As I return from certification training in Salt Lake City for NetDocuments, the popular document management service for document-intensive professions, I am finding my thoughts are “in the Cloud”, which is where NetDocuments has parked me for the past three days.
A plethora of so-called “Cloud-Based” applications and services have emerged for the legal profession in the past two or three years. It seems to me that these can be broadly lumped into two distinct classes:
- applications that replace the traditional legal apps found on the law office desktop,
- those that serve as “data repositories”, relying on familiar desktop apps for processing, but storing all of the data for those apps “in the Cloud.”
If you haven’t stuck your toe in the cloud yet (to severely mix my metaphors here!), and are curious to learn what it feels like to do so, here are few free or low-cost applications that will help you get your feet “cloudy” without spending a fortune, making a long-term usage commitment, or significantly altering your present computing style.
EverNote is a free application that captures virtually anything you can bring up on your screen (text, graphics, URL’s, etc.), store those “clippings” on a secure website, and then display those clippings for you via a login from any device that supports the app (which includes PC’s, Macs, iPads, and all manner of smartphones). Need to remember that long URL? How about that witty quote you just saw displayed on a slide in a webinar? Clip it into EverNote, and then easily and seamlessly retrieve it on your smartphone, the hotel workstation, or wherever you happen to be when you need the reference again. Easier than jotting it down on that piece of paper you will likely misplace.
RoboForm is a versatile credentials capturing tool that liberates your logins to travel with you wherever and whenever you happen to need them. For a $10 annual subscription, RoboForm Anywhere will securely store all of your logins, passwords, bookmarks, and other related identification data routinely requested by websites. You can install RoboForm on an unlimited number of computers (and other devices) for the price of the annual subscription fee, and then retrieve your credentials from wherever you are via a simple web synchronization. If for any reason you are unable – or reluctant – to install the app on the computer where you happen to be working, you can go ahead and install it on a memory stick/USB drive, and run the app directly from there. When you are finished, simply unplug the device, and all of your precious credentials are tucked safely away on your removable drive, away from prying eyes. Next time you are on your “home” PC, simply synch up with the RoboForm website and any new or changed credentials that were stored while “on the road” are updated to your local PC. One master password protects your data at all times; when using RoboForm it is the only password you will ever need to remember.
Both of these apps run locally, but store their data out on the Internet (the ubiquitous “Cloud”) for retrieval as needed.
NetDocuments is a considerably more rigorous (and somewhat more expensive) application that has adopted a very similar architecture.
NetDocuments allows users to create documents of all types via locally-installed apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) but then allows the user to store those documents in a highly customizable, search-optimized “filing cabinet” out on the Internet, directly from within the local app, for retrieval from virtually anywhere (including smartphones). My partner Andrea Prigot, who joined me for the certification training in salt Lake City this past week, will have more to say about NetDocuments in a future post.
I am finishing up this post while quite literally “in the clouds”, flying east toward Philadelphia at 34,000 feet. Upon clicking Save from within Word this document will be saved to NetDocuments, from where it will then be posted to our Eastern Legal Systems blog. If you are reading this now, you wlll know that both I and my document arrived at our destinations safely.
Jack Schaller has been active in the field of law office technology since 1989, and has worked with a variety of commercial accounting, legal billing, practice management, and document management software products during his twenty plus years in the software consulting field. During his tenure as a software consultant he has garnered many sales and service awards for his work with legal software products. Jack is a frequent presenter at legal conferences and seminars, and is a regular contributor to TechnoLawyer and other technology publications.