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[Music] a broadcast is now starting all attendees are in listen-only mode hey everyone thank you for joining us for another racket matter CLE co-presented with the Florida Bar practice resource Institute my name is nefra MacDonald I'm the business development and strategic partnership coordinator here at rocket matter and today we're going to be talking about ways you can automate and simplify your law practice so rocket matters the leading cloud-based practice management software and a Florida Bar member benefit so visit the Florida Bar a member benefit page for more information as I said this is presented in conjunction with the Florida Bar practice Resource Institute which strives to bring attorneys the resources they need to run better law firms please put any questions that you have as we're going through the presentation in the go-to webinar questions widget and the CLE number will be given at the end of the presentation just in case you miss anything don't want you guys taking furious notes take notes if you want to but the wrap-up email with the recording slides and any resources we discuss will be sent out tomorrow at noon all right and with that I'd like to introduce to you our co-presenter today meet Steve senate's Steve is an information technology specialist with extensive experience in helping law offices become more efficient productive and profitable he is a deep background in software design and client support as well it's a technological and operational aspects of running a law firm he provides IT and system administration support for a multi office estate planning and family law practice in the Saint Peter st. Petersburg Tampa Florida area he's also a certified rocket matter expert and channel partner providing technology consulting services to other law firms seeking to improve their productivity Steve thank you so much for being with us today thank you enough for my pleasure all right so let's get started where is all this coming from there have been a lot of headlines in the news the New York Times above the law the National Law Review Automation is here and technology can really really be your best friend here while you're using technology be sure to always consider your ethical obligations regarding technology the Florida Bar pri has a ton of resources for you when you're considering working with cloud providers anytime you need any help with anything computer related or Technology related when it comes to running your law practice the PRI is definitely there but let's talk about this New York Times article it talked about you know AI replacing a lot of attorneys and how possible it is the conclusion was that it's gonna take some time this attorney whose billing rate was $400 in 1999 and now his billing rate is a thousand dollars an hour he had this to say about automation for the time being experienced like mine as something people are willing to pay for what clients don't want to pay for is any routine work so how can you eliminate the need to build clients at a high rate for routine work 23 percent of a lawyer's job can be automated with existing technology today that same New York Times article you guys can go look it up if you'd like to had some research from McKinsey Global Institute that did a study of attorneys tasks that can be accomplished with current technology and this is the conclusion that they came up to so let's think about this if you're not automating 23% of your job right now you may have some work to do and so this is what this CLE will provide you with some ideas and tools to really assess what you're doing in your practice right now and how you can get better and this is a really really important slide here automation and productivity go hand in hand so while some of this stuff that we're talking about today might not be true automation there's gonna still be a human element to it and it does start to speed up your productivity so when you refine and automate processes that once took a lot of time that's more time you get back to practice law you're giving yourself competitive advantage and in fact most modern clients today will demand that lawyers practice efficiently and if they're not demanding this this may be a great way for you to market your service and differentiate yourself from other small firm lawyers you're gonna be spending the maximum amount of time a day working on the things that only a lawyer can which is using the law to bring a successful outcome to your clients so Steve is a big proponent of GTD as he calls it which is getting things done so Steve do you want to tell us a little bit about that philosophy sure as you said attorneys time is their most important you know asset it's what they use it once they bill for so obviously anything they could do to take that time preserve it use it effectively bill for it is going to go a long ways to making their firm more efficient more profitable so obviously GTD is a good method I'd like to suggest to people I try to use it myself as best as I can I must say I took quoting a good friend of ours Victor I think I'm a constantly failing GTD you know we starter because it's like you keep revising the process but the idea is in general you find ways to take this mundane and routine things in your day whether it's emails or we can go into later document automation and simplify or automate so that they take less of your time and then you're free to use your time to think you know to meet clients to you know spend time with your family because there's also an element of work-life balance that kind of goes along with the GTD thing too that you're living a full life a good life and providing you know good service to your clients as well as enjoying