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Learning New Things-a/k/a Dog Ain't Too Old Yet

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  • The Clouds Gatherschool-blackboard

I now have all of my new cloud-hosted (most of it) Westlaw Litigation Solutions Package installed. I nave been going through training on it for a few weeks now. It sure seems like a lot to learn. There is an undeniably steep investment up front of time. From what I have seen so far, the pay off will be worth it in the end–or maybe “in the beginning” is more apt.

  • Time Shall Unfold What Plighted Cunning Hides

I can tell it will eventually make my practice more efficient and economical. The time consumed by discovery seems to grow exponentially from one case to the next. It has gotten to the point where if Shakespeare were alive, Discovery would have had a recurring role in his plays and sonnets. But if these new tools can help me save some even a little time spent on discovery, they will pay for themselves promptly.

I still have more training left. I can’t wait to feel conformable and confident with the new system. That won’t happen until I use all of this in a real case. I’m still grasping to understand it all so I can’t really write too much about it.

  • Techno-Cloudiness

I will just let attorney Ashley Hallene describe the “Hosted Practice Technology” I am learning. The following is from Attorney Hallene’s article for the American Bar Association‘s January 2013 edition of GPSolo eReport:

Hosted Practice Technology unites a comprehensive suite of litigation solutions into a single user interface. Two solutions that it integrates are cloud-based versions of Westlaw’s Case Notebook and CaseLogistix. Case Notebook assists attorneys in case analysis and in creating an electronic case file. CaseLogistix is a document review e-discovery tool. With this product Thomson Reuters will offer scalable storage space to accommodate documents and files associated with complex litigation.

The whole article is here and discusses the cloud-hosted practice management I use too called “Firm Central.” Firm Central is designed to integrate with my new products. This will all be a topic for another post.

  • Being Product Trained

Last month I began training with an introduction to the system called “Hosted Case Analysis Premier.” It covered Case Notebook but I may have forgotten everything I was supposed to learn since I have not used it on my own yet. the amount of information they show you is overwhelming. My trainer has put up with my incessant interruptions. I can’t help it. I only interrupt to slow things down and try to relate what I’m learning to something I know. At least that way I try to make sure I am absorbing all the new information flying at me.

Last week I had training on CaseLogistix. I see this as an assistant that will help me organize and review discovery. It has a ton of functions that seem daunting to learn, but the user interface is familiar and reminds me of Microsoft Office. That will make my learning curve much less steep and the program’s potential to save time is readily apparent to me.

  • The Schooling Continues

This week I have training on Drafting Assistant-Litigation. It’s basically a plug-in for Word that incorporates Westlaw research right into the word processor. It has some cool tricks for checking citations, organizing research and finding relevant precedence without leaving Word. If my version of Word 201 would stop blocking it as a potential threat it would be even better. The damn security settings are so ridiculous I think Bill Gates must fear for my personal safety.

After that I have a couple more training sessions to go through and the trainer said they will be the most technical of them all. The problem is I am learning the front-end and back-end of the system. As a solo I have to use both. It would be easier to just master the front-end as a typical attorney user would do, but I will know it better and I gotta pay for both ends anyway so I might as well learn all of it.

More reports from Training Camp to come . . .

MKT

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