For 13 years, Law Technology News has awards their prestigious Vendor Awards at the Gold, Silver and Bronze levels.  These awards are given not only based on popularity, but also on independent criteria and customer satisfaction. We are thrilled to share that, for 2010, three of our partners, Worldox (World Software) Tabs3 and PracticeMaster (Software Technology) were awarded the highest honor by being named “Gold Vendors”.

Mindjet has announced the release of MindManager 9 for Windows, the latest version of their outstanding mind mapping software. Version 9 debuts with impressive new speed. It not only opens faster and loads large maps faster, but it does so using drastically fewer system resources – something we can all appreciate. Version 9 also has a new slide view for presentations, allowing you to pick and choose which topics you want to present, and control exactly how you want each branch to appear. There is a new Outlook Dashboard, allowing you to see related Outlook items, emails, contacts, notes, tasks or meetings without having to switch applications. MindManager 9 also has improved printing capabilities, allowing you to print as much (or as little) as you need, something that much more restrictive in previous versions. There is also a new image and icon library, with new professionally designed images that increase the impact and retention of your maps. MindManager 9 is fully compatible with the Office 2010 Suite. Existing users can upgrade their software to Version 9 for $149 through September 30, 2010. New licenses run $349.

  

Are you a Time Matters user looking to learn more about this powerful software, or, do you have a new staff member who needs to get up to speed on the system they use every day? Join us Tuesday, June 15, at the Ohio State Bar Association Headquarters for a Time Matters Workshop.

Are you a Time Matters user looking to learn more about this powerful software, or, do you have a new staff member who needs to get up to speed on the system they use every day? Join us Tuesday, June 15, at the Ohio State Bar Association Headquarters for a Time Matters Workshop.

How many times have you received a PDF and desperately wished you had that PDF as a Word document?  Often, the thought of retyping all that information is too daunting to undertake. Thanks to Zamzar, there is now a free online utility that will quickly convert your files from one type to another.  Zamzar supports a variety of file types including documents, images, music and video.  Their video conversion works very well.  I have been using Zamzar to convert YouTube and DVD files for quite some time.

In your “Find” or “Save As” dialog, you do not always have to use your mouse to select the correct client or matter.  A better solution is in the works from Worldox development, but for right now, we’ve found a solution which isn’t too bad!  We like it FAR better than using your mouse!!

Affinity Consulting Group presents a free webinar on document assembly in the law office or legal department Date: 03/23/2010 Time: 3:00 PM EDT Presenter: Barron K. Henley, Esq. Stop Reinventing The Wheel! Automate Your Document Drafting: Generating documents is a primary area of inefficiency for many law firms and legal departments. Therefore, reducing the resources required to create accurate documents immediately improves the bottom line. There are much better options for drafting new documents than trying to find a similar old document as a starting point. This seminar shows you all of your document automation options from using the tools already present in your word processor to commercial drafting systems to document assembly software. Learn how to increase speed and accuracy simultaneously, and take your drafting efficiency to the next level! REGISTER HERE About Barron K. Henley: Barron K. Henley, Esq. is an attorney, a "legal technologist" with 15 years of experience and a founding member of the Affinity Consulting Group. He received his B.S./B.A. (marketing and economics) and J.D. from The Ohio State University and is a member of the American, Ohio and Columbus Bar Associations, and the Worthington Estate planning Council. Mr. Henley is a member of the ABA Law practice Management Section and the Technology Committee (General practice, Solo and Small Firm Section), the Visioneer Legal Advisory Board, and the Columbus Bar Association Law 2010 Committee. He's also a member and former Chair of the Ohio State Bar Association Law Office Automation & Technology Committee. Mr. Henley is a Certified Consultant for Amicus Attorney® practice management software and a Certified Consultant and Alliance partner for HotDocs® document assembly software. Mr. Henley heads the Affinity Columbus office's HotDocs document assembly and software training departments and teaches CLE classes covering practice management, document management, file management, server and personal computer issues, remote access, mobile lawyering, scanning and imaging, legal paper reduction strategies, electronics case filing, Word, Excel, Outlook, Wordperfect, HotDocs document assembly, Adobe Acrobat, malpractice avoidance, and many other topics. Mr. Henley is a frequent Continuing Legal Education speaker on legal-specific technology issues throughout the U.S. for State and local Bar associations and CLE providers including the Ohio State Bar Association, Indiana Continuing Legal Education Forum, the Institute of Continuing Legal Education in Michigan and many others.

Year after year, ABA TECHSHOW is the go-to legal technology conference for legal professionals. This year’s event, scheduled for March 25-27, in Chicago, promises to be no different. An unprecedented 15 educational tracks and 60+ legal technology CLE sessions promises something for everyone. You can still REGISTER online for this great event.

