I recently assisted as co-counsel in a U.S. Customs Service case in the
Court of International Trade in New York City. I was retained by a
five-lawyer firm representing an importer.
Co-counsel and I knew in
advance that we might have to produce written motions, memorandums, and
similar documents on the fly. Accordingly, we reserved our rooms at a
Manhattan hotel whose ad touted Internet connections in the rooms and a
fully equipped business center. I brought my high-speed connection card,
packed my trusty scanner, and loaded everything I could imagine I might
need into my laptop computer. (It crossed my mind that a stolen laptop
could bring us to our knees.)
Happily, our post-9/11 flight was
unevent-ful. Happily, my computer arrived intact. As soon as we got to our
hotel, I inspect-ed my room's Internet Connection. No prob-lem. However,
the business center was shockingly medieval. It had one primitive
computer. It was open only during business hours. I was very glad I had
brought my own gear. Fortu-nately, a 24-hour copy center was located
almost di-rectly across the Street. Consequently, we survived quite nicely
from an equipment standpoint. What we had forgotten to pack was an
efficient legal secretary!
My colleague and I spent far too much
time key-boarding during the trial, responding to inevitable yet
unpredictable crises as they arose. But how could we have done otherwise?
Who could have justified flying a legal secretary 3,000 miles to be ready
in case serious typing was needed? And, if somehow we could have brought a
secretary, how could we have talked such a per-son into working nights,
batting out briefs during the late hours, or turning them around in two or
three hours as we went to dinner? The idea of having a high-quality legal
secretary available to us during the entire trial, with no travel
expens-es, seemed at the time like a beleaguered liti-gator's wild-eyed
fantasy.
Consequently, we did what countless other trial lawyers do. We
did all our own typing. And, we stayed up very late doing it.
Ugh!
A week after I returned to the Bay area, I bumped into my
wild-eyed fantasy at a legal technol-ogy show, Glasser LegalWorks in San
Francisco, Wow! Actually, Sharon Quaintance and Catherine Massey are no
fantasy; they are the brains behind an Atlanta-based company known as
LawDocsXpress. Each has more than 10 years of experience in corpo-rate
management. Sharon is the "techie." She has an extensive background in
telecommunications, data transport, and Internet services. Catherine, on
the other hand, has over a decade of experience heading legal temporary
agencies and placement services in two different states. Together,
synergistically, they have hatched LawDocsXpress, a dynamite
idea.
Their company (referred to by founding mothers Quaintance and
Massey as "LDX") has a toll-free number a lawyer can call anytime of the
day or night, from anywhere there's a phone connection, to dictate the
contents of a letter or a brief. Using the telephone keypad (as one might,
for example, from a hotel room in Manhattan), one can stop, start, rewind,
and listen to one's own recorded dictation. As an alternative, if that
same lawyer has Internet ac-cess, as I did, he or she can connect to the
LDX serv-er and upload dictation as a sound file. LDX also ac-cepts typed
drafts and turns them into finished legal documents. Or, as yet another
alternative, the lawyer can use an inexpensive device, available at any
Ra-dio Shack store, that allows dictation recorded on an analog or digital
tape recorder to be "played" directly into a telephone.
Once
received at LDX, that lawyer's work product will be assigned to a legal
secretary with experience in the same field of law. (LDX secretaries have
a minimum of three years of legal work behind them. They average between
seven and eight years of work as legal secretaries.) Conflict checks
ensure that the "faceless' legal secretaries at the other end of the LDX
dictation lines have no incompatible work inter-ests. Repeat users are
assigned to the same secre-taries over and over, fostering the development
of a more productive professional relationship and ensur-ing
confidentiality.
Secretaries prepare the documents on the LDX
server, not on their home computers. (This provides an extra measure of
reassurance and security.) They emulate a style furnished by the sender.
