The Mac Lawyer : Ben Stevens : Using Macs In The Practice Of Law

It is no secret that I have been a big fan of Marketcircle's Daylite for quite some time.  In fact, I have posted several articles (here, here, and here) promoting Daylite as a viable option for other attorneys.  I have used Daylite as our office's case management program for almost two years, and it has done a great job during that time.  It is easy to learn, easy to use, and it just works without problems ... until now, that is.

I downloaded Daylite's new update  (v. 3.5.1) last Thursday, and since doing so I have had problems, which worsened on Friday.  These problems are of the type that make it very difficult to impossible to do any of my daily tasks/functions in Daylite.  When you have any software that becomes the part of the backbone of your practice, any problems quickly become major problems.

Daylite offers free technical support by email, but they state that they "aim to answer your emails within 2 - 4 business days."  I emailed tech support on Friday afternoon explaining the problems that we are having and to request assistance.  I received a somewhat generic email response within a few hours, but it seemed that the person that sent the email did not understand the problem I had described.  At least it asked me to supply additional information, which I promptly did.  I have not yet received any additional contact from Marketcircle.

I am posting this information to keep my readers informed as to how well Marketcircle's tech support resolves these issues and enables us to resume working at full speed.  Hopefully, I will be able to post very soon that all problems have been resolved and how well their tech support people handled these problems. Either way, I will let you keep you posted on how things develop -- good, bad, or other.

Update  ::  10.1.07

I received an email from Marketcircle Tech Support late this morning ago with some proposed solutions to the problems that we are having.  I have implemented the steps that they have recommended, and the results have been mixed.  It initially seemed that one of the main problems was fixed to the point that we could resume working in our database, but the problem has since returned.  I have updated Marketcircle as to the mixed results and ongoing problems, and I hope to get further updates and fixes from them.  Either way, I will keep updating this post as things develop.

Update  ::  10.2.07

I was not able to update the status again yesterday for two reasons:  (1) Mondays are always very busy in a family law practice, with yesterday being unusually so; and (2) these technical problems have hindered my efficiency, and it's taking a lot longer to do virtually everything than it was before these problems began.

Marketcircle's tech support called me a few times yesterday afternoon to have me attempt several possible resolutions and to get some additional information from me.  To their credit, they seem to be working hard to resolve these problems.  In fact, the tech support person that I spoke with stayed at his office until after 6:00 p.m. working on this problem.

The last thing I did last night was upload our entire Daylite database to Marketcircle so that they could try to get a better handle on the problems and come up with a solution.  I am simultaneously very appreciative of their efforts and very ready to have these problems behind me so that I can get my office back up to working at full speed.  I will update again later today after I hear back from Marketcircle.

Update  ::  10.3.07

Over the course of yesterday, two things happened:  (1) our problems got worse, to the point that we were not able to do anything in Daylite for a period of a few hours, and (2) Marketcircle's tech support and software engineers worked steadily and diligently to find a resolution to these problems.

I am thrilled to announced that early yesterday evening, Marketcircle found a way to resolve the problems we were having, and we're now back up to full speed as of last night.  I am not sure exactly what happened to cause the problems, and frankly I'm not sure that they are either, as my situation was apparently unique.  I am not so much concerned as the "why" it happened as I am glad that it is behind us.

I want to extend my sincere thanks to the folks at Marketcircle (particularly Matthew) for all of their hard work to solve this problem.  They stayed after hours on several days to find a resolution, and they even checked with me afterward to make sure that everything was working as it should.  Support like that is hard to come by in today's world, and I want them to know how much I appreciate all of their efforts.

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An article published in ComputerWorld late last week compared the iPhone with other new competition in the business phone arena.  This article asked "Is the iPhone  as good as its hype?"

An expert, Perceptive Sciences, was asked to examine and compare the iPhone with the HTC Touch and the Nokia N95.  The result was that "when it comes to usability, the iPhone does, indeed, live up to its hype."

The scoring was not even close.  The iPhone's overall score in the usability tests was 4.6 out of 5, whereas the HTC Touch scored only 3.4 and the Nokia N95 scored only 3.2.  You can read the full text of this article by clicking HERE.

Source:  "Usability Tests Show Apple's iPhone Blows Away The Competition" published at MacDailyNews.
 

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Several months ago, I posted a way to connect a Mac notebook computer to the internet using a Bluetooth telephone.  I have been using this method for quite some time, and it works flawlessly.

One of the reasons I was hesitating to get an iPhone was because I didn't want to lose the ability to use my cell phone as a wireless modem from time to time.  Well, I now have one less excuse, because the folks at Dragon Forged have figured out how to do just that.

The step-by-step illustrated instructions are listed HERE, and of course, this method is completely free!  Thanks to those guys and gals for their efforts in figuring out how to do this and for sharing it with the rest of us.

Note:  I am still waiting on the 3G iPhone to be released before I get one, so I have not tested this method myself.

Source:  "Tethering the iPhone for OS X" posted at the Dragon Forged blog.  Thanks also to Finis Price of the TechnoEsq blog for pointing out this information at the Macs in Law Offices (MILO) group.

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If you need to send multiple attachments to an email, you should check out Attaché, an AppleScript droplet by Martin Michel.  This add-in quickly creates an new email with all the attachments included and listed.  You can put Attaché anywhere you like, though the Desktop and Dock seem the most logical locations, and then simply select the files you want to send and drop them onto it.  Best of all, Attaché is free and can be downloaded by clicking here.

