Tray Selector – save frustration, time and the environment.

Brought to you by our friends at Tray Selector

Any self-respecting modern law firm will produce documents on all sorts of paper types: expensive headed paper, draft copy paper, duplex, pdf etc.  Our product is Legal advice and even in the days of email we are still required to convey this on paper to our clients.

Our offices are now occupied by an array of multi-function printers that can do all sorts of clever printing. Two sided or duplex on a variety of paper sources selected from lots of different paper tray. Wonderful as this is it creates a specific problem when we decide to print a document from Microsoft Word.  When ready to print we need to remember a sequence of complex settings to output the document to the correct tray. We need to know which tray is which and be sure it is loaded correctly with the correct paper tray. If we get any of these steps wrong its wasted time and paper and a lot of frustration. The expletives which emanate from around the printer when the document comes out on the wrong paper can keep the company swear box topped up for weeks.

Tray Selector http://www.trayselector.com/ is a small and ingenious solution to this problem.  Once loaded into Microsoft Word it allows you to pre-configure your print jobs and assign each one to a button in your toolbar or ribbon bar.  When these buttons are clicked the document is printed in exactly the right way first time and every time.  Each button can be set to select particular trays so that output can be sent to say first page to headed paper and the rest to plain followed by a copy all on plain.  The buttons are given friendly names to remind us what they do e.g. “Headed + Copy”. Tray Selector allows up to 12 buttons.

Suppose in order to save paper you want to print your letters duplex. The first page should be duplex but select paper from the headed paper tray other pages should come from the plain paper tray. In addition to this you wish to print a copy all to plain again duplex. To do this it is quite straightforward. You just configure a printer driver to always print duplex and with a few short clicks setup a button in Tray Selector and call it “letter-duplex”. In a single click your output will be printed that way each time every time.  This alone can save a busy office thousands of pounds a year.

There are loads of other bells and whistles including envelope printing, mail-merge, duplex, calling macros before and after printing, watermarking copies, support for Citrix and Terminal Services. In addition Tray Selector comes with a year’s free product support and upgrades.

Every now and again a simple little time saving bit of software comes along which makes your life that little bit easier. Tray Selector won’t solve the problems of the world or provide an extensive document management system. What it does do though is save time, paper and frustration and in so doing will pay for itself time and time again. Unlike many other products one can buy there is absolutely no risk in trying out Tray Selector. It is available on a fully functional 30 day trial basis. The price is a very reasonable £20/$30 per user as a one off cost (no maintenance bills). The company will also provide you with a free online demo to get you up and running. You can get more information from http://www.trayselector.com and download a free trial from the site and get started.  There are tens of thousands of users out there now and the company has never refunded a single license fee despite offering a money back satisfaction guarantee.

May 20, 2013 ¡ Tim Kevan ¡ Comments Closed
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Monday morning with Alex Williams’ cartoons,20th May 2013

This cartoon is by Alex Williams who draws the Queen’s Counsel cartoons for The Times and in numerous books including Lawyers Uncovered. He also does the cartoons for BabyBarista and has had two more excellent books published recently: 101 Ways to Leave the Law and 101 Uses for a Useless Banker. He offers almost all of his cartoons for sale at £120 for originals and £40 for copies and they can be obtained from this email info@qccartoon.com.

May 20, 2013 ¡ babybarista ¡ Comments Closed
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Book Recommendation: Friends at Court

Roger Thursby is prospering in the legal profession and is about to be made a Queen’s Counsel. In this brilliantly funny sequal to Brothers in Law we follow him through a further series of hilarious legal highs and lows.

 

 

 

Available from Amazon

May 15, 2013 ¡ babybarista ¡ Comments Closed
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Monday morning with Alex Williams’ cartoons,13th May 2013

This cartoon is by Alex Williams who draws the Queen’s Counsel cartoons for The Times and in numerous books including Lawyers Uncovered. He also does the cartoons for BabyBarista and has had two more excellent books published recently: 101 Ways to Leave the Law and 101 Uses for a Useless Banker. He offers almost all of his cartoons for sale at £120 for originals and £40 for copies and they can be obtained from this email info@qccartoon.com.

