LAW OFFICE COMPUTING

May 1997

Winton Woods

Bringing the Internet to your law firm

Last month I reported to you on Microsoft Office 97, which is the first piece in the mosaic of computer applications that promises to dramatically change the way we work in our offices. The development of those intranets will enable high level home offices to begin to grow and flourish. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that such high level home offices have mushroomed by over 50% in the last year and are becoming part of the ongoing processes of blending home life with modern day practice demands. Home Offices have, if fact, become "trendy" according to the WSJ. Be that as it may, it is clear that the home office phenomenon is here to stay and dial up access to the firm intranet is the key to the next major stage of development.

My students in the Law Office Management and Technology course have recently done their first presentations using the Office 97 capability to develop hyperlinked basic presentation documents and I must say they were nothing short of remarkable. By the time you read this column, they should be posted to our world wide web site under the heading Law Office Management and Technology Resources found at http:\\law.arizona.edu\courtroom.html . These student presentations are just the beginning of our development efforts. There is a great deal to learn and I expect the changes to be fast and furious. By the time you read this column Corel WordPerfect will have introduced it's competitor to Office 97. The Corel Office 97 will integrate the new Netscape Communicator into the functionality of the Office suite, just as MS Office 97 uses the MS Internet Explorer technology to allow the creation of standalone web browser sites. Last week I received a pre- release copy of the new Microsoft Internet Explorer version 4.0, which incorporates much of the newest Microsoft Internet technology. It is the second major piece in the mosaic. The third will be the Windows 98 operating system which will not be simply an upgrade of the existing Windows 95 but rather a major dramatic move toward the complete integration of all of your fundamental office functions on your desktop computer.

One of the most dramatic changes that is underway has to do with the creation, distribution, storage, and retrieval of documents. These documents are documents that are created originally in electronic form and stored in that form in your office or paper documents that have come into your office from others and then converted to electronic format. These documents may be of every kind and character. There will be photographs, videos, sound recordings, spreadsheets, word processing documents, scanned images of paper documents-- the list goes on and on. While it is easy to store that multitude of documents electronically, it is far less easy to locate, retrieve and use those documents in your office or at trial. If the documents are in digital text form, for example WordPerfect or Microsoft Word, they are relatively easy to organize and retrieve through the use of a full text searching engine such as ISYS. If they are scanned text documents that can be converted to digital text through the use of optical character reading software they are also searchable though the errors in the optical characters reading may impinge upon the efficiency of the full text search. If the documents are not subject to effective optical character reading conversion into digital text or are in their original form non text documents such as photographs, sound recordings, or videos, other methods of filing and searching must be developed. Here the traditional database technology comes into play. The new databases from Corel and Microsoft provide you with the ability to do database searches and retrieve database information as well as the image of the document in some usable form. The promise of modern web browser technology is that all of those documents in whatever form they may be will be easily found and then displayed with the single click of a mouse.

What I find particularly exciting is the way that novice computer users are able to move through and use the variety of documents on their desktop. One of the reasons for the phenomenal growth of the world wide web is the fact that it is so very easy to use. Bringing that technology into the office environment is a sea change in the way we work and organize our "production." And, because this technology energizes, integrates and promotes "multi-media" in the presentation of ideas, I expect that we will soon see major changes in some of the most basic functions of our business. Already appellate briefs that incorporate video depositions and sound recordings have been filed in the federal courts. The litigation over the Communication Decency Act in the Supreme Court was supported by an extensive brief that contained hyperlinked citations to various places on the world wide web. The justices, or their clerks, will be able with a single mouse click to visit the vast array of information that is at the core of that litigation. It will not be long before we all do that. I find that exciting and challenging and know that most of you do too!!

A Tip that will save you money

Since all of this intra and internet development requires telephones you may want to check out the new long distance service offered by PriceCostco/ Intelnet. I have converted my home phone lines to their service and it costs only 9.5 cents a minute anytime, night or day! You can get the same service for your business at a cost of 13.5 cents per minute. I compared some specific calls that we make all the time and saw a remarkable difference. The quality is first class because they use major long distance telcos like MCI and WorldCom. We had some trouble getting all of my phones working but with the gracious help of Pat at Intelnet, I am now up and running on all lines. My home is now connected to University and through my server there to the world!! There is no discernable difference in quality and there is no access code to call. Call Intelnet at 1-800-351-7648 for more information.

Next time I will talk in some detail about using ISYS as a full text searching engine for the digital text documents in your office system.