your life as you go forward so excellent great point Steve so how do you know what to automate in the handouts section of the GoToWebinar control panel you'll see a handout that we promised you here for automation and that's going to take you through different phases of seeing what you might be able to refine and automate within your practice so how do you know what to automate the worksheet is going to take you through all of these steps keep a log of your firm's daily activities for one week so that could be you and your paralegal or any associates that you work with everyone should be taking a look at what they do during the week and that's everything from standing up at the copier and copying papers stuffing envelopes and sticking stamps on them to going back and forth with a client and scheduling a meeting for next week everything should be logged even the most mundane things and you'll see why so you take all of those activities and you organize them into areas of work and what I mean by areas of work is categories that you can sort of lump these activities into so documents or phone calls or you know exchanges in the form of emails like that kind of stuff you can lump them into categories and get them organized and then you address each area of work with ideas for improved processes so if you notice in each area you're doing the same document five times in a week or you are spending 20% of your week scheduling phone calls and trying to get that back and forth accomplished you might have identified an area that can benefit from an improved process or some automation your next step is to research technology tools that might ease the administrative burden of each area of work so there are a ton of tools out there and we're going to be talking about some of them today as we give you examples of this that you can then look at and see if they can be good solutions for your firm you got to think about the cost of all of this stuff so you need to decide what kind of resources you're willing to allocate to improve the areas you've identified and that resource those resources come from money they come from you know manpower or people their time it might be in the form of hiring a consultant or hiring a practice management company that also does some business holding services the possibilities are endless but with a little bit of research you can definitely realize some areas that you can improve and then the last step is to set realistic goals for implementation and give each project an owner and a deadline so that the worksheet that we have there will take you through this entire process and after you complete this you're going to be able to identify some really big areas that can benefit from automation improve processes in your firm really does mean more profitability at the end of the day and we're peace of mind the same work/life balance that Steve was talking about can be achieved if you take the time to do something like this Steve do you have anything to add here no you're right on target I think it's you're preaching to the choir I'm here with you saying this is the things that I think everybody should at least consider and technology and automations are our tools that you can use to to make your life better so excellent so here's what we're gonna be talking about today this is gonna be our agenda for the rest of the presentation these are some areas that you can easily automate and I think universally some of you on this on the CLE today will be able to take something away that you can then take back to your practice and go through so these are gonna be common areas of work that law firms will recognize that they can automate we'll cover each section and then give you ideas and tools to be able to simplify and refine your processes and automate what you can within a reasonable budget so we'll cover documents checklists and workflows billing procedures and then some other repetitive tasks that we can show you some technology that might help you out so the first thing we're gonna talk about is document generation and Steve is gonna have a lot to say about this one so beyond basic drafting document generation makes up a huge part of most law practices so hopefully you've already started to build a document database for your practice which are documents that you're using repeatedly these might include letters to opposing counsel intake forms contracts state planning documents and much more so to automate document generation first you need to take those documents and turn them into forms and Steve will be able to tell you a little bit more about document assembly some of the products that might be out there and this is Steve's area of expertise he does this for law firms across Florida so Steve when you're trying to implement something like this are there any helpful things to consider any tips you might have well as you said one thing I would consider is the things you do repeatedly the documents that you're touching all the time things that you're constantly having to fill in whether its pleadings or letters to clients collection letters whatever these are all things that you want to consider so maybe you want to take some time in your day or your week to think okay what is this thing I've touched I've touched it multiple times this is a good candidate let me put it on that list right of things that you could automate or you know somehow improve your your workflow and process on obviously another thing to think of is like commonalities there's a lot of things that you're doing over and over again so there's certain bits information that you're probably touching you know over and over again too as well oops sorry excuse me and then as you mentioned you want to gather all these things