Saving Time and Money With The Internet

(1st Qtr 1998 NCATL Discovery Newsletter)

By Dale Tincher 

As I consult with firms, I find that legal assistants and paralegals are often given key responsibility in making hardware, software, and Internet decisions. Many wisely accept the responsibility with enthusiasm. Legal assistants and paralegals who become proficient with the Internet and its resources will dramatically further their firm and their own career. I submit to you that the Internet can help a firm more than virtually any other technology. Internet Benefits And Resources Business America utilizes the Internet for communications, research, product promotion and research, and many other purposes.

Electronic mail (E-mail) has become an important extension to their communications. Many business and firms start their day by checking their internal and external E-mail. Throughout the day, their computer notifies them of E-mail from an important client or co-worker. Increasingly, clients are asking for their law firm’s E-mail address. E-mail alone can justify adding the Internet to an office. E-mail is quick and efficient. Instead of rushing documents to the Fed Ex box or delivery person, they can be attached to an E-mail and sent across the country or world in seconds - at no charge. Very importantly, the recipient can retrieve the editable documents into their word processing program. The edited documents can then be forwarded to individuals or groups throughout the world, a key advantage over delivery agents and voice mail. Adding a password and encryption can make the documents secure.

Finding people, business information, legal information, dictionaries, encyclopedias, medical resources and other data is a snap with the Internet. Several resource locations (URL’s) follow. I wish to thank Tammy Moldovan for her contributions to the list. If you have Internet access and wish to avoid manually retyping desired locations, please refer to my home page and I will have a section listing all of these at http://home.att.net/~daletincher/articles.html. An individual looking for medical information can search http://www.nlm.nih.gov/databases/ freemedl.html. On June 26, 1997, the National Library of Medicine announced that its MEDLINE database of more than 8.8 million references to articles published in 3800 biomedical journals may be accessed free of charge on the World Wide Web. Two Web-based products, Internet Grateful Med and PubMed, provide this access. A brief description of each system is provided. HealthGate (http://www.healthgate.com/HealthGate/home.html) provides the ability to search the world's largest biomedical database, six other databases, and display your results free. Looking for an individual or resource? Whether you are searching for the phone number, address or E-mail address of an old classmate, witness, or resource, the Internet most likely houses your information. Search services include http://www.infospace.com/, http://www.switchboard.com, http://www.whowhere.com and http://four11.com. North Carolina doctors and their data can be found at http://www.comp.state.nc.us/ncichome.htm. Attorneys can be found at http://www.martindale-hubbell.com, http://lawinfo.com/ and on some of the book publisher’s pages. How about information on corporations, including registered agents? The secretary of state’s http://www.state.nc.us/business/ and http://www.state.nc.us/secstate/ provide a wealth of information. The EDGAR database of corporate information can be found at http://www.sec.gov/edgarhp.htm. Legal specific search engines include http://www.findlaw.com, http://www.aparalegal.org, and http://www.alllaw.com. Associations, including the National Federation of Paralegal Association, National Association of Legal Assistants, State and National Bar and Trial Lawyers’ Associations (e.g., http://www.ncatl.org) and others can be found at these sites. Legal research over the Internet continues to improve. These sites provide a host of federal, state and local research resources.

The terms intranet and extranet are becoming common. These are defined as Internet technologies deployed as an information infrastructure over your LAN(s) and/or over "virtual private networks" via the Internet. A play on the word Internet, an intranet is a restricted-access network that works like the Web, but isn't on it. Usually owned and managed by a corporation, an intranet enables a company to share its resources with its employees without confidential information being made available to everyone with Internet access. Extranet is a new buzzword that refers to an intranet that is partially accessible to authorized outsiders. Whereas an intranet resides behind a firewall and is accessible only to people who are members of the same company or organization, an extranet provides various levels of accessibility to outsiders. You can access an extranet only if you have a valid username and password, and your identity determines which parts of the extranet you can view. Intranets are surprisingly affordable to establish. Uses for intranets and extranets include news feeds, recent rulings, etc. Analysts estimate that 18% of printed data becomes obsolete within 30 days. North Carolina firms are saving impressive amounts of money and time by using intranets to house Human Resource information, internal forms, marketing documents, and other firm data. Additionally, marketing is encouraged and successes are published over Intranets. Collaboration is greatly enhanced using Intranets and Extranets. Applicable case, calendar and other information are continually updated on the site and are available to firm and collaborating outside attorneys and clients 24 hours per day. Conferencing is available. Attorneys love the ability to travel without briefcases of data which will quickly become outdated. An example of an Intranet is located at http://www.trialnet.com. TrialNet® is a network of private Intranets designed and managed by trial lawyers for trial lawyers. The TrialNet litigation management network is an international network of trial defense attorneys and their clients organized using advanced Internet technology. The purpose of the TrialNet network is to organize and share resources and information in order to improve the quality of legal services while reducing defense costs. By sharing information and resources, members reportedly reduce inefficiencies and significantly enhance the quality of their representation. The National Law Journal in its July 21, 1997 issue has TrialNet profiled as a legal technology innovation that makes it all the more clear that "attorneys of all ages who refuse to recognize the value of new technology in their practices" are "dinosaurs" and an "endangered specie." This comment could easily apply to Internet acceptance in general.

Do you want your own web site? Do you want business? These two questions will correlate in 1998 through 2000. Technology clients use the Internet now to find their servicing agencies. Corporations are finding that it is quicker and less expensive to find information from the desktop computer than it is to publish or purchase catalogs of information. The Internet is growing at 10 percent per month. Forbes 500 CEO’s expect to generate almost 40 percent of their sales through the Internet within ten years. You need to learn, understand, and tap into this medium. You can attract new clients and communicate with information seekers. You can strengthen relationships and market additional services to existing clients. Your information is available twenty-four hours per day with minimum cost and resources. Consider your image. If one of two comparable firms has a professional web site, which firm do you view as more progressive? We will spend more time on this issue in a future article.

Suffice it to say that you can and should develop your own site. You should start by spending $100 (www.internic.net) for a two-year purchase of your domain name, e.g., http://www.yourname.com. I suggest renting web space from a provider such as AT&T, BellSouth, Interpath, AOL or one of many others. These providers will rent two to five megabytes of space for twenty to thirty dollars per month. You can hire someone to develop your site for two hundred dollars and up depending upon the depth and complexity (please see the example on my page). Most providers give you "Quick Template" tools which allow you to fill in the blanks, choose some graphics and quickly throw up a temporary site. You may choose to supplement this offering by acquiring page development software such as Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe PageMill for around $99.00 to further develop your page. Professionalism is important, therefore if you have reservations about your site, talk with a designer. If you want to have a site, but you do not want to worry about design and maintenance, the web contains many companies, who like my company, will do the entire job for you. You can search the web for "web designers." You can also look at the bottom section of law firm pages to see who developed the page or click on "View Source" to see the code and sometimes the designer’s name. Feel free to call or send an E-mail. I will be happy to match you with a company who will meet your design and budget desires. I’ll see you on the web.

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