Winning Strategies for Word Wrestling, Part 3: Managing Styles and Stylists

The third part of a three part series on using Styles in Microsoft Word focuses on the team effort required for successful planning, design and deployment.

Click here to read the post.

Winning Strategies for Word Wrestling

The first of a three part series on mastering styles when writing and editing legal documents with Microsoft Word, now published on the Microsystems Blog. Winning Strategies for Word Wrestling explores and illustrates the benefits of documents that make thorough and consistent use of styles. These blog posts will make contemporary the analysis and advice I began in Woody’s Office Watch in 1999 with The Seven Laws of Styles.

Technology Competency: Lessons across the Ages

I suggest there are four kinds of technology users. I borrow from one of the central instruction manuals in my life, the Haggadah, used each spring on Passover to teach the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Read my essay, published on the Microsystems blog, by clicking here.

What Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Really Mean

Two of the hottest terms in the technology of law today are “artificial intelligence” and “machine learning.” …

Read my blog post on this topic on the Microsystems blog, published May 11, 2017.

Contract Companion (formerly Eagle Eye) at Work – A Lawyer’s Perspective – A White Paper published in 10 Serial Episodes

Microsystems is publishing my white paper on its Contract Companion (formerly EagleEye) product in 10 serial episodes. The white paper explores in depth the needs for empowered agreement drafting and checking with Contract Companion’s capabilities. Episodes appear every Thursday on Microsystems social media pages:

The episodes can be found here:

Let’s Be Safe Out There

Favorable mention for the latest Collaborista Blog post from Jeffrey Brandt at PinHawk.

 

Let’s Be Safe Out There

Security from the Start

In my latest post on the Collaborista Blog, I explore how to begin a matter employing sufficient security, especially for email communication. I wrote,

There are legal matters deserving “Highly Confidential” or even “Top Secret” treatment from the start. However, more common matters such as secret merger negotiations also need protection.

Read the full post at Practicing Law Securely — Security from the Start.

“Top 12 Objections to Scanning and Destroying Paper” published by ILTA, November 2015

From the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA), a November 2015 digital white paper, “Business and Financial Management – Driving Client Value” includes the article, ” Top 12 Objections to Scanning and Destroying Paper.”

In 2016 and the years to come, lawyers must be prepared to work in a world of rapid and disruptive change. When necessary, take lessons from children and grandchildren. Trade the litigation bag full of papers for a tablet with scanned documents. Your lower back surely will appreciate.

 

Technology Property September / October 2015

The Probate and Property magazine of the American Bar Association has published my contribution to the Technology Property column in its September / October 2015 issue.

Why do we need a power assist for document drafting and editing? It should help us to create and complete agreements, contracts, and other work products and to fashion client communications that are clear, correct, and complete. It should help make drafting precise and exact, free of error and ambiguity. It should help us against the pressures on fees, for which proofreading may not be collectible time. In a world that expects turnaround at the speed of e-mail, we may be hard-pressed to proof thoroughly. Though the prevalence of e-mail and instant messaging has made much of our communication less formal, words remain our stock-in-trade and, nearly all the time, deserve and require careful craft.

Practicing Law Securely – Current Developments, October 2015

The Practicing Law Securely series on the Collaborista blog now includes current developments reports. Here are Practicing Law Securely current developments for October 2015.

Follow the link to the full collection of Practicing Law Securely blog posts.