Dennis Kennedy is an award-winning leader in applying the Internet and technology to law practice. A published...
Tom Mighell has been at the front lines of technology development since joining Cowles & Thompson, P.C....
Published: | January 8, 2016 |
Podcast: | Kennedy-Mighell Report |
Category: | Legal Technology |
In 2015, we were introduced to a plethora of tools designed to make lawyers’ lives easier. However, not every legal professional has the same technological needs, and not every lawyer knows how to find the most useful tools for him or herself. In this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell ring in the new year by sharing their favorite apps, websites, gadgets, and technology advice of 2015. They cover their favorite task management tools, cloud and Dropbox service options, search tools, news sources, VPNs, password managers, polling software, and much more. Tune in for a debate on whether the Microsoft Surface Pen is better than Apple’s Pencil and website suggestions for any lawyer who wants to use technology better.
In the second half of this podcast, Tom and Dennis discuss where they discover their best legal tech tips. Their sources include Twitter, panels they’ve attended like ‘30 Legal Tech Tips in 30 Seconds,’ and RSS feeds where they can get links from colleagues and friends in the legal tech world. The hosts wrap up their inaugural 2016 podcast with Parting Shots, the section that always includes tips that you’ll be able to start using as soon as you’re finished listening to the podcast.
Special thanks to our sponsor, ServeNow.
Dennis’ Tips:
Tom’s Tips:
Parting Shots:
Advertiser: Got the world turning as fast as it can? Hear how technology can help – legally speaking. With two of the top legal technology experts, authors, and lawyers: Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Welcome to the Kennedy-Mighell report, here on the Legal Talk Network.
Dennis Kennedy: And welcome to episode 163 of the Kennedy-Mighell Report. I’m Dennis Kennedy in St. Louis.
Tom Mighell: And I’m Tom Mighell in Dallas.
Dennis Kennedy: In our last episode, we debated whether the pen or the finger was mightier than the keyboard. In this, the last episode we’ll record in 2015, we decided not to give you the normal technology gift list, but a whole bunch of useful technology tips you can use for yourself after or maybe even during the episode and some of our best tips from 2015. Tom, what’s on our agenda for this episode?
Tom Mighell: Well Dennis, like you said, in this edition of the Kennedy-Mighell Report, we’ll be offering tips; tons of technology tips. In our second segment, we’ll step back from those tips and talk about how and where we find our best tips, where you might be able to find them. And because we can’t put it down, as usual, we’ll finish up with our parting shots, that one last tip, website or observation that you could start to use the second that this podcast is over. But first, let’s talk about our favorite tech tips from 2015. It seems like every tech conference and even non tech conferences like to offer tip sessions to lawyers. And my experience has been that every tip session I’ve been in has been if not standing room only then at least very crowded. Dennis, maybe it’s worth taking a minute before we start talking about these tips about why 60 tips in 30 minutes or 30 tips in 30 minutes presentations are so popular with lawyers.
Dennis Kennedy: Well, to a certain extent, lawyers do have that diminished attention span that we’re famous for, so that plays a part of it I think. But I think over time, and we’re in another period like this where there’s so much difference in the level of technology use and the level of technology knowledge. It’s harder to hit the sweet part in the audience when you’re talking about technology and it’s definitely impossible to bring the whole audience with you. So the tips thing works well because you’re spending about a minute, you’re offering something useful and practical, concrete that somebody can use. You take a minute to describe it, the audience can decide whether it’s helpful to them or not, they can make a quick note and often take away 3, 4 or 5 things that are useful to them out of that 60 minutes. It’s fast paced and like I said I think it’s practical, concrete information often with immediate results for people. And I think as a speaker, Tom, the tips thing is great because you’re usually on a panel and you’re responsible for 10 or 15 tips a piece. You don’t have to do a lot of prep, it’s fun, you get a big audience and the audience likes what you do. Have I covered the highlights of why lawyers like tip sessions?
