internet. This setup allows me to use my two primary applications on Monitor 1 and reference others on Monitor 2.

Here are some of my personal tips to get the most out of dual monitors. First, get two of the same monitor. Not only does it look better, it is actually easier to move your eyes from one to the other. I suppose it is because your eyes do not have to refocus to size, shape and picture quality. Second, find monitors with the smallest side edge possible. This minimizes the amount of space (and the inherent distraction) between the actual screens. Third, make sure you have a video card that can actually run two monitors. Nothing is more annoying than the little glitches that can be caused by an underpowered card. Finally, a simple monitor management program, Ultramon, provides a lot of nice dual monitor features.

My experience has certainly been different than Mr. Ryder’s. Like many other things, I suspect that how much you like dual monitors will depend on a lot of factors such as the specific tasks you perform, how you organize your workday, etc.

Upgrading from a Small Hard Drive to a New Larger One by Jeff Krause

I spent much of the weekend attempting to upgrade my son’s computer hard drive. The old one had only 80GB of space and he was out of space for the newer games he wanted to install. Got a great deal on a 500GB Western Digital hard drive from NewEgg, then the fun began.

I did not want to add the new drive a secondary drive because it was faster and quieter than the old one. I wanted to clone the old one and simply boot to the new one. This used to be SO EASY. In the old days, all you needed was Ghost. You would simply put the new drive in as a slave, clone to it, then make it the master. So, my first thought was to get a new copy of Ghost. Ghost is now owned by Symantec. I spent $70 on it only to find out it does not work. It says it is supposed to work - but it just doesn’t. I wasted a lot of time finding this out, not to mention the money. Research of the issue I was having tells me that many, many others are experiencing the same issue with it. After switching the drives, it boots to a blank desktop. Notice that I have not linked to Ghost or Symantec? Why would I point you to a product that does not work?

After doing some research, I found a product that does work. I always like to send a shout out to products that are easy and do what they are supposed to do. The product I found was EASEUS Disk-Copy. It worked just like Ghost used to. Boot to a CD, clone the disks, switch the system to the new disk as primary. The only issue I encountered was it created a new partition the same size as the old smaller disk. However, EASEUS also had a Partition Master tool that resized it for me right in Vista. The whole process took maybe an hour.

Best of all, the home versions of these two products from EASEUS are free. Kudos to the folks who made these great utilities.

ScanSnap S1500 Review by Jeff Krause

Introduction

There are a number of reasons why I really like the ScanSnap. It is a great value, especially when you consider the bundle Adobe Acrobat software. It is small enough to be placed on the desktop and affordable enough to be placed on every desktop. It is fast, scans in color and scans both sides of the document in one pass. Finally, it is very versatile, allowing you to recognize text in scans and save the scans to just about any document management system you like.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 is no longer “new.” In fact, I have been using one for about six months. I suppose that one good thing about this belated review is that I have really run the unit through its paces in a real-world setting.

Impressions

ScanSnap S1500

The S1500 looks more a bit more modern than its predecessor S500. The lines are a bit more angular. Overall, it takes up the same amount of space as the previous unit. If I was really into aesthetics, I would mention that the black and silver case with the blue button perfectly matches the Dell monitors on my desk. The catch tray does look a little flimsier than the previous model but I have not experienced a single problem with it during the last six months.

My previous ScanSnap S500 had a tendency to double feed. This meant that I had to babysit scans of multiple pages. I never really minded all that much because the scanning is so fast. Nevertheless, I am happy to report that my new S1500 has not double fed a single time – so far.

Scanning with the S1500

Scanning is incredibly easy with this scanner. Simply insert the page or pages you wish to scan and hit the blue scan button. The paper is pulled through and the scan appears in the default application you have set (more on this later). If the paper was two-sided, the two sides will be pages 1 and 2 of your resulting PDF. Different page sizes are not a problem. The ScanSnap automatically detects this and adjusts the resulting PDF accordingly. Similarly, it automatically rotates pages and removes blank pages. If you scan a mix of documents where some are one-sided and some are two-sided, the blank sides of the one-sided documents are removed from the resulting PDF.

