Ross Kodner, computer guru extraordinaire, has an article about how Acrobat Standard, Professional or Professional Extended editions can be used as a typewriter to fill in those forms. He gives very detailed step-by-step instructions about how to save the forms as pdfs and then how to fill them in. http://blog.technolawyer.com/2010/01/smalllaw-acrobat-typewriter.html

He has his own blog, http://rossipsa.com/, and this and some of his other articles are also published in the Small Law blog at Technolawyer.com.

There is no charge to subscribe to either Ross’ blog or the Technolawyer.com mailings. Subscribing to both is highly recommended.

The Journal article writes about how Minnesota authorities collected “several thousand dollars” by using one evader’s MySpace announcement and how the IRS got $2,000 taxes after the debtor announced he was going to be a deejay at a forthcoming party.

In addition to using Facebook and MySpace, tax people also use Google. ”One agent collected $30,000 of unpaid tax from a resident after a Google search found him listed as a high-ranking local marketing rep for a national firm. If a Google online search isn’t productive, agents use the social sites or chat rooms in a last-chance hunt for their quarries.”

One note, however, about a difference between using Facebook and MySpace. The Journal notes:

“There are limits to what state agents can do on the Web. In Nebraska, agents are only allowed to use information that is publicly available online. So, MySpace — owned by News Corp., publisher of The Wall Street Journal — tends to work best because its users often post more public information than do those of sites like Facebook, [a Nebraska agent] said. The default settings for adults on MySpace create a public profile, while the default settings on Facebook create a profile only viewable by an approved list of friends.”

There are more examples, but you get the idea, and, by now, you’ve probably realized that you could do this for your clients.

P.S. I just come across a very detailed article on ”How to Subpoena MySpace and Facebook Information.” It has lots of information. (I found the article  — including some 50 other article titles – in a weekly posting from Technolawyer. It’s a free service and also has lots of valuable information for attorneys.)

While I was at the conference, I started speaking with someone who was attending who could not have afforded that rate. He told me how he found a hotel that was much cheaper and that was only a block away. How did he do it?

Here’s how: He went on Google’s street views and just “walked” from the Hilton to the next block on Michigan where he “saw” another hotel, the Blackstone, which was at 636 South Michigan. He called the hotel, and, in addition to being close, it was cheaper than the Hilton.

But, you might ask, how did he know that it was a hotel and what its name was? Simple. He could see a sign “from the street” showing that it was the Blackstone Hotel.

Here’s how you can have the Post Office automatically send you the new address: Just place “Address Service Requested” on your envelope and you’ll get the new address – at the grand cost of fifty cents.

Think about adding the line to the return address on your envelopes. That is, unless you don’t want to get notified or pay the fifty cents.

You can see details and requirements here and here. The rules are also printed in the Postal Service’s Quick Service Guide, Publication 95, section 507d. There is also a “Quick Service Guide 507d, Additional Services, Ancillary Service Endorsements” here.

While I was at the latest American Bar Association Techshow, Jim Calloway told about a site that was new to me. It’s 123People.com.  It’s a good source of information, and, if you search your own name, you might find yourself mentioned in cases or in articles that you had forgotten about.

Jim always has interesting information on his site, Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips Blog. If you haven’t seen it, take a look.

And, if you’re trying to find someone — or how old someone is – or their phone number – or perhaps even their prior addresses — try Zabasearch. It has an incredible amount of information — and it’s also free.

I recently read an article about how one plaintiff lawyer purposely does not pick a representative group when he selects people for his mock juries and focus groups. Instead, he sometimes selects only conservative jurors — those who are more likely to find problems with his case. The attorney, Sach Oliver, a partner in the Bentonville, Arkansas firm of Bailey & Oliver, writes in part:

Our firm has had huge success with focus groups by choosing a conservative church in the community to find jurors, and this method may help you, too. We choose a conservative church because we want to find out everything that potential jurors might think is wrong with our case, and we find that conservative-minded people tend to point out more weaknesses.