Tom Mighell: I think you did. The only thing I’ll add to that is sometimes I enjoy giving tip sessions. But sometimes it’s hard to come up with tips that are brand new. And I don’t know about you but sometimes I struggle. This list that we’re about to give with the tips, some of them I’ve talked about in the podcast, some of them we’ve talked about on podcasts in the past. I think they’re still important, good tips. I hope I’m not saying things to our listeners that they’ve already heard before but I think that’s sometimes a challenge of being able to give good tips.
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, and I would say the other thing I’ve noticed is I recently did a tips session where it was 50 apps, sites, and tips in 50 minutes, and I think part of the thing there is there’s this overlap between different things. So you’re trying to say if you get an audience that they’re Windows users on a bunch of different Windows versions, people using different types of laptops, desktops, people using Macs, so it’s hard to divide out sites apps and tips. So combining them all together makes it easier as a presenter but I think again it gives the audience a number of ways to move forward. But let’s jump in right away with the tips, Tom, and I’ll start us off with something that was emphasized to me by Ben Shore in a presentation on OneNote I saw this year. I’ve been looking for ways to use OneNote more, which is a Microsoft note taking tool, and Ben emphasized there is something called the docked view in OneNote, and that allows you to take a OneNote page and put it on the side of your screen or you can even put it on a second screen if you have multiple monitors and it stays up all day long docked to the side of your screen. And you can just use it the way I do, which is if something comes up where I have an idea, something I want to write down, a phone number, something I need to remember, I throw it into that rolling OneNote docked view document and I can see that every day and I just make it chronological. I just put a date and I throw stuff in and it’s searchable and it’s usable in a lot of ways. I can pull stuff out of there if need be, I can clip web pages or other things into it and it’s really handy and I think it’s a great use of a second monitor as well.
Tom Mighell: So a couple of these tips I’m going to follow up with you on the topic. So for my first tip, I will talk about the virtues of OneNote versus Evernote. I know a lot of lawyers are trying to figure out what note taking app; they go back and forth, they look at things on the iPad. I generally had lawyers kind of standardize on one of the two, either OneNote or Evernote. I really come down on the OneNote side. I think they both have a lot of qualities that make them worthwhile. One, they’re on all platforms which to me is one of the major pluses of a tool like this; you can get it no matter what type of computer or mobile device that you use. I just think that OneNote tends to be a little bit stronger and fuller featured. You can create separate notebooks that have tabs. The layout is just a little bit friendlier and probably a little bit more legal looking than in Evernote. One of the things that I like is the tagging capability. You can tag individual notes in Evernote, but in OneNote, you can tag separate lines of text. So you can have multiple tags within the same notebook or the same note, even. So the docked position is just one more plus to liking OneNote, so I really do prefer OneNote to Evernote.
Dennis Kennedy: And then my second tip, Tom, is something that listeners of the podcast won’t be surprised by because I think I’ve called Omnifocus a life changing application for me. But I think a really strong to do list or task management tool is essential for lawyers these days to keep on top of all the different projects and all the different things that you’re doing on it. For me, Omnifocus is the one that I use. It’s on my Mac, it’s on my iPad, it’s on my iPhone, and it’s great and just gives me a lot better control of what’s going on in my day and all the many projects I’m involved in. So for me, Omnifocus is a really strong, deep program, but I think any to do list is going to make a difference for a lot of lawyers.
Tom Mighell: And to follow up on Dennis’s Omnifocus tip, I will agree with him in part that a to do list is essential and there are a lot of great ones out there. Omnifocus is a terrific tool. My one gripe about Omnifocus is that it is Mac, Flash iOS only. It doesn’t cater to Windows or the Android faithful, so that’s why I tend to look for a to do tool that will cross multiple platforms because I work on those platforms. I really prefer Todoist. Todoist I like a lot and it actually works in a certain way similarly to Omnifocus. If you’re a fan of getting things done methodology, you can implement getting things done by labeling your task with a certain context. So here’s what I get done on the phone, here’s what I get done in the office, here are the errands that I need to run. The thing that makes something like Todoist valuable to me is I create separate lists for the different projects that i Have or the different clients that I’m working for and then I can combine that into a single view. I can filter that view by things that are priority one, that are due today, that are priority two, that are due in the next week; I can combine that and filter that in multiple different ways. So like Dennis said, having a to do application I think is really a must have for lawyers to keep up with what they’re doing. Find a tool you like, but for me, it’s really Todoist.