together and you can do it electronically you can start saving Word docs or or whatever format you're using some people I know have used paper printed forms and then identified them and started collecting them into folders so that they their staff can can have a central place say these are things we use often and these are things we could benefit from automating one of the other benefits of automation and I think I can mention is obviously it'll cut down a lot not just on time and processing but errors if you're constantly grabbing other I'll use example like a word doc from a prior client and then copying it and trying to repeat it you know you're most likely going to miss a typo you could actually have the wrong clients names you know in the wrong place the wrong gender you know embarrassing things like that which you you want to avoid because it just doesn't reflect very well on you or your firm so yes these are some scary mistakes I've definitely some of the and there it's no and you and if you if you've ever been on the receiving end of a document that might have incorrect party names or something like that know somebody wasn't thinking too clearly or proofreading so they were just copying it forward yes I don't want that to be you is what we're trying to say so here are some document assembly products that you may have the option to use so there's direct law doc modo draft ones hot Doc's Express Doc's turbo Law there are a ton of products out there and you really have to think about what's gonna be easy for you to use what ties into the database that you already have Steve you used hot docs correct right we've used hot looks actually not as a developer more as an end tool but using templates that were provided for us here in the state of Florida actually so there's a version for sort of like the end user versus say a developer who wants to develop their own forms and there's also even a cloud-based platform that they use as well okay but if you know if this might be too much for you and you're already in the market for practice management software just a little plug here Rocketman does have built in document assemblies so what it will do is it'll take advantage of all of the fields you already have within the rocket matter system like your clients name and address and how many children they have and the court that it's in or the county the judges name opposing counsels address all of the stuff that you might need to plug into forms over and over again they're already ready for you to merge into documents and Steve is built forms hundreds of forms using rocket matters document assembly exactly anything else to add to document assembly Steve before we move on well like I said I think it's good to consider the different platforms you might be on or maybe integrations that you already are in so for example if you're into a Salesforce database or in certain like where the data resides that could be something to consider as to what you want to what path you want to take as far as integrations they all work in different way is it somewhere windows-based some were cloud-based but there's other things to consider rocking out obviously is cloud-based and I've had a ton of experience doing that I find it you know very flexible you know intended to do what you need and then have the end document come out the way you need it to look so awesome thanks for that all right so let's move on to checklists and workflows so do you have checklists that you use to work up cases or workflows that you just implement all the time because this is how you move through a case you might want to automate these instead of making them paper-based take those paper checklists or if you don't have any of those think of case types that you handle often and think about all of the things that you need to do to bring a case to a certain point so it's ready for first letters to be sent out or it's ready for filing a complaint all of the things that you need to do to get it to a certain point and once it's at that point what comes next how do you prepare for trial how do you like your trial notebook to look what you need to prepare for it all of those things start thinking about those kinds of activities and this is ripe for automation why because it's a repeated process regardless of what it is you will do these things all the time so when you have this in place standardize the data fields and the steps to bring it to the successful conclusion so what do those steps look like what are you going to call them and standardizing those data fields are important because of what Steve just talked about which is document assembly when those fields are standardized you have a merge field that you're plugging the same information into that will then filter into any document that you build so as long as that field is the same name over and over again you're already helping yourself automate another process is that right Steve exactly I mean whether you're talking about rocket matter or hot docs it's the same general concept of a commonly used field client name you know first name clyde address that's so you want to really lock in and standardize your data so that you can reuse it over and over again in these forms and it will save you massive amounts of time and therefore hopefully make you not only more productive more profitable yeah absolutely so then you take the combination of all the tasks the calendar events the deadlines and all the documents that need to be drafted for you to complete that checklist or workflow and you will put that into a matter template so this is all the critical information that you need to be able to work up a case so here are some technology tools to help you with that case management software rocket mater has