LAW PRACTICE TIPS

Software Tools to Make Your Job Easier

By Jim Calloway, Director
OBA Management Assistance Program

There are lots of important lessons we all have to learn about life. One of those lessons is how well you can do a job if you use the right tool. Many of us have had the opportunity to compare our roadside tire-changing efforts with the pneumatically driven precision of tools employed at the tire store or service station. You can use a butter knife to drive a flat-head screw or use a pipe wrench to pound in a nail - but that doesn't mean it is the preferred method. We have all started a project with the wrong tool, experiencing delays and frustration. After stopping to locate or purchase the exact tool, it is just amazing what a difference the right tool makes.

No one could reasonably dispute that the lawyer's tools of the trade have become computers and software. Online and CD-ROM legal research services, both free and commercial, are now widely available. We spend a lot of time discussing law office software with lawyers - case management software, time and billing software, accounting software and practice specific software.

The software to be discussed in this article is not limited for just the law office, but can be used in almost any office. And many of these tools might find a home on the lawyer's home computer. Although not designed specifically for lawyers, these might serve as handy additions to the lawyer's "toolbox." We will include many names of specific products. Sometimes the product mentioned will be among the leaders in an area. In other instances, it will just reflect the tool that the author tried first and continues to use. A few of these tools aren't even in my toolbox yet, but reliable sources have convinced me that it should and will be soon. Appreciation is expressed to several OBA-NET members who suggested their own favorite software tools.

Adobe Acrobat Reader

The bad news is that every lawyer absolutely positively has to have this tool.

The good news is that the price is right. It is free!

Adobe Acrobat Reader just does one thing. It allows you to view or print something on your computer and have it appear exactly the same as it appears on everyone else's computer. That might not sound like anything special to someone who has not experienced formatting problems. But many of us have experienced many times the fun of doing a pleading or some other document on our home computer, bringing it to the office and watching the "reformatting for printer" turn it into something unrecognizable. A complex document that someone else did on their computer might undergo radical changes on yours because they have their tabs set differently from yours. The problem is even worse if the person you want to share a document with does not own the same software that you do.

Adobe Acrobat files use the PDF format (Portable Document Format). So why do we need Adobe Acrobat format? Because it is a common format that we can all use. I can send a PDF file to dozens of people all across the country, and they can each view and print exactly the same document regardless of their computer, printer or preferred software. Many observers believe that PDF format will be the primary format used by courts as we move into the era of electronic filing or e-filing. Pictures and other images can also be shared in PDF files.

For instance, it is almost tax day. The Internal Revenue Service can save untold dollars and provide a great service to citizens by providing their forms in digital format. But the IRS does not want their forms reformatted into many different versions by various word processors, computers and printers. They want the forms to look exactly alike no matter where they are printed.

So you can download tax forms dating all the way back to 1992 in PDF format from the IRS Web site, www.irs.ustreas.gov. The IRS has added some other formats, but it is clear from reading their instructions that PDF files are the format of choice. It is certainly a lot more simple to download and print a form than to rush over to the local IRS office or post office. The Oklahoma Tax Commission has state tax forms available for downloading in PDF format as well. The home page is www.oktax.state.ok.us/oktax. Most government and private industry downloadable forms are in this format. This includes the 1997 through current downloadable Oklahoma Bar Journals and CLE materials on the OBA-NET. Most lawyers spend a lot of time dealing with government documents. So this is a "must have" utility. Many computer owners already have the Adobe Acrobat Reader "plug-in" installed in their computer.

You can download Adobe Acrobat Reader from the Adobe Web site. Just go to www.adobe.com and click on the "Get Adobe Reader" link at the bottom of the page.

So why does Adobe give away their software for free? Well, they don't really. They only give away the Adobe Acrobat Reader. The Adobe Acrobat software used to create all of these PDF files is sold by Adobe. If you frequently distribute documents or if it becomes the standard for court electronic filings, you may want to invest in a copy of the software. However, if you need it infrequently, the latest version of WordPerfect and some other programs now come with a limited capability to save documents in the PDF format.

Quick View Plus

Suppose your new client who has just hired your firm on several complex litigation matters sends you a package of files via e-mail, or on a CD-ROM or Zip Disk. You attempt to open the files, but none of your computers recognize the file format. The client may have assumed that a law firm as prestigious as yours would naturally be able to handle files from any spreadsheet program or in a Microsoft Publisher format or in any number of other file formats.