May 13, 2013 ¡ babybarista ¡ Comments Closed
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Quarter of law firms admit to “misplacing” confidential documents

Brought to you by our friends at Networks First

Almost a quarter of law firms in the UK have admitted to losing mobile devices containing confidential documents and information, according to the results of a new survey.

A top Data protection firm surveyed 100 legal firms throughout the UK and discovered that 24 per cent had misplaced at least one mobile device containing confidential documents. The results showed that data most at risk of being compromised included client information, contracts and case notes.

Out of those who admitted to losing a mobile device containing confidential information only 13 per cent said they were confident that the device could not be breached as it had security settings in place to protect against unauthorised access.

Over the past few years data has become a growing source of value for companies, considered on the balance sheet alongside other assets, and while data might not be an asset which law firms can put a price on the nature of their work means that they should be taking even more data protection cautions than businesses in other sectors.

Information breaches can seriously jeopardise cases, severely damage the level of trust that clients have in a legal firm and will also be a breach of the Data Protection Act 1998, which sets out rules that those handling the personal information of others must adhere to.

A naive approach to the protection of data was revealed by the survey, with more than 90 per cent of lawyers questioned believing that their information was protected by the use of a simple password, and four per cent admitting to not using any security measures at all.

Ex-hacker and security IT consultant Robert Schifreen described passwords as “inadequate”. “You can download cracking software from Google that can break the average password in less than 30 minutes,” he warned.

Data security should be an important focus for anyone working in the legal profession. Carrying client information, records, case files and contracts on a device with no encryption is unprofessional at best, and gives an incredibly negative message about a firm as a whole – would you trust a lawyer who acted so irresponsibly with private information about other people?

One of the key mistakes made over data protection is that the end user is often given too much responsibility or control. For data protection solutions to be truly secure they must be controlled by a central system or device, and they must have a warning system which quickly flags up attempted unauthorised access.

Data protection should be a top priority for all legal firms and any security measures should be backed up by comprehensive staff training on working safely with sensitive data.

About the Author: Peter Titmus

Having been an apprentice with GPO (now BT) Peter moved into the network industry where he has been for the last 35 years. After working for Racal Milgo, Motorola Codex and then Infotron, Peter and five of his colleagues founded Networks First where he is Chairman today.

Peter is passionate about innovation and strongly believes in technology such as ProductivityOne that allows companies to access, synchronise, share and control contacts, documents, calendars and task & note information securely and allows their staff to work in a much more flexible and effective way.

May 8, 2013 ¡ Tim Kevan ¡ Comments Closed
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Book Recommendation: Letters to a Law Student: A Guide to Studying Law at University

Letters to a Law Student relays all that a prospective law student needs to know before embarking on their studies. It provides a useful guide to those considering a law degree or conversion course and helps students prepare for what can be a daunting first year of study.

 

 

 

Available from Amazon

May 8, 2013 ¡ babybarista ¡ Comments Closed
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HHJ Pennyweather, the legal arms race and grumpy old judge syndrome – @theiclr

Brought to you with the support of our friends at The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting

Sometimes I really think that the supposedly cleverest people in the world are in fact the most stupid. A case which came before me last week illustrates this point perfectly. It started life as an uncomplicated personal injury matter which should have settled out of court many years ago. But instead what happened was that the solicitor in his wisdom passed the case to a barrister for advice. All well and good except that this clever young and earnest barrister was out to make a name for herself and thought the case was in fact far more important and complicated than it actually was. So she advised bringing in leading counsel. Said solicitor then passed this advice first to his client and then to the legal expenses insurers who duly brought in a very learned and esteemed Queen’s Counsel.

But this is where the stupidity arises since as soon as the other side realised that they’d be facing a much more senior barrister in court they decided that they too needed to instruct equally learned and esteemed leading counsel if they were to avoid being massively out-gunned and have any chance of winning whatsoever. So then we had two barristers instead of one on each side and probably four times the costs to boot. The problem is that it’s like a never-ending arms race or I suppose a very expensive game of chicken where each side simply matches the other and cancels out the advantage. Which ultimately leaves them all in no better position than if they’d just gone along with their original cheapo lawyer in the first place.

