♫ I just want the simple things..♫
Lyrics, music and recorded by Miguel.
This post continues the theme of innovative technology for lawyers. John Heckman, a legal technology consultant for whom I have a great deal of respect recently wrote in his blog “Does it Compute” a piece entitled:
Technophobe and Proud Of It — the Consequences. He states that there are “attorneys whose willful refusal to become conversant with their firm’s technology will drag down its productivity and ability to respond to client needs.” John then quotes Sharon Nelson, another good friend and legal technologist who is a co-author of the annual American Bar Association’s Solo and Small Firm Technology Guide (for which the write is a contributing author) put it bluntly: “The raw choice is that lawyers must choose between adaption and extinction.”
Well, fortunately there are technologies that are simple, effective and easy to use even for technophobes. SimplyFile is one of them.
This application which is a toolbar add-on for MS Outlook on the PC (not Mac..sigh!). It does one thing very very well. It is an adaptive program that learns from you where you like to file emails in your Outlook folders.
If you set up your Outlook folders to match your client files, then SimplyFile will help you quickly and easily move both incoming and outgoing emails into their proper file in Outlook. It learns from you and correctly guesses the correct folder 80-90% of the time. Moving the email to the right folder once Simplyfile guesses the folder is just a mouse click.
No longer will you end up with all your outgoing emails in the ‘Sent’ folder in Outlook.
No longer do you ‘drag and drop’ emails to organize them.
I have been using SimplyFile for years now and love it. There are companion applications that speed up other tasks and for those I refer you to Techhit’s web page.
If you use a Document Management System (we use OpenText) Simplyfile helps you move your emails into your profiled folders in Outlook and from there they are indexed into the DMS system. I understand it is equally effective with Worldox and other DMS platforms that work with MS Outlook (but you should check with your DMS provider first).
When it comes to legal technology there is no question that for maximum adoption by lawyers on all points on the legal technology spectrum, the applications should keep it simple.
-David J. Bilinsky, Vancouver BC.