the ability to do all of these things calendaring tasks custom reports matter templates all of that good stuff so you take those paper checklists you plug them into templates and even if you're starting a new matter you can apply a template to it and your intake process is super easy because all of the things that you need to gather from the client to be able to get started are in fields that automatically populate and all you have to do is fill fill in that individual value or that unique value that's applicable to the client that you're taking on so we also have rules based calendaring software and that's a helpful technology tool because one part of working up a case is calendaring deadlines and calendar in those deadlines can be tedious there's a lot of room for human error and mistakes and a missed deadline means sometimes losing a client or at the very least some discipline from the bar if it's if it's a pretty big mistake so rules based calendaring software does help to speed up that process and automate it for you that they can also notify you of any rule changes and you can modify those rules really quickly and easily and it does help with your malpractice insurance so if you use rules based calendaring software you can get a discount on malpractice insurance so that's something to keep in mind Microsoft flow this is a fairly new product but this is something that can also help you automate your work flows and then zapier zapier is growing and expanding weekly so you can use as app to say for example manage your contact and email marketing lists so say every time you star specific email in your Gmail you can set up as app to enter that contact information into your Google contacts and then to your MailChimp list for your weekly or your monthly newsletters so zapier is a way for you to sometimes automate some of those mundane things and instead of adding that to a to-do list you're doing it with a click so that's a couple of ways that you can sort of automate and speed up and refine your workflows case management software roles based calendaring Microsoft flow is a really good one and then zapier do you have anything to add here Steve no I think that the it this today's modern software and technologies has really helped greatly as far as automating these things these things like Microsoft flow and SAP your I can think of a few others I'm thinking mostly iOS based things like if this and that or workflow it's gotten so simple that anyone can just like combined different services like you mentioned whether something comes in your Gmail and it triggers this no longer do you need to be a programmer to do this you really just connect up different web services and aggregate them and away you go it's just amazing how quickly it happens and how easy it is anyone can do it so if anybody is afraid of like technology I would say don't be it's really much simpler than you think so true Steve snow so true so let's talk about billing what are some ways that you can think about tightening up your billing processes and automating it so you'll go through your worksheet and you'll come up with problem statements the problem statements are gonna be problem that you can now see now that your you've taken a look at all of the things that you do daily and you see a something that you need to change so these might be some of your your problem statements here so consider optimizing your billing if you spend more than a few days getting your billing and order or you have to piece together your billing at the end of the month and this is you if you don't bill as you work and you may be writing billing down quickly on a sticky note or on a notepad or you go through your email at the end of the month to build for those emails or you go through your phone log to see how much time you spent on the phone with a client if that's you you might want to consider optimizing so if you're currently using snail mail to send out your bills there might be an opportunity for you if you've ever sent out in an accurate invoice you might want to consider this and then if you have clients who pay you the same amount every month like think retainers or flat fees that's something you probably should not be spending your time on you want to focus on the bills that might be unique amounts every month but those are there that are the same thing every month might not seem like it's that difficult or that it's taking up too much of your time but if you eliminate that from your monthly workflow you'll have more time to be doing other things so here's how you automate and optimize your billing this is gonna address some of the problems we just talked about you use your time and billing software to its fullest potential so what does that mean if you have a standard rate that you use all the time no matter what great you can still use your time and billing software to send out all of your bills accurately and easily however if you're in the situation where you build different clients at different rates or different matters for the same client at different rates things get a little bit more complicated and it's harder to keep track of accurately billing someone your practice management software makes it so much easier for you to plug in those billing rates when they become a effective and then you can do that next step which is batch billing and the batch billing will allow you to run all of your invoices at once and any open matter that's above a certain dollar amount for a specific time period which should be since you last ran bills you can do an invoice for there's something called pre bill which will allow you to see the invoices first make sure everything is accurate and then you can set it up to actually invoice and automatically adjust