Dennis Kennedy: My most surprising tip of the year is how I’ve kept keyboard shortcuts. This is a surprise to me in many ways, but I think if you find maybe four to eight keyboard shortcuts that you use on a regular basis, it can make your life a lot easier. So the normal sorts of things would be ctrl C to copy, ctrl X to cut, ctrl V to paste, ctrl P to print, and ctrl Z to undo. I think that if you have a little bit of repertoire with those, and you don’t need to have that many. But for some reasons, even though you can do the same thing by drop down menus or right clicking, those keyboard shortcuts can make a lot of difference. You can also do some mapping to those like even the ctrl V for paste, you can map it to do a paste special. So you have some options even within those, but I’ve just been surprised in the last year how much I’ve gone back to keyboard shortcuts.
Tom Mighell: So we’ve talked a number of times in this podcast about Cloud and about using file transfer services like DropBox and Box and all of those. And still, every time I give a presentation, I get asked, “What about the security?” And I think that the security question’s already answered. But if security is still an issue for you and you’re a solo or a small firm and you can really even be a larger firm, then creating your own private Cloud really ought to be an option, it should be on the table for you. For my purposes, I used the File Transporter. File Transporter used to just provide you with solo or small firm options. So the version I have is a terabyte hard drive that sits on my desk in my office. It has a wireless device connected to it that when I connect it to my WiFi, I download the software to my laptop, to my phone, to my iPad, and I can access my files from anywhere in the world just like I would through DropBox or through Box but they’re all sitting here on my desk. They’re not trusted to someone else, they’re not on someone else’s computer in another location. They’ve really branched out. They’re offering large servers for bigger firms obviously at much larger prices. But I think if using a tool like DropBox or Box is not something you want because of security purposes, use something like File Transporter because I think it’s a really great option that keeps your documents safe and secure.
Dennis Kennedy: A real simple one that I don’t think people use enough is the Microsoft options menus. So if you drop down the file menu, it varies a little bit depending on which version you’re in. But if you drop down a file menu you’re going to see something called options. And there’s a bunch of default settings that’s really easy to tweak and it can be things like the automatic replacement, it can be how you do spell checking, things like that, which is your default directory that you save to. Just spending five or ten minutes in there would be amazingly helpful to you. So, real simple. You can customize to your heart’s content in a lot of ways, but you can definitely pick up a few things that will make your life a lot easier.
Tom Mighell: So at the end of the year, I want to give a recommendation on the best tablets for lawyers to have, although I suspect that most of you have already made a decision about a tablet one way or the other so this may come too little too late for everybody. But I think that there’s two kinds of questions you need to ask. What’s the best tablet first for productivity? You need to get things done and actually be productive. I still think that the Surface tablets are the best. They run full versions of Windows, which means they run full versions of Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, just about any software that you want. What I’ve seen with people and the reviews coming out about the iPad Pro is that they are definitely devices that you can get more done than you could before, but most of the reviews I’ve seen still say it’s not quite a laptop replacement. That said, a lot of people think that’s all that they need, really; they don’t need all the bells and whistles. And if that’s the case, maybe the iPad Pro is a good productivity tool. Where I think the iPad Pro excels is for litigators, is in the courtroom as a tool that you can now – with the side by side split screen – you can set up both your questions and your evidence presentation tool and you can present like a pro in trial on your own. So that’s my recommendation. Productivity. If that’s your goal, Windows Surface tablets, the Surface Book or the Surface Pro 4, if you’re going to be a litigator, have that iPad Pro to go into court with. You may still need a laptop but I still think the iPad Pro is going to do you a better job than anything else in court.
