Computer Software for Florida Family Law Attorneys and Clients (Part I)

This post will be a bit different than my others so far – it deals with computer software rather than divorce or other family law issues. I recently updated some of the computer software I use in my office, and wanted to share what has been working well for me, and how I think some of it could be helpful to someone about to start or in the process of going through a divorce or other family law case. I’m finding that software that works well and is pleasant to use makes the day a lot easier.

The first program is CLIO, a practice management program for attorneys. It’s practice management software in the “cloud” that you use in your web browser. I’m liking the interface – pleasant and easy to use, and it has some features I like. You can associate/link emails you send with a client file in the program, and there’s a feature that gives you a secure place to post documents on-line for your client to view. The price is reasonable I think, and it avoids needing to update the software or have a maintenance contract, or network computers in your office – you access the program on-line.

I started using the business version of Google Apps for my email. The setup to use my domain for my email was not too bad. I’m liking Google’s system of “labels” for email versus folders. I’m finding that it’s making it a lot easier to clear my inbox each day. I watched a “podcast” about office software a few weeks ago that talked about achieving “inbox zero” I think the phrase was. I’m liking having a clear inbox – I think when I switched over from Outlook I had hundreds of emails in my inbox. Google’s spam filter seems to work really well also. Clio integrates with the Google Apps calendar, so has been a very easy way to have my calendar on my “smartphone”.

Next one is a program called Dropbox. Once the program is installed, when you make a change to a document on your computer the change is saved to your Dropbox folder in the “cloud”, and at the same time saved on all the other computers you’ve installed Dropbox on and linked to your account. I’m liking this because it avoids having to deal with networking computers, it’s an easy way to back-up documents, and the program also automatically saves all of your revisions/versions for 30 days – don’t have to worry about accidentally saving over a version of a document if I meant to create a new version.

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