Author Archives

    Bryan Sims

    Posted on

    My Tip for the Day: Don’t Create Stupid Rules

    by

    My wife and I are in the process of refinancing some rental property that we own. Because we have all of our information in a digital format, we were able to send our financial info, tax info, etc., to the bank electronically. In response, the bank sent us an application that they wanted us to complete and sign. The app was emailed to use. My wife completed and we each simply stamped our signatures on the application and returned it to the bank. I am sure that this was not what the bank anticipated when they asked for our signatures, but I wasn’t terribly concerned about this.

    This morning, we get an email from the bank. They can’t process our loan applications because we didn’t initial a line that appears just above our signatures. Yes, that is right. They have no problems with the signatures. But they must have actual written initials on the page before they can actually do anything with our application.

    When the loan officer was asked for the reason for this. He admitted that he didn’t know why this was required. He just knew that it was.

    I want to emphasize that this was an initial on a separate page to verify the info there, or anything like that. No, it was initials directly above our signatures.

    The point I want to make here is that when you create rules, you should make sure that the rules have some rational basis or justification. Don’t create rules that must be blindly followed simply because someone once thought up the rule.

    Posted on

    The Cost of Not Going Digital

    by

    The Greatest American Lawyer posted today on the Cost Savings in Going Digital. If you have not yet made the move to keeping all of your documents digitally, I recommend that you check out this post. The post explains:

    I’m often asked how much money it will cost in staff and time to scan in all of the documents which are generated from outside our own office onto our file server.  Essentially, people want to know whether or not a paperless law office will save, or cost, them money.

    There’s no doubt that it takes people and time to scan in documents.

    He goes on to observe

    Scanning documents is a multi-step project.  Obviously, someone has to stand at the scanner and scan them in.  That person then has to pull the document from a common scanning file and place it on the file server under the correct client/matter.  Quality control requires that the person confirm that all pages have in fact been scanned.  This does take time.

    However, this time is more than made up on the back end. The post continues:

    Once the documents are scanned, however, there is lots of time saved on the back-end.  I never have to ask my staff to find me a hard copy of any document, pull a file or engage in host of related administrative activities.  My overall sense is that the amount of time it takes to scan the documents is far less than the amount of time spent in a paper-based office retrieving and organizing physical files.

    I cannot agree with these observations more. My ability to retrieve any document, from any case, at any time, is absolutely invaluable. I cannot calculate the amount of time that I save on a daily basis simply by being able to immediately retrieve any document that I need.

    In my experience, the only way to make this transition is to start scanning everything today. Scan every document that comes in to your office. As you work, you will identify that prior documents that you should add to your digital collection as well.

    I will not tell you that the transition to a digital world will be painless. However, I can assure that it will be worth every bit of pain that you may endure. In fact, the majority of the “pain” that I endured in the transition period was the fact that I got too used to having the digital documents and I became frustrated when I had to pull a physical file to retrieve an older document that had not yet been scanned.

    I have yet to meet anyone who has transferred to a digital practice that regrets it at all.

    Posted on

    The Mobile Law Firm

    by

    At The Illinois Trial Practice Weblog, Evan Schaeffer reports that he and his wife, Andrea Lamere, are spending the month in Arentina. Given that their firm consists of Evan and Andrea, some people may be wondering about how they are keeping their practice going while they are both in Argentina.

    In his post, Evan reports that the ubiquitos nature of wi-fi in Buenos Aires makes it easy for him to work while there. He reports he is using services such as Skype, iPhone, MyFax, Google Calendar, Google Notebook, and Slingbox to keep in touch with home.

    Read his entire post here. It’s a nice primer on how to practice while away from home.

    I would also note that all of the services that Evan talks about are useful even if you don’t leave the country. For example, I use an electronic faxing service to receive my faxes. I will never go back to having only a fax machine. It is simply too convenient to be able to receive my faxes anywhere that I have internet access.

    Posted on

    Google Maps in the Courtroom

    by

    I was in court this morning waiting for my case to be called. The judge was hearing a short argument over how much access and expert needed to a private home to render his opinion. To demonstrate the situation, one of the attorneys had brought in some pictures of the houses at issue.

    While the attorneys were arguing, the judge asked for the address of the property at issue and then pulled that up on Google Maps. She asked the attorneys if the map accurately depicted the homes at issue, both attorneys agreed that it did.

    From my perspective, the great aspects of this situation are that the judge actually had a computer on the bench that was connected to the internet and that she was not afraid to use it to resolve the discovery dispute between the parties.

