TurboLaw Time and Billing: Always Improving
May 14, 2008
It’s been just under 2 months since we released TurboLaw Time and Billing, and far from resting on our laurels, we’ve been hard at work making constant improvements based on feedback we receive.
Some of the things we’ve improved are:
- Statements now more clearly show a positive balance/credit - as from when you have a retainer
- We now offer a 30-day trial period
- Statements don’t print out the “payment number” that is used internally to track payments (some people found it confusing)
- Bill numbers now start at 1001 instead of 1 (some people found the old behavior confusing)
- We changed the layout of the Choose Template window to make it easier to see the names of templates (especially if they are long names)
- The template editor has been enhanced to allow you to drag & drop merged fields to make customizing bill and statement templates even easier
- You can now change the headings for work/expenses on bills (look under Tools > Settings)
- You can now choose whether bill items are sorted oldest to newest or vice-versa (look under Tools > Settings)
These are just a few of the improvements we’ve made - and we’re always working on more! We take our responsibility to provide you with great software very seriously, and we always listen to what our customers have to say.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions - feel free to drop us a line! You can email us at help@turbolaw.com, or call us directly at (800) 518-8726. We look forward to hearing from you!
Ask The Geek: How can I send documents in PDF format?
March 10, 2008
To send documents as PDFs (which stands for “portable document format“), you need a program to create PDF files - there are several available on the Internet for free, as well as some from commercial software vendors. The company which popularized the PDF format is called Adobe, and they sell a program called “Adobe Acrobat Professional” which allows you to create a PDF from just about anything. They also give away for free a program called “Adobe Acrobat Reader” which allows you to view a PDF and print it out (although not create a new one).
The best part of a PDF file is that just about anyone can view it - whether using a PC, a Mac, or some other type of device, chances are he or she can open a PDF file and view it. There are PDF viewer programs written for virtually every type of computer ever made, so when you send a PDF, you can generally be assured that the recipient can view it. Over the years, it has become the de facto standard for printable documents on the Internet.
Another great benefit of PDF files is that they strip out all the hidden “meta data” in your documents. You may have heard about “meta data” - this is the data inside your documents that you normally don’t see, but that may contain sensitive or personal information you don’t want disclosed. Creating a PDF naturally strips this information out - which makes PDFs a simple, easy solution to the problem of “meta data.”
Have a question for the geek? Send it to us at askthegeek@turbolaw.com!
Macros and Word 2007
February 7, 2008
If you have recently upgraded to Word 2007 (part of Microsoft Office 2007), you might have noticed that just about everything looks different - and the controls for macros are no exception.
The first time you open a TurboLaw document, you’ll see a “Security Warning” appear near the top of the screen, as shown below.
Because TurboLaw documents use macros, if you don’t enable the macros, the documents won’t work the way you expect.
If you click on the Options button, you’ll see a screen like the one shown below.
You’ll be able to see that the document has been signed by Promethean Software Corporation (the makers of TurboLaw), and some other details.
In order to enable the macros, you must select “Trust all documents from this publisher.”
Once this is done, click OK. The macros will now be enabled, and you can continue using TurboLaw. You won’t have to perform these steps again (unless you get a new computer).
If you’re using an earlier version of Word, the steps to enable macros haven’t changed - you can view the steps in our Help Center article on “How to Enable Macros.” If you can’t choose “Trust all documents from this publisher,” or if that option does not even appear, then you may not have the necessary certificates installed. This Help Center article describes how to install the needed certificates.
Ask The Geek: How can I get rid of junk mail (or “spam”)?
January 23, 2008
Unfortunately, the only guaranteed way to stop all spam is to not use e-mail. Spam is a part of life now, but you can take steps to reduce the amount of spam you get:
- Don’t publish your e-mail address on the Internet anywhere. Or, if you must put it on the Internet, write it out as “john at NOSPAM myaddress.com” instead of “john@myaddress.com”. This will help prevent automatic programs from collecting your address.
- Be careful whenever a website asks for your email address. Consider using a 2nd address just for on-line ordering and so forth - this way, all the spam goes to the 2nd address and you can just delete it from time to time.
- Use a good spam filter. Most email programs have some sort of ability to sort emails as they arrive - look into the features for your program. Microsoft Outlook has its “Junk Mail” folders, and if you use Microsoft Exchange in your office, there are many programs your IT person can load onto the sever to reduce spam before it even gets to your inbox. If you use Mozilla Thunderbird or Eudora, just start marking junk email as “junk” by using the buttons for it in these programs. They will “learn” to recognize spam over time and filter it for you.
Hopefully these tips help you deal with the avalanche of spam we all have to deal with these days. Good luck!
Have a question for the geek? Send it to us at askthegeek@turbolaw.com!
Using E-Z Pass data to prove infidelity
November 6, 2007
In what might be a compelling reason to go back to using your spare change when paying tolls on the highway, we found this report of E-Z Pass data being used to prove infidelity:
E-ZPass and other electronic toll collection systems are emerging as a powerful means of proving infidelity. That’s because when your spouse doesn’t know where you’ve been, E-ZPass does.
