Hoosier Lawyer

INTERNET PHONE SERVICE GIVES YOU CHEAP OPTION FOR EXTRA LINE / LONG DISTANCE

If you have not looked into Internet phone service, you owe it to yourself and your practice to do so -- and quick ! ! !

Skype, one of the leading companies in Internet phone service is offering an incredible deal until the end of January.  Sign up and you get unlimited calls, including long distance throughout the United States and Canada, for $14.95. 

That is NOT $15 per month.  That is $15 for the ENTIRE YEAR.

To sign up, just go to www.skype.com Because it is a British company, you'll see the price listed in Euros.  But don't let that scare you off. They take good ol' American.

If this sounds too complicated, or simply technically too far out there for you, it is not.  Look into it, and you'll see it is no more complicated than dialing your own phone.  In fact in some ways, it's a lot more simple.

I already have an office phone and a cell phone.  What good is this to me?

Try this.  I have two lines in my office.  I'm always concerned about missing calls if both my secretary and I are on the phone at the same time.  But adding a third line is a huge investment in equipment and installation, in addition to the extra $$$ per month for the line charge.

But by adding Skype, I have nearly eliminated the issue.  I make my calls on Skype, and soon I will have my secretary doing the same.  Our two phone lines are left for incoming calls.

How about this.  NO long distance charges on my office phone.  EVER.  I can call Toronto or San Francisco for the same fee as the pizza place down the street.  And that would be a big $0.00

Adding Skype is simple.  Just go to the website and download the software.  You actually pay after you install the software.  That's it.  For a better quality, I suggest buying a headset with a microphone -- an investment of about $20-30.  That's it. 

Oh, and all those contacts in your Outlook?  They automatically show up in your Skype contact list as long as your Outlook program is open. 

And if none of this has convinced you that you have to try this, just remember . . . We've all blown $15 on stupid stuff more time than we can count.  If you end up not liking it, so you blew another $15.  But if you find it works (which I think you will), you will be amazed at yourself for what you did  for the price of 3 thick burgers at Hardees. 

SAINTS' ALIVE - CONTINUANCE GRANTED

You gotta hand it to New Orleans.  Even with all the trauma that city is dealing with every day, it still has kept that essential quality that makes it different.

For 40 years of futility, New Orleans has stood by and cheered its beloved Saints.  But Sunday, for the first time in the team's history,  The Saints are playing for the NFC Championship.  And everyone knows that after the game, all of New Orleans is either going to be parading down Bourbon Street with to-go cups in hand, or drowning its collective sorrows in a vat of Abita Amber.

Either way,  Orleans Parish Civil District Judge Ernest L. Jones has recognized that nobody in the Big Easy is going to feel like sitting in trial for a couple of days.  So he granted a recent motion for continuance on the grounds of "party aftermath."

Judge Jones was scheduled to preside over a   trial scheduled to start on the day after the Bears-Saints game.    But the defense moved to delay the trial for two days "in order to accommodate all fans, including the great majority of the jury pool, the parties involved in this case and the counsel involved in this case."

Guess the motion sounded better than "Judge, we're all gonna be hung over."

GEAUX SAINTS ! ! !

SCANSNAP -- YOU GOTTA GET ONE!

I just installed a new Fujitsu ScanSnap S500 desktop scanner in my office, and it may be the best piece of office equipment I have ever purchased.  It is absolutely amazing.

Let's start with the most fundamental issue -- price.  This little desktop wonder costs just over $400.  But that INCLUDES a full copy of Adobe Acrobat, which alone will cost nearly $300.  Plus it also includes ABBYY Finereader OCR software so you can scan documents directly into your word processor.  It's like you just buy the software, and they throw in the scanner for free.

But this scanner is the star of the package.  It is small -- with a footprint smaller than a standard sheet of paper.  It will quietly scan nearly 20 pages a minute directly into pdf format -- scanning both sides at once for 2-sided documents.  And the quality of the scan is outstanding.

If you're not a "techie", don't worry.  Just load the software, which takes only 2 or 3 mouse clicks.  Then plug in the scanner in, then plug in the usb cable, and you're ready to roll.  And operation is, well, a snap.  Just push the big green button that says "scan".  That's all there is to it.

In my solo office, I have the scanner hooked directly to my secretary's computer, which is also the "server" for my TimeMatters data base.  My secretary can scan a 10-page document and save it directly into the case file on TimeMatters in less than 90 seconds. 

If you have a need for scanning -- and in this electronic age every lawyer does -- check this out.