New Lawyer Column Technology Tips and Tricks for the Legal Practitioner By Israel F. Piedra ingly, apply text recognition, and allow you Outlook’s Rules & Alerts settings. The rel- it relatively intuitive, DocFetcher does have a to save/email the document as a PDF. Among evant “rule” option is to “defer delivery by a learning curve. Second, the software does not While computers can be exasperating at the most popular of these apps for iPhone and number of minutes.” apply its own PDF text recognition – mean- times, they can also be extraordinary tools. Android are Scanbot, Scannable, and Scan- After this rule is in place, emails you ing that PDFs must be made searchable be- With the New Hampshire Supreme Court ner Pro. One practical use for lawyers: mak- send will remain in your outbox for the speci- fore they can be indexed by the program. and Superior Court ing quick PDFs of documents from a court fi ed amount of time before disappearing into transitioning to e- fi le at the clerk’s offi ce. cyberspace. If you want to re-read or revise, Webpage Screenshot Add-ons fi ling, it is more you merely open the email from the outbox In a variety of contexts, it is becom- important than ever Microsoft Word shortcuts and re-send when it’s ready. There are some ing increasingly important to preserve in- that Bar attorneys Though they will only save you a few drawbacks and the function does take some ternet information such as Facebook pages, are profi cient with seconds at most, these two Microsoft Word getting used to. For one, you must manually business websites, forum posts, and tweets. computer technol- shortcuts could prove useful. disable the rule to send an immediate email. However, this content can often be removed ogy. SHIFT + F3 (hold the Shift key and or modifi ed, and lost. Saving the HTML fi le Here are a few press F3) will toggle the capitalization of the Desktop search soft ware or printing the page often creates an imper- tips and tricks es- selected text: fi rst, changing the text to all up- The native Windows search feature fect record. Screenshots are the best solution, pecially for legal per case, then to all lower case, and fi nally leaves much to be desired. Document man- but it can be cumbersome to save an entire practitioners. They to capitalize the fi rst letter of each word. I agement software (DMS) is one solution; webpage. are truly miscella- fi nd this helpful to convert pleading titles and however, expensive software isn’t necessary Thankfully, there are several Internet neous and range from keyboard shortcuts to headings to all caps. for the narrow goal of enhanced search func- browser add-ons which make the process software suggestions. SHIFT+F5 will jump your document to tionality. simple. A single click can save a webpage A couple of caveats. These tips are in- the last spot you edited. This works within a DocFetcher is one example of open- as a PDF or image fi le. For Google Chrome, tended for Windows users. Overall, I have voluminous document you’re currently edit- source desktop search software. How it two free and user-friendly examples are tried to select things that aren’t “obvious” to ing, as well as when you re-open a previously works: you choose certain folders and the “Fireshot” and “Awesome Screenshot.” the average computer user. It’s possible that closed document. program indexes the fi les within them (Word some of these items will already be familiar documents, PDFs, e-mails, etc.). You can Computers are an inescapable part of to you but I hope one or two will make your E-mail delay then use the search bar to quickly search both lawyering. All of us — including those of us work a little easier. Ever send an e-mail and immediately fi le names and inside the fi les themselves. who grew up in the smartphone era — could wish you could get it back? Maybe you cc’d The software ranks the search results from stand to improve our tech skills. By continu- Smartphone scanning apps the wrong person, made a spelling mistake, most to least relevant. DocFetcher supports ing to learn new techniques, like the ones in Smartphone cameras have progressed or shot off a reply without really thinking. Boolean searches and returns results in mere this article, we can better use technology to to the point where quality scans are possible While Outlook has an email “recall” fea- milliseconds. benefi t ourselves and our clients. with just your phone. While simply tak- ture that can theoretically retrieve an email I use it to index digital folders full of old ing a photo of a document continues to be a after it’s already been sent, that function has CLE materials, Superior Court cases, memos Israel Piedra is an attorney with Welts, White workable solution, there are many specially- so many limitations it’s almost worthless. of law, research notes, and sample docu- & Fontaine, P.C. in Nashua, New Hamp- tailored smartphone scanning apps available. The better solution is to stop the email before ments, among other things. It’s like a mini shire. He joined the NH Bar in 2015 and is Among other things, these apps can auto-de- it’s ever sent by introducing a delay. personal legal research database. a member of the NHBA New Lawyers Com- tect the document and crop the photo accord- To achieve this, set up a new “rule” in Two quick notes. First, while I consider mittee. Abramson, Brown & Dugan has attained more medical malpractice settlements and verdicts than any other law firm in New Hampshire. We are an award-winning medical malpractice and serious injury law firm recognized by our peers for excellence in client advocacy and precedent setting legal practice. While awards and accolades are a testament to our firm’s expertise, client satisfaction remains the most important goal to us. With extensive experience in medical malpractice and other complex personal injury litigation, we have won a number of cases which have set precedents in New Hampshire state law. We honor referral fees. Let’s work together for your clients’ Personal Injury and Medical Malpractice claims. THE PRACTICE FOR MALPRACTICE. 1819 Elm Street, Manchester, NH (603) 627-1819 Fax: (603) 666-4227 www.arbd.com 6 JUNE 20, 2018 www.nhbar.org NEW HAMPSHIRE BAR NEWS.