Dennis Kennedy: And I really like screen capturing. I think this can be really helpful when you’re troubleshooting something and you can take a screen capture and send that to somebody if you have a helpdesk or somebody who’s helping you out. If you’re doing presentations you can capture websites, screens, do all sorts of things. There’s a whole range of doing these things. You can capture screenshots off of your phone, off an iPad, off a computer. I love the keyboard shortcut alt and then the print screen button as a way to grab screen captures. And if you want to have a lot of control and be able to do a lot of things, then a program like Snagit is really awesome. Once you realize you can do this, it’s sort of amazing, all the uses you can come up with just for screen captures and a lot of different things that you do.
Tom Mighell: One of my favorite new apps is called Nuzzel, and Nuzzel’s purpose is to help you clue in to what your friends think is interesting on social media. So when you start Nuzzel up, it will ask you to plug into both your Facebook and your Twitter account. And what it will show you each day is it will show you what your friends shared. So basically it’ll pull to the top the most popular stories that your friends shared and then you can actually go one level out further and say, “What did the friends of my friends share?” So I have found that that’s the best way to get the what the most important news of the day is, at least according to my friends. I get better quality stories through using the Nuzzel than I would just going out on my own because these are people that I follow and people that I care about what they think. Here’s what they think and here are types of articles that they think are important to them. Nuzzel, it’s a completely free app to use.
Dennis Kennedy: I want to call this a non traditional search when you’re doing research. So this would be non text, non document, and sort of media search. I love searching podcasts and podcast episodes in iTunes or other podcast apps to find specific episodes or even whole podcasts about information of a topic I’m interested in. Other people use that with YouTube and other video sources. But I think that the whole idea of opening up the different sources to research, Slideshare’s another one where you can see people’s presentations. But for me I love audio, you may find a better way than just reading text to get good research information.
Tom Mighell: So the most recent ABA Legal Technology Resource Center survey stated that 29% of lawyers still use no security when they’re accessing WiFi in a public location. So 29% of lawyers at Starbucks on WiFi are subject to being hacked. Dennis and I know folks who can do that, who can sit there and hack you while you’re sitting there on public WiFi. There’s no excuse to use a virtual private network or some other security to secure yourself while you’re using public WiFi. A VPN is very easy tool to install. I use a tool called Proxpn. It’s free to use but you get have better service if you pay for a yearly fee which I think is something around $30 or $40 a year to subscribe to it. I start it up whenever I’m on the road. It creates a secure tunnel connection. It worked when I was overseas because the network thought that I was dialing in from Dallas or Los Angeles or New York instead of where I happened to be when I was in China and I was subject to the great firewall of China and I could not access a whole lot of sites. I was able to use the VPN to actually get out. Because it thought that I was dialing in from Dallas and it didn’t really recognize that I was in China. So a VPN is good for a lot of different reasons, security is most important. Proxpn is one but there are a lot of great tools out there that can help.
Dennis Kennedy: I’m sort of a headphone nut and so I really like headphones and I think there’s a lot of different headphones for different uses. If you’re a real, extreme headphone person, InnerFidelity.com is the place to go. But there’s two types of headphones that I want to mention this to. One is the noise-cancelling headphones, especially if you fly a lot. I like the Bose QC25, the over the ear ones. There’s also the QC20, that’s in ear if that’s your preference. I’m also really liking bluetooth headphones for when I work out. So I bought some new Powerbeats, Beats by Dre that are bluetooth that work really well. They have earpieces that make it so they stay on your ears when you’re working out. Lots of great headphones choices these days, but noise-cancelling and bluetooth headphones I think are really helpful.