“E-ZPass is an E-ZPass to go directly to divorce court, because it’s an easy way to show you took the off-ramp to adultery,” said Jacalyn Barnett, a New York divorce lawyer who has used E-ZPass records a few times.
Lynne Gold-Bikin, a Pennsylvania divorce lawyer, said E-ZPass helped prove a client’s husband was being unfaithful: “He claimed he was in a business meeting in Pennsylvania. And I had records to show he went to New Jersey that night.”
Whether it’s E-Z Pass or Fast-Lane, such devices provide an often overlooked source of evidence.
Verbal Branding and Productive Interactions
June 7, 2007
By: Stephen Melanson
Do you realize it took until 1977 before attorneys could advertise their services legally?
David L. Hudson Jr., a First Amendment Center research attorney (www.firstamendmentcenter.org) tells us, “(In 1977, the Supreme) Court first determined that attorney advertising was a form of commercial speech entitled to some degree of First Amendment protection in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona.”
Prior to that, he writes, the law said, “A lawyer shall not publicize himself, or his partner, or associate, or any other lawyer affiliated with him or his firm…”. Only business cards were an acceptable form of promotion.
Things have changed.
With consolidation and the overall ability to differentiate from each other diminishing, law firms are getting more and more attentive to their marketing efforts and brand identities.
For now, let’s focus on branding, and a curiously hidden element of it: verbal interactions as a brand building tool. Imagine how you’d feel if every time someone in your firm spoke to someone outside it, you lost money and your brand was diminished.
That sounds pretty awful. Unfortunately, it’s not exactly uncommon.
Most organizations, as far as I can tell, don’t recognize that direct contact with the public, i.e., actual conversations, represents the front line of their brand, and that these interactions must be managed as branding activities.
From over twenty years of varied business experience, there’s one thing I’m quite sure of: the last people to be trained and given a full understanding of an organizations’ value and brand positioning are, quite surprisingly, those on the front lines of direct customer contact.
That’s not only a shame and a lost opportunity, but it literally stands branding on its head.
Given one regrettable interaction, some clients will remember it the rest of their natural-born lives, and to them it’ll symbolize a firms brand from then on. (If you doubt this, ask an unhappy client what your brand is. Often, they’ll be most upset about an interaction they had with someone on the staff.)
It’s bad for business and, well, just bad for everybody. Therefore, verbal branding ought to be a management priority and a critical training issue.
Before we continue, let’s establish some philosophy: No matter what you do, you can only count on your audience (the public and individuals) remembering one or two things about your firm—period!
I know this to be true, and I can’t overstate the importance of understanding this going in, so you’ll develop your messaging correctly.
With this in mind, how confident are you that an initial contact with someone is promoting your brand effectively? Or for that matter, think about your web site – another type of “interaction” – and if a visitor will leave the site remembering what you want them to?
Without this effort to manage what people remember about you, especially through verbal contact, your brand could be diminished every day and potentially with every conversation.
Yes, it’s a scary thought. But as I mentioned, at some companies it’s happening right now, everyday.
Consider: Do you really need to tell people so much during a first conversation? Are questions of any kind likely to take you “off message,” never to return? If so, maybe you haven’t really found your best brand message. And by the way, does the home page of your web site really need to be that busy? It’s probably diluting your message.
Let’s get back to the central point. What do you really need someone to know – or if you will, remember – so each direct interaction is as productive as possible? The idea of “productivity” is an important one to verbal branding. An interaction is productive to the degree that people remember what you want them to, whether it’s a day, week, or month later.
When you’re compelled to tell your audience every detail of your organization and service, it simply means your verbal branding needs work.
As Vincent Gardenia said in Moonstruck, “That’s all I’m saying; I’ll say no more!”
Let me describe a productive business environment from a verbal standpoint: each interaction has a foundation of just a couple of central concepts; your answers to questions support, and track back to, those concepts rhetorically instead of diverting from them; and when anyone in your organization is asked, “What in the world do you guys do?” they understand what needs to be communicated, and they can do it with simplicity and confidence – every time.
Is it less exciting? Maybe. Does it work? Definitely.
Plus, the entire staff now has more confidence and the relief of knowing what to say. That’s how you generate more revenue, increase market share, and build your brand on a daily basis, conversation by conversation.
I like a quote by Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team:
“If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Stephen Melanson is a brand and positioning consultant, specializing in verbal brand development and teaching its application.
Email: stephen@melansonconsult.com
Where is my “Add/Remove/Rename” button?
May 30, 2007
In TurboLaw 2.60, the old Add Remove Rename Button was itself renamed to Open this Folder. Instead of opening a TurboLaw window, the new button simply opens the folder where TurboLaw is saving your documents - right in Windows itself. (Technically, this view is a “Windows Explorer” window.)
The old Add Remove Rename Button has gone the way of the Dodo
The new Open this Folder button has replaced it
From this window, you can add, remove, or rename any file you see.
