Nine Mac Utilities That Will Boost Your Law Firm's Productivity

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Nine Mac Utilities That Will Boost Your Law Firm’s Productivity By Brett Burney November 23, 2010

n the Mac versus Windows lawyers using a Mac. These nine 2. WITCH (ENHANCED debate, many law firms “utilities” are not major software APPLICATION AND WINDOW choose to go with the latter applications, but are meant to en- SWITCHING) because of the abundance hance the daily computing activi- When I work in the Windows world, ofI legal-specific software. But Mac ties of Mac-using lawyers. I’m a big fan of the left-handed versions of Adobe Acrobat and Mi- “Alt+Tab” shortcut to swiftly switch crosoft Office plus Windows virtu- between open windows. alization software and Web-based Whenever you type a legal applications make switch- In the Mac world, we have ing to Macs feasible for many law specified set of keystrokes, “Command+Tab” but that only firms. In this TechnoFeature, tech- TextExpander immediately switches between open appli- nology consultant Brett Burney, au- cations. It works fine if you only thor of the forthcoming ABA book replaces it with a pre-defined have one window open for each “Macs in Law,” reviews nine helpful “Snippet” of text. application, but I often have sev- Mac utilities that can dramatically eral Word documents, email mes- enhance your productivity on the sages, and Finder windows open Mac should you take the plunge. at any one time. These utilities can automate docu- 1. DEFAULT FOLDER X ment creation, store and enter log- (CUSTOM OPEN & SAVE Witch ($19) from Many Tricks is a ins and passwords, manage your DIALOGS AND BASIC customizable “keyboard-switch- documents, and much more. DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT) er” that allows me to swap be- Lawyers open and save a lot of tween each individual window INTRODUCTION documents, so anything that can that I have open. I’ve set my key- Lawyers who choose to use a Mac streamline that process is welcome. board shortcut to Alt/Option+Tab, quickly discover there’s not a lot which saves me several minutes of legal-specific software available Default Folder X from St. Clair Soft- each day. for the platform. But that doesn’t ware slyly takes over your open & mean that Mac-using lawyers are save dialog box with a black bor- 3. TEXTEXPANDER out of luck. Microsoft offers a ver- der (or a small toolbar) that gives (AUTOMATIC TEXT EXPANSION) sion of Office for Mac, Apple offers you one-click access to folders There are a number of typing “ex- the iWork suite, Adobe offers Acro- you’ve recently saved files into. panders” and “automators” for bat for the Mac, and Mac OS X has the Mac that will replace a few excellent built-in mail, calendar, You can also pinpoint favorite keystrokes with pre-defined text. and address book applications. folders that will show up in Default My preference is TextExpander Folder X every time. For example, ($34.95) from Smile Software. For everything else, Mac-using you can add a client folder to the lawyers have to wade through an list so you don’t have to drill down TextExpander sits in your Menu Bar intoxicating list of software to find to that specific folder every time watching you type. Whenever you what works for a law practice. The you save a new document. type a specified set of keystrokes, Mac software community is active TextExpander immediately replac- and healthy — and poised to be- Default Folder X ($34.95) also en- es it with a pre-defined “Snippet” come even more robust thanks ables you to easily add Spotlight- of text (or images or scripts). to Apple’s forthcoming Mac App Comments or OpenMeta Tags so Store. This article offers a list of you can take advantage of them For example, I’m constantly typ- the best software “utilities” for for document management. ing my email address in various

