Three services that make an attorneys’ lives easier
by Barry D. Bayer
I use a lot of different software and hardware to assist me in the practice of law. This week I discuss three services that I wouldn’t want to do without.
Google mail
If you get your e-mail through your firm’s local area network, you’re probably using Microsoft Exchange Server and Outlook, although there are certainly other programs that can be and are used to great advantage. Solos and lawyers in very small firms are likely not using the fancy stuff and must receive and send e-mail another way. And even big-firm lawyers may need an e-mail address for personal, nonlaw purposes.
A couple of years ago I probably saw more Yahoo, AOL and Hotmail addresses than anything else, but Google mail (Gmail) is definitely on the rise.
As regular readers know, I’ve been using Gmail for personal and some business purposes since the days that you had to wait for an invitation from the company to get an account, and 2 gigabytes of disk space for e-mail storage sounded like it might last forever.
The Gmail legends at the bottom of the screen show that I am currently using 2,844 megabytes of space, 42 percent of the 6,655 megabytes of space allocated to me by Google. Of course, however many messages I have, I can still search through all of them in seconds to find the message that I want. And Gmail doesn’t attach messages to the bottom of my outgoing mail, as some services do.
• add a signature to every outgoing e-mail, although the service still doesn’t let you directly choose one of multiple signatures;
• selectively forward e-mail to another account;
• access Gmail through a Pop3 e-mail client such as Outlook;
• pull e-mail from other standard Pop3 accounts into Gmail,
• have “chats” with other Gmail users; and
• easily add “labels” to e-mails for later retrieval, although Gmail will not let you place messages in different “folders,” except for trash, inbox, sent and spam.
Gmail also has spam and virus filtering, and a host of other features.
(One of my most-used Gmail features is the ability to instantly view attached “.doc” and other file formats instantly, within the browser rather than being required to download the file and view it within the originating application or special viewer. Of course, you can always download the file later, but if all you wish to do is to take a fast look at the digipix or Word file or whatever, this feature saves a lot of time.)
All of this is free of charge, of course, but it does come at a price. First, all of your e-mail and attachments are stored as you send them and indexed on Google servers. You can send attachments that have been encrypted, but I know of no way to use PGP or similar encryption programs with Gmail. Indeed, Gmail’s advantageous searching would be lost if the e-mail, sitting on Google’s servers, was encrypted. This means that all of that e-mail, including any e-mail that may be confidential, is in the hands of a third party for lawyer-client purposes, and, even worse, can be used by evil folks at Google to track down what I’ve been doing. (I do have more traditional e-mail accounts that I use for confidential, including client-confidential, material.)
And, of course, Google presents the e-mail that I do review alongside advertisements keyed to the e-mail content. If the e-mail discusses a pending vacation, the ads are likely selling airline tickets and hotel space. Often the ads are useful, and most of the time I just ignore them.
The other great advantage to Google mail is that it is available not only on your own computers, but on any computer you happen to borrow or rent — at a client’s office, in the library or at a restaurant — and often through unencrypted Wifi. It turns out that however you access Google mail, log-on procedures are conducted using relatively secure SSL encryption.
Once the passwords, handshaking and cookies have been exchanged, however, Gmail reverts to unsecured mode, unless you addressed the system using https rather than merely http. If you use http://gmail.com, Gmail will eventually service your transmissions unencrypted; if you log on using https://gmail.com, Gmail will start off in SSL mode through the login process and stay in SSL mode.
If you want to keep track of new Gmail features, the company maintains a blog at gmailblog.blogspot.com.
Skype expands
Skype, now owned by eBay, originally was a rather techy telephone service that provided free audio communications between Internet-connected computers. All you needed, besides the Internet connection, was a headset and you were in business.
Surprisingly, it worked pretty well a good deal of the time, but who wants to remain at the computer to catch a call?
Skype offerings, in terms of hardware, accessories and software, have expanded, and so have the services offered. Add a webcam and you can now have computer-to-computer video conferences, not to mention text-messaging “chat” sessions. And for about 2.1 cents a minute, plus a 4-cent-per-call connection charge, you can talk with traditional or cellular telephone systems. Add a few dollars a month and you can call anyone in the country without additional charge, and can receive calls from traditional phone systems. (If you aren’t at your computer when the call comes in, Skype will accept a voice message for you.)
I have tested the Skype Pro offering that lets you call a phone number somewhere in the United States on any phone (including your cell phone) and call anywhere outside the United States at that same 2.1 cents-a-minute/4 cents-per-call charge. If you already have “free” U.S. long distance, then you can make inexpensive international Skype calls when you’re not at your computer.
The service works nicely: Call your assigned number, and the Skype automatic operator asks which of the five “speed dial” numbers you want. After you indicate the correct one, it dials and connects.
Skype has recently revised its pricing, including a $6-a-month program for unlimited calls from the United States to Mexico, $10 a month for unlimited calls from the United States to 34 countries, discounted pricing to other countries, and the old $3 per month for United States to United States calls.
If you want a phone number so people can call you from standard phone service, you’ll have to pay about $60 a year for that service. But as you likely have a conventional telephone, there may be no reason to bother with a SkypeIn number. For more information, or to sign up, surf over to www.skype.com.
MyFax
Finally, I use www.myfax.com to send and receive faxes. For $10 a month, I get a toll-free incoming number, 200 received pages and 100 sent pages. This is less expensive than maintaining a separate fax number, and I don’t need a fax machine — although a scanner is very useful for faxing documents that I did not create. Just scan to PDF and send the PDF.
Documents that I create on my computer (or download) can be sent in either Microsoft Word .doc format or PDF. MyFax creates a cover page and makes it easy to queue the files containing the fax. (A typical fax may include a cover sheet, explanatory letter and documents.)
If you have set up the fax correctly — the only difficult part is remembering how to enter the phone number — MyFax quickly responds that the fax has been successfully submitted. After the fax is sent, the service e-mails enough information for a receipt showing delivery of the document.
I have arranged for my incoming faxes to be received as PDF files, but MyFax also sends a .gif file, making it easy to check what you’re getting before bothering to download it to your computer. (Of course, the PDF that I receive is easy to resend to others if necessary. If they have e-mail, I can even send the faxes to them as e-mail attachments, and not bother with using the service to refax them.)
There are several similar fax services; but when eFax rate increases soured that service for me, MyFax seemed to have the combination of features that I needed at a not unreasonable price.
A benefit of all this is that you can easily store incoming and outgoing documents in appropriate client folders, changing the name, if desired, of incoming transmissions so that all of the documents are now on your computer.
Google mail, Skype and MyFax are three convenient services that make it easier for me to practice law, and save me and my clients money to boot.
Barry D. Bayer practices law and writes about computers from his law office in Homewood, Ill. To contact him, write to Law Office Technology Review, P.O. Box 2577, Homewood, IL 60430; call him at (708) 957-3322; or send an e-mail to barry@lawtechreview.com. Specific origin and pricing information about the products discussed in these columns are available at www.lawtechreview.com/details.html.