Tom Mighell: Dennis has mentioned several times on this podcast liking a tool called Huffduffer that you could basically create your own podcast feed of audio files that you find on the internet that you want to listen to but they don’t have their own podcast feed. I recently came across a podcast that was posted to Soundcloud. I really wanted to listen to it but I wanted to listen to it on my phone and I wanted to listen to it in my podcast app. So I tried Huffduffer and Huffduffer did not work on that Soundcloud file. I can download that file to an MP3 and I was trying to figure out the way to do it and unfortunately I kind of gave up before I discovered Justcast, and what it does is it turns one of your DropBox folders into a podcast RSS feed. So it plugs into your DropBox account, when you add a file to that, it will actually create a feed for you that you could subscribe to in any podcast client and it will go and grab those files from your DropBox folder when it listens to them, so I think I’ve solved the problem. Justcast, it’s a free download.
Dennis Kennedy: And just one word on 1Password, Tom. A password manager’s essential.
Tom Mighell: I’ll agree with that and maybe you’ve just stolen my follow up tip from you which is that it’s not just 1Password, it’s any password. Using a password manager is absolutely essential no matter what and I’ll add to that by saying that in addition to having a password manager, you really owe it to yourself to enable two factor authentication for the major sites that hold your substantial information. So my GMail account, my DropBox account, my Amazon account now has two factor authentication. I’ve set two factor authentication up on everything, it trusts some of my computers so it doesn’t ask me all the time. On my phone, though, it will usually ask me for a code and that’s why having an app like Authy or Google Authenticator – I really tend to prefer Authy, it’s a better product – are great apps for your mobile devices because they can hold all of your two factor authentication codes and they can be available to you all the time, even when you happen to be offline.
Dennis Kennedy: I also think it’s worth mentioning, Tom, that having that password manager on your phone will give you a lot of benefit because then all your passwords are securely with you all the time when you’re checking in a hotel or whatever else you’re doing and if you need a username or password, you have it right there. I think one of my big tips this year and I think you agree, Tom, is this Amazon Echo and the whole new world of digital assistance and having a device that you can speak to that will provide information and do simple things for you is really a cool direction the way things are going.
Tom Mighell: And what I’ve learned about the Echo, one of the nice things about having the Echo is each week we get an email from Amazon that says, “Here are the new things that Amazon can do,” and it’s not just things that they’ve enabled but it’s things that other people who have their own Echos have learned what to do with them and have modified it and have found new uses for it; I think it’s really nice. I wish there would be more of an online community to do this than just these emails, but I think that’s really nice. And my tip for the Echo is you can actually go in and train your voice on the Amazon Echo. You can actually go in to the app and train your voice. So if it’s having trouble hearing the things that you’re saying, you can actually go and get it to recognize your voice a little bit better. Now if you’re not the only voice, then maybe that’s not the right thing. But if you’re the only one using the Echo, there’s really no reason not to have it understand your voice as well as it can.
Dennis Kennedy: I have a tip on overlapping Cloud backup, and Tom you touched on this a little bit. But my notion is that you have a DropBox account, you have Evernote, you might have an iCloud account, you might have another backup account, you might have a Microsoft account that gives you a certain amount of storage. Google Docs or Google Drive might be another place that you can store things. So I think the notion of saying let me develop a portfolio of backup where I keep my documents in a number of different places really lets you diversify your backup, give you more protection and will help you not lose things and to access them when you need to.
Tom Mighell: So another thing that I really like and I want to do more of on my blog is the ability to create polls and to have people answer polls very quickly. But polling software – we’ve done a podcast on this – it’s expensive, it’s difficult sometimes to implement, it’s something that you’re going to pay a monthly fee for. There’s a new tool called Straw Web Polling. It really excels in mobile devices but it recently has released the ability to create instant free polls within Google Chrome, Firefox, the new Microsoft Edge browser that you’ve got. It’s a lightweight polling tool, it’s not fully featured. But if you just want to ask a couple of questions and get polls out there, I think Straw Web Polling is a nice little tool.