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places throughout the day so I iStat Menus enables you to add information (your keychain) is programmed TextExpander to re- several icons to your Menu Bar to backed up at all times. Agile Web place “bc@” with “burney@bur- show memory, CPU and hard disk Solutions also makes a version of neyconsultants.com.” I’ve also set usage, as well as heat sensors, 1Password for the iPhone and the up several “Snippets” for my email network activity, battery life, and iPad and have started develop- signatures and snail-mail address- much more. ment on a Windows version (cur- es, so I can add the current date rently in beta). anywhere by simply typing ddt. iStat Menus is beautifully designed and drastically customiz- 1Password allows for syncing and You wouldn’t think TextExpander able. It’s an excellent tool to keep backup through Dropbox, but you would make much of a difference, tabs on what’s going on under the might prefer a pure Web-based but it has a nifty “Statistics” box hood of your Mac. service in which case I recom- that shows you exactly how many mend LastPass. Snippets it replaces and how 5. 1PASSWORD (SECURE many characters it has saved you PROTECTION FOR PASSWORDS from typing. It also estimates how AND LOGINS) You pick one very strong, much time it saves you. We’ve all heard the persistent di- rective to pick strong passwords, very secure password As a lawyer, TextExpander can but most of us defiantly carry-on to use as the main key, streamline the composition of with easy-to-remember passwords complicated documents because for the sake of convenience. and 1Password handles all you can set up “Snippets” that of your other password- contain boilerplate paragraphs 1Password ($39.95) from Agile related needs. or other frequently-used phrases Web Solutions is one of the most and statements. mature and attractively designed pieces of Mac software. You pick TextExpander is very customiz- one very strong, very secure 6. LAUNCHBAR (EXTENSIBLE able and now syncs with Drop- password to use as the main key REPLACEMENT FOR THE DOCK) box so your “Snippets” are always to 1Password. It then handles all The Dock in Mac OS X is beautiful backed up. Smile Software now of your other password-related and useful, but sometimes I feel also offers TextExpander touch for needs. like it takes up unnecessary space your iPhone and iPad. I could otherwise use for my work 1Password does a fabulous job of (I auto-hide mine on the left side While I prefer TextExpander, I embedding itself into all of the ma- of my screen). know many other legal profes- jor Web browsers, so it can seam- sionals who swear by similar utili- lessly enter all of your logins from That’s why I use LaunchBar ties such as TypeIt4Me, Typinator, your bank account to Facebook. ($32.95) from Objective Develop- and QuicKeys. ment, which enables me to launch 1Password can do much more any application with a few key- 4. ISTAT MENUS than manage passwords. It also strokes. I can also instantly per- (CUSTOMIZABLE INFORMATION keeps track of the serial num- form Web searches, access my IN THE MENU BAR) bers and licenses for your Mac clipboard, and a myriad of other The right-side of the Mac OS X software, and stores “Identities” functions. Menu Bar is a busy area that dis- for pre-filling most forms on the plays a lot of information, but you Web. You can also store “Secure For example, to open Mail, I press cannot customize it easily. For ex- Notes” that can contain free-form Command+Space (which has ample, I like to have the day of the text notes for any sensitive infor- completely replaced my Spot- week show up along with the nu- mation you need to hide from cu- light shortcut) to bring down the meric date, and I’d like to change rious eyes. LaunchBar “bar.” I then type “m” the font size and color. That’s all and hit Return. I could obviously possible with iStat Menus ($16) The 1Password keychain can be launch Mail from the Dock, but from Bjango. stored in Dropbox to ensure the with LaunchBar my hands never

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have to leave the keyboard to bel can cut down the time spent leave little bits and pieces linger- grab the mouse. searching for the proper folder. ing around. Plus it looks nice too! I also use LaunchBar to per- AppZapper ($12.95) uninstalls an form Web searches, regardless Candybar from Panic Software of- application as well as all the related of what application I’m currently fers a few more layers of custom- files that need to go too. You sim- using. I press Command+Space, ization for folders and other icons ply drag an application icon to the type “goo” (for Google), press the in Mac OS X. AppZapper window, click Zap!, and spacebar and type in my search wait for the cool laser gun sound. terms. As soon as I press Return, 8. TEXTSOAP (TEXT SCRUBBER) my Web browser opens with a Lawyers deal with a lot of text that AppZapper has been around a page of my Google results. can come from scads of different long time and has some nice fea- sources — email, court docu- tures, but you can also try out LaunchBar is now one of the ments, scanned PDF files, Web CleanApp or AppDelete. must-have utilities on any Mac I browsers, etc. When you copy use. I really can’t use a machine text from one source into a Word without it. or Pages document, you might LaunchBar enables me get weird results because of hid- Many of the Mac faithful have den formatting. to instantly perform Web long used Quicksilver, but I’m searches, access my one of those who never quite got TextSoap ($39.95) from Unmarked clipboard, and launch any the hang of it. When the develop- Software tackles the unenviable ment of Quicksilver fell into ques- task of cleaning up text that has application with a few tion (the developer now works extra carriage returns, HTML tags, keystrokes. on Google’s Quick Search Box), I oddly placed paragraph breaks, turned my attention to LaunchBar. email forwarding marks (>), and A newer alternative to LaunchBar much more. is Alfred. CONCLUSION You may not need TextSoap all While legal-specific software is 7. FOLDERBRANDER that often, but when you do, it scarce for the Mac, the outstand- (CUSTOMIZED FOLDER can save you a lot of frustration ing software utilities listed above APPEARANCE) and time. can help Mac-using lawyers take Every folder has to have a name, better advantage of their chosen but why can’t they also have cus- CleanText from Apimac can also computing platform. These utili- tom colors and visual labels? Fol- help you accomplish the same task. ties cannot replace large software derBrander ($19.95) from Yellow applications such as Microsoft Of- Mug Software enables you to eas- 9. APPZAPPER fice or Adobe Acrobat, but they ily customize the color and text la- (COMPREHENSIVE APPLICATION certainly support the daily use of bels for your folders so you see at UN-INSTALLER) those major packages. Your Mac a glance what the folder contains. Most Mac users know that you will run just fine without any of can uninstall an application by these utilities, but Default Folder It may sound like a nonessential simply dragging it to the trash. It X, TextExpander, and LaunchBar extra step, but having certain fold- really is just that simple, but cer- in particular can dramatically en- ers branded with a color or a la- tain applications will sometimes hance your productivity.

Brett Burney is the Principal of Burney Consultants LLC, a legal technology consulting company that specializes in supporting Mac-using legal professionals. Brett authors the Macs in Law blog, which covers the use of Macs and iOS devices (iPhone and iPads) in the practice of law.

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