Author Archives

    Bryan Sims

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    The Coolest Record on Appeal Ever

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    I spent the first two and one half years of my professional life working as a staff attorney for our state appellate court. Thereafter, I had the opportunity to spend a little more than a year clerking for a justice on the Illinois Supreme Court. The upshot of this is that I love working on appeals. Unfortunately, because of the high percentage of cases that get settled, I rarely get to work on an appeal.

    Recently, however, we had a case pending in federal court in the Central District of Illinois in which the district court granted a motion to dismiss. As a result, we have an appeal pending before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. One of the questions we had was how we were going to get a copy of the record on appeal from the District Court. For those of you unfamiliar with Illinois geography, the Central District of Illinois (Springfield Division) is not exactly close to our office.

    We contacted the clerk, who told us what paperwork we needed to file to have them send the record on appeal. I was relieved. We didn’t have to worry about trying to get the record from Springfield to our office. The clerk would just send it to us. I figured this was great. I would file the required paperwork and in a few days I would get the record on appeal in the mail.

    Things did not happen as I expected. However, unlike most times, this was a good thing. I filed the repaired paperwork on a Friday. The following Monday, a copy of the record on appeal showed up in my inbox. That’s right, the clerk had assembled the record on appeal from the filed PDFs, electronically stamped the documents, and then emailed me the record.

    This was absolutely awesome and I was thrilled to see it. Not only did it mean that I had the record almost instantaneously, it also means that I didn’t have to worry about scanning the record in for myself, plus, I don’t have to worry about returning it. It’s not as though I have the only copy that exists. I have an electronic copy. I hope that this is a trend that we see more of in the near future.

    I love working on appeals anyway, but working on this appeal was a real pleasure for me.

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    Vonage v. Comcast Voice: There is No Contest

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    We have had Vonage for our home telephone service since November 29, 2003. From then until now, I have loved it.The service has been consistently good, I have never had any problems, and the features are great. Our two favorite features were the silmuring feature, which allows any call to the house to also ring my wife’s cell phone, and the voicemail feature, which automatically emails a wav file of any received voicemail to us.

    Recently, in an effort to reduce costs, we opted to switch our phone service to Comcast Digital Voice, as part of their Triple Play bundle. For some reason, I was expecting similar service. I was wrong.

    First, although Comcast offers call forwarding, it does not offer simulring. Inquiries with Comcast have revealed that they have no intention of offering simulring in the foreseeable future. Fine, I knew this going in, I just didn’t expect the call forwarding to be as difficult to remember to do as it has become. This has made us realize how simple and easy to use simulring has been. If this were the only problem, however, we would probably stick it out with Comcast.

    However, the voicemail system is awful. First, when we receive a voicemail,  we  get a voicemail from Comcast telling us that we have received a voicemail. Unlike with Vonage, we do not get an audio copy of the voicemail. We just get a notification that we have a voicemail. We actually have to go to Comcast’s website to listen to the voicemail. This is a problem for two reasons.

    First, getting an email with the voicemail attachment is quite convenient when we are away from the house. We can retrieve the voicemail in our email and listen to it with our smartphone, all with just a couple of clicks. With Comcast, however, we have to go from the email, to Comcast’s website to access the voicemail. This is a convoluted process and there is no reason for it. Second, the link in the Comcast email that is supposed to take us to the voicemail, never does. After we click on the link, we always have to end up manually signing into Comcast’s webpage to find and access the voicemail.

    That brings me to the next complaint that I have. The webpage is terrible to try to navigate. When I first set up the service I had to go to multiple pages to set my preferences for my account. There is no easy way to get around and the titles for the various sections don’t really relate to what is going on in that section of the webpage. The one thing Comcast has done with their webpage is ensure that I truly appreciate the simplicity and easy navigation offered by Vonage’s webpage.

    If all of this were not bad enough, I suffered a final indignity at the hands of Comcast. When Comcast came and installed our service and one of their cable modems (we have to use a Comcast modem because it also has the telephone ports on it), the installer stole my cable modem. He didn’t even ask if the modem was mine or if I was renting one from Comcast. He just walked off with my cable modem. I am still flabbergasted by this.

    In sum, we switched our home phone service to Comcast for less than a month. Despite the savings, we are in the process of switching that service back to Vonage. I know that not everyone is thrilled with Vonage, so your mileage may vary. For me and my house, however, there is no contest.

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    A Great Opportunity to Improve Your Acrobat Skills

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    Rick Borstein just announced that he is presenting 3-hour Acrobat demonstrations in Chicago, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Seattle. If you work in or near one of these cities and want to improve your Acrobat skills, you should take advantage of this opportunity. I have seen Rick present several times, and he always does a great job.

