Legal Humor

The following classified ad appeared in a 1989 issue of the Texas Bar Journal:

"Small, highly disorganized... law firm, having characteristically waited past the last minute, frantically seeks associate with two to four years experience in general business representation and business litigation. Successful applicant must to be able to function with little or no guidance in extremely chaotic environment, and be able to stand long periods of indecision punctuated by short bursts of frantic activity... Toleration of tobacco smoke required. Affinity for hard liquor is recommended... Free parking ... Only the stouthearted need apply."

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Coming Updates

2008 Planned Enhancements

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,	•	Litigation,
•	Conservatorship,	•	Juvenile, and
•	Guardianship,	•	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 using 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, 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

• Inventory and Appraisal program and Accounting program – These will be the same as for the Conservatorship PowerPack.

• 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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ProDoc Customer Support: Creating Form Sets

Forms sets enable you to select an entire grouping of commonly used documents with only a mouse-click, instead of requiring you to select each document individually to generate in a ProDoc document assembly session.

For instance, for family law matters, you can create a form set you name Uncontested Dissolution containing the following forms:

Or, for your Estate Planning matters, you might create a form set you name Basic EP that contains these forms:

You can create as many different form sets as you wish in any volume. If you are not now using form sets in your ProDoc, you are wasting some of its incredible productivity capability for your firm.

See how easy it is to set up and use Form Sets in ProDoc >>

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Trial Tip: Educating the Public about Jury Duty

Believe it or not, there is a website devoted to educating the public about jury duty. It features video interviews by "experts" on various topics such as: Jury Summons, Reporting for Jury Duty, Jury Service Tips, Jury Trial Tips, etc.

Visit Video Jug - Jury Duty >>

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Practice Tip: The Top 5 Things Paralegals Want to Tell Their Attorneys

David Swanner posted a blog item on this topic. The information for the posting came as request posted by Shirley Hughes on the ATLA listserv. We think you will find it interesting.

Read the Top 5 Things Paralegals Want to Tell Their Attorneys >>

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Tech Tip: Networking Made Easy

If there is more than one person in your firm, networking can make it more efficient - there is no question about that. This is especially true for ProDoc and SOS^® users. Networking enables everyone in your firm to share ProDoc case data and documents, SOS calendars, billing information, client information, etc.

But, until now, setting up and maintaining a network was beyond the capabilities of most attorneys. However, Network Magic™ Pro may have just changed that. This is an intuitive program that handles all network connections and monitoring for you. And, at $49 for up to 8 computers, it's a bargain even when compared to hiring your neighbor's teen son to set up and maintain your network.

Learn more about Network Magic Pro >>

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Tech Tip: Manage Your eMail - File 'em Just Like Your Paper Filing System

QuickFile™ 4Outlook - Lawyers Edition provides a great tool that enables you to file your email in Outlook just like your paper filing system. You don't have to change anything about your present system.

Their claim is that: "... it’s the ONLY email management solution for lawyers that solves all the problems, yet does not require you to change the way you file client/case records. You simply plug it in and two new buttons are added to your Outlook screen."

Learn more about QuickFile 4Outlook - Lawyers Edition >>

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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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