LawyersUSA

This installment of the Lawyers USA tech round-up focuses on a "smart" pen that can upload notes and drawings onto a PC in digital text, a no-cost alternative for putting videos on your website, a new software package that assists matrimonial lawyers in identifying optimal divorce settlements for their clients, and a new document management system with the capability of transforming stacks of paper files into electronic ones with a single touch of a scanner button.

From notepad to hard drive

For lawyers who take notes when they're on the go, a new electronic pen may be just the ticket to transforming those notes into electronic documents.

The Mobile Digital Scribe, recently released by the Irvine, Calif.-based technology company IOGEAR, resembles a standard pen – complete with standard ink refills. But that's where its conventionality ends.

The pen contains an electronic sensor and transmitter that sends signals capturing hand movement to a small receiver. The receiver, in turn, can then be connected to the user's PC via a USB cable, which uploads the notes or drawings into the computer's hard drive for easy retrieval.

There's more.

The device comes with "handwriting recognition software," which the company claims is capable of translating notes into text. It can also save drawings as JPEG image files.

IOGEAR spokeswoman Erin Hall said the pen reduces the risk of lost notes and increases the ease of sharing notes quickly with any number of people. Once the notes are uploaded into a user's computer, the file can be sent as an e-mail attachment.

The device is priced at $129.95 and can be purchased on the company's website, http://www.iogear.com. The website also lists 54 retail chains that carry the pen.

Website videos made easy

An increasing number of law firms have discovered the marketing value of website video. (See "Straight to video: Law firms want website visitors to see and hear their message," Feb. 25, 2008. Search words for Lawyers USA website: Foster and Battle).

But lawyers who worry about expense – or are a bit camera shy – now have the option of joining the Legal Television Network for access to hundreds of informational videos that they can place on their firm's website. The video service is called CLIENTELEVISION and is free. You can view it at http://www.clientelevision.com.

Legal Television Network is the brainchild of Irwin R. Kramer, a veteran trial lawyer and managing partner of four-lawyer Kramer & Connelly in Owings Mills, Md. He contends that too much of the video marketing by lawyers is boring. Furthermore, he said lawyers are mistaken in thinking that website visitors are interested in hearing them talk about themselves.

"Lawyers shouldn't think, 'What's in it for me?' when they're producing or having a video made; they need to ask, 'How does this add value to my visitor?' If you can add value and make your website something worth clicking on and staying on, then you can engage visitors and perhaps form a relationship with them down the road," said Kramer.

Kramer created Legal Television Network two years ago and began producing two-minute informational videos dealing with dozens of legal issues of interest to the general public. Today the website includes several hundred videos divided into 10 categories called "channels," such as automotive, criminal justice and employment.

Each video focuses on a narrow subject and is a mixture of "talking head" lawyer or other professional coupled with file footage to illustrate the subject. For example, a video explaining Miranda warnings includes a reenactment of police detaining a motorist interspersed with comments from well-known Baltimore criminal defense lawyer Andy Radding and Byron Wornken, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Because law is so state-specific, the messages have to be general. But Kramer contends that very basic information about whether a person might have a claim is all that matters.

"You give them the information and accentuate the need for competent counsel," he said. "Then they might say, '[Great], I'm on the website of competent counsel.'"

Law firms get access to the videos by joining the network as "affiliates." They can add as many of the channels to their site as they want.

Kramer said he allows law firms to use videos at no charge because he plans to run ads on CLIENTELEVISION. But he promises the advertising will be noncompetitive – "you won't see somebody down the street advertising on your website," he said.

Reducing the guesswork in divorce settlements

A software product called Divorce Financials provides family law practitioners with a new tool for optimizing clients' divorce settlements.

Bill Mayweather, the CEO of EasySoft of North Brunswick, N.J., says Divorce Financials can sort through and analyze the myriad combinations and permutations of alimony versus child support, while factoring in state and federal tax codes and then suggesting up to five different settlement scenarios – in minutes.

Lawrence J. Cutler, a partner at Cutler, Simeone, Townsend, Tomaio & Newmark, an 18-lawyer family law practice in Morristown, N.J., is a strong proponent of the software.

"You can look at various scenarios of incremental alimony between X and Y," he said. "It will say, 'At $1,000 a month, this is what the parties are left with, net; at $1,500, this is what they're left with,' and so on. It gives you the whole thing."

The software retails at $249 and is available at the company's website, www.easysoftusa.com.

Paper files go electronic

Omtool of Andover, Mass., has developed a product called AccuRoute that can quickly transform all that paper files in your office into digital files and make them accessible with the click of a mouse.

One of the keys to AccuRoute's big-batch conversion capabilities is its use of "intelligent routing sheets," which employ embedded directives – strings of characters or bar codes – that replace traditional labor-intensive modes of feeding scanners and faxes.

In Boston, the 47-lawyer intellectual property law firm Bromberg & Sunstein installed AccuRoute two years ago and according to the firm's chief technology officer, Monroe Horn, the result has been an increase in document-management efficiency.

"What we wanted was a system where users spend as little time as possible in front of the device, and AccuRoute allows us to do that through the use of the routing sheets," he said. "You minimize the amount of time and information that the users have to enter at the device that's doing the scanning."

Last year, he said, Bromberg & Sunstein converted 400,000 pages of paper documents into digital form – a process that resulted in significant cost savings.

"It has a lot of flexibility to help us get digitized, which is our goal," he said. "Lawyers no longer have to have the paper file in order to find out everything that's related to that case."

Questions or comments can be directed to the editor at: susan.bocamazo@lawyersusaonline.com