Midwest Law and Technology Conference group discusses growth of

(This article originally ran in The Wisconsin Law Journal, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, another Dolan Media publication).

When it comes to technology tips, Google rises to the top of the list, offering a variety of tools for gathering information and conducting research online. Whether you are looking for something on the Internet or on your own computer, the folks from the leading search engine are coming up with new ways to conduct those searches.

A group of six legal technology leaders offered their top technology tips during the Midwest Law and Technology Conference earlier this month. As the discussion moved from speaker to speaker, one name arose more than any other - Google.

Launched half a dozen years ago by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google quickly became a leading Internet search engine. Google has continued to evolve and develop new products. Among those are Froogle and the beta versions of Google Desktop, Google News and Google Scholar.

Legal technology consultant Craig Ball said, Somehow every year Google manages to do it for me. It manages to bring us the greatest piece of technology, and it's always free.

Ball, a Texas trial lawyer and technology guru, touted two of the test products - Google Desktop and Google News. He noted that Desktop brings the power and speed of Google to search information stored on an individual's computer. It allows a user to search Word documents, text files, PowerPoint files, Outlook e-mail, AOL instant messages and recently viewed Internet Explorer pages.

Finally, something that allows us to search our stuff, or at least the things that matter to us among our stuff, with the speed and accuracy that Google brings to the Web, Ball explained.

Ball also praised the news-gathering capabilities of Google News. The beta site compiles news articles from around the world. However, it goes beyond simply listing news articles and allows users to track specific issues or people in the news. He noted that lawyers could use it to keep track of news references to themselves, their cases or opposing counsel.

You can give it searches that you want it to perform all the time, Ball said. Then you can have it send you a report once a day or as it happens.

Dale Tincher, president of Consultweb.com, a North Carolina-based Web consulting company, said he includes Google as a tool when he is teaching legal research. He observed that people are often amazed at how much legal information is available through the free search engine.

Tincher said Google's advanced search function allows a user to select a particular Web site and search its contents. For example, a lawyer could designate the wisconsin.gov site and search for OWI. The search would list all references to OWI on the state's official Web site.

Google Scholar is another research tool that is still in beta testing. Unlike the traditional Google search, Tincher explained, Google Scholar only searches information from educational institutions. It weeds out all of the information from commercial Web sites.

Sheryn Bruehl, a legal research sales consultant for Thomson West, pointed to Google's Froogle site as a powerful tool for purchasing items on the Internet. A user simply searches for an item to be purchased.

It shops all the sites for you at one time and ranks them by price or any other category you want to use, Bruehl said.

The one-hour technology tips discussion covered 60 recommendations from helpful products to practical suggestions. Bruehl offered one recommendation that many people simply overlook when they begin using new software or services: Read the furnished materials.

This is my favorite technology tip, she said.

On a daily basis she receives questions from people asking, How do I do this? When she asks whether they have utilized the help options, the answer is invariably, No. She noted that any Windows-based program has at least three ways to utilize the help menu, whether it's the index, search function or a program wizard. Simply clicking on the right mouse button will bring up a list of available actions for the active screen.

Nine times out of 10, the five or six things you most likely want to do in whatever space you are sitting are right there, Bruehl explained.

Milwaukee solo practitioner Gwendolyn Connolly offered several practical tips that could be applied daily. One way for lawyers to make sure they are not letting earned dollars slip through their hands is to purchase time and billing software, then make sure they are regularly recording the services they provide. She noted it is better for a lawyer to record something at the moment the service is provided, rather than waiting until later and hoping to remember how much time was allocated to a particular case.

In order to increase the profitability of your firm, you don't have to necessarily work more hours, Connolly said. You need to focus on the hours that you are working and cash in on that time.

Connolly also stressed the importance of protecting electronic records. Always back up your hard drive, she warned. This is a lesson you will learn the hard way, particularly in a solo or small practice.

Following that advice is getting easier and easier, according to Ball. Backing up a computer system can now be done at the touch of a button using the Maxtor One Touch. Maxtor has a series of external hard drives designed to simply plug into a computer and copy the information for safe storage. One Touch drives hold as little as 160 GB of information for about $180 or as much as 300 GB for approximately $300.

You leave for the day, you push one button, and when you come back the next morning, it has backed up everything, Ball said. That's the way back-up should be. It should be completely idiot-proof, reliable and fast.

Ross Kodner, a Milwaukee-based legal technology consultant, urged lawyers on the move to take advantage of converged devices that combine a variety of practical tools into one portable unit. As an example, he noted that the Treo 600 smartphone from palmOne combines a mobile phone with a Palm Powered organizer, offers Web browsing, text messaging and contains a digital camera.

Converged devices make a lot of sense, Kodner said, noting they range in price from $300 to $600.

Kodner also recommended the Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner, capable of scanning two sides of a document and automatically saving them in a PDF format.

When you put a document or a pile of documents in to be scanned, you literally press one button, and those documents get scanned and show up on your Windows desktop as a PDF, Kodner said.

The scanner, which sells for less than $500, allows for quick electronic conversion and storage of all documents.

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