He has also summarized in an e-mail the benefits of his approach:

One of the most interesting and favorable aspects to the church method is that you watch conservative jurors use conservative arguments to persuade other conservative jurors. These conservative arguments are usually golden material that should be used in the preparation of your case as themes and arguments.

You can find the following attached in a PDF document:

Sach Oliver’s “Simple Steps to Conduct Your Own Focus Groups: The Church Method”

A two-page form letter to Pastors of selected churches, including information regarding payments to the church and to the potential jurors for the mock trial

A letter to the volunteering mock jurors

(The foregoing materials in the pdf are reprinted with permission of the author.)

Also included in the pdf is a copy of a piece by Sach Oliver in Trial, a publication of the American Association for Justice. The article is also available online at http://www.justice.org/cps/rde/xchg/justice/hs.xsl/5045.htm (for subscribers) and is printed in the December 2008 issue of Trial, page 59. (Reprinted with permission of TRIAL (December 2008), Copyright American Association for Justice, formerly Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA(r))).

How to search the “Deep Web” with “pipl“

She wrote this about pipl  in her article Find personal information in the deep Web :

[Google and Yahoo] can help you find information on specific people. But search engines don’t index some of the juiciest information. For that you need to go a little deeper.

pipl only searches by first and last name, city, state and country. But it searches the deep Web. These are the pages search engines often overlook.

It will search through public records, online store profiles, member directories, publications, etc. It will return the best results from multiple categories.

I tried all four sites and pipl seemed best to me. It even included the amounts and recipients of federal political contributions that some of the people I searched had given. Fascinating information if you’re trying to get info on a juror or anyone else.

Two of her other articles, Tools for finding long lost friends and Employers can find personal information online, give further details on cybersleuthing.

How to find both federal and state political contributions

You can also go to OpenSecrets.org, a site that collects lots of data on political contributions for federal offices, including the names of donors and the recipients and dates of the donations. (If you search OpenSecrets, make sure you put the potential donor’s last name first, followed by a comma and then the donor’s first name.)

For information about contributions to state candidates, you can go to the Institute on Money in State Politics, whose url is appropiately named  www.followthemoney.org.

 4/22/09 For a later post regarding more sites for finding info on jurors, lawyers, and others, click here.

As they noted, some out-of-work attorneys have started volunteering to do pro bono work as a way to keep busy and to keep their morale up.

Some time ago — probably at least two years ago — I read an article about a lawyer who was also unemployed. Here’s how he found some work: He called a local TV station — it might have been a newspaper — and offered to cover at no cost an ongoing criminal trial that was of great interest to the community.

He reported from the court and got his name out at least daily. He did a good job and people called him to represent them.

So, get a notepad or some makeup and, likewise, get your name out. And get those new clients.

 But there are many more uses for Nuance Corporation’s Dragon!!

 Uses outside of a law office

I read a while back about how a husband whose wife was deaf was using Dragon to communicate with his wife while they were driving. Even though she could read his lips, she couldn’t use that facility in the car because she couldn’t see his lips while her husband was looking straight ahead while he was driving. What to do?

Solution: her husband put their laptop in the car, and, while they were driving, he would speak into a microphone – perhaps a lapel mike – and his wife could read what he was saying on the laptop screen. She could then orally answer and he could respond using Dragon. It changed their lives.

I just did a Google search, and found a variety of uses for Dragon on Nuance’s U.K. site. One of the user stories described in detail how a daughter communicated with her deaf mother using Dragon and a wireless mike.

Nuance has a page that categorizes user stories of how Dragon was used to improve the users’ creativity, their work, and their life.

One of the unusual stories detailing how life was improved was a story by a student who was paralyzed from the shoulders down. He used Dragon to complete his 107-page master’s thesis, and he noted that he could even use Dragon while laying down. He added: “It has truly been a new lease on life.”

Other stories include ones by a psychologist with chronic fibromyalgia, a multiple sclerosis patient, and someone with severe dyslexia. There are others, for a total of 9 pages of stories.

