Litigation Software Update

I wrote a post in 2020 about the software that I and other litigators use at work. But no blog post about software can stay current forever, so I thought I would write in the year 2023 about the software I use in my work. Many of my changes have come about because software improves over time and new software comes on the market. But many changes happen for other reasons: for example, I have changed firms, gotten a new phone, broken my iPad, and some vendors have gone out of business. Events like these require lawyers to be ready to adapt to the technology available.

Why should you continue to read this update to a post about litigation software?

• You want to encourage me to update some of my other posts that come from all the way back in the year 2020.

• You’d like an update on how my life has changed since this blog began, but with as few personal details as possible.

• You’re a software vendor and you want to see if you made this year’s big list of programs I use.

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Document Management and Online Cloud Storage

Many law firms use document management software to store documents and allow multiple people to edit the same document. But in the last few years, I have been working with attorneys that have been relying on online storage to share documents. And I have encouraged other lawyers to use online document editing software, like Google Docs, to collaborate on a single document.

Software that lets people work together on a document is very useful. This is because the alternative is having people send drafts of a document back and for to each other. This invites the possibility that someone edits the a version of a document that is not the most recent, causing some edits to be lost and prompting the frustrating work of cobbling together a new, correct version. It also makes it hard to confirm which version of a document is the correct one. And a careful attorney may need to run a comparison against previous versions of a document to see what changes have been made, or trust that the previous editors have used Microsoft Word’s track changes feature correctly to highlight these changes.

For this reason, I like Google Docs. It keeps one version of the document that multiple people can edit - even simultaneously - and it keeps track of who made which edits and when and allows users to revert to previous versions. Some careful lawyers may be concerned that a document may lose its privileged status by being shared online with Google, but I have never seen that happen myself. Further, Google Docs seems to require a Google account to use, which may be awkward when working with people who want to use their work email accounts.

Beyond collaborating on documents, online storage is important to make sure important documents can be easily found in one place and are not vulnerable to destruction if a computer or disk is lost or destroyed. I understand that online storage is very inexpensive right now. And so my immediate thought when I started a solo practice was to use Amazon Web Services, which advertises very low storage rates. But I found it hard to use and, for some reason, incredibly slow. So instead, I started using IDrive. Their rates are reasonable and, while it can be a little clunky to use, I have gotten a lot of data reliably stored with them. I also use DropBox, which has also been useful and easy to use.

Time Entry and Billing Software

I used to use an iPhone app called iBillable to keep track of my time. But when I got a new phone, I could not download it again because it was no longer available. I tried a lot of replacements, but many sought a monthly subscription, which didn’t seem necessary to me for such a simple task. Eventually I found Easy Hours, which for only $5 did what I needed: kept records of the time I spent for each of my clients and then let me review and edit those entries later.

I also used to use TABS3, but now I have two different solutions for recording my time for billing purposes. For many of my clients, I use Clio. And I have to admit, Clio is better than TABS3. It lets me enter in time in minutes, not just tenths of an hour. And the interface is much easier to use and read.

For some clients, I just use Google Sheets, where I record the number of hours I spend each day for a client, giving each client its own tab. I can then use that data to calculate the total hours and the total amount to bill. Honestly, this provide all of the function I need for several of my cases and is free.

For matters where I bill clients directly, I have been using Intuit’s QuickBooks. I like that it can interface directly with my bank accounts and business credit cards, easily generate invoices, and help keep track of my accounts and expenses.

Comparison and PDF Software

I used to believe that software that can compare two documents was essential for litigators. And the gold standard, I believed, was Workshare Compare. While I agree that Workshare Compare is great for PDF documents, I now realize that Microsoft Word can compare Word documents itself, and this has been a very helpful feature for a lower cost.

In the past, I have worked for law firms that use the full version of Adobe Acrobat. But Acrobat is expensive; Adobe charges monthly subscriptions for it instead of letting users buy it for a few hundred dollars.

On this blog, I noted that Nitro is a popular and low-cost alternative. But I have started using PDF Element Pro 6, largely because I forgot that Nitro existed. But both programs offer roughly the same features that lawyers need: text recognition (“OCR”) and Bates stamping and basic editing and combining of PDFs and producing PDFs in PDF/A format.