it’s about time (and billing)

It's About Time (and Billing)

Chrometa - Automated Timekeeping

Join me for this complimentary webinar about time and billing

Thursday, June 18, 2009

2:00 PM Eastern/1:00 PM Central/12:00 PM Pacific

sponsored by Chrometa

Lawyers underestimate their time by 25% due to bad recording habits, disorganization, and bad management. Enroll in this complimentary webinar and learn how to:

– Capture activities that you’ve been missing
– Create a back-up for time-keeping purposes
– Find out what you do most (and least); and
– Maximize billiable time by minimizing waste

Have your questions answered live by our panel.
Mazy Hedayat – Legal technology writer and practicing attorney
Kristi Royse – Speaker and legal time management and billing expert
Brett Owens – Software entrepreneur, CEO and co-founder, Chrometa

Sign up here.

ABA TechShow: The Video

Live from TechShow 2009 ...

 

Thought I’d share some choice video from TechShow 2009 featuring all 4 of the Best of Show winners that I wrote up in TechnoLawyer, plus interviews with some of my heroes such as Bob Ambrogi, Jay Funeberg, and Kevin O’Keefe, as well as sightings of legal blogging all-stars like Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighelle. I’m still excited.  

 

See related videos here and find me on YouTube as practicehacker. 

ABA TechShow 2009 – Short and SaaSy

We're the ABA Damnit! We own you!

This was my 10th year at ABA Technology Show in Chicago. This year was particularly cool.  Here’s why:

Meeting The Heavies: To me, seeing people like Dennis Kennedy, Tom Mighelle, Bob Ambrogi, Jim Calloway, Kevin O’Keefe, Brett Burney, Andy Atkins, Jay Foonberg (!) and the rest of my pretend blog friends … I mean pretend LinkedIn friends … is like reconnecting with long lost relatives. Exciting and a little intimidating. But all of them were really great and down to earth. Except that Kennedy. Such a prima donna. I kid, I kid.

Meeting Canadians: Who can forget meeting the Great Librarian of Upper Canada! Beat that. Then there was Phil of the Future (my name for him), Steve Matthews (nice guy), Brett Burney (I think he’s Canadian), Dominic Jaar (vive la Quebec libre!), the boys from Clio (or as I called them, the Booth Babes), and a host of other talent from the Great White North. It was great to meet you all: now go back where the ice doesn’t melt until July.

Technology Becoming Accepted: This year for the first time in memory I noticed a preponderance of grey hairs and the careful gait of partners scoping out potential buys for their offices.  This was not the brash, flash-in-the-pan TechShow of the late-90’s in which the Internet was decried as a fad.

SaaS, Saas, and more Saas: Software as a service was all over the place, and by next year it will be pervasive. This year I was knocked out by the number and variety of kick-ass SaaS providers at the show including Clio, RocketMatter, and VLO Tech. Clio was my hands-down favorite for a number of reasons – I intend to use it in my own practice. Whatever your cup of tea, the idea of throwing away the IT department in favor of the Cloud is gaining traction fast.

Less is … Less: One lamentable fact about this  year’s show – there was less of it than I’ve seen in a long time. Another casualty of the economy I’d say, but we shouldn’t overlook the fact that many legal technology vendors have been slaves to profit instead of boosters for innovation and the slow economy is making it painfully apparent what a royal screw job they’ve been giving lawyers all these years. Many players couldn’t make it ? Good riddance to bad company.

Other than that however, it was a great experience as always and one that I heartily recommend to one and all. If you haven’t been to TechShow, go there. If you have, come back. A splendid time is guaranteed for all.

For more coverage see my SmallLaw Column in TechnoLawyer.

Check out Twitter coverage of TechShow.

As always, I’d love your thoughts. E-mail me at mhedayat[at]mha-law.com or tweet me @practichacker.

ttyl 🙂

Clio Client Connect – collaboration gets serious

This weekend at LegalTech the makers of practice management suite Clio launched ClientConnect, a secure portal that will enable attorneys to share documents, collaborate, bill, and take payments in a secure evnironment on the web. And oh yes – it’s free to every Clio subscriber.

ClientConnect very nearly solves the universal problems that plague asynchronous multi-party communication. In other words, with ClientConnect there are no more e-mail roadblocks, mixed signals, or convoluted conversation-threads in the way of attorney-client communication. As a result lawyers can now make files of any kind, as well as time-sheets, notes, and case details available in seconds just by  recording them in Clio or uploading them to Clio’s super-fast collaboration-servers.

The highlights of ClientConnect include

• document exchange and collaboration
• clients can audit case activity anytime
• case notes are now instantly available
  
• clients can pay bills in seconds by PayPal
  

All told both clients and lawyers will benefit from the ability to collaborate in an open, secure, round-the-clock system that requires no software and has a virtual 0 learning curve. For those lawyers still on the fence, the advent of ClientConnect makes it hard to justify not trying Clio’s 30-day free trial.

my 15 minutes of fame …

 

My 15 Minutes of Fame

 

Courtesy of 37 Signals, creators of killer apps such as highrise (their crm application), comes my 15 minutes of fame as their spokesman. You’ll find me right here on their website. And it’s no bull. I’ve used highrise, basecamp, backpack, and campfire to communicate with teams accross the country in connection with pending litigation. Yeah, it works. Not only that, the products are easier to use,  more intuitive, and less costly than anything out there with the possible exception of Google Apps, which I also use. But that’s a whole other level of commitment …

 

Poll: Do You Use Web Apps?

getting (the) Gist

Gist combs through your in-box and contact list to give you a clearer view of who and what is important. This sounds like a pointless task until you’ve experienced the crush of too much e-mail from too many sources. Suddenly, tools like Xobni and Gist look like virtual life-preservers. But since it’s still being tested, Gist is somewhat raw and experimental, a love-it-or-leave-it proposition. Then again, what do you expect for free? Funny you should ask ..

First Impressions
I really like the look and feel of Gist. There are a number of reasons tthe application appealed to me –

Sliders: Slide-based controls are one of the easiest ways to express interest (or disinterest) in a topic.

Change Anything: The more you can customize a tool, the more comfortable it feels. Of course this feature is much more charming the first time than the 40th.

It Just Works: Plugging in your Gmail account is easy but  for the moment that’s all you can do. But given the limits of the data in my Gmail account, Gist came up with some interesting connections. Well played.

Now the Bad News
Even if Gist makes a dent in the ocean of e-mail, would the product catch on? Early adopters might use it and give it a favorable rating; but what about the people who make (and pay) real money? Well, since Gist has thrown its hat into the ring let’s talk about what it could do better.

Semantic Search, Anyone?: If smart search were ever going to come out from behind the clouds, this would be an opportune time. No matter how imoprtant information on the web might be, it will never be as crucial as the treasure-trove of information buried in my own system.

If I Have to Rate One More Thing: The downside of having to rate everything is that if you don’t you can get incoherent results. After 14 years in practice, do you want to guess how much data that is?

Keep It Relevant: Gist tries to make connections between contacts, email, attachments, articles on the web, and my in-box. Often however, it brings up items that share or a word or phrase in common – and nothing else. That’s not a real connection.

Learn to Behave: If making relevant connections is too much to ask at this stage, how about learning from me as I use Gist? It’s simple behaviorism: if the application begins to react like me then I will perceive it as ‘smart.’

Parting Shots
I will use Gist some more and hope that it evolves. Thus far I give it a 3.5 out of 5. In the meantime I would certainly recommend it … except that it’s in closed beta so you’ll have to wait a little longer.