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Maximizing Your E-Potential
By Jacob Williams
Opening a solo law practice is quite daunting. I have to admit,
when I first made the decision to hang a shingle and go out on my
own, I had many concerns. Number one was financing, number two was
financing and number three was financing.
Obviously, there were many other concerns at that time as well.
However, one concern I did not have was how to maintain a competitive
edge against firms with more resources. I had the Internet, knew
how to use it and planned to use it to its maximum potential. I also
planned on doing so without it costing me a dime. Surprisingly, doing
so was relatively easy.
Three of the Internet’s resources offered for free that I
adopted were RSS feeds, electronic monitoring (e-monitoring) and
electronic alerts (e-alerts). They have now established themselves
as the wave of the future. If you do not employ them in your practice,
you are putting yourself at a disadvantage.
Oklahoma attorneys already have the benefit of the Oklahoma State
Courts Network (OSCN), found at www.oscn.net. One of the most, if
not the most, comprehensive state court Web sites available,
OSCN is free to all users. Not only does it offer an impressive search
engine, allowing Oklahoma case law, statutes and jury instructions
to be easily located, but it also allows monitoring of litigation
dockets and Oklahoma Appellate Court decisions. When used in conjunction
with free Web-based services, OSCN can become a very powerful tool
for any attorney.
Of the three resources discussed here, the two most beneficial Web-based
services that can be used in conjunction with OSCN are RSS feeds
and e-monitoring. E-alerts are better used to follow law and rule
changes or
monitor specific search engine criteria.
Your Personal Wire
A RSS Feed is a Web feed to which one subscribes that updates the
subscriber as soon as the updates are published online. The process
of subscribing is sometimes referred to as syndicating or aggregating.
Just consider it a personal newswire. These updates can cover a multitude
of content, ranging from articles and essays to podcasts.
In order to receive a RSS feed, subscription through a newsreader,
sometimes referred to as a news aggregator, is necessary. There are
many RSS newsreaders available for download online. Web sites such
as Yahoo!, Google and AOL all offer Web-based newsreaders for free.
An extensive list of RSS newsreaders can be found at http://allrss.com/rssreaders.html,
or for a more user friendly selection visit the OBA’s very
own Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips Blog at http://jimcalloway.typepad.com,
a great resource with its very own RSS feed.
To monitor recent decisions from Oklahoma’s Appellate
Courts, a simple feed subscription to a specific court’s decisions
is all that is required. OSCN has listed these feeds at http://www.oscn.net/Applications/OSCN/rss.asp and
broken them down into Oklahoma Appellate Courts - All Recent Decisions,
Oklahoma Supreme Court Opinions, Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals Opinions,
Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals Opinions and Oklahoma Attorney General Opinions.
Based on the subscribed feed, updates will be received through a
newsreader as soon as a new decision is published online through
OSCN. As an example, on Sept. 4, 2006, the most recent Oklahoma Supreme
Court decision was made on Aug. 31, 2006 in the case of In re:
Initiative Petition No. 379, 2006 OK 60. By reviewing my subscription,
I know that the case involved an initiative petition begun as a taxpayers
bill of rights, or TABOR, in which the Oklahoma Supreme Court decided
that the petition failed due to the “numerical insufficiency
of signers” and because “[t]he evidence supports substantial
illegal participation of out-of-state circulators.” (Id.
at ¶ 1.)
The E-Monitoring Advantage
Not all Web sites offer RSS feeds. Even if the Web site offers a
feed, it is most likely not practical to offer a feed for each page
it hosts.
E-monitoring is the perfect solution for such instances. By monitoring a page
electronically, notices are received anytime the page is
updated.
The aptly named WatchThatPage.com, www.watchthatpage.com, is a wonderful
resource for monitoring Web sites. It provides users the ability
to monitor Web sites for changes made to a specific page. Normally,
if a page were to be updated, discovering the change would require
manual navigation to the page in order to notice the change. No more.
WatchThatPage.com works by telling the service what pages to watch.
It then sends an e-mail notice whenever the page being watched is
changed.
This is extremely beneficial when monitoring OSCN’s docket
system. By telling WatchThatPage.com which cases to watch, keeping
on top of a file is easier than ever. Has an application been filed
in a criminal case? Has opposing counsel filed a motion in limine asking
to exclude key evidence? Has a ruling been made on said motion? WatchThat
Page.com is the key to knowing as soon as it is put online.
The features offered by WatchThatPage.com are fully customizable.
The options include: selecting to receive an e-mail for each page
being watched with a customized heading; lumping all of the changed
pages into one e-mail; having the changes listed in the e-mail with
a link to the page; having only the link to the page e-mailed setting
keywords to determine what changes are sent; and setting the frequency
and time of the e-mails.
WatchThatPage.com also allows easy selection of the pages to be
watched by using its bookmark and favorites feature. Supported by
all major Windows Web browsers, this feature allows the addition
of a page to a watch list while on the actual page. No need to copy
the site address, go to WatchThatPage.com and then paste it. WatchThatPage.com
can do it all from the site to be monitored.
The only true drawback is training the site to ignore OSCN’s
daily updates. It is easy to do and doesn’t take long using
WatchThat
Page.com’s Page Problem Wizard. However, it is required once for each
case being watched, so depending on the number of cases
being watched, it could take a little bit of time initially. After that, it
works superbly.
WatchThatPage.com offers its services for free, but for priority
service, a nominal
contribution of $20 is necessary. Since the contribution is good for an entire
year, it is well worth it.
So What’s New?
E-Alerts are alerts e-mailed to a user at their request.
By subscribing to a Web site’s e-alert and submitting an e-mail
address, e-mail notices are received when a new alert is issued.
Many e-alerts are offered by Web sites themselves. These include
official government sites such as the United States Government Printing
Office found at http://listserv.access.gpo.gov/ and
the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma at http://www.oknd.
uscourts.gov/, which is actually referred to as an e-newsletter. There
are also unofficial sites that monitor government activities that
provide e-alerts such as GovTrack, www.govtrack.us,
and PatentAlert, www.patentalert.com.
Another way of receiving e-alerts is through Web sites such as Yahoo!
and Google. These search engines allow the monitoring of searches
to pull up new results that show up within the top categories. This
is an excellent way of monitoring searches beneficial to law firms.
As the alerts are limited only to one’s searching abilities,
it would be beneficial to learn the respective search engine’s
advanced search features. Although a semi-steep learning curve, the
end results more than make up for it. Think of it as a Westlaw or
Lexis-Nexis search query on steroids.
Ctrl+Alt+Delete, or the End
With these three resources, any firm can streamline many of their
processes and cut internal costs. Knowledge is power and, with these
tools, the power is available freely to anyone willing to embrace
it. That is if your legal secretary lets you read this article.
About the Author
Jacob Williams is a solo practitioner focusing his practice primarily
on personal injury, workers’ compensation and Social Security
Disability. An undergraduate from Northeastern State University,
he received his J.D. from the TU College of Law. He is a member of
the Oklahoma Trial Lawyers Association and recently assisted OTLA
with the successful Trial Lawyers Are Cool campaign to provide low-income
families with air conditioning units.
Maximizing Your E-Potential
Published 77 OBJ 3103 (Nov. 4, 2006)
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