An out-of-the-box use in a law office

In addition to non-law office uses, I have come across an unusual use of Dragon in a law office. One time I was speaking with a secretary about Dragon, and she told me about the out-of-the-box way her office was using it. She told me that an attorney she worked for would often handwrite his papers and presentations. Rather than her typing them, as would be normal, she, as his secretary, was saving time by using the speech recognition software to herself dictate what the attorney had handwritten.

I’ve heard for a long time how attorneys have been using dictation software, but that was the first time I had ever heard about a secretary using it.

The Nuance U.S. site also includes a number of stories of how others with physical challenges have changed their lives and have become able to work in law and other offices.  It also includes stories of how one lawyer has used Dragon and has eliminated his need for a full-time secretary .

See a review and demo videos

You can see David Pogue’s New York Times review of Dragon version 10 here. You can also see his video review here.

You can also see video demos in English  or, if you want, a humorous version in Geman, an older version (9) in Italian,  and a current demo in Spanish. You can even see a demo of someone transcribing from an MP3 recorder to Dragon.

Please comment on other uses

It would be interesting to hear stories of how law and other offices use Dragon to communicate with clients, witnesses, or office personnel. Please add a comment that might help others if you have any such stories.

In a demand letter related to personal injuries suffered by a Chinese melamine-laced formula poison infant, the video that popped up was devastating - showing the powerful concept conveyance capabilities of video images v. mere words or even static pictures. While obviously not likely admissible, the effect on a claims adjuster could be significant.

I went to the lawyer’s site and he had a sample letter that had embedded in it a sound video of the plaintiffs’ baby crying as well as two very brief mp3 files.

This ability to insert a number of different file types was news to me, and I could see a variety of ways that this ability could be valuable.

You do need Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro to create the documents and the reader/viewer/listener will need to at least have downloaded the free Adobe 9 viewer.

For details from Adobe, take a look at Adobe’s “step-by-step guide” for “Inserting rich Media into PDF files.”

With a Google search of: pdf “insert video” (with the quotation marks) I also found a video demo of how to insert flash content into a PDF document.

Here’s a general caveat, however, regarding Acrobat:

Adobe has reported: “A critical vulnerability has been identified in Adobe Reader 9 and Acrobat 9 and earlier versions. This vulnerability would cause the application to crash and could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. There are reports that this issue is being exploited.”

For more information of the vulnerability, click here. The writer of this article reports another source that recommends that people disable javascript in Reader.

A friend of mine sent me the following about a detailed ABA posting about Acrobat training. (The posting was in ABA’s blog Site-tation, which if from ABA’s Legal Technology Resource Center.) Here’s what he sent:

Training Alert!  Free Acrobat Legal Training Movies
You can get Adobe Acrobat training relevant to attorneys at no cost or travel–just visit the Acrolaw Blog to access links to free Acrobat Legal Training Movies. There are at least 25 short films and 2 hour-long e-seminars with more being added regularly. Topics include creating PDFs, combining PDF, working with PDFs, OCR, securing PDFs and using legal-specific features such as redaction and Bates numbering. You can download the slide presentations to watch offline. 

The Acrobat blog, Acrolaw Blog, is more fully described as “Acrobat for Legal Professionals” and is authored by Rick Borstein, who is “a Business Development Manager specializing in the Acrobat-Legal Market for Adobe Systems Incorporated.”

Please leave a comment if you or others have used video and other rich media in PDF files.

Jeff’s blog is iPhone J.D. — Lawyers Using iPhones, and he includes — with lots of screen shots – detailed postings of new apps and other useful info for attorneys. Some of his postings include info about Time tracking — online, Time tracking apps — Eternity Time Log, adding additional fields in your contacts, having federal rules on your iPhone (rules of civil, criminal and appellate procedure and the bankruptcy rules), and how, with an Exchange server, you can have unlimited e-mail on your Phone.

The inventive lawyer had an AHA solution: he put an oscillating fan in the room to keep the lights on.

