I signed up for Amazon Prime on a whim. A friend had mentioned it to me years ago but I never followed through on it until just recently. I order a fair amount from Amazon.com but have usually been able to wait the several days delivery that accompanies free shipping.

I tried the “free” Amazon Prime trial and, of course, forgot to cancel it once the 30 day trial period elapsed. I’m glad I kept it. My printer’s drum reached the end of its lifespan and my printer refused to feed paper through. After reviewing the recommendations at pcmagazine.com, I settled upon a printer and found it at Amazon.com.

Amazon Prime gave me free 2 day shipping. I initially chose that option but later couldn’t resist and bumped my order to overnight shipping for only an additional $3.99. Received my printer the next day (a new drum unit was almost as much as a new printer).

In a nutshell, for $79.00 a year, you get unlimited, free, 2 day shipping with any order (even orders under $25) and you can upgrade to overnight shipping for only $3.99. Not a bad deal at all!

POP or Post Office Protocol is how most of us check and send our email. The problem with the POP standard occurs when we use more than one computer. You can easily set both computers to sync all of your incoming mail by setting the preferences to leave mail on the server for a certain length of time. Doing so allows time for both computers to get copies of the new incoming emails. But after that specified length of time expires, the messages are deleted from the server forever.

But what do you do if you want to sync all of your sent messages on more than one computer?

I used to run into this problem all the time. I’d want a document that was on my office computer. I’d remember that I had attached that document to an email and sent it to a client. If only I could get to that sent email, I’d have the attachment as well.

Finally I switched over to the IMAP protocol (Internet Message Access Protocol). This protocol keeps all of your emails on the server. When you set up a computer to use the IMAP protocol, it pulls all of your emails from the server. If you have more than one computer, both computers will mirror the emails on the server. If you get a new computer, there’s no need to try to copy your old email files from your old computer to the new one. You just enter the IMAP preferences into the email client, and the email client syncs up with the emails on the server (received and sent messages and attachments).

IMAP also syncs up the status of the emails. So if you’ve flagged messages, replied to some, or not opened others on your work computer, that same status will show up on your home computer.

Here’s one of my favorite tricks for getting software.

I needed a copy of Adobe Acrobat. Problem is a new version runs $299. On a whim, I went over to ebay.com to see what was available. And we get -

Here’s an older version of Adobe Acrobat Standard starting at $9.99 with shipping of $6.99. It will probably sell for $50 or less.

Now if we go over to Adobe’s site, we see that we can upgrade to Adobe Acrobat 9 from version 6 for $99.
…click here to read more →

One of my attorney friends likes to often state,

“The only money you’ll ever see is money up front.”

When clients suggest that they pay his retainer in monthly installments, he responds,

“You can make monthly payments to your credit card company. They have already got convenient monthly billing to your mailing address set up.”

Attorneys that are solo practitioners or who are part of small firms can take advantage of various forms of payment beyond cash, checks or money orders and get paid quicker. And they can do so without investing in expensive credit card processing equipment.

I use Paypal’s Virtual Terminal. Paypal’s Virtual Terminal is an online credit/debit card payment solution. Clients can pay you over the phone, via fax, or in your office with Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express.

Paypal's Virtual Terminal

It’s is as simple as logging into Paypal.com, pulling up virtual terminal and entering the credit card information.

Cost is $30 a month. Transaction fees range from 2.4-3.1% plus 30 cents per transaction depending upon your sales volume.

There are no set up fees, no cancellation fees and no additional hardware needed beyond your computer and an internet connection.

You would think this one would be obvious but I get so many questions from others where my immediate thought is to google their question to find an answer yet the person asking the question never considers that option. Here are some recent examples:

1 – What’s the current judgment interest rate in Ohio?
2 – How do I turn off the reveal formatting function in Microsoft Word?
3 – What’s the statute of limitations for credit card debt in Ohio?
4 – What are the 2009 amendments to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50?
5 – What does the “I’m feeling lucky button” do in Google?
6 – Who’s calling me from area code 867 and where the hell is that?

The answers are usually there. Just Google it.

And by the way, you generally don’t go to a website by typing in its domain name in a Google search box.

Heading Towards a Paperless Office with Paperport 11, Omnipage 15, and Xerox Documate 252

I revived a post from the past when I was first getting into the paperless office movement. You may want to check out my more recent post on the Scansnap scanner

October 19, 2006

Ahh, it is the dream of almost all lawyers, a paperless law office! Of course, there are many attorneys who still feel much more comfortable with a file bulging with pleadings, correspondence, notes, invoices, etc. Too bad they can’t locate a particular document in less than five minutes. And if it wasn’t for all the paper, my office would always be in a perfect state of tidiness.

There are many attorneys, including myself, out there who cannot completely knock their paper addiction. I’ve supplemented mine with an electronic file addiction. In fact, I’ve almost supplanted my paper addiction with an electronic one. How did I go about it?

Basic needs to get started

Well, several years ago, I purchased an all in one, printer/scanner/fax/copier. At the time, I bought the Brother MFC 9700. It was very inexpensive and was bundled with software including Paperport 8.0. Since my purchase, I’ve learned that the MFC 9700 has a slight defect in that sometimes the automatic feeder pulls documents in slightly askew (this can be corrected within the Paperport application but I’m in the market for a new scanner as a result). You don’t need to purchase an all in one machine but it has a relatively small footprint and thus does not hog critical desk space. What you do need is a scanner with an automatic feeder that is somewhat robust – meaning that you can load at least 50 pages at a time into the feeder. Without an automatic feeder, your quest for the paperless office is doomed.

…click here to read more →