California
June 2008
In this Issue
ProDoc Now Part of Thomson Reuters
Legal Wit
Coming Updates
ProDoc Customer Support: Creating Default Answer Sets
Trial Tip: Tips for Using a Trial Outline to Your Advantage
Practice Tip: Asking for Referrals
Tech Tip: Organizing Emails Among Your Multiple Devices
Tech Tip: The Easy Way to Order Medical Records
View Past Issues of this eZine
Vent - Tell Us What's on Your Mind
 

ProDoc Now Part of Thomson Reuters™

By now, you’ve probably heard that Thomson West™, now Thomson Reuters, recently acquired ProDoc. And, you probably have several questions and concerns. Here is some news that may be of interest to you:

Short-Term Plans
West recognizes that we have a high-quality product and the worst thing they could do is to fix what isn’t broken. So, they are committed to maintaining the high quality of our product and customer service.

Longer-Term Plans
West intends to provide us their vast content resources so we can expand the breadth and depth of ProDoc volumes.

Subscription Plans and Pricing
Customer retention is the highest priority for West. There are no current plans to increase the price of ProDoc products for our existing subscribers, nor of altering the number of your user licenses.

Customer Support
In the short term, continue to call us at 800-759-5418 for ProDoc customer support questions. However, Customer Support will move to the corporate headquarters soon.

West acknowledges Customer Support made mistakes on the recent purchase of another software product and are determined not to repeat those mistakes. For instance, they are retaining a number of our Customer Support team members to whom the West support team can escalate any particularly challenging issues. Our team members are undergoing a detailed and intensive training plan that West provides for all of their Customer Support teams.

While calls will soon be routed to the Customer Support teams in Eagan, our technical and development staff at ProDoc will remain in San Antonio and will always be available to escalate issues and answer questions.

Additionally, West has a very large and professional Customer Support staff. Having them support ProDoc will allow us to offer broader and more consistent hours of support.

Training
ProDoc training will continue to be free. Call us at 800-759-5418 to set up your free ProDoc training.

Access to Our Attorney Developers
Yes, our attorney development staff will remain in San Antonio and will be available for your questions about our content, just like they are today.

Our Home Office
West's history shows a clear pattern of maintaining the home office of companies they acquire in their existing locations. Accordingly, we have received assurances that our location will remain right here where we’ve always been.

Undoubtedly, there will be changes in the future. However, West is committed to keeping the spirit of ProDoc going. We at ProDoc look forward to continue serving you for many years to come.

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Legal Wit

"Some people think that a lawyer's business is to make white black; but his real business is to make white in spite of the stained and soiled condition which renders its true color questionable. He is simply an intellectual washing machine."
 

Logan E. Bleckley
American Judge

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Coming Updates

2008 Planned Enhancements

Later This Month

We intend to release our July 1 Judicial Council Forms update. It will contain the changes that are effective July 1 to all the present Judicial Council forms in ProDoc volumes.

We also intend to release six new volumes comprised of the Judicial Council Forms for these areas of law:

Criminal Law Litigation
Conservatorship Juvenile Law
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.

We'll also update many of the local forms in the Family Law and Probate volumes.

Finally, in addition to the work in 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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ProDoc Customer Support: Creating Default Answer Sets

If your paralegal/legal assistant generates ProDoc documents for more than one attorney, he/she needs to know how to create and use Default answer sets. By creating and using the ProDoc Default answer sets feature, he/she will save time and reduce the likelihood of errors in your documents.

Learn how to create default answer sets in ProDoc >>

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Trial Tip: Tips for Using a Trial Outline to Your Advantage

The author of this article, Kansas City attorney Jim Wirken, covers ideas that can be used to "get the work done" in matters... no matter whether they are litigation or business matters.

View Tips for Using a Trial Outline to Your Advantage >>

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Practice Tip: Asking for Referrals

If asking for referrals—one of the top sources of new business for most attorneys—is challenging for you, we have a great article for you. In a recent article entitled “The Art of Asking for Referrals“, Mark Powers, President of Atticus, walks you through a variety of scripts which will work wonderfully.

Read The Art of Asking for Referrals >>

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Tech Tip: Organizing Emails Among Your Multiple Devices

If you read your email on multiple devices: a desktop computer at work, a laptop computer at home, a smartphone other times; you're probably fretting over keeping them all synced. Ideally, when you receive or reply to an email on one, it should be reflected in all. But, that's probably not the case for you right now.

However, a recent enhancement at Google™, IMAP, now makes this synchronization a snap. You first need to set up a Google mail account at mail.google.com.

Learn more about what Google's new IMAP service can do for you >>

Learn how to initiate the IMAP service for your Google mail account >>

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Tech Tip: The Easy Way to Order Medical Records

Using MediConnect Global's new RapidRetrieve™ 5.0, you can now order and manage medical records retrieval from your Web browser. The system gives you the option of ordering, tracking, and downloading medical records through your existing system-without retyping information or using multiple applications.

Learn more about RapidRetrieve 5.0 >>

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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 website for your review.

View past issues of the ProDoc eZine >>

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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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