Adding files is easy - just drag & drop them into the folder, or use copy & paste, or whatever method you are comfortable using. Since you are just copying (or moving) a file from one folder to another on your computer, you do not need to remember any new special way of doing it. Adding a file to your TurboLaw case folder is no different than adding a file to any other folder on your computer.
Removing a file is also easy - and with this new window, it is also safer. Just select the file (or files) you want to remove and press the “Delete” key on your keyboard; or right-click and choose “Delete;” or click the “Delete” button on the Windows Explorer window toolbar. In other words, you can delete the file (or files) just as you would any other file on your computer. The extra safety comes from the fact that files deleted from your computer will go to your recycle bin, instead of just being deleted immediately - the same as any other file on your computer. So if you make a mistake, you can recover your work. (Assuming you haven’t emptied the recycle bin, of course!)
Renaming a file, as you can probably guess, is also very easy. You rename a file in TurboLaw the same way you rename any other file on your computer. You can right-click on the file and choose “Rename,” or use any of the other ways that Windows Explorer allows you to rename a file.
So if you were wondering what happened to the old “Add/Remove/Rename” button, now you know - it has been replaced by the new “Open this Folder” button, which allows you to do everything you did before - only now it is easier, and more in-line with the way you add, remove, or rename files elsewhere on your computer. As always, we are only seeking to help make it easier for you to get your work done!
TurboLaw and Pocket PCs
April 4, 2007
More and more often, we’re hearing questions along the lines of “Can I use TurboLaw on my PocketPC?” And the answer to this question is “Yes, and No.”
Yes, you can take your TurboLaw documents and edit them on your PocketPC by using the “pocket” versions of Microsoft Word and Excel (these typically come with any new Windows-powered PocketPC). Remember, TurboLaw documents are just Word (and occasionally Excel) documents - so once TurboLaw has created them, you can do whatever you like with them.
The “no” part of the answer comes from TurboLaw itself - there is no PocketPC “version” of TurboLaw that you can run on your PocketPC. So you can’t create new forms on your PocketPC - you can only edit existing ones. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, however - merging information into documents is a job for a full-fledged computer, not a tiny device with a 3 inch screen and no “real” keyboard to speak of. While you might want to occasionally enter client information into TurboLaw from your PocketPC, you would never want to make a habit of it. Imagine trying to fill in one of the Case Interview Wizards, while typing all of that information on a tiny “thumb” keyboard. Your thumbs would fall off after just a few screens!
However, since the documents are really the “heart” of TurboLaw, you’re not losing out on much by only having the documents on your PocketPC. With the right attachments (e.g. a small hand-held printer), you could make changes to a motion right on your PocketPC and print it out right in the courtroom - and it would certainly look better than a hand-written motion! Never mind that you could do the same to a financial statement, a complex court form, or really any other document that TurboLaw provides.
If you have feedback regarding your own experience with TurboLaw documents on your handheld device we would love to hear from you. Just e-mail: keith@turbolaw.com.
One Judge’s Opinions on Blogging
April 27, 2006
Ernie The Attorney writes that “[t]he fine blog 3L Epiphsny has an interesting Q&A with Judge Richard Kopf (a federal trial judge in Nebraska) about legal blogging and its place in the realm of scholarship.”
It is very interesting to see how legal blogs are being cited in case opinions. I expect to see more and more blogs being cited in this way, especially as more and more attorneys and legal scholars begin blogging.
The Dream of the Paperless Office
April 3, 2006
or “How to Use TurboLaw to create PDF files”
The concept of the “paperless office” – like the flying car before it – has long been around. And just as steps towards developing flying cars have been made (try to imagine traffic jams in three dimensions!), so also have practical steps toward realizing the “paperless office.” Some of these advances have come thanks to the PDF file format.
PDF stands for “portable document format” and is a publicly available standard for creating files that reproduce paper documents. This standard, coupled with free “viewer” programs available on the Internet, allows just about any computer safely to view PDF files. PDF files are a quick and easy way to make electronic copies of documents that can be shared (via email or other means) with nearly anyone. Combined with TurboLaw’s picture-perfect forms, PDF files can be a lawyer’s – and paralegal’s – very good friend.
Forms can be quickly created on the computer and saved in PDF format for storage or transmittal to other parties, or filed on-line as with federal courts, never once requiring printing on paper.
The most commonly used software for creating PDF files is Adobe Acrobat Professional, which must be purchased, but there are free alternatives. To empower our customers, we offer our “Free CD” with several free programs, including “PDFCreator,” that complement TurboLaw. (You can also download PDFCreator by clicking here.)
To create a PDF file from an open TurboLaw document, click on the printer button on the TurboLaw toolbar. Change your printer selection to “PDFCreator” and click “Print.” Poof! A PDF file is created to be saved on your computer; it can be archived, emailed or filed on-line with some courts and agencies. TurboLaw documents converted to PDF files are easily emailed to opposing counsel and clients for review, even if the recipient does not have TurboLaw installed on his own computer.
Once you start working with PDF files, you may find fewer and fewer reasons to print things on paper – save for signing documents – and that’s getting pretty close to the “paperless office.” Now, about that flying car…
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