Pagico

Looks interesting. A combined, notes, contacts, files, folders, iCal organiser.

Going Paperless (well as paperless as possible)

Today, I begin an experiment to see if I can convert my office into a paperless one. There is one problem though, I have, technically at least, I cannot succeed: letters, orders, claim forms, agreements and a whole plethora of other documents require my, physical signature. I am sure many American lawyers work this way already but it is a relative rarity in the UK. This is my plan:-

1. Hard copy documents to be scanned on a daily basis. I have ordered a Fujitsu Scan Snap to replace my HP 3030. Hard copy documents will be boxed up and stored.
2. Scans will be stored in DocumentWallet. DW will be backed up daily to the second hard drive on my Mac and weekly to an external hard drive. I would like to be able to share the DocumentWallet library between my G5 and MacBook. I am not sure how to do this yet. It may well be just a simple matter of sharing the library file. Also the setting up of the fields in DocumentWallet is crucial I need to be able to capture the right information over a range of documents, everything from pleadings to faxes to contracts to witness statements. This is quite a difficult exercise.

3. I will begin a retrospective scan of all my other documents. This could take weeks.

It seems so simple at this stage…..I really have not thought this out properly. However, I am taking what I would call a “Russian Engineering Approach”: get going and work out the kinks as you go along.

DocumentWallet: intial impressions.

DocumentWallet is produced by GGT enterprises based in San Diego. I downloaded the trial yesterday and have been playing with it since.

My intial impression? It’s a belter. I think I have found in DW something I have been looking for for a long time. These are some brief thoughts:-

1. The UI is simple and effective. It’s a classic three pane affair much like you’d see in Mail. On the left hand side is a column which sets out your main document collections: the main hierarchy of files. To the right sits a main navigation pane showing details of particular documents, below that is a preview pane.

Easy.

2. Setting up collections or folders of particular documents is as easy as creating new Mail folder. Not only that you can create smart collections based on the meta data you have entered for each document.

So once you have your documents in DW moving around them is beyond easy. But how easy is it to get your documents in there in first place?

Answer: about as simple as you could hope for.I tried it today and I ended up laughing at how easy it was. It’s not often software makes me smile, but DW did.

Let me explain:-

Last year I was acting for a Claimant in a fraud claim. When it came to disclosure from the Defendant I was confronted with 40 lever arch files of documents. Having a small office I decided to employ a contractor to scan the disclosure into pdfs. My hope was I would have a few DVDs and with just those I would navigate all those documents with nimble ease. Ha ha ha, I am such a fool.

When the contractor was done he gave me a bunchh of DVDs, which turned out to be basically useless.

The DVDs did not contain 40 pdf files, that is one for each folder, but many hundreds of files. The contractor had used a scanner with a 50 sheet maximum feed capacity. Each time a new batch of 50 pages was scanned a new file was created. Even worse the file naming protocol was inconsistent and it was impossible to tell how each pdf related to the other, without printing them out and checking each against the Defendant’s list of documents. Next to useless – no utter crapola is probably a better description.

The upshot was that I had to have all the files printed off and checked against the list of documents in order to recreate the hard copy originals. I ended up 40 lever arch files.

Anyway, I have another case pending against the same Defendant. So I thought I would see if DW could help me tidy up the files. And? Well, after an afternoon of learning how to use DW and experimenting with those files , totalling 4 gigabytes of pdfs, they are now in perfect order. That is a real testament to the power and simplicity of DW. How did DW allow me to do this?

1. When you import a bunch of files you can choose to import all as one file or as seperate files. Hence you can merge many seperate pdfs. For example I merged 398 pages of bank statements stored in 8 separate pdfs with one click of a mouse.

2. Once you create a file you can add to it. So when I found a further 200 pages of bank statements a little later on in the afternoon I added them to the 398 pages I mentioned above with no problems at all. So you can tootle along adding files, and as you spot stuff that needs to be merged with existing documents it’s simple. That feature is great for anyone wanting to keep an open file of, say, correspondence. You can simply open your existing file and scan in your new materials.