For instance, the firm, The Bartlett Law Firm, APLC,  lists its fee for writing a principal brief on appeal at $7,750 and for writing both principal and reply briefs at $11,900.  The firm lists additional fixed fees for other services. However, the site adds that the firm “will consider blending a lower flat fee with a contingent-portion of the award in certain cases.”

Thanks to Ernie Svenson for posting about the site.

In line with this, there is a January 29 article in the New York Times: “Billable Hours Giving Ground at Law Firms,” which discusses how some firms are using, for instance, value billing in litigation. In one situation, the firm set a fee, but that fee was to be and indeed was increased based on how much the firm saved its client over the amount the client feared losing if it lost.

The article continues:

“Millions apparently suffer from ‘no mobile phobia’ which has been given the name nomophobia.

“They have become so dependent on their mobile that discovering it is out of charge or simply misplacing it sends stress levels soaring.

“Experts say nomophobia could affect up to 53 per cent of mobile phone users, with 48 per cent of women and 58 per cent of men questioned admitting to experiencing feelings of anxiety when they run out of battery or credit, lose their phone or have no network coverage.”

By way of background, one way of coming up with solutions in your practice is to have many ways to jog your thought processes.

Assume you have a case that involves a statute (state or federal) or a regulation (state or federal) or a court rule ‘o or indeed any rule (state or federal), and the statute, regulation or rule is barring you or your client from achieving the relief you would like. One defense to the bar that you might consider is whether that bar is invalid. For instance:

1. If the bar is a statute, is it unconstitutional under either the federal or the state constitution;

2. If it is a regulation, is it invalid because it did not comply with rule-making requirements or because it violates a federal or state statute or constitution;

3. If it is a district or appellate court rule, similarly, does it violate a federal or state constitution, statute or even a uniform rule of the court;

4. If it is a city ordinance, does it violate a constitution or a statute.

This validity-checking technique would apply to various types of litigation, and could be helpful to all who are trying to defeat some bar. It could be helpful to plaintiffs and defendants, and to corporations where they are being charged with violating a statute of a regulation. It would also be helpful to civil rights or other groups where they or their clients are being barred from some type of activity. The list could go on and on.

Just as a test, I skimmed Howard Bashman’is highly-admired appellate blog, How Appealing from February 8 through February 17 and found one case in which a federal court of appeal held an EPA rule invalid and another case in which a different federal court of appeal held a Texas statute unconstitutional.

In the first, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected an E.P.A. regulation regarding mercury emission trades, holding that the rule violated the plain text of the federal Clean Air Act. In so holding, the court discussed issues regarding the limits on the ability of an agency to promulgate rules.

The second case was from the U.S. Fifth Circuit. In that case, the court, 2-1, held that a Texas statute that made it a crime to promote or sell certain devices for sexual stimulation was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. In doing so, the court rejected Texas’is claim that the plaintiffs, who distributed the sexual devices for profit, did not have standing to assert the rights of their customers.

You may not have a mercury emission or a sex toy case (what a difference), but the same issues, even if you had not considered them, might apply to your case or to your client. This blog could cause attorneys to at least think about related potential solutions in their cases ~n a consideration that the attorneys might not have made without that trigger.

Additionally, there are cases that have held certain federal rules were invalid because the government failed to publish them for notice and comment. Hemp Industries Ass’in v. DEA, 333 F.3d 1082 (9th Circuit., 6/30/03, 01-71662). For instance, the DEA issued a rule that banned the sale of consumable products containing hemp oil, cake, or seed. The U.S. 9th Circuit held the rule was invalid because it was a legislative rule `iand should have been subjected to notice and comment procedures [under the Administrative Procedures Act].^i

As far as the potential number of cases, I did a sample test of the first half of a six-month index for U.S.Law Week and, from that, estimated that Law Week reported for 2007 about 110 cases in which a law or rule was held invalid for some reason. And, of course, Law Week did not report all state and federal cases in which a statute or orinance or rule had been held invalid.

This new blog could also have categories or topics for the various bases of invalidity. Those categories could, for instance, include: Violates state constitution, Violates federal constitution, Violates federal statute, etc.