LDX sends a confirming e-mail when the documents are ready to he
retrieved. Users then log into their own LDX pass-word-protected Web page
and download the com-pleted documents directly to their computers. For
se-curity reasons, and to prevent formatting issues, documents are never
c-mailed. |
As amazing and innovative as that service is,
LDX is far more than just your average sophisticated, lawyer-oriented,
voice-to-document, Internet-based transcription company. LDX software also
offers opportunities for collaboration on documents among sources far
removed from one anoth-er. For example, a lawyer in Manhat-tan, a lawyer
in San Francisco, and a general counsel in Denver could se-curely view the
same document at the same time and confer about it over the Internet in a
chat room in real time, making changes in a draft version as they go or
dictating changes to he input by the LDX legal secre-tary. And a premium
service allows a firm of 20 Lawyers or fewer to store all of its files (up
to 50 megabytes worth) on the LDX server.
This same service allows
a firm to distribute passwords to allow designated indi-viduals
(passworded lawyers, parale-gals, secretaries, and clients) to se-curely
access documents and data whenever necessary from an Internet connection
anywhere in the world -in essence, creating a worldwide vir-tual office
and conference center. (In-dividual files can be assigned differ-ent
levels of access: for example, the Law firm's partnership documents may be
designated as viewable only by passworded partners, while case re-lated
documents may be made avail-able to all within the firm.)
A smaller
firm could save particularly precious files (e.g., the firm's time and
billing records) to the LDX secure server, re-ducing computer backup time.
The LDX Web site also allows firms to cre-ate a firm-wide, secure online
calen-daring system that can be accessed from anywhere and that can
provide for differing levels of access.
This LDX file storage
feature alone could justify joining the LDX family. Someone in a position
like mine when I flew to New' York could save all relevant files to his or
her own se-cure and segregated space, whether LDX prepared them or no.
Then, even if a laptop were to be stolen, the attorney could access all
files remotely over the Internet from any other computer, using a special
password. Then, last-minute changes to the retrieved documents could be
made via toll-free phone dictation.
LawDocsXpress maintains all
stored documents on its own secure server. It is backed up daily.
Docu-ments are stored using sophisticated but user-friendly iManage
Worksite content management software. This software also provides for a
high level of pro-tection and encryption. (See www.imanage.com.) A smaller
firm that has considered purchasing its own license to the powerful
iManage Worksite content management software database but lacks the
economies of scale to justify the investment at pres-ent can "grow into" a
full, freestanding iManage site license by initially purchasing the right
to use the software through LDX on a much lower cost basis, user by
user.
Larger firms and, indeed, federal agencies, faced with
continual pressure to provide high-quality serv-ices while controlling
costs, can enter into strategic partnerships with LDX to avail themselves
of a vari-ety of outsourcing services designed specifically to reduce
overhead. For example, outsourcing to LDX can reduce the use of temporary
staff. LawDocsX-press customers pay only for the time they use. It is
often difficult to find and keep experienced legal secretaries who are
willing to work as floaters or in after-hours typing positions. And
staffing positions after-hours generally requires paying a premium. This
is not a problem with LDX. By outsourcing these needs to LDX, a firm will
pay only for what it actually needs and uses. On average, an LDX-pro-duced
document will net out to about $6.25 per page. (The price goes up as the
turnaround time goes down.)
Sharon Quaintance and Catherine Massey,
the very bright, scrupulous, and customer-oriented folks behind LDX,
maintain a Web site at www.lawdocsxpress.com. Among other things, the site
provides helpful estimates of the bottom line cost of preparing various
documents. It also lucidly explains the vari-ous pricing options. The LDX
site is currently con-veying an offer to transcribe any two-page document
free, to complete the test document within 24 hours. and to send an e-mail
message when it is ready. The introductory offer can be extended to also
allow' a lawyer or firm to join the LDX family for a month with no
start-up costs. (After that, start-up costs are modest.)
You simply
cannot lose. Give LDX a try. I am con-vinced that this service is very
worthwhile, whether you are a sole practitioner. a member of a larger
firm, or even a federal agency attorney (if funds have been, or can be,
allocated for the outsourcing of le-gal support services).
See
you again next month in Cyberia.
Mike Tonsing is a member of the
editorial board and an attorney in San Francisco.
|