your trust ledger your matter Ledger's so you can see what goes into trust what goes into operating really does help you keep track of your trust accounting with a whole lot less worry and a whole lot less time bill as you work what does that mean if you're sending an email you should be attaching time to it at the same time if you're finalizing a document you should be attaching billable time to that document as you're done with that the billable time and the description that will go on your invoice Roget matter has bill as you work technology so if you're running a timer for something as soon as you're done with it you can save it and it goes straight into the matter that you're working on so at the end of the month you're not piecing together all of the things that you've done over the course of the month because it's already there hopefully as you start to get into the flow of this you won't be missing too much when billing time comes around payment plans and recurring billing are good and they're for those situations where you are dealing with a client that pays you say a two thousand dollar retainer every month to have access to you for ten hours a month if that's your arrangement awesome you can set it up so that they automatically get that invoice every month you can also set it up so that their credit card or their bank account will get a deduction on the same day every month in that amount as long as you have that in your retainer agreement and that's what they've agreed to you know that that is money just rolling in and you don't have to think now what if you've got clients that say hey I can't handle that invoice right now I'm really strapped on cash I can pay you 500 bucks a month so normally you would have to remember every month that that client promised you $500 a month with payment plans on practice management software you can set it up to have that client get a credit card or a bank account deduction on the same day every month until their balance is paid off and that's something you can totally automate and set up and then what if you're sending stuff through snail snail mail one thing you can do is transition all of your clients to email invoice sharing so that you don't have to print and stuff envelopes anymore and include a self-addressed stamped envelope so they can make sure they send you that check back and you can also use payment processing giving your clients the ability to click a secure link and pay with credit card or a check that means money funded quicker and in the door for you without too much legwork so you're saving money on postage you're saving somebody else some time for stuffing envelopes and then processing checks and taking a trip to the bank so these are ways that you can optimize and automate your billing Steve I know your firm is probably getting ready for for billing week pretty soon do you guys do any of this yeah actually that's one thing I was before you moved off here was gonna kind of jump in the hole saving of time I mean across the board if you're using a practice management system like this a rocket matter it can't be stressed enough I think how much time and productivity you'll gain back in the sense that I remember law firms lawyers who would you know capture their time on pieces of paper and then send them to a clerical person to input into a billing system well if you can get away from that and it is a change of mindset and do as you say bill as you go it is an incredible time saver because one you're not printing out free bills checking free bills for grammatical errors as much because usually the person capturing the time the attorney themselves is going to spell that clients particularly unusually long name you know correctly you're not having to do it over and over again so there's efficiencies to be had there by using a system like this and I don't know if you didn't mention there's also a kind of a portable version of Rock amount of the iOS faced at the Android base - so really the attorney could be capturing time not only when they're in their office but anywhere anywhere they have internet access they could be at the courthouse they have their phone and bam you've got the time it's the billable it's it's ready to go but yes we are at billing time it has helped I can't say how much 33 percent of our time probably each month getting backed by not having to print out paper invoices you know and send them out and also having the electronic payment is a huge you know saver - like you said we still do get people who do bring us paper you know check payments and we still have to carry this into the bank like you say but when you have electronic payments that goes away so again focusing on time and efficiencies and productivity you know these all play into that and I think they're they're quite important actually absolutely thank you for that Steve all right so let's talk about some other repetitive tasks that could benefit from automation if you guys have any questions by the way continue to throw them into the questions widget and we'll get to them in just a couple of minutes okay so scheduling this is one they can get super annoying trying to schedule a time between a couple of people that works for everybody it can get just it's a drain it's your inbox is full of five or six or seven or eight or twenty emails going back and forth to try to get a date these two pieces of software work great I personally use calendly and it's really taken the burden off of me to find a convenient time to meet with someone else I can spend that time doing everything else I need to do and they have a view of my calendar where I can set it up to meet with people in 30 minute increments now after they book that meeting you can extend that meeting if you