Another topic, for instance, that would apply to Hemp Industries, might be `iPublication Requirements Not Met.^i

Thus, in a case involving a regulation, just having a topic of `iPublication Requirements Not Met^i could trigger attorneys to check whether indeed the regulation in their case had been published properly.

Attorneys could thus treat the list of topics as a checklist, similar to one that a pilot goes through before taking off. The attorneys would probably know of all of the defenses to the bar that would be listed in the topics. However, what the list would do, though, is to trigger thought processes and a consideration of defenses that the lawyers might not have otherwise considered.

As far as who would be the blogger, it could be an individual or it could be a group of attorneys in a firm or academics from one or more law schools who specialize in different areas of the law.

NOTE: Please let me know if you are interested in starting the blog or have any questions about it.. I’im not after any remuneration. I just think this could be a very valuable blog.

In addition, I would appreciate learning of suggestions for such a blog. I’m not allowing comments to be posted because of severe comment spam problems. However, you can email me as follows: Type `inoboxes^i before the traditional @ sign and type `icox.net ^i after the @ sign. (Do not include the quotation marks.)

Well, in one case reported by CaseMap, an investigator entered all of a husband’s checks into CaseMap’s case preparatiion program. Here’s how, in that out-of-the-box way, the payments that didn’t show up led to the investigator’is discovery of the husband’is hidden bank account:

[Bill Branscum, the owner of an investigative agency based in Naples, Florida] recalls how . . . he investigated a subject’s finances after the individual in question had supposedly turned all of his financial records over to the court. CaseMap allowed Branscum to quickly pull out all of the man’is alimony payments, which enabled Branscum to detect something odd: Some monthly payments were just missing, and not made up later. On a hunch, Branscum used CaseMap to pull up the man’is car payments, and he found the same pattern: some payments simply were not made. Branscum’is conclusion: the man had a hidden bank account from which he occasionally paid his alimony and his car loan. The hunch was right and the missing finances were revealed.

Of course, some of the same results can be accomplished with spreadsheet programs.  However, CaseMap might allow you to use its bells and whistles and its related programs like TimeMap that ordinary spreadsheets won’t have.

I recently learned that there is also some extremely valuable information hidden away in the digital version of digital photographs. And Microsoft has a free –  that’s free – program that allows you to discover from the digital version such information as the date and time when the photo was taken.

You may also be able to discover additional information with Photo Info, although not all of the information may be available for all photos. The additional information may include:

The camera model: If different photos were taken with different cameras, was there more than one photographer?The serial number of the camera: Again, was there more than one photographer?Technical information, such as F-stop, exposure time, ISO speed, and focal length: Did the photographer alter the way the scene really looked by adjusting the settings?

The “author”of the photograph

You need to be wary, however, because the metadata may have been changed before you see the photograph. For instance, someone could change the date and/or time when the photo was taken. However, knowledge regarding photo metadata is less well-known than word processing metadata, so photo metadata is less likely to be deleted or changed than the word processing metadata.

In addition to being able to see the metadata, you can, on your own photos, for instance, change your metadata or add metadata such as keywords to help find your own photos more quickly.

Microsoft has a general description of the program here; it has frequently asked questions here and you can download the program here. (You may already have other programs that show certain photo information. I have two, but, unlike Microsoft’s program, neither of them show the camera model, the camera serial number, or the “author” of the photograph.)

There is a technical description of Microsoft’s program at the site of one of our local TV companies. You will have to search on “metadata” to find it. The page where the description and other computer tips are included is named “Digital Gumbo.” (Only in Louisiana could there be a website with a combination of “digital” and “gumbo.”)

NOTE: I would appreciate learning of ways that lawyers and support personnel have used metadata in photos. I’m not allowing comments to be posted ecause of severe comment spam problems. However, you can send me your thoughts at the following email adress:

Type “noboxes” before the @ sign and type “cox.net” after the @ sign. (Do not include the quotation marks.)