Did I mention how fast it was? To give you some idea of the speed of this scanner, I inserted 10 sheets with printing on both sides. Twenty-eight seconds after hitting the scan button the resulting scan appeared on my screen. This equates almost exactly with the 20 pages per minute that Fujitsu states in the specifications for the S1500. Inserting color documents or inserting some of the documents upside-down or sideways, does not add noticeably to this time. The only thing that does at time is adding text recognition at the time of the scan, which I never do. Why not? For starters, I just do not need it on most documents. Second, I can easily do it after the fact using the OCR features in Acrobat.

Bundled Software

ScanSnap Manager

Once the scan is finished, it can be displayed in one of several ways. All of this is controlled by the included ScanSnap Manager software, which allows you to choose what happens when you select the Scan button. There are seven choices including Scan to File, Scan to Folder, Scan to Email, Scan to Picture, and Scan to Print. There are situational uses for each of these but most users will select either ScanSnap Organizer or Adobe Acrobat as their default setting. The one you choose depends on several factors. The advice I give my clients and personally follow is to select Adobe Acrobat if you will be saving each scan immediately and ScanSnap Organizer if you tend to scan a lot of documents and save and organize them later.

ScanSnap Organizer

Because my typical scanning process is to scan a number of documents in quick succession, then save each of them once they are all scanned, my default is set to the bundled ScanSnap Organizer software. In other words my scanning process is scan, scan, scan, save, save, save. The ScanSnap Organizer is a software tool that will remind you of Microsoft Outlook or any other software that has a main display window and folders within which files can be displayed. As you scan each document a thumbnail of the scan appears in the main window. You can create folders and drop scans into those folders, or double click on any scan and open it in Adobe Acrobat. The ScanSnap Organizer also allows you to right click on any scan and access the previously mentioned Scan to Email, Scan to Print, etc. Personally, I open each document from the ScanSnap Organizer to Acrobat and use TM Save to save it to Time Matters. Once saved, I delete it from the ScanSnap Manager.

The fact that Adobe Acrobat Standard has always been included with the ScanSnap is one of the scanner’s best selling points. The S1500 includes the newest version of Acrobat, 9 Standard. I often describe the ScanSnap as a “paper to PDF” machine. It is the fastest way to turn a piece of paper into a PDF file and, as we all know, PDF is a nearly universal format that can be read by almost anyone and is compatible with every document management system used in professional office. From a scanning prospective, PDFs are also more compact than some of the traditional scan to formats like TIF.

If you choose Adobe Acrobat as your default application, scans will appear immediately in Acrobat. This is very useful if your scanning process is scan, save, scan, save, etc. Simply use Save As in Acrobat and save the file with a name and location of your choice or, if you use a document management system, save it from Acrobat into that system. For those of you who already have Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional, you can continue to use that application with your ScanSnap S1500. Adobe also offers upgrades from 9 Standard to 9 Professional. These upgrades are available for approximately $150.00 and are available via download from Adobe’s website.

I do not mean to short-change the other software bundled with the ScanSnap S1500 but I must admit that I am not all that familiar with these products. For example, ABBYY FineReader is bundled as an OCR application. It receives very good reviews, but I have not used it. Instead, in the rare event I need OCR, I use the OCR Text Recognition function in Acrobat.

Conclusion

The ScanSnap S1500 has a suggested retail price of $495.00 but you can almost always find it for less. Like earlier models, there are $50.00 rebates available and many resellers will sell if for less than the $495.00 list price.

Overall, the ScanSnap S1500 continues the traditions established by its predecessors – speed, accuracy, ease of use, loads of features, and great bundled software. It is an integral part of my own office and a tool I recommend to all of my clients.

For more information on the ScanSnap S1500 including a Flash demo, visit my website at Krause Practice Management - Fujitsu Scanners.