We are asked this question quite often and the best way to describe it is: Managed Services is a way of monitoring, maintaining and supporting business networks - remotely, securely and proactively. Servers, workstations and networks are not “plug it in and forget it” devices. Just like your car, they require routine maintenance to keep everything running smoothly. Just like cars, if you wait until YOU detect the problem, you’re probably facing costs that are not only financial, but also time and resource related. Here are a couple real world examples of situations with our clients in the past week where our Managed Services service really saved the day. But this is a needed service for your business, regardless of the IT support company you use. 1) We received an alert on Saturday AM about XYZ Lawfirm’s Exchange Server database going offline. Exchange Server is the master Outlook database of all email, contacts, calendars and other Outlook information for the entire firm. Within an hour, we had logged onto this server and discovered they had exceeded the default size restriction on the database. So we increased the limit in the Windows registry then put the database back online and they never knew anything even happened. Without Managed Services, no one would have realized this problem until one of the firm’s employees realized Outlook data was unavailable (probably on Monday) and contacted us to fix it. In the meantime, Outlook would have been unavailable for anyone that wanted to work over the weekend and there would have undoubtedly been delays in receiving email. The downtime went from potentially 48 hours to 40 minutes and it’s unlikely anyone even noticed there was any downtime at all. 2) We received an alert last Thursday about ABC Lawfirm’s main application server experiencing long disk queue length. This can mean many different things and have many causes but users will notice it because applications will be running slower than normal. Very soon after receiving this alert, we logged onto their server and began investigating the problem as well as called the Office Administrator to let her know we were working on it. As it turns out, the cause of this problem was solved by installing a driver update for the RAID (hard drive) controller on the server. Considerable downtime was again avoided by an early alert and quick response to a problem instead of waiting for users to notice the problem (and probably reboot their computers thinking it’s a workstation problem) then contacting us and we begin investigating without knowing what is going on because we are not monitoring the server. Any size office may benefit from Managed Services – by proactively monitoring your important technology assets, you can best protect against unexpected breaks that cost you time, energy and money. You can cover any combination of elements that may be included in your office – workstations, servers, etc. For more information or specific questions, please contact Brian Cluxton at the Columbus office. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

February 14, 2010 marks the ten year anniversary of the Columbus-based Affinity partner, HMU Consulting. Clients, friends, family and staff gathered on Thursday, February 4th to celebrate this milestone at an Open House. 

Users of the LexisNexis products PCLaw™ and Time Matters® and Billing Matters®  may have recently heard that LexisNexis is requiring customers to purchase or reinstate their Annual Maintenance Plan (AMP) by May 1, 2010. While news of additional software costs can sometimes be alarming, it’s important to remember that purchasing an AMP is something that Affinity recommends to all its clients.

Sometimes it is helpful to view two different parts of your document at the same time.  In Word 2007, there are two ways to do this. 

If you messed up and bought a netbook with the low-capacity 3-cell battery and are now stuck with just three hours of battery life instead of 6, 7, or even 9 hours you could have gotten from the optional 6-cell battery, all is not lost. Starting Sunday, Feb. 7, Staples has the Energizer Xpal XP8000 external netbook battery on sale for $79.99, a $20 savings. It is about the size of a smart phone and can give you up to three extra hours of netbook power. It is also versatile enough to charge your iPod or cell phone. It comes with 6 cell phone tips, 9 Net Book Tips, iPod / iPhone tip, AC adapter, and carrying case.

Free Webinar February 26, 2010, 1 p.m. EST What is a mindmap? A mindmap is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mindmapping has been used for decades for task management, project management and knowledge management. Mindmapping technology has been changing the way knowledge workers capture, connect and communicate information and ideas. This technology has recently been applied to the legal profession with extremely beneficial results. How do lawyers use mindmapping? MindManager has long been used by professors at leading law schools such as Harvard, UCLA, University of Colorado and William & Mary to teach, perform legal research and write books and articles. It is also enjoying recent popularity among legal practitioners looking for new ways to improve their efficiency and performance. Please join Trotter & Maxfield litigator Dave Maxfield and Mindjet General Counsel Ken Hirschman for a one-hour webinar demonstrating how mindmapping can be used to streamline your legal practice, improve your communications and allow you more time to think creatively. Some of the uses of mindmaps that will be demonstrated during this webinar: •Visualize all aspects of your litigation – find new connections in your case •Simplify complex information for clients through visual representation •Capture, organize and annotate your legal research in a novel contextually relevant system •Manage your tasks more effectively – visualize your workload •Close transactions more efficiently – throw away tables forever •Brainstorm and organize your thoughts with ease Register Here!