Thanks for your thoughts.

Particularly pertinent for attorneys are articles entitled:

“Business Solutions: Making Sense of Social Software”

“Social Studies: Companies of all kinds are figuring out which tools work and how to use them” — The article includes information on topics such as social networking, RSS, wikis and blogs and a discussion of how corporations are using them” (This article may be seen at not cost on the Journal’s site.)

“Playing Well With Others: How IBM’s employees have taken social networking to an unusual level” — The article even includes a discussion of how IBM has islands on Second Life for its employees”

“Wikis at Work: Companies turn the Wikipedia concept into a powerful corporate-information tool for employees””

There are also interviews with Steve Jobs, George Lucas, and other magnates.

If you’re interested in any of this and don’t subscribe online, you need to get the paper today while the issue is still available.

How many times have you written a brief and you’re on page 10 and you want to refer to something above that’s on page 5. So, you write “See page 5, supra.” But later you put some new material before page 5, and page 5 becomes page 7. Now your reference is no longer accurate. Then, unless you forget, you manually change 5 to 7. However, that can be tedious if you have four or five or more cross-references. And, even if you only have one, you might forget to make the change.

There’s a way in both WordPerfect and Microsoft Word to make your life easier. It’s called “cross-referencing.” It’s a little complicated at first, but once you or your secretary learn the technique, it’s easy.

Essentially, for instance in WordPerfect 8 (other versions of WordPerfect may be somewhat different), click consecutively on Tools, then Reference, and then Cross-Reference. Reference Type is almost always “Page.” Give the reference a name in the “Select Target” box (for instance “negligence”), and press “Mark Reference” ~n and that’s now the “reference.” Then, go to the location you are referring to, such as page 5, and press “Mark Target” using the identical name you used when you named the reference. You now have marked both the Target and the Reference. Now, you can press “Generate” and, shazam, the “See p. ___” on page 10 now refers to page 5. If you add pages in front of page 5 and page 5 becomes page 8 (or becomes page 4 because you deleted material), all you need to do is “re-generate” the reference (Tools, Reference, Cross-Reference, and Generate), and page 10 now refers to page 8 ~n or page 4 ~n or whatever.

For instructions in WordPerfect itself on how to do the cross-referencing, you can go to “Help” in the toolbar at the top of the page, then click on “Ask the Perfect Expert,” then enter “cross-reference” (without the quotes), and follow the instructions. (Again, there may be variations in finding the instructions, depending on which version of WordPerfect you are using.)

Smart Computing magazine, which has very practical articles “In Plain English,” as it says, has an article on WordPerfect version 6.1’s cross-references at www.smartcomputing.com/support/links.asp?id=892and one on cross-referencing on WordPerfect’s version 10 at www.smartcomputing.com/support/links.asp?id=890. Again, although your version of WordPerfect may be different, the techniques and the principles of marking and generating will probably be similar. (The links to these articles will be open only until April 5, 2007. You can also search Smart Computing for these and other computer articles with a free Smart Computing trial subscription.)

Microsoft Word also permits cross-referencing, although the technique is different. There is a detailed article on Word 2003-2004 at www.uwec.edu/help/word03/AUTO-pageref.htm (No time limit is imposed for that article.)

3/5/2007

The same technique can be used if you want to cross reference to footnote numbers and counters that you create. Instead of selecting page in Cross Reference, just select Footnote number (or counter or “Paragraph/Outline”).

In addition, you can automatically increment Exhibit numbers so that you can move the exhibits around or delete or add exhibits and have the numbers automatically change to the correct new number. To learn about that tool, in WordPerfect 8 (other programs and versions may be slightly different), go to Help and, in the Index tab, type list, numbered. You’ll see detailed instruction on how to use the time-saving technique.

In addition, you can try the Louisiana Hospital Association site that the Louisiana State Medical Society links to : http://www.lhaonline.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=259.

If that doesn’t work, you can try telephoning the Hospital Association at 225-928-0026 or the Medical Society at 800-375-9508 and 225-763-8500.