**Editor’s Note: Many thanks to Bryan Sims for sharing some technological advice with our readers. If you missed previous segments of the interview look here and here. 
Very sage advice…I found his 5 “must have” pieces of technology particularly informative and are you kidding me, he uses three monitors! If you like what you’ve heard here, I see he’s also joining me on the dais at the ISBA’s Solo and Small Firm Conference, October 22-October 24 (really I’m joining him on the dais). Or just come on down to see Exhibit A in the history of Illinois pay-to-play politics: The Abraham Lincoln Hotel & Conference Center. 5th Annual Solo & Small Firm Conference: Creating a Thriving Practice in Challenging Times.
SIC: List 3 cheap and simple technology changes/upgrades a lawyer could make with the potential for a big payoff.
TCL:
The first thing I would recommend echoes what I just said. Learn how to use the stuff you have already paid for. Leverage the technology you already own before you think about spending money on something else.
Second, scan everything. Being able to work with electronic documents only is unbelievably liberating. With my laptop, I have access to every document on every file on every case on which I am currently working. Further, being able to access a document, a pleading, a piece of discovery, anything to do with my file without having to find the file and then search through it is a huge time saver. However, this works only if you scan everything. If some of your stuff is in paper and some is electronic, you will never know what is where. However, if you scan everything, you will be rewarded with savings in time and greater efficiency.
The final recommendation I would make is to add a second monitor to your desk. When I first added a second monitor, I was amazed at how much more efficiently I was able to work. This is especially the case in situations such as quoting from a case, or responding to a motion. The best testimony I have seen to the effectiveness of a second monitor is that I have never found anyone who uses two monitors that would ever be willing to go back to just one. The biggest drawback to using two monitors is that you feel cramped when you are away from the office and have only your laptop screen to use.
That being said, I love my multiple monitor set up (I now use 3) and do not hesitate to recommend it to anyone who asks.
SIC: I see you’re a big Adobe Acrobat fan, how do you use Acrobat beyond merely reading/ creating PDF files?
TCL:
I use Adobe Acrobat on a daily basis in my practice. One of my favorite ways is to use it with my research. When I find a relevant case, rather than printing it to paper, I print it to PDF. I then highlight, annotate, and otherwise mark up my cases, just as I would if I had printed them to paper. However, now I have my cases with me, wherever I go. Plus, if I need a copy for the judge, I can simply print the case, without the annotations. In the Print Dialogue, on the upper right under Comments and Forms, you can choose whether to print just the documents or the document with comments.
I also use Acrobat to handle all of my documents in a case, whether pleadings, correspondence, discovery, or anything else. I store them all in PDF and run Adobe’s OCR (optical character recognition) process on them. By doing this, I can easily build an index to search all of the documents in a particular case.
I have also found that Adobe works great to store deposition exhibits. At the conclusion of a deposition (dep), I can put all of the exhibits together keep them as a single PDF that I can keep with the electronic copy of the dep. This means I never have to search for a paper copy of a dep exhibit. Also, by bookmarking the file, I can easily jump to any particular exhibit that I want to.
Additionally, I find Acrobat invaluable in preparing discovery. For example, the Bates Stamping feature allows me to stamp hundreds of pages of documents in a span of a couple of minutes. Also, if there is any information that I need to redact, I can use the redaction feature to securely and completely redact the information from the document.
Acrobat is a very powerful program with some great features. I urge anyone who has never explored some of these features to check out the webinars that Adobe has put together to get an idea of all of the things that you can do with Adobe Acrobat.
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Peter
August 29, 2009
I would second the use of a scanner and Acrobat (actually, on the Mac, I use Skim, which is an *awesome* Acrobat alternative). If you aren’t using it already, you will encounter a slight learning curve, but it’s not impossible–and it will change your practice for the better.