Thursday, July 14, 2011

AND THE SURVEY SAID....!

The results of the 2011 ABA Technology Survey have been posted. It would have been nice if the the sample set was >1000 but I still found this to be very telling. Of the 15% of all attorneys who use a tablet device, 89% report that they use an iPad, 8% report using Android. Read the full report by Jeff Richardson: SURVEY

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

ELECTRONIC PRE-BILLS DELIVERED TO YOUR iPAD? YES!

Reviewing Pre-Bills is a necessary and a very important evil in every attorney’s practice and is not a task billing attorneys look forward to every month. However, pre-bill review is vital to any law firm in order to achieve accuracy in billing, especially today as corporate clients adopt ebilling and auditing review systems. But timing is also important when reviewing pre-bills. The faster attorneys can turn them back to accounting the faster invoices will go out to the client and helping to shorten the receivables cycle.

Wouldn’t it be great for attorneys to be able to review pre-bills from his/her iPad, anywhere they are, make revisions and annotations (using a stylus or finger) and send them back to accounting? The firm will save thousands of sheets of paper, go truly paper-less, at the same time attorneys are not constrained to be at the office to work on their pre-bills.

iDocExplorer allows ProLaw firms to do that and much more. As follows I describe a workflow any firm can implement in a matter of minutes and is a start to a truly automated paperless pre-bills review.

- Accounting will run pre-bills for each attorney and instead of sending it to a regular printer, they will send it to a PDF printer. There are many good PDF printers for free (I’m serious). My favorite is PDF995 (http://www.pdf995.com/)

- Save the pre-bills to an admin matter in ProLaw for each attorney to access. You can choose one general admin matter or each attorney’s admin matter.

- From iDocExplorer, attorneys will be able to immediately access those pre-bills from their iPads by navigating to the appropriate matter.

- Use the “Open In” feature of iDocExplorer to access apps such as neu.Annotate (free!), iAnnotate or GoodReader, and start reviewing and annotating pre-bills with a Stylus or just a finger.

- Email pre-bills with changes to Accounting or to any other attorney for further review.

- Done, that’s it! This can be done while in the airport, waiting in court or on a Saturday from home (not from the office).

There is big difference in efficiencies by doing this from your iPad, versus trying other electronic mechanisms or software. The greatest advantage using your iPad for this function is that it can be done anywhere and it resembles the simplicity of doing it in paper, but with portability and without having to carry tons of paper.

Now, how about Conflicts Reports? You can apply the same workflow and get the most out of your iPad and your time.

If you are interested in learning more, please contact us at info@bellefield.com and our support team will be happy to step you through the entire process so attorneys at your firm can successfully star reviewing pre-bills totally paperless.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Bellefield Advances Mobile Strategy With New Version of iDocExplorer iPad App

ProLaw users can now easily view, edit, and annotate documents on their iPads
PITTSBURGH, PA. JULY 6, 2011–Bellefield Systems, a leading innovator in Mobile Legal Applications, today announced that iDocExplorer upgraded version 1.4 is now available on the iTunes app store. The free to download app seamlessly integrates with the ProLaw DMS providing immediate access to profiled documents and emails. Users may also email, annotate, and save documents to their iPads.

“Each of the iDocExplorer enhancements resulted from user requests and help unleash the true potential of what the iPad can do. We remain fully committed to our clients and bringing the very best mobile applications to market,” said Gabriela Isturiz, Principal Bellefield Systems.

New iDocExplorer v. 1.4 features include:

• Browse the ProLaw Document Management System. Documents that are stored in the ProLaw Document Management System can be accessed from Recent Matters, My Matters, Assigned Matters, or full document searches.
• Email. Documents may be emailed from the iPad to any recipient in seconds.
• Open In – Documents can now be opened using third party apps.• Annotate / Save. Documents are easily annotated directly on the iPad and may be saved and or emailed with the annotations intact.• Matter level and Document level security. iDocExplorer honors ProLaw security hierarchy and document database restrictions.

"iDocExplorer has become an indispensable tool for my practice. It allows me to access and manipulate any document I created or received for any matter I am working on at any time and any place. That is a powerful tool for lawyers," said Eric Hughes, Attorney Hughes & Hughes

iDocExplorer leverages the Bellefield Connect Platform, Bellefield’s proprietary enterprise cloud data system, permitting seamless 2-way communication between Legal Management Systems and mobile devices. This ultra-secure platform provides bank level security and encryption of firm and client data.


About Bellefield: Bellefield is a leading innovator in Legal Mobile Technologies, bridging the gap between your enterprise software, mobile devices, and desktop applications. Bellefield’s mobile strategy is based on Bellefield Connect, the most robust and secure mobile data platform designed specifically for legal. Guiding the way in mobile computing for legal, Bellefield has released iDocExplorer and iTimeKeep. For more information Bellefield at www.bellefield.com

Download the PR  here