Do It Yourself Stock Certificates

Here's a tighwad technology tip for those of you who are paying for pre-packaged incoporation paperwork kits from vendors. Recently an Oklahoma Bar member inquired about an inexpensive way to create stock certificates in-house when a lawyer does an incorporation for a client. I did a quick search on the Microsoft website and found a really nice Word template for stock certificates that is available for free download. Since it is a Microsoft Word template, you (or someone in your office) should be able to easily customize it to change style or colors or add any language needed in your jurisdiction. Check it out.

ABA's Economic Recovery Resources

Hat's off to the ABA for posting its Economic Recovery Resources page. This is especially timely as I was reading on a blog yesterday a claim that the ABA wasn't doing much to help lawyers in troubled times. It has features on job searching, career transitioning, professional development, stress management and more. Considering my area of interest, I urge you to check out the practice management section. There are links to many really good articles on practice management. It is like the greatest hits on practice management culled from several ABA publications. Regular readers of my blog have seen several of these. But whether you are experiencing the downturn directly or not, an hour spent reading these articles will give you a lot of great ideas to improve your practice.

A Bounty of Law Practice Tips

I try to bring you lots of different tips to allow you to practice law better. But it is rare that I get to pass along so many tips at one time. That is because the March 2009 edition of Law Practice Magazine is once again a technology tips theme issue. 

The idea is to promote ABA TECHSHOW. The result is a great collection of tips on everything from e-discovery to paperless practice to expanding your web presence to easy online collaboration.

You really don't want to miss this issue of Law Practice Magazine. To make sure you don't miss future useful issues, you can either join the ABA Law Practice Management Section if you are an ABA member or subscribe to Law Practice magazine if you are not.

Meanwhile, enjoy the great content in the online version of  the magazine.

Google May Have Quite a Loud Google Voice

There is a lot of buzz about the latest Google offering, Google Voice. I was pretty excited when I heard that it was going to offer free transcription of voicemail into text. How many times are you in a situation where you can't take a call or listen to a voice mail, but you could surreptitiously look at a text message or e-mail on the phone? Maybe you could even text instructions to your staff like "Call Mr. Smith. Calm him down. Tell him I am in depo and get # where he will be at 6 pm for me to call."

But then I read David Pogue's New York Times column, One Number to Ring Them All.  I hadn't subscribed to GrandCentral before Google bought it and closed it off for new sign-ups. Pogue gives us the history of GrandCentral and weaves it together with the features of the new GoogleVoice to make the case that this could be the new phone service "killer app." Not only is there voicemail to text, but it includes free conference calls, cheap international calls and organization and retention of text messages. (More places for lawyers to look for Electronically Stored Information [ESI].) I know there are some tense and serious meetings this week at other companies that are offering service in this space. I also know some privacy advocates won't be happy with this development. But, for me, I'm just waiting for the folks at Google to do final beta tweaking with the Grand Central users and open Google Voice up to the rest of us.

Lifehacker's Best of 2008

Sometiomes I try to do some end-of-the-year law office technology roundups. But lately I've been more focused on issues relating to practicing law in a "tough" economy. So, while it is not law-related, here's quite a collection from LifeHacker in its Best of 2008 feature. Among the offerings are Most Popular Free Downloads for Mac, Windows and Linux, Most Popular How-To Features,  Most Popular Do-It-Yourself Projects of 2008 (and All Time),  Most Underhyped Apps of 2008, Best New and Improved Software of 2008 and others. Go geek out!  

Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User

I sometimes wonder how productive we all would be if we all got really good training on the technology we use. I sometimes cringe when I see someone trying to "lasso" a word to select it instead of just double clicking on it or someone grabbing the mouse to click on the menu bar for something instead of just using a keybaord shortcut. Then there are those who forward a false e-mail to hundreds of colleagues because they didn't know to "Snopes-cize" it first.

Check out David Pogue's latest column, Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User. I'll bet you find something there that "everyone knows," but you didn't. Years ago many of these were fodder for "Tips" sessions at legal technology conferences like ABA TECHSHOW. But a surprising number of people still do things the slow way every day. Forward the link to this column to some (or all) of your co-workers.

Update: The blog version of his column allows comments from readers. It is online at this location. Since noon today, the moderator has approved 238 comments from others submitting their favorite tech tips.

Digital Edge Podcast Hosts Outlook Guru Ben Schorr

I forgot to mention earlier that the August edition of our podcast, the Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology, is an interview with Ben Schorr, author of The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft® Outlook 2007. I've known Ben for several years now and Sharon Nelson and I had fun interviewing him. Listen to the podcast to get a few Outlook tips without buying the book. But, you will probably decide to buy the book if and when you get Outlook 2007. I have to admit Outlook 2007 has been one of my favorite upgrades of the year.

Dragon Dictate Naturally Speaking Preferred Ver. 10 Released

Nuance released Dragon Dictate Naturally Speaking Preferred Ver. 10 earlier this summer. I just placed my order and will receive my upgrade next week. Nuance is offering a half price for upgrade until the end of September, 2008. That's $99 for Preferred Edition, instead of $199.

So I can't review the program just yet. So, I'm going to call on a guest columnist (unknown to him of course), David Pogue, the personal technology columnist for The New York Times. The executive summary is that he likes it. You can read his review: Speak Up, a Computer Is Listening. It looks like there have been some nice improvements made.

For a more visual demonstration, view his online video review of DNS P10. It features, yes, you guessed it, David Pogue with his hands tied behind his back. That's probably as convincing a case for the Dragon as anyone can make.

Speech recognition is not for everyone, particularly fast and accurate typists. But for many of us, Dragon Dictate Naturally Speaking Preferred long ago crossed the line from novelty product to useful (and used) office tool. I did locate a 10% off promotion code with a search if that helps anyone. Get the code here.

50 Tricks to Get Things Done Faster, Better, and More Easily

There are literally tons of books published on increasing your productivity and improving your time management skills. There are numerous classes, blogs, (I noted 100 of them not long ago.) websites, coaches and other resources to give advice in this area. 50 Tricks to Get Things Done Faster, Better, and More Easily is a quick treatment of much of the advice you would learn from these other resources. You can't try all of these at once or you'd overdose on productivity. But you can pick three or four that you willing to try and save the link for future reference.

100 Productivity and Lifehack Blogs

Just as there are many self-help books on the shelves of book stores, there are a growing number of blogs dedicated to doing things better. I think you will enjoy looking through this list of 100 Productivity and Lifehack Blogs compiled by a website promoting online college degrees. I can't really completely agree with their rankings as they omitted Lifehacker from the most popular and stuck it at the end of the list. It is typically ranked in the top (or second) spot in this category and as one of the five most popular blogs on the entire Internet. (It's also my personal favorite.) But one can find some really great productivity resources here like 43 Folders, Dumb Little Man and Zen Habits.