Source: "Attaché: Droplet for Quick Mail.app Attachment Lists" by Tim Gaden, published at his excellent Hawk Wings blog.

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I have previously posted about Keynote being vastly superior to PowerPoint.   There is a detailed comparison of these two programs at The Trial Technologist's View blog, which includes insightful analysis and videos highlighting the differences in the following areas:  layout, graphics engine, slide transitions, image transitions, image manipulation, charts/tables, video importing, and exporting. This blog is written by a trial presentation and litigation support company, and it contains excellent, practical, and if you haven't checked it out yet, you owe it to yourself to do so. 

Source:  "Differences Between PowerPoint and Keynote [video]" by Blake Boyd, published at The Trial Technologist's View blog.

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Take a look at the two photos shown below.  The computer on the left is an iMac, and the one on the right is a Dell XPS 410. Which you would prefer to have on your desk?  Do you think that it makes a difference to a potential client whether you appear to be well organized and tech savvy or just a jumbled mess?  I think that it does, and these pictures show yet one more reason that you should consider using Macs instead of PCs.

Source: "Mac vs PC - a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words" posted at SwitchingToMac.com.

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To follow up on an article I posted two months ago, AppleInsider.com reported yesterday that market researchers anticipate that Apple may release a new iPhone with 3G broadband internet capability before the end of this year.  You can click HERE to read the article, which bases its prediction partly upon a recent deal Apple signed with a key parts supplier.  I am still trying to wait on the 3G iPhone before buying one for myself, and I hope that this prediction is true because I am certainly ready to get one.

Source:  "Analyst sees 3G iPhone from Apple by Christmas" by Aidan Malley, published at AppleInsider.com.

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The Apple Blog published the following list of thirty Mac business applications:

Time Tracking & Invoicing

On The Job - If simple time tracking an invoicing is all you need, On The Job is the app for you. It purposefully has less features than some of the competition and that is something it definitely has going for it.  

Studiometry - Full-featured time tracking, invoice, and client management.

Billings - Billings is a newer player in the full-featured time tracking and invoicing market but they've made a solid splash.

QuickBooks - While QuickBooks does not have any real time tracking abilities, it does have a fairly stout invoicing system that can be very convenient if you use QuickBooks to manage your business finances.

Blinksale - Straightforward invoicing at its best.

Harvest - Solid time tracking (OS X Widget included).

Money Managment

QuickBooks - The industry standard for business finance management. The Mac version of QuicKBooks is frequently chastised for its clunky interface compared to its Windows counterpart.

Cha-Ching - Arguably one of the best looking applications on the Mac, Cha-Ching has somehow managed to make a boring financial application hip and fun. Class OS X features like smart folders and iSight integration make this a fairly easy application to learn and use.

iFinance - Fairly simple interface.

iBank - Pretty full-featured with things like report and chart creation and budget tracking.

Money 2 - Jumsoft's Money has recently seen a major upgrade to Money 2. The new feature set in Money 2 really is extremely solid though some may find the extra features as a little overkill.

DimeWise - Super cheap.

Wesabe - Includes a helpful community for tips and suggestions.

Communication

Mail - This pretty much goes without saying. Apple's own Mail.app really is the best mail application, and it is included with OS X.

Skype - One of the best tools for phone communication.

Adium - Whether you think chatting is productive or not, it's great for hitting up co-workers or clients for quick questions.

Mailroom - Mailroom is a fairly niche mail application in that it's mainly built for customer support teams.

Campfire - Perfect for group chats with co-workers and clients with features such as file attachments and chat logging.

Project Management

Daylite Productivity Suite - An incredibly full-featured project management application, Daylite is one of the most useful applications on the Mac today. The full suite includes some killer features such a Mail integration, shared calendars, contact management, and more.

OmniPlan - One of the newer Omni Group applications, OmniPlan makes heavy use of Gantt charts to help schedule out any project you have.

Basecamp - 37signals' flagship product, Basecamp has become the standard for project management in many offices (especially small/home businesses).

Contact Management

Address Book - Enables you to keep up with all my contacts, and it is included free with OS X.

Daylite - In addition to being a great project management app (as mentioned above), Daylite also does a killer job of managing contacts.

SOHO Organizer - SOHO Organizer is a bit less business focused than Daylite. In addition to helping you organize contacts, it also helps lets you attach everything under the sun to those contacts as well as group them together however you wish.

Redlien Account Executive - Redlien is almost exclusively for people who are in sales. With features such as email logging and opportunity management, I can't imagine this not helping you increase your sales to other people.

Highrise - The newest application from the 37signals crew, Highrise is contact management in the usual 37signals style. Simple, straightforward, no feature-bloat. It has just the tools you need to customize it to your workflow.

Miscellaneous Tools

Yep - Yep is an application for organizing your documents.

VMware Fusion - This virtualization software enables you to easily run Windows on your Mac.

OmniGraffle - Enables you to create a flow chart for any type of information.

MailTemplate - You create custom mail templates for either new mail or replies that will ultimately save you tons of time on responding to certain types of email.

Source:  "30 Apps to Run your Business By" by Josh Pigford, published at The Apple Blog.

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