It's unlikely you want to contact the new client and advise that you are ill-equipped to deal with what they obviously view as a standard file format.

So you can put your computer experts on the job of determining the correct file format and purchasing the software that uses it, or you can turn to a simple and inexpensive file viewing utility like Quick View Plus. Quick View Plus allows you to locate, view, copy and print virtually any document, even if you don't have the originating application, usually with a simple right click of your mouse. Quick View Plus supports viewing of over 200 different Windows, DOS, Macintosh and Internet file types and since it recognizes the file format, the lawyer does not have to spend any time determining which format was used.

There are many benefits from using a powerful and inexpensive file viewer utility like Quick View Plus aside from the obvious one of not having to invest in numerous software purchases to read numerous file formats. You can copy information from the documents and paste it into a word processor or other application, leaving the original file unaltered. If there was ever a question about whether a document was altered in your law firm, certainly the information that you did not even have the software to open and edit such a document would be of interest.

But, perhaps the most important benefit of using a file viewer has to do with the proliferation of various viruses like the Melissa virus, the Word macro viruses and other macro viruses. It has been considered safe to read incoming e-mail.  When you start opening file attachments you are clearly at risk. Previously, it was only a concern when you opened executable file attachments (those with a file name of something.exe.)1 But the macro viruses can strike when you open some other types of file attachments like infected Microsoft Word files.2 Recent events have suggested certain software "worms" can attach just from reading an infected e-mail in Microsoft Outlook.

Quick View Plus does not open files. It merely allows you to view the files without opening applications or executing macros, thus preventing your computer from catching or spreading macro viruses. No opening of the files equals no transmission of a virus infection. The vast majority of the time when you receive a file in an unusual format, you only want to view or print a file anyway. The producers of Quick View Plus suggest you use it to safely view all e-mail attachments.

A final plus is that this program is shareware. You can try it before you buy it. Download it from www.jasc.com. The trial version expires in 30 days. To continue using it after 30 days, you can purchase the registered version for $59. Just at deadline time, a reliable source advised me that all versions of WordPerfect from 6.1 and on include a version of Quick View Plus that is not loaded during a typical install. You might check your install disks or CD with a custom install to see if you already have this product.

ANTI VIRUS SOFTWARE

File viewers are great and cut down the risk of virus infection on your computer. But they are not a complete guard against virus infection. They also do not give you a method of cleaning up a virus infection. You have to have anti-virus software.

Recently a national e-mail list with more than 600 attorney subscribers received a message with the "Pretty Park" virus attached. When I saw this e-mail, I thought that the name sounded familiar. I did not open the file attachment and instead went to the OBA-NET to review the latest discussion about new viruses. Sure enough, I found the postings about Pretty Park and a link to the Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CAIC) Bulletin3 about the virus. Armed with the information, I decided to prepare a warning to the rest of this list about the virus they had just received. Although I had received the e-mail "live" a few seconds after it was sent and my OBA- NET and CAIC research had just taken about two or three minutes, there were already several warnings posted by other list members.

How did they get the information so quickly? Because they did one dumb thing and one smart thing. The dumb thing was that they immediately tried to open the file attachment to the e-mail that they received without any thought or examination. The smart thing was that they had kept their virus protection files updated regularly and so even though this virus had only been "in the wild" a few weeks, their anti-virus software recognized the virus and stopped it in its tracks, giving them a warning message about the potential threat.

Anti-virus software now has several components, including periodic scanning and the "guard dog" protection function outlined above. Since new viruses appear periodically, the data files that recognize viruses must be regularly updated over the Internet. Virus scanning software starts to look more like a service than a product. There is a time period where you get updates and then you have to re-subscribe. You may have received anti-virus software and the first year of updates free when you purchased your computer.

The two leading anti-virus services/products are Network Associates' McAfee Virus Scan (version 4.0 is the current version) and Symantec's Norton AntiVirus 2000. There are several other lesser-known products. You can read reviews of the various products at several places online. My favorite source for reviews is C|Net. Just go to http://www.cnet.com and type "virus" in the search box.