A Multi-Touch Collections Process by Jeff Krause

I am very happy to welcome Loretta Ruppert, from LexisNexis Practice Management, as a guest writer. As Senior Director of Community Management, Loretta works to bring together the community of product users, consultants and technology leaders and to create a resource to facilitate better communication and cooperation between these groups. I have extended an open invitation to Loretta to guest post on this blog on any topic related to Law Firm Practice Management. Today, she writes a follow-up post to her two part series on Collections Best Practices. This post focuses on creating a multi-touch collections process. Jeff Krause

This post will complement the two previous posts regarding Collection Best practices – (1) the Problem and (2) the Solution and will focus on the multi-touch collection process.

On September 9th Allison Shield blogged on the subject of talking to your clients about fees on her blog Legal Ease. She mentions an important point - it all starts with the fee or engagement agreement. There is no such thing as too much information when communicating with your client about rates, and what is included and more importantly what is excluded from the fee agreement, don’t be afraid to spell it out.

• The fee agreement should also contain a clause regarding past due accounts and what happens in the event of non-payment. Do you ask for a credit card number in the event of non-payment that authorizes you to charge the credit card for the balance due? Do you have some physical collateral to put a lien against or sell?

• Include aging periods for past due accounts in the fee agreement, these are typical accounting standards of 30, 60, 90 and over 90 days past due. But this is really for reporting purposes. There is nothing preventing you from taking action before or in between these aging periods.

Aging periods are one of the main areas we focus on when developing a multi-step collection process. Below is a list of some steps and recommended do’s and don’ts. As with most business practices and processes, some of them are very obvious, but the ability to implement a multi-step process and stick to it is more important than just developing one.

If you offer an early payment discount, don’t be hesitant to send an email reminder or fax reminding your clients to take advantage of the early payment discount.

Only charge interest if you plan to collect it.

At the 30 day mark, send out a reminder statement.

When the bill is 45 days past due, you have now provided enough time for your clients to get your bill and additional mail time to receive payment. Pick up the phone and call your client and ask straight up when you can expect payment, the conversation obviously should be polite but firm.

At 60 days charge the client’s personal credit card they authorized in the event of non-payment at 60 days. If you don’t have this in your agreement, ask the client if they are having financial difficulty and if they are, negotiate a payment plan.

If you negotiate a payment plan, do not drag out the payment plan beyond three to six months depending on how many months of work it represents and absolutely ask for a retainer for any further work until payment is complete.

When you reach 90 days past due you are at a high risk of not receiving the payment in full or at all.

Consider a visit with the client face-to-face, depending on the amount past due of course, and if a considerable amount, start thinking about the lien on collateral. If you don’t have this to fall back on, go to the next step.

As a last resort, consider negotiating the bill, the timing may be well past the 90 days. E.g. If the client pays the firm 60% we will write off 40% or whatever you think is reasonable. Or you can choose to hire a collection firm. The problem with using collection firms are the fees, but by this time, you have already taken so much of your time and your staff’s time trying to get the fees collected.

The main point you want to take away from this post is to prepare for the exception - the non-payment, and to be consistent in your approach of how to handle them. Automate as much of these steps as possible using a calendaring or billing system. And if you have a repeat client who continually falls behind in payments, consider what the intrinsic cost to your firm is to keep that client versus one that pays you.

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Free Desktop Dictation Webinar on Monday by Jeff Krause

Sticky Keys in Time Matters Notes? by Jeff Krause

Moving Your Existing Documents Into Time Matters by Jeff Krause

Starting a New Law Practice? Learn Something About Business! by Jeff Krause

Client Intake Part III - Phone Inquiries by Jeff Krause

Updating Billing Matters for 2010 Mileage Rate by Jeff Krause

Some Thoughts on Dual Monitors by Jeff Krause

Upgrading from a Small Hard Drive to a New Larger One by Jeff Krause

ScanSnap S1500 Review by Jeff Krause

A Multi-Touch Collections Process by Jeff Krause

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