Now when I came to give judgment I made it very clear that I found for the claim for perfectly good reasons that would be impossible to appeal. But if you want the real truth then you should listen to my wife. She pointed out many years ago that my actual reasons for deciding a particular way are many and varied and rarely have anything to do with the law and only occasionally with the facts. In this particular case it had a lot more to do with the fact that one side provided case reports from the splendid ICLR online which to be fair is I think a perfectly legitimate reason in itself. But sometimes it can be as superficial as a barrister donning clip-on braces (a pet hate of mine) or perhaps threatening me with appeal or using the phrase ‘With the greatest respect’. Whatever it might be, I have long since given up trying to self-justify the outcome on other grounds. Judicial caprice is how my wife politely describes it even though grumpy old judge syndrome is what she usually calls it.

So unless you have a crystal ball and think you can predict the mood of a grumpy old judge (an impossible task according to my wife) or you plan on playing the cunning ICLR card, then I’d say you’d be far better off not spending a penny on lawyers and instead simply agreeing to draw straws at the beginning of the process and sticking with whatever comes from that. Because unless you do the only people who are going to win are the lawyers.

Which come to think of it, makes me think that they are perhaps not as stupid as they perhaps first appear.

May 6, 2013 ¡ Tim Kevan ¡ Comments Closed
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Monday morning with Alex Williams’ cartoons, 6th May 2013

This cartoon is by Alex Williams who draws the Queen’s Counsel cartoons for The Times and in numerous books including Lawyers Uncovered. He also does the cartoons for BabyBarista and has had two more excellent books published recently: 101 Ways to Leave the Law and 101 Uses for a Useless Banker. He offers almost all of his cartoons for sale at £120 for originals and £40 for copies and they can be obtained from this email info@qccartoon.com.

May 6, 2013 ¡ babybarista ¡ Comments Closed
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Book Recommendation: Legal Skills

Legal Skills encompasses all the academic and practical legal skills essential to the law student in one manageable volume. It is an ideal text for first year law students and is also a valuable resource for those studying law at any level. Clearly structured in three parts, the book covers the full range of legal skills you will need to succeed from the beginning of your law degree, through your exams and assessments and into your future career. The first part covers ‘Sources of Law’ and includes information on finding and using legislation, making sure you understand where the law comes from and how to use it. The second part covers ‘Academic Legal Skills’ and provides advice on general study and writing skills. This part also includes a section on referencing and avoiding plagiarism amongst a number of other chapters designed to help you through the different stages of your law degree. The third and final part is dedicated to ‘Practical Legal Skills’; a section designed to help you to develop transferrable skills in areas such as presentations and negotiations that will be highly valued by future employers. The book contains many useful features designed to support a truly practical approach to legal skills. Self-test questions and diagrams are set in a user-friendly colour design. More extensive activities give you the opportunity to take a ‘hands on’ approach to tackling a variety of legal skills from using cases to negotiation. Each skill is firmly set in its wider academic and professional context to encourage an integrated approach to the learning of legal skills. Online Resource Centre Legal Skills is accompanied by an innovative online resource centre offering a range of resources to support teaching and learning. Video clips of good and bad ‘real life’ moots in action bring the subject to life for students. Practical exercises appear throughout the book so you can test yourself on your essay writing, problem solving, revision and exam skills. Examples of good and bad answers to these exercises appear on the online resource centre providing insight into the varying approaches that can be taken to the same question with commentary on the strengths and weaknesses of each answer. Lecturers can track student progress using an online bank of 200 multiple choice questions offering immediate answers and feedback that can be customised and loaded on to the university’s VLE.

Available from Amazon

May 1, 2013 ¡ babybarista ¡ Comments Closed
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Monday morning with Alex Williams’ cartoons, 29th April 2013

This cartoon is by Alex Williams who draws the Queen’s Counsel cartoons for The Times and in numerous books including Lawyers Uncovered. He also does the cartoons for BabyBarista and has had two more excellent books published recently: 101 Ways to Leave the Law and 101 Uses for a Useless Banker. He offers almost all of his cartoons for sale at £120 for originals and £40 for copies and they can be obtained from this email info@qccartoon.com.

April 29, 2013 ¡ babybarista ¡ Comments Closed
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