    I believe that Acrobat is one of the most underused programs available. Use this opportunity to change that fact in your office.

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    Yes! A New Convert

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    When I find someone else who has converted to a multiple monitor set up, I feel a completely irrational rush of happiness. No, there is no rational explanation for this. However, multiple monitors provide such an efficiency boost that I think everyone should use them.

    Recently, The Greatest American Lawyer has started drinking the Kool Aid. As Enrico explains:

    I’m quite ashamed to say that, for all of my talk about being a high-tech law firm, I am only now setting up two monitors for my laptop computer at work.  There is no doubt, no controversy and no contrary argument to the simple fact that two monitors are better than one.Two monitors all you to eliminate the amount of scrolling and window switching and allows you to mix and match your browsers as well as help organize your desktop and increase productivity.

    He even provides some links to articles from PC World, CNN Money and others that extol the virtues of using multiple monitors.

    Isn’t it time for you to upgrade to multiple monitors? Come on, all of the cool kids are doing it.

    Just because I happened to have my camera with me, below is a picture of my multiple monitor set up.

    multimonitors

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    Protecting Your Bates Numbers

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    One of my favorite features in Adobe Acrobat is its ability to add Bates numbers to hundreds of pages in less than a minute. Another great feature built into the Bates numbering feature is that, because Acrobat stores the Bates numbering information as metadata, it allows you to remove the Bates number from the documents. This is particularly convenient if you find that you want to reorder your documents before you produce your documents to the other side.

    The downside of this flexibility, of course, is the fact that if you send these documents to someone else, then they can also modify your Bates numbers. Fortunately, this issue is one that is easy to solve and Rick Borstein explains how in a post on his Acrobat for Legal Professionals Blog. As Rick explains:

    The ability to remove Bates Numbers is valuable in case you make a mistake during the numbering process. However, due to the adversarial nature of the legal business, attorneys may desire to limit what the other side can do with documents.

    * * *

    In this article, I’ll discuss how to “lock down” Bates Numbers so that they cannot be removed by Acrobat’s “Remove Bates” option.

    In his post, Rick explains to how protect your Bates numbers in both a single documents and in multiple documents. Check out the entire post for his easy to follow instructions.

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    Where to Get Free Photos

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    When I prepare a PowerPoint presentation, one of the most difficult things for me is typically finding good pictures that I can use as visuals in my presentation. Just to make things difficult, when doing this, I prefer to use photos that I have the right to use. Matt Homann (who always has great advice) links to a post that provides 37 paces to get free stock photos. Matt also provides a link to his two favorite places to get photos: Every Stock Photo and Stock.xchng.

    So, the next time you are in need of a photo, you now have some resources you can use to find the perfect picture to represent your point.

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    More Word Tips

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    John Heckman has recently gathered together some links to site with tips on how to use Microsoft Word more effectively. These include a link to 221 MS Word Keyboard Shortcuts. I cannot stress how advantageous using keyboard shortcuts can be for you. Not only does it allow you to increase your typing speed (because your fingers do not leave the keyboard), but it also keeps you from using the mouse (most people do not have an ergonomically friendly mouse).

    The comments also contain a link to CompuSavvy’s Word & WordPerfect Tips, which contains a variety of tips to help with problems in both Word and WordPerfect.

    The important thing to remember is that if you are having problems with Word, don’t bash your head against the desk. Chances are that there is someone who has encountered the same problem that you have and has posted a solution to that problem. Checking sites such as these as well as doing a little google research will often allow your to ferret out the answer to your problem.

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    The 5 Stages of Techno Grief

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    Nicole Black has posted a great article analogizing lawyers adopting technology to the five stages of grief. As Nicole explains:

    In many ways, the legal profession’s response to technology, and online technologies in particular, can be likened to Kübler- Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance.

    The legal profession’s reaction to technology follows a similar path: denial, defiance, desperation, deployment, and then, at long last, dedication.

    A few trailblazers, mostly solos and small firms, have worked through the process and are now reaping the benefits of technology and all that it has to offer. Unfor- tunately, the vast majority of the profession is currently stuck in the middle of the process.

    The sad part is that she is absolutely right. I see attorneys who constantly do everything they can to avoid adopting technology. I love how Nicole describes the denial stage:

    Until very recently, the majority of the legal profession was blissfully clueless about Internet technologies, their collective heads buried in the sand. Most attorneys seemed to think the Internet was a passing trend, and if they ignored it, it would eventually disappear.

    Go here to read the rest of her spot on analysis. Although I think the acceptance phase may be just a little farther off than Nicole anticipates.