3 . As you import (whether by way of an scan or existing file) you are confronted with a dialogue box which asks you for data such as title, date etc. The data entry fields can be modified to suit your own needs. For example I have changed the default fields to “relevance”, “issues”, “source” and “tag” (more of the last one next). Data entry using this system is aided by auto-fill of fields fields. This can make the whole data entry process extremely rapid.

4. My initial instinct was to create a folder called “Defendant’s Disclosure” and drag and drop all of the files into it. However, I added the “tag” field which I used that to identify the documents as “Disclosure”. I then created a smart collection to hold anything tagged as the same. Simple. Smart collections can be made up from other fields, such as title, description etc much like you would an iTunes playlist. It’s so easy it’s almost a joke.

So my initial impressions have turned into a mini-essay. However, DW is that good. To be totally honest, if I never use DW again it will have been worth $30 just for tidying up 4 gigs of mess.

If I could add anything? I would like to be able to dump selected information from the document information pane to a printer. That way I could use DW to draw up lists of documents. Hey, but that’s not a complaint.

I am over the moon with DW. It sits alongside IGTD, Quicksilver, and Circus Ponies Notebook as simple cost effective and smart software that helps me. I have seen more sophisticated document management software, but what do I want that for? The simpler the better for me. I need documents to be accessible and useful to my case. I do not want document management for document management’s sake. But don’t take that as meaning DW is not sophisticated, it is, it just does not cloak its sophistication with complication.

Give the trial a go, you have nothing to lose but the clutter and mess of too much paperwork.

DocumentWallet

DocumentWallet looks like a good piece of software. In my line of work, commercial fraud, document management is fundamentally important. This is the developer’s blurb:-

So what is DocumentWallet? DocumentWallet is a Mac OS X program that allows you to scan in and manage your documents. When you scan in each document, you enter a few pieces of information about the document such as the title, category and sub category (as well as fields that you define) and then you can quickly and easily locate your documents. You can view the documents right on the screen, print them, email them, or save them as PDFs. In addition to the powerful search built into DocumentWallet, you can organize your documents into collections. These collections can contain whatever you want and even better than that is the ability to create smart collections that automatically create collections based on whatever criteria you like. For instance, you can create a smart collection that contains all of your manuals for your electronic components or one that contains documents for a certain case. The possibilities are endless

Looks good. Going to trial it and see how it fares.

At war with my HP Laserjet 3030

The HP laserjet 3030 is a mainstay in my office. It’s a cheap and cheerful all-in-one scanner, fax, printer and copier. For faxing, printing and copying it is fine. But why oh why is scanning such a dark art with it? The instructions for saving a scan, as a file are set out in the HP manual, like so:

1. Load the originals in the automatic document feed. Ok not too hard, even for an eejit like me.

2. The manual then says that you need to click “Scan” from within HP director; a preview of the scan will appear. You can then choose “save as” in order to pick your chosen file format.

Not so.

When you click “Scan” you are faced with the scan dialogue box, no preview, and with the hard copy document sat in the document feed.

This is when things get funky. The scan dialogue box has a number of inviting options, including:-

1 . send to (mail, outlook etc);

2. scan and scan all; and

3. some others….

So what to do? My instinct is to choose “Scan/Scan all”. In my experience this results as follows:

1. 30% of the time, the scanner scans the document, gives me a preview and allows me to save as a file;

2. 30% of the time nothing happens and I get a message stating that the file cannot be found or the scanner is busy or nothing at all occurs. In every case I have to force quit and turn the 3030 off at the power switch.

3. The rest of the time the scanner seems to work and then stops mid way through.

I do not understand why 1. above is not repeatable. It seems to me to be absurd that a relatively simple task can lead to such odd outcomes.

The answer seems to be that you have to sit around and wait after pressing “Scan” for your preview. That seems sensible. However, I have just tried that approach and after sitting around for 4 minutes with nothing happening and the “scan all button” pulsing I gave in. “Scan all” worked fine.

I have decided to move as far as possible toward a paperless office. That means I am going to be relying on scans of all my documents and correspondence. It would be unfair to suppose that the 3030 could cope with this, particularly since it has taken me over an hour to scan 6 pages into pdf format today.

I have no idea what to look for. I seem to remember that Fujitsu make good scanners. So it’s research time.