want but you have a way to schedule default meeting times and the count that that's the free version of calendly if you want to be able to have different meeting lengths or surface different calendars to different people like if you only want to meet with new clients on Tuesdays and Thursdays that's gonna be your new client calendar and you can surface that link to the clients themselves or if you want a scheduling service to do that for you if someone calls in or if you want your receptionist to be able to schedule those the receptionist has a link to that calendar and can see your availability just for those time slots on those two days acuity does a lot of the same thing Steve do you use any of these I like countly actually the free version right now but I must say I think it helps cut down a lot on that that you've heard that back and forth like oh let's meet Wednesday no that's not good for me and so by just kind of making your calendar out there available in like you say 1530 minute whatever increments you can almost allow your clients or whoever you're trying to schedule with self scheduling and in some ways that saves you time too because you're not having say your receptionist or you're not playing a phone tag with someone or email tag as to what's a good date I think it's it's a very useful tool I like it yeah all right the next area that you can automate is text so if you have the same standard email that you send all the time or a phrase that you type in all the time you can streamline your emailing by creating boilerplate email responses and then customizing what you need to this goes as well with document creation or document generation if you have a paragraph that you insert pretty frequently if you're writing a ton of demand letters if you're in personal injury and there there's a there's a specific paragraph that you don't necessarily want in your form but that is unique to cases where there's a bicycle accident you can create these snippets and start typing them and you'll get a drop-down of all of the snippets that you've saved and you can just click it and it'll be right in there so the three that we have up there are phrase Express test text expander and click parts quick parts is a standard part of Microsoft Word it might be worth it for you to dig in and see if you can use that it is you know sort of the Steve put it earlier the the poor man's version of some of these it's it's the free way to start you can dig in you know by starting with that so yeah and it's it's super super easy these things are mind-blowing ly life-saving and time-saving this is the kind of stuff that will help you run circles around opposing counsel if you're a small firm you've got no help at all this is great however if you do have other people in your office and you have paralegals or associates or receptionists or anyone else in your office interacting with clients and you start to see some of these emails they can get pretty scary so if you have standard ways that you'd like them to start or like just some sort of some sort of starter point for them 444 email correspondence especially or for first drafts of documents that they might be giving you this is something that you can do with these paid versions hear a phrase Express or text expander or you can share it across teams and everyone will have access to that same snippet phrase line whatever it happens to be so it standardizes your firm's voice across multiple people which is really cool and then proofreading and editing so these are some tools that will be really really helpful for you when it comes to proofreading and editing and if you've got staff that may not have the best grammar these might be tools you want to why use so grammerly helps you to write mistake-free on Gmail Facebook Twitter Linkedin nearly anywhere else you write on the web there's also a word plugin that's gonna help you with document drafting and proofreading have you ever used grammerly Steve I haven't got you but I know of it and I actually to reach back a little bit sort of a cheat but an extra bonus add in things like text expander you can actually it's kind of a little trick if you miss type words frequently I misspell things while these are very good you can actually put the spilled word and say textexpander and it looked corrected for you so it's kind of a another extra bonus you can use it for not just expansion but Corrections when you type things wrong I see the IT and you coming out that's that's a hack do you use grimly I must say I'm not perfect but I do type really well so yeah so it's a great tool to have perfect it is another one that it checks the capitalization of words phrases and headings punctuation of bullet points and lists hyphenation of prefixes suffixes terms of art and then define terms that's a really big one because if you're if you're doing anything like a lick contract and you have those defined terms you want to make sure those letters are capitalized and they're consistent throughout the document perfective is gonna help make sure that you do that without you having to go through and I mean when you're looking at the same thing for hours it's really hard sometimes to find these things it's like having another set of eyes right so there's a pair of punctuation quote quotation marks you ever forget to close quotations you know that's that's rough so how your numbers are presented spacing between words and sentences it also checks for and enforces the legal writing and style found in the Redbook and certain terms of art found in Black's Law Dictionary so this is an awesome piece of editing and proofreading software for attorneys perfect it definitely check it out it's widely used by professional editors and it's got a built in style set