E-MAIL

You cannot compile a list of useful tools without mentioning e-mail. It is one of the most incredibly useful tools developed in the last 50 years. The subject of e-mail in the law office merits a complete article all its own and, in fact, there will be an article on that topic in the Oklahoma Bar Journal later this year.4 Everything that has made fax machines so indispensable in law offices applies to e-mail as well, except there are no long distance charges and several aspects that make e-mail more powerful.

(Just to illustrate the power of e-mail, while I was finishing up this article, I have exchanged four or five e-mail messages over the last half hour with a friend who happens to be in Mexico. We had a couple of things to discuss and then there were follow-up questions. There are no international dialing codes or long distance to worry about with e-mail.)

The power of e-mail is even more impressive when you need to communicate something to several people at once or when you receive some detailed instructions that you need to forward on to a third party. Using e-mail to review drafts of contracts or articles during collaborative drafting projects is an incredible time saver.

We know that many of you are still avoiding really using e-mail. Almost every week someone's assistant tells us, "Ahh...well, yes, he has an e-mail address...but he doesn't really ......ummm....check it all that often." But we also know how many of you are starting to use it more.

"You need a copy of that 20-page paper? What's your e-mail?.... (Ten second pause).... OK, I just sent it to you." Now that's a real power tool! With no addition to the "Things to Do" list, no bothering the assistant, and no cost (not even a sheet of paper), it is just done.

FILE COMPRESSION UTILITIES

This may sound a bit boring, but this class of handy utilities with names like Netzip, WinZip and PKZip certainly have a place in the lawyer's toolbox. Price will be no object with any of these three products as each retails for $29.95. However, only PKZip has a Mac version.

All of the three utilities are widely available for download online as shareware. Payment of the registration fee typically adds additional features. In fact, a search of one popular Internet site yielded over 100 different file compression/decompression utilities available for download. Most of these are inexpensive shareware. Some of them are free.

Most of you are already familiar with how these programs work. They do date back to the ancient days of DOS and 300 baud modems. The first exposure to these utilities was often when you had a file with that .ZIP filename extension and had to figure out how to open it.

Compression of files was crucial in the old days of slow modems. But it is still a timesaver today. There are many uses - like when you want to copy a 1.5 megabyte file to a 1.44 megabyte floppy disk. It is also very useful when you have five or six documents that need to go together, like for a real estate closing. Zipping all of the documents up into one single file keeps them together. Word processing files compress nicely, too. Sometimes they shrink in size by 65% or 70%. With a 56K modem that's a significant difference in transmission time and with a slower modem it is even more dramatic. File compression can also save a lot of hard drive space when you are storing a lot of files.

One of the advanced features of some of these programs is to create self-extracting zip files. Computer guru Doug Loudenback comments, "Maybe you want to send "zipped" files to someone who hasn't got WinZip or similar software. WinZip Self-Extractor is the answer. By using WinZip Self-Extractor, compressed files can be, well, self-extracted by the other person even though he/she does not have decompression software. Two versions are available: the 'personal' self-extractor that comes with the main WinZip program. If users want to use the program commercially as part of a product they sell, v2.1 WinZip Self-extractor costs $49 as a stand-alone product."

GRAPHIC FILE VIEWERS AND IMAGE EDITORS

A picture is worth a thousand words, and these programs allow you to view and manage thousands of pictures.

Again, these types of utilities date back to the early days of personal computing. Then you had to have a special type of view software to be able to view a digital picture. Now many people just view pictures in their web browser without a thought. But an inexpensive software program can be used for many purposes including cropping photos and editing scanned images. There are dozens of these types of programs online and in the computer software stores.

And, again, we asked Doug Loudenback for his opinion. He indicated that his favorite program was Lview Pro.

"This small and powerful graphics creator/viewer program doesn't begin to match the "big guys" like Corel Draw, BUT, if you need a fast graphics program with lots of powerful features to create or edit graphics files in numerous file formats (as well as making catalogs of graphics files), LViewPro is worth a good hard look. The program has been around for years, and it just keeps getting better but without becoming bloated. For fast creating and/or editing of graphics to insert into word processing documents (or other programs into which graphics can be inserted), this program would be hard to beat. And, the jpeg files it makes are considerably smaller than those rendered by your scanner, for example. Of course, the program has an Acquire feature, so that you can use it with your scanner. I've used it for years, and I wouldn't be without it," according to Mr. Loudenback.

