ProDoc's California July News You Can Use

Normally, the story would end there, but in this instance, the problem was that this guy was homeless and all of his worldly possessions were in the back of his truck. Before the truck was auctioned off, the repo company took all of his possessions and threw them into an open storage bin located outside their building. This guy went to a law firm looking to sue the repo company for property damages of his possessions, which he valued at $12,000.00.

It is extremely difficult to get any type of emotional distress or punitive damages in such property damage cases in the state of Massachusetts and the recovery is usually strictly limited to property damages. But what made this case unusual was that the client had photos of his clothes in the storage bin showing them soaked and covered in snow with the bin open to the January weather thus establishing his version of events. Given the obvious evidence of intentional negligence, the guy's lawyer was hoping to get his client a quick settlement of around $7500, which is a lot of money for a dude living out of the back of his truck.

So the guy's lawyer starts his case against the bank and the repo company. The repo company's and the bank's counsel totaled four attorneys. They impleaded their subcontractor who in turn impleaded its subcontractor so that by the time impleading and cross claiming was done; there were six defense counsels on the case. By the time these defense counsels working on a billable hour basis were done and the case finally settled on the eve of a jury trial, they successfully generated $80,000.00 in legal fees. So a case that would have settled for $7,500.00 eventually settled, with the addition of emotional distress and punitive damages, for $30,000.00. In exchange for $80,000.00 worth of legal work, the bank was able to more than quadruple their expenses for a case they could have settled a year and a half earlier.

When you have a trillion dollars in assets, you are not required to act intelligently.

from LegalHumor.com

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Updates Review

Coming Updates

September
We're working diligently to prepare for a big CD update in September for California. Here are the early details of the shipment:

Adding Mandatory Local Forms - We are adding mandatory local forms to nearly every ProDoc volume.

Updating Local Forms - Many local forms in nearly every volume will be updated.

Workers' Compensation Volume- At customers' request, we're adding a number of non-EAMS and non-legacy forms.

Introducing our New Federal Litigation and Federal Criminal Law volumes - Yes, we will finally debut these two much-anticipated volumes in California.

December
Our final major update of the year will be our end-of-year legislative and 2010 Judicial Council Forms release in December.

Past Updates

June CD Update
This was a significant shipment containing the mid-year Judicial Council Forms (JCFs) update and they affected every ProDoc volume containing those forms. The changes included the following:

Family Law - We added 11 forms and updated 18 JCFs in accordance with July 2009 changes.

Probate - We updated one JCF in accordance with July 2009 changes and we updated 12 local court forms.

Lipman's Wills & Trusts - We added numerous additional options to wills and trusts forms, removed the Comprehensive Wills and Trusts, added Supplemental Needs and Retirement Benefits Trusts, and more.

Litigation - We added 10 and updated 16 JCFs in accordance with July 2009 changes.

Guardianships - We added JCF GC-210APF, Attachment to Petition for Appointment of Guardian - Professional Fiduciary, and updated three other JCF forms in accordance with July 2009 changes. We also added one mandatory local form, Notification to Court of Address of Guardian (012G) - Sacramento County.

Conservatorships - We added one and updated three JCFs in accordance with July 2009 changes. We also updated one local court form.

Juvenile Law - We updated two JCFs in accordance with July 2009 changes.

Criminal Law - We updated four JCFs in accordance with July 2009 changes.

Landlord and Tenant - We updated three JCFs in accordance with July 2009 changes.

Attorney-Client Matters - We updated two JCFs in accordance with July 2009 changes.

Court Names and Addresses Updates - We updated court names and addresses in multiple counties. For example, the Tehama County Courthouse changed a P.O. Box number, the East branch courthouse in Sutter County now hears traffic cases, and Siskiyou County closed the Happy Camp Branch Courthouse.

More specific details about the update >>

Early July Web Update

Family Law – We updated form FW-001, Request to Waive Court Fees, pursuant to a late Judicial Council release. We also made a minor fix in SUBP-001, Civil Subpoena for Personal Appearance at Trial or Hearing, per user requests.

Litigation – We updated form FW-001, Request to Waive Court Fees, pursuant to a late Judicial Council release.

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Be Sure You Installed that June Update
In addition to providing you the valuable updates listed above; installing the June update keeps your ProDoc current so it does not timeout on you in the future.