sheet for lawyers called American legal style so it's really really awesome contract companion does a really good job of ensuring consistent substantive use of defined terms and legally operative phrases so this one is gonna guide you through the necessary reviewing of checking to find terms for that proper substantive use throughout so it does some of what perfect it can do as well so we can sort those define terms and prioritize your review based on the risk and you can also use companion to review cross references which are a key part of every contract so with that you can check the cross reference that accurately reference references or refers to the clause or this section that you indicate so it will reference the section the chapter or a term that is actually a part of the document so really powerful stuff here these are really great tools if you do a lot of writing any of these would be amazing this is a good addition to your arsenal and then here's some other software that I'm gonna let Steve talk about these are other things that I like to get edged to my eye say your toolbox to kind of help you with your day-to-day steps routines things you do so let me just go down the list there's these as there's many others you can find and I'll mention them later this other alternatives but hazel is a tool that I think I could not live without it is sort of the made you think of hazel from the series I was the 50s or 60s I can remember anymore she kind of looks after you so for example I use it as a Productivity tool I have files that I commonly download or they're a certain format and so hazel will watch certain folders and then file them away for you and they can do much more than that but as a simple example I could commonly download bank statements from my bank and they hit a certain folder hazel has the ability to actually look into those files if they are ocr'd off to a character recognition and pull out you know bits of information and say ah this is my Wells Fargo bank statement I need to file it away under bank statements and they can even go by the year et cetera you can get really deep and crazy here that is a very useful tool like I said I couldn't live without that Alfred is another tool that's very helpful it exists sorry I should back up Hazel's only for Mac from echo it's not for Windows there are alternatives to hazel ones called made manager another I've heard of is digital janitor another also is Belvedere and there's foul juggler you can actually search for alternatives to hazel when you'll find other ones out there as well but that's just my juice offense on those Alfred is interesting in that it's sort of a another keyboard based not a kind of expansion for me so I use Alfred quite frequently in my day there's common keystrokes that I will use I'm kind of a admitted geek or techie person so I couldn't get kind of lazy and I don't want to type too many keystrokes if I want to you say shut down my computer restart my computer find certain files on my system Alfred's an easy way to actually pull up with a quick keystroke of combination keys just say search your computer for files and again it's a Mac OS based but there are alternatives to this as well one another one for me another one for Mac OS which I like let's see there's one called keyboard maestro which is another useful tool there's launcher for Windows also launching for Windows and executive for Windows and again you can Google or search for these phrases like alternatives to Alfred and find many others out there I'm sure for other platforms continuing on there also again Mac based if you are commonly looking for files and again on the Mac if you're not comfortable with using spotlight there's total Finder is sort of like the finder and Mac on steroids you can use it to search for files tag files organize files again these are all tools that sort of help help make your day go a little faster help you find the files going to eat quicker and and kind of take some of the things that you do over and over again and just make them go away so that you have more time to spend on things you you should be doing moving on there is also boomerang which is a plugin for Gmail which I've used before and this is interesting service it allows you to do things such as snooze or send an email later in same box in some ways also ties into this that's another male based area where you can gain some time back in your day but so boomerang again is something you plug in for Gmail and you could use it to say send an email later or follow up and it'll disappear from inbox and then reappear later when you need to either to remind you to hey get back in contact with that person you spoke to you last week etc source or snooze it and come back when you're able to look at it on Monday because it's a weekend you don't want to deal with it or or also do things like send later which are powerful tools the same box is another service for mail which is very useful and you can do things such as send to same black hole which is like emails you never want to hear from again so it's kind of like unsubscribe without him subscribing is that a standard inbox in there I'm sorry is black hole is that the standard name that they have for it it actually is but I think there's different levels you can subscribe to so there's like a basic service you can get and you get certain things you get from same box like by basically emailing one week later at same box you can have an email disappear from your inbox and come back to you one week later which again is sort of a hack or a tool that you can use to basically clear your plate so you're not looking at your inbox because mentally by seeing all those emails that you're really a can't do anything with right now or B