    Had she pulled this up during a trial and used it to issue her ruling, there would likely be some evidentirary issues. Here, however, this was a discovery dispute that she was able to resolve more efficiently because she was better able to accurately picture the property in question.

    Posted on

    Let Mail Goggles Save You

    by

    One of the things I love about Google is that they aren’t afraid to try something. They almost always have some cool new feature coming out of their labs. One of the latest is Mail Goggles. Named after Beer Goggles, Mail Goggles is a feature in GMail that requires you to perform a series of simple math problems before sending an email.

    In the default setting, the feature is enabled only on Friday and Saturday nights between the hours of 10 pm and 4 am. The idea is that you may not be in the best frame of mind if you are sending emails at that time of night. On the other hand, Google figures that if you have the thinking skills to solve a few math problems, you can probably decide for yourself whether to send the email.

    You can activate Mail Goggles from selecting Setting > Labs from you Gmail screen. Best of all, there are a bunch of additional lab feature that you can choose from in that same tab. Take a stroll through these features and see which you would like to enable in your Gmail account.

    Posted on

    The 20th Century Strikes Again

    by

    When I checked my mail at home today I found a two inch thick book that was a gift from my alma mater. The book is an alumni directory. And yes, my undergrad is small enough that all of the alumni can fit in a single book.

    When I realized what this was, I was struck by the absurdity of it. I can’t imagine how much money the school spent to compile it, to print it, and to mail it to everyone. Despite the fact that I just received it, I have no doubt that it is out of date and it will simply continue to grow more out of date as time passes, simply because people move and change jobs.

    On top of that, is the fact that it is flat data, when there is no reason that it should be. Why should I have to thumb through a book to find someone’s information. It would be much easier for me if I could search for it. Speaking of searching, if I want to find a woman that I graduated with, I either have to know her married name or I have to the year she graduated and read each name until I find hers (because of course the graduating year information is organized by last name with the maiden name in parentheses).

    Why isn’t this information in an alumni section on the website rather than in some dead tree version in my kitchen? Why do I have to wade through pages of names instead of simply searching for names in a database? Why can’t I pull up a list of all of the alumni who live in my city, my state, or within 10 miles of me? Why can’t I pull up a list of alumni who are doctors, or lawyers, or plumbers? Why can’t I find alumni who also attended my law school?

    This could be a really cool feature. As it stands, however, it is practically worthless. I would love to see a useful Web 2.0 version this directory. Instead, what I got was the same thing that could have been handed to the first incoming class in 1954.

    Posted on

    Safely Using Wi-Fi

    by

    The Consumerist has a great post titled The Idiot-Proof Way to Securely Use Public Wi-Fi. The article discusses a variety of VPN solutions to protect your privacy when you are using a public wi-fi connection. I have a VPN through my work. Thus I have not tried any of the listed programs. However, because I am a fan of open source software, I was intrigued with the discussion of OpenVPN. If you want to check it out, it can be found here.

    Posted on

    Basic Tech Tips

    by

    One thing I have noticed is that the shortcuts people use to make their computing lives easier are usually things that someone else has showed them or, more typically, something they discovered by accident. I can remember freaking myself out the first time I moved my scroll wheel with my Ctrl key depressed. At the time, I had no idea that it changed the display in my browser.

    In a recent post, David Pogue has put together his list of basic computer tips. The tips he lists are useful and definitely worthy of reading. Even better, however, his comments are open and he has invited others to provide their tips as well. At this point, there are almost 1,000 comments, the majority of which contain handy tips of their own.

    This post from David should be required reading for everyone.

    My favorites from David’s list:

    You can double-click a word to highlight it in any document, e-mail or Web page.

    Nobody, but nobody, is going to give you half of $80 million to help them liberate the funds of a deceased millionaire…from Nigeria or anywhere else.

    You can tap the Space bar to scroll down on a Web page one screenful. Add the Shift key to scroll back up.

    Posted on

    Has Anyone Tried Box.net?

    by

    Google Docs and Zoho seem to be getting all of the press for online document creation and collaboration. I recently discovered an additional service Box.net. Box.net allows you to upload files and store them on their server. Additionally, you can edit these documents online as well as share them with anyone you wish.

    Box.net is primarly a online storage, access, and collaboration, service. As a consequence, it uses Zoho to edit documents and Picnik to edit pictures.

    Box.net offers four different plans, including a free plan with 1GB of storage as well as a paid plan at $19.95 a month for 15GB of storage.

    A cool feature that I like about the service is that you can access it from a web enabled cell phone.

    I have just signed up for the service and haven’t had a chance to really try it out yet. I would be curious to hear from anyone who has experience with the service.