If you are not sure whether you installed it, there is an easy way to determine this. Open ProDoc and look in the extreme upper left corner. It should show ProDoc Version 5.24. If it shows an earlier version, you are not current.

If you cannot find the CD or you cannot find the KeyCode to install the update, call the Tech Support team at 800-759-5418, option 3, for assistance.

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Customer Questions from the Last WebNotes
The following questions were from ProDoc customers like you in response to last month's ProDoc WebNotes.

Q: Why do the client forms not have an input for the client phone number? In many forms, at least the estate planning documents, the client phone comes into play. It would seem to be a sensible addition.
A: When you set up a client and case in ProDoc you can enter all the contact info for the client so that it is easy to find by everyone in the firm. Most ProDoc volumes contain areas for you to request phone numbers from your clients. You'll find information here about how to save in ProDoc the client address and contact information you collect.

Q: I recently had to replace my paralegal who was an authorized user under my ProDoc license. Can you remove her name from the list of authorized users?
A: That is not necessary since we don't assign ProDoc licenses to a specific person. Each ProDoc subscription comes standard with three licenses. These are not assigned to a specific person. Whoever uses your previous paralegal's computer will have full access to ProDoc on that machine.

Q: One thing we would recommend when doing the updates is to provide the subscribers with a list of the actual documents that have been deleted, modified or added (new). This would make it much easier on all of us than having to try and search to find them.
A: Glad you asked and we have just what you are asking for. After you install the update, open ProDoc. Click on Help, then on About the Volumes, and then select the volume for which you wish to view the changes. On the ensuing page for that volume, click on the Change History link. You will then be able to view a list of all forms that were updated along with a synopsis of the changes to that form.

Submit your ProDoc question(s) >>

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Customer Support: Adding Your Own Forms into ProDoc
You can create and add your own forms and letters into ProDoc software. If you want, you can even automate them to merge data into pre-selected fields. It is relatively easy to do so and some firms have created entire libraries of their own special-purpose letters and forms.

If you wish to create more complex forms containing logic we also provide a free program available by download from our web site. There is more of a learning curve involved in this process. We call this free download program SuppDev (short for Supplemental Developer). It is a light version of the product our attorney-developers use but you can use it to create documents as complex as almost any other automated forms authoring systems available.

Learn how to add your own forms into ProDoc >>
Learn about SuppDev >>

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Practice Tip: Estate Planning Help for at Your Finger Tips
If you have looked at our Lipman's Wills & Trusts volume you know what a comprehensive, powerful, and easy-to use product it is. But, no matter how easy we have made it to generate comprehensive estate planning documents, you probably still have questions on the topic.

For that reason, we have two excellent resources for you to obtain answers to the questions you have about estate planning. Our Estate Planning forum provides a venue for you to ask your questions and receive the answers from Ronald L Lipman, author of our Estate Planning volume. And, the Lipman's Wills & Trusts volume provides valuable information about the more important forms in its manual—when and how to use them, understanding key clauses, etc.

Visit our Estate Planning forum >>
View the California Lipman's Wills & Trusts manual >>

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Tech Tip: Converting Word Documents to PDFs and Vice Versa
OK, you undoubtedly know what to use to covert your Microsoft® Word docs to PDFs. But, how do you convert PDFs into Microsoft® Word, Microsoft® Excel, etc.? Abbyy® PDF Transformer is the answer. It will even retain the original layout and formatting of the PDF. If you've ever tried to copy text from a PDF you know just how remarkable this feature is. And, for only about $50 (download version) it is a reasonably priced product for converting documents to PDFs, and vice versa.

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Tech Tip: Connect Your Billing System with Your Clients' Billing Systems
What do you do when your corporate client requires you to submit eBills? eBillingHub® is a web-based solution that integrates corporate billing systems with leading time and billing software platforms including Thomson Elite®, Thomson ProLaw®, ADERANT™ CMS, RainMaker® Platinum and RainMaker® Visual Pyramid ensuring compatibility and no rework to your existing data or processes. In addition, the eBillingHub supports over a dozen of the leading e-Billing vendors, making sure that you can automatically and easily connect your system to your client’s preferred e-Billing vendor.