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National
June 2010
In this Issue
• Legal Humor
• Updates Review
• Customer Questions from the Last WebNotes
• Customer Support: Backing Up West Forms Files
• Practice Tip: Developing the Paperless Habit
• Tech Tip: More on Dictating to Your Smart Phone
• Tech Tip: Simplified Credit Card Processing
• Tech Tip: New Ultra Portable in Inexpensive Scanner
• Vent - Tell Us What's on Your Mind
 
Legal Humor

Attorney Arlo Sommervold of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was representing a defendant charged with stealing hogs during a 1991 trial.

After Sommervold put on a spirited defense, the jury deliberated for a short while and then returned with its verdict. The jury foreman announced, "We the jury acquit the defendant."

Sommervold turned to shake hands with his client, who then asked, "Does this mean I can keep the hogs?"

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Updates Review

Coming Updates

2010 Updates
We will continue our commitment to provide you updates to West Forms forms as agency changes and case law changes dictate. We will also ship form changes we make as a result of customer suggestions and enhancements we make in both West Forms and the automated forms.

May Update

  • Business Transactions Solution - We updated the Directors’, Officers’ and Principal Shareholders’ Questionnaire form per an update from the author, Alan S. Gutterman.

  • West Forms/SOS Database Enhancement - We also released a database enhancement to make your West Forms more stable and reliable.

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

Q: Is there a projected release date for Small Office Suite interface to any smart phone other than Palm OS? How about for Outlook?
A: Around mid-2011 we expect to release an enhancement to SOS that enables it to sync with Microsoft Outlook®. With this enhancement, any device that can sync with Outlook will be able to sync indirectly with SOS using Outlook as the intermediary.

Q: After "completing" a document I sometimes have to go back to West Forms to correct or change an answer to one or more questions.  It would be handy if after making that change, I could just go directly to the end of the document without having to go through each of the subsequent questions that need no changes.
A: It sounds as if the issue is that you want to change an answer or two without going through and entire document assembly session again. Assuming that is the case, you find the information about the easy way to change case answers and reassemble the document here.

Q: Is the update going to run faster?  The present version is very slow to load.
A: The updates we have been shipping since April (depending on the jurisdiction) have contained the database upgrade and those installations have been quite slow. Once you have completed the upgrade, the subsequent updates will run as they have in the past. Incidentally, we intend to do away with the CD updates completely later this year so all updates will be handled automatically in the background using our WebUpdate feature. Watch for more info about this.

Q: Can I download West Forms to an external hard drive and just run the program from there or does it have to be installed onto a specific computer? I only ask because I would like to save space on the drive of my laptop so it will run better. Plus, if my laptop crashes - which it did recently, I would have the files already on the hard drive. 
A: Yes, you can install West Forms on an external hard drive and run it from there. We suggest that you call our Tech Support team at 800-759-5418 for free assistance. They will make sure that the short cut you click on your laptop will open West Forms on the external drive. And, our tech rep will also help you move your client and case files to the external drive. Understand that under this setup, you will only be able to access West Forms when you are physically able to connect to the external drive.

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West Forms Customer Support: Backing Up West Forms Files
IT specialists tell us that all computer hard drives eventually fail. Talk to any lawyer who has experienced this calamity and they will tell you that it was a nightmare. To protect against such data loss nightmares, you should make regularly scheduled backup copies of important data files.

However, as bad as it is to temporarily lose data due to a computer hard-drive failure, it is not the worst calamity that could happen to you. A fire in your building, a major flood, robbery, etc. could completely eliminate all of your precious client and case data forever. Leaving your back up data on site virtually invites such a disaster as some attorneys have found out the hard way.

So, our recommendation is that you follow the instructions we provide below to back up your West Forms and SOS data and then back up these and other important files off-site.

Learn how to properly back up your West Forms files >>

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Practice Tip: Developing the Paperless Habit
Law firms are expressing more and more interest in paperless or paper-less offices. Nerino Petro and Ernest Svenson presented their step-by-step action plan to this goal at the 2010 ABA Techshow.

Read "Digital Workflow: Developing the Paperless Habit" >>

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Tech Tip: More on Dictating to Your Smart Phone
Last month we covered SpeakWrite, an application that enables you to record your thoughts on your iPhone and upload the audio so it can be transcribed by real typists. But perhaps you simply want a robust dictation app that enables you to dictate and save for transcription by your secretary. Here's info about two of your options:

Read about JMDictate for iPhone® >>
Read about AudioWav MobileMic for Blackberry® >>

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Tech Tip: Simplified Credit Card Processing
Square™ enables you to process credit card payments from your clients on your iPhone, IPod touch, iPad, or Android smart phone. You don't need a merchant account and there's no contract, setup fees, monthly fees, or monthly minimum. Square even provides you a free mobile card reader, the use of which further reduces the already competitive processing fee.

Learn more about Square >>

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Tech Tip: New Ultra Portable in Inexpensive Scanner
Doxie™ is the new, modern paper scanner that's so simple, it'll revolutionize the way you think about sharing and storing docs and photos forever. Doxie is ultra-portable, fully automatic, and integrated with your favorite desktop and web apps – ready to scan and share all of your paper for just $129!

You can scan to Acrobat, iPhoto, Picasa, or right to the desktop with ease. And Doxie scans your documents, business cards, receipts, and photos intuitively – so you can ditch the paper stack and get everything organized. Doxie scans all of your documents, and then makes it easy to store and share.

Learn more about Doxie >>

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Vent—Tell Us What's on Your Mind
This is your opportunity to what's on your mind. Email us your suggestions and other feedback.

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