Dennis Kennedy: I got a new iPhone recently and in the process I had to re setup Facebook and I noticed as I was drawn to my newsfeed, all of these videos just started autoplaying and I remembered how annoying that is and for how long I’ve had it shut off. And it’s difficult to find, but just reminded me that there are a bunch of settings in Facebook that you can use to make your experience a lot better. And this is going to be true of other social media tools as well, but going into the settings, this is worth taking the time to dig through the settings. You can probably find some good either in the Facebook help or in Google, find a way to do this because it can vary depending on if you’re in the app or on the web. But I told somebody I did this and they were like, “Oh my god, that’s the most amazing thing I ever heard of,” and I had to show them how to do it. So just remember that there are those settings out there and can make your life a whole lot easier and way more pleasant.
Tom Mighell: I agree. so I’m going to make an inflammatory statement to my Mac and my iOS fans out there and make the argument that the Microsoft Surface Pen is just plain better than the new Pencil. I know it sounds like sacrilege but here’s my case for that. Granted, the Apple Pencil does great things and I’ve heard nothing but just glowing admiration for a white stick that can write really well on an iPad. But here’s why I think the Surface Pen is better: One, it has an eraser on it. You’d think a pencil would have an eraser. It doesn’t have an eraser, but the Surface Pen, you can actually turn it around and the end of it works as an eraser. Recently, though, they’ve enabled the two buttons that are on the Surface Pen to actually be able to launch any program that you want on your device. So if you just press a button you can launch any program without hitting a key, without saying a word, without clicking anything with your mouse. I think that’s a great use of the Stylus and I really think the Pen is a terrific addition to the Surface. Alright, Dennis, last tip. What have you got?
Dennis Kennedy: I’ve got the American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center site, not surprisingly, since I’m the chair of the LTRC board this year and you’re the vice chair. But I think between the blog, the survey and the other stuff that we’re doing, it’s a really great resource for lawyers who want to use technology better.
Tom Mighell: And my last tip is actually non technology related. There was an article in the New York Times a couple of months ago that I still come back to occasionally and it’s called Stop Googling, Just Talk. And it takes its premise a survey of some studies that have shown that just placing a phone between two people on the table at dinner affects the conversation in a negative way. We’re seeing apps come out that if you happen to be texting while you’re walking or while you’re driving, the apps will actually tell you to stop texting while you’re walking or driving. I found myself at Thanksgiving, I looked around the room and nearly everybody in the room was looking at a screen the whole time. I really like to look at my phone and I really like to do stuff on it but I am starting to see the negative implications of that. So everybody please, after this is over, put your phones down and go talk to somebody for a while.
I guess that wraps it up for this, but before we move onto our next segment, let’s take a quick break for a message from our sponsor.
Advertiser: Looking for a process server you can trust? Serve-Now.com is a nationwide network of local, prescreened process servers. Serve-Now works with the most professional process servers in the industry. Connecting your firm with process servers who embrace technology, have experience with high-volume serves and understand the litigation process and rules of properly effectuating service. Find a prescreened process server today. visit www.Serve-Now.com. We’re glad you’re listening to Legal Talk Network. Check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn too.
Tom Mighell: And now let’s get back to the Kennedy-Mighell Report. I’m Tom Mighell.
Dennis Kennedy: And I’m Dennis Kennedy. There’s so many tips out there and I feel we barely touched the surface. People often wonder where we get all the tips that we use in presentations and on this podcast. We thought we’d reveal some of our secrets. Tom, where do you find your best tips?
Tom Mighell: So mine is not really a complete secret and we talk a lot about how both you and I still rely a lot on RSS feeds. And I’ve been listening in the tech media that people have stopped looking at RSS feeds for information and they rely more on Twitter to get the news and to get updates and stuff. And to a certain extent, I get some of mine from Twitter but I will say that the resources that I’ve subscribed to in my RSS feeds allow me just a great cross section of information. So I’m able to get both legal technology tips from all of my colleagues and friends in the legal technology world, but I also subscribe to technology blogs, technology news sites. Just general technology how to places that I get tons and tons of tips every single day that some are useful, some are less useful. But it’s a neverending supply of things that I could use. And frankly, I’ve got it set up to where I just get it straight coming into my RSS reader, so it’s really not too difficult for me. What about you, Dennis?