don't want to do anything that's right now you were freeing your mind and making yourself available to focus on the things that you should be doing as opposed to distractions so but yeah that is actually an address you can use it's like black hole I think that same box I forget the actual the naming but so basically by carbon copying or blind cup ing to these specific email addresses using their service it helps you manage your inbox basically your email awesome and then boomerang I can see that being really useful for people who maybe are working late at night and the last and you want is for your clients to start emailing you late at night sometimes you can't avoid but if you set the own of only meiling within business hours then maybe they might you know have to conduct themselves in that way so you can set up boomerang to send an email within business hours we're exactly traveling and you're in a different time zone that's really awesome too these are some great tools Steve thank you so much yep and again you can always find alternatives I should also mention instead of bloomerang there's also something called Jim Elias it's a GME L I u.s. and I must mention that boomerang and Jim Ellis are both extensions to your browser so using those in a web-based mail application and then same box has an alternative called email pet in case you're curious and looking at other software that does the same thing awesome so we've taken care of some of the research here for you but like we said in the handout you're gonna be prompted to do some research on tools that might be available to you to automate and simplify your practice so we hope that you've gotten a lot out of this session that this has been food for thought for you as you go through this handout and the worksheet to try to automate simplify and optimize some areas of your practice the Florida Bar PRI also has some additional resources for you if you visit the page they have a really great library of administrative forms so that forms library we were talking about if you don't have one of those yet if you're just starting out or maybe you're using a forum and you're like oh my gosh this needs help take a look at what they have these can be really good first drafts for you you can supplement some of the forms that you already have there's a great library there so take a look at that and they also have a knowledge base so if there are things that you might not be really to sharp on or if you might need some help with developing a really good efiling checklist for example they have stuff like that if you just got a new iPad and you don't know how to use it there's a whole section on that so really great resource use the PRI they are amazing they really do care about making you better lawyers rocket matter also has produced white papers ebooks we've got a blog we've done a ton of blog work on productivity and automation we've also published these ebooks this year payment processing for lawyers everything you need to know boost profits with payment plans and recurring billing we also have paperless law office a second edition we also published it in Spanish if that's how you prefer to read here your ebooks these days so you can visit rocket Metacom forward slash law firm management resources and you can get your hands on our whole library of ebooks that are free of charge so those will definitely get the wheels turning as well so now we'll transition to some of the questions that have come in ok can we share the list of automated document companies again yes we'll send out these slides in the wrap-up email tomorrow so you'll have access to everything that you saw today yes the slideshow will be available the handout with all of these suggestions listed in one sheet that is not part of the handout that's in this presentation but we can definitely include something in the wrap up tomorrow steve was gracious enough to prepare this and sort of a spreadsheet form so we'll we'll pretty that up for you and we'll send that out as well ok zapier how does that beer interact with rocket matter it doesn't yet so we haven't set up any zaps as of yet I will tell you though top-secret our engineering team is working on it you may be able to zap some things from Google Forms so that might make getting and takes easier we'll see what we do but we're definitely looking at ways to increase our use of zap for our customers for sure ok any other questions all right we're gonna go ahead and move on keep those coming in florida bar members get 15% off rocket matter for life if you're interested in getting a look or setting up a free trial there's no credit card required here's our phone number eight six six seven one zero one eight four five feel free to call us we'll take you through the product no pressure but it might be a good way to automate a lot of your practice and here is that course number course number is twenty seven forty eight this webinar has been approved for one hour of general CLE credit including one hour of technology credit so we've done for technology courses this year which is pretty great so if you need any technology credits the Florida Bar PRI is committed to getting you those inexpensive and easy to digest way so continue to sign up for those reach out to us if you have any questions you can reach me at nefra Rocket matter comm you can reach Steve at Steve at Clary lucam if there are no other questions we're gonna wrap up Steve any parting words nope I've had a great time I appreciate it this is always fun to talk about something near and dear to my heart which is productivity efficiencies getting things done automation thank you Steve you've been amazing today folks we will see you for another rocket mater CLE soon take good care thank you [Music]