Legal Wit

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Coming Updates

2008 Planned Enhancements

Any Day Now

We'll ship many of you, depending on the volumes in your ProDoc subscription, another update very soon. This update is primarily due to counties and agencies catching up with changes required as a result of 2007 legislation.

Local County Forms - New legislation requires the counties to change the signature blocks in many local forms. The following counties have completed the update and we're sending you their updated forms:

•	Alameda	•	Monterey	•	San Mateo
•	Butte	•	Napa	•	Santa Barbara
•	Contra Costa	•	Orange	•	Solano
•	El Dorado	•	San Bernardino	•	Sutter
•	Inyo	•	San Diego	•	Tehama
•	Los Angeles	•	San Joaquin	•	Tulare
•	Madera	•	San Luis Obispo	•	Yolo
•	Marin

We will send you the forms for the remaining counties after they become available and after we "work our magic" to make them ProDoc automated forms.

Real Estate volume - We're updating the UCC forms based on agency changes.

Family Law volume - We're updating the Domestic Partner forms to match changes made by the California Secretary of State. We're also updating a San Bernardino County form, Family Law Case Management Conference Statement, to match the current local form. Additionally, we're updating all the Federal UIFSA forms (Uniform Interstate Family Support Act) pursuant to recent changes.

Small Estate Wills volume - We're updating the domestic partnership forms based on agency changes.

Lipman's Wills & Trusts - We're removing, in two forms, outdated answers for the amount of the spouse’s monthly maintenance needs allowance and the dollar limit a person may earn to qualify for Medicaid. Based on customer requests, we're removing a paragraph Form 53-3 Letter Sent with Draft (for Individual) which sometimes inappropriately discussed the presence and significance of powers of appointment.

Later This Spring

In the first half of 2008 we intend to release six new volumes comprised of the Judicial Council Forms for these areas of law: Criminal, Conservatorship, Guardianship, Litigation, Juvenile, and Landlord/Tenant. We will also include additional Judicial Council Forms in the Attorney-Client Matters volume. Effective with this future release, every Judicial Council Form will be included in ProDoc.

In addition to the volumes, we are creating special purpose PowerPacks with features you will find extremely useful:

Conservatorship PowerPack™

• Inventory and Appraisal program – Easily create estate inventories for the GC-040 and GC-041 forms by simply entering all the necessary information once in an easy-to-use spreadsheet. ProDoc then automatically calculates the value of the estate, completely eliminating manual calculations – and potential errors.



• Accounting program – Using this feature, you enter information relating to the estate’s assets, receipts, disbursements, attorney’s fees, distributions, capital transactions, remaining assets, etc. in a simple-to-use spreadsheet. ProDoc handles all of the associated calculations for you and generates the necessary reports and documents. This feature will greatly simplify and speed your generation of the new GC-400 and GC-405 forms, as well as all of the related schedules and worksheets.

Guardianship PowerPack™

In addition to the Inventory and Appraisal program and Accounting program included in the Conservatorship PowerPack, the Guardianship PowerPack will also have:

• UCCJEA program – This program enables you to enter all the requisite information about addresses and prior cases affecting the minors in a user friendly data entry format. This will simplify and speed your generation of form GC-120.

The PowerPacks will be fully integrated with ProDoc, so the data you enter is stored and reused whenever needed in other forms you generate through ProDoc. It’s all about us finding more ways to save you even more time!

Thanks for being a ProDoc subscriber!

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Looking for Guardianship, Conservatorship, and Juvenile Law Subject Matter Experts

We’re looking for California Subject Matter Experts to help us create the best possible Conservatorship, Guardianship, and Juvenile law volumes we can provide you. If you consider yourself knowledgeable and experienced in any of these areas of law, we would love to be able to call upon you for assistance.

We expect that we would contact you no more than once every couple of weeks, or so—maybe 10-15 minutes each time. The purpose would be to ask for your feedback or suggestions on form content and/or design.

If you are willing to assist us, or to request more information before you volunteer, please Bruce Nims or call him at 800-759-5418. Bruce is the attorney in charge of all of our California products.

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Trial Tip: Lessons Learned the Hard Way

Richard C. Miller, a trial lawyer in Kansas City, shares in this short article seven great tips from his long experience trying cases.

Trial Tips (Or Lessons Learned the Hard Way) >>

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Practice Tip: LawyerBillingTips.com

OK, this site's main function is to market their credit card billing services to you. However, they provide useful information about billing procedures, thereby "helping lawyers make more money - with less headaches."

And, the site contains a couple of useful free downloads: Legal Billing Secrets - 3 Easy Ways to Eliminate Client-Billing Hassles While Boosting Your Law Firm Profits and 8 Things You Need to Know Before You Start Accepting Credit Cards.

Visit LawerBillingTips.com >>

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Tech Tip: Setting Up Dual Monitors on Your PC

Increasingly, attorneys are setting up dual monitors on their desks for numerous reasons: turning one of the monitors 90° so they can review documents in portrait view, turning one monitor to clients for demonstrations, viewing legal research on one monitor and documents on the other, etc. Setting up this feature on your computer is easier and less expensive than you might think.

View a Guide to Dual Monitors in Windows >>

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Tech Tip: Shopping for a New Printer

When it's time to buy a new printer for home or office there are several excellent sites on the Internet to comparison shop. After all, the initial cost is only a small part of the overall cost of owning a printer—you should also consider the true costs including ink/toner. We've identified below three excellent sites for you:

• PrinterShowcase.com >>
• PCWorld Magazine, Printers >>
• RealPrinterCost.com >>

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View Past Issues of this eZine

Looking for a Tech Tip from a past ProDoc eZine... but can't find that old eZine? We keep recent past issues on our web site for your review.

View past issues of the ProDoc eZine >>

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Come By and Meet Us

Come by and visit us if you'll be attending — we'd love to see you!

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Vent—Tell Us What's on Your Mind

This is your opportunity to what's on your mind. Email us your suggestions and other feedback.

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