Dennis Kennedy: Well, same thing not surprisingly and even a lot more these days from podcasts. Although the difficulty with picking things up from podcasts is if you’re in the car or something, it’s hard to grab that information and write it down and record it or go back to it and find it; so that’s the difficulty with podcasts. For the pure technical tips, I love the Ask Dave Taylor blog and the How-To Geek blog which I just have these really good, handy tips. I think a lot of the computer magazine sites and other sites along those lines will provide tips. And then, Tom, frankly a great resource for both you and me is that when we’re either on a panel or listening to a panel of our friends who are doing 60 tips, because we see what’s new and current and what people find that are both new and lawyers are liking. So between all those sources, you’re right, Tom. There’s tons of tips out there and I wish I could implement them all. And a lot of times I just use the ones that I’ve tried that actually stick with me, which is why I mentioned that I was surprised this year that it was the keyboard shortcuts, including the Windows shortcut. But shortcuts really helped me this year and it was just because I tried them and they really benefited me. Now it’s time for our parting shots, that one tip, website or observation that you could use the second that this podcast ends. Tom, take it away.
Tom Mighell: So because you never have enough tips, we’ll have a couple more tips here to end it. I saved one of my favorite tips for the last here. I have been waiting for a long time for a scheduling app designed by Microsoft for Outlook. There’s lot of scheduling sites out there. Doodle, WhenIsGood, Timebridge is one that’s been around for a long time. They’re all third party applications that don’t plug in neatly to an Outlook or an Exchange account and I miss that. FreeTime is a Microsoft tool. It’s for Office 365 users. I open up an email, the FreeTime apps opens automatically within the email, I select a couple of times that I want to have a meeting that email goes out, people vote. It automatically schedules the meeting assuming everybody could make a specific time. I don’t have to do anything, I’ve only done it twice to schedule meetings so far and it’s just worked flawlessly. It’s a great tool and it’s absolutely free. So if you’re on an Office 365 account, go to your apps section and you can actually download and install FreeTime for Outlook.
Dennis Kennedy: I’m going to close with two tips, Tom. One is the one I’ve just posted but it will be up for a while when this podcast goes online. My Twelfth edition of the Blawggie Awards for best law related blogs that I’ve been doing since 2004. It’s taken an unusual approach this year and I encourage people to take a look at that post which you could find by a search on Blawggies, which should bring it up either the first or second result in Google. The other tip I have I wanted to say, because I found this recently and it’s really helpful to me but it illustrates how hard it is to do tips. So it’s the concept here more than the precise instructions because everybody’s using different devices. But what i like is this ability now to take what’s on a computer, on a tablet or a phone and using a TV device like your Apple TV, Roku, Comcast, to put that onto your TV. It’s kind of a cool way to show vacation photos to a group of people. It’s a way to stream video or show slides onto a TV and I think it really shows the way that you can use all these different screens we use and share things between them and pick a screen that’s most useful for the job at hand.
Tom Mighell: So that wraps it up for this edition of the Kennedy-Mighell Report. Thanks for joining us on the podcast; information on how to get in touch with us, as well as links to all the topics we discussed today, is available on our show notes blog at TKMReport.com. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or on the Legal Talk Network site where you can find archives to all of our previous podcasts. If you’d like to get in touch with us, please email us at [email protected] or send us a tweet. I’m @TomMighell and Dennis is @DennisKennedy. So until the next podcast, I am Tom Mighell.
Dennis Kennedy: And I’m Dennis Kennedy and you’ve been listening to the Kennedy-Mighell Report, a podcast on legal technology with an internet focus. Help us out by telling a couple of your friends and colleagues about this podcast.
Advertiser: Thanks for listening to the Kennedy-Mighell Report. Check out Dennis and Tom’s book, The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together. From ABA Books or Amazon. And join us every other week for another edition of the Kennedy-Mighell Report, only on the Legal Talk Network.
[End of Transcript]
Notify me when there’s a new episode!
Kennedy-Mighell Report |
Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell talk the latest technology to improve services, client interactions, and workflow.