LViewPro is available for $49.50 on CD-ROM or can be downloaded as shareware on a 21-day trial basis from www.lview.com. Other popular programs in this class are Paint Shop Pro, ACDSee and Adobe Photoshop.

REAL PLAYER

Playing video and audio files typically falls more under recreational computing than business use. So we will not cover all of the audio and video players available. They are fun and interesting, and the college student in your family can give you many more details about them than we can. Windows Media Player and Real Player from the RealNetworks, Inc. are two of the best known of these products.

We are going to bend the non-lawyer software rule slightly because we have to comment on the Oyez web site maintained by Northwestern University. Oyez Oyez Oyez is phrase that the Marshal of the U.S. Supreme Court uses to call the courtroom to order. The Oyez project is a "multimedia database" of the U.S. Supreme Court. There is a lot of interesting information about the Supreme Court here. But the most unique thing here is the recordings of many actual Supreme Court oral arguments. You can listen to justices as they interrupt the carefully prepared oral arguments to ask questions. This does require the Real Player software. The Oyez site address is http://oyez.nwu.edu. You can download the free Real Player at www.real.com. Note that the Real Player Plus version is not free. It costs $29.99. Not surprisingly it is very easy to locate the location to download the version for sale, while the free player is downloaded through a tiny link at the bottom of the screen. If you are only going to listen to Supreme Court arguments, the free player will do nicely. When you want to listen to music files you may want to invest in the Plus version.

OBA-NET

We have to mention the bar's own exciting tool for lawyers - OBA-NET.

Where else can you get advice from other lawyers at any hour of the day? Where else can you download many Oklahoma specific forms and files? Where else can you learn about substantive law and law office technology all in one place? Where else can you get the past OBA/CLE manuals? Where else can you learn about online research with the OBA-NET Website of the Week?

We gave a writer from the Internet Law Researcher a temporary press pass to the OBA-NET so she could review the service. Here are her comments:

"This is one fee-based online service for lawyers that's a genuine bargain. My sojourn in OBA-Net almost made me want to become an Oklahoma lawyer, just so I could continue past the term of my press pass."

Is it time for you to invest $100 for a year for one of the Oklahoma lawyer's very best tools?

CONCLUSION

There is no real conclusion here, just a stopping place. We still have not covered several important tools for lawyers, like OCR software, presentation programs and mathematical software. But, we have probably covered more than any of you readers are likely to purchase this month. You may not need all of these tools right now. But, just like the next time you are tempted to use a butter knife to drive a screw, when you do need one of these tools it is certainly handy to know that they are available.

1. Anytime you open an executable file attached to an e-mail, you are opening your computer up to almost all potential damage. Most of these files are harmless, like the various goofy Christmas files that circulate each December, but you just do not know. An executable command could be anything from format the hard drive without asking for a confirmation to delete all files beginning with the letter "P" to send all of your word processing files to everyone in your Outlook address book. At a minimum, it is always a good practice to virus scan any executable file you receive via email before running it.

2. Melissa operated as a Microsoft Word 97 macro virus in conjunction with MS Outlook. When a user opens an infected Word document, the virus would attempt to e-mail a copy of the infected document to up to 50 other people in the user's address book, using Microsoft Outlook e-mail. Thus a new level of threat was reached because the virus could be triggered by merely opening the MS Word 97 document as opposed to running a program. The virus would also insert the phrase "Twenty-two points, plus triple-word-score, plus fifty points for using all my letters. Game's over. I'm outta here" periodically into open documents. It also changed some menu items to hide its activity. Because of technical differences Word Perfect documents are not as susceptible to this kind of virus. This is also true for files that are only viewed and have no macro capability like Adobe PDF files or JPG images. But virus designers, for whatever unfathomable reasons, continue to develop new viruses.

3. This authoritative site is the first place to check when you get those e-mail warnings about viruses that usually turn out to be hoaxes. The address is http://www.ciac.org. It is operated by the U.S. Department of Energy. It no longer has a database of viruses, having left that to the private anti-virus companies. But it does have a list of the ever-circulating virus hoaxes (e.g. Good Times, Takes Guts to Say Jesus, et al.) and links to the commercial sites.

4. Previous OBA Management Assistance Program articles, including law office software buying guides, are available online.

Originally published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal April 8, 2000 - Vol. 71; No. 12