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How A Law Firm Can Use Evernote to Increase Efficiency

10/8/2012

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How A Law Firm Can Use Evernote to Increase Efficiency


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Given that it allows for fast communication and collaboration, even when on the go, it should be no surprise that Evernote is a very useful tool for busy lawyers who spend much of their work-time on the move. Evernote has an open data format that helps its users enjoy more functionality and the ability to customize the system to suit their particular needs. This is just a hint at all the things that this online storage and management service has to offer.

The Many Benefits

A firm that builds a centralized case management system using Evernote accounts will allow all its partners and employees to organize and share documents on the fly and with minimal effort. Not only does this eliminate the space that thousands of files and manila folders would take up, but it also makes for faster searching to find materials when they are needed. Therefore, the simple use of electronic methods to store information takes care of two potential problems automatically.

Since Evernote uses an open data format, the regular features can easily be customized in special ways to suit anyone—such as creating your own interface and making templates for the addition of new documents. Doing this would eliminate the need of doing redundant tasks that would otherwise expend a lot of time and effort that could be placed into doing more productive work.

The use of Shared Notebooks is a great way to get everyone on the same track. This is a great help to lawyers managing cases because all the information for each client can be organized in an appropriate manner. Not only that but since these files and contents can be accessed and edited by others, the material within them can always be available for reference and can be updated regularly by those you collaborate with.
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Optimize and Organize

Another great thing is the fact that your folders can be organized in an efficient way that will make finding information a straightforward task. A lawyer, or their assistant, could first create a universal index that would house all cases and links to individual folders where the case documents are stored. Each case would then contain notes and material within its specific folder. In turn, each case can have various tags assigned to it (such as client name, year, file number, and etc). This is helpful when doing a search to pull up the particular documents that are needed at the time.

It is also important for attorneys and layers to save correspondence with partners and clients. This can easily be done by creating a folder especially for this material and placing the appropriate tags on those items. However, how you wish to separate and organize these and other data is strictly up to you and your collaborators since you will be the ones creating it all.

Save Any Document From Anywhere

Aside from the creation of documents, it should be stressed again that one can also store documents that were created outside of the Evernote system. This includes any type of document—from text files to photos and video. This comes in very handy in many types of situations. For example, if you or a client need to create videos or photos detailing evidence in a case, then you have the full capability of making those files and uploading them to your Evernote case file for storage. Or, if you are contacted by a client on your mobile phone while away from the office, you can easily take down notes from them and send that info to a collaborator. Since they will be able to access the files too, this lets you have that material transferred to your Evernote management system. If you simply need to search for something already saved, then your mobile device allows this to be done quickly from anywhere. With the Offline Notebook, you can even do this where there is no internet connection.

Just to give you an idea of the possibilities, a firm could easily create a virtual office where 85% of their work is done strictly with Evernote. Not only is this possible, but it is also profitable for you or anyone who is aware of the advantages that come with setting up your own online workstation. 

After you have set up your Evernote electronic office, where all your important work is done and data is saved, it is very important to make a back-up system just in case something goes wrong and you lose the information there. In order to do this, you could also get an account with another site such as Google Drive or Dropbox where you could regularly upload from Evernote. This would be a secondary site that you would not access unless in case of an emergency—such as if Evernote’s servers went down or if someone got access to your account and decided to destroy everything there. In fact, making an second online storage site account as a back-up is just as important as, for instance, having a portable hard drive where you can save files that are on your computer hard drive. The reason being that you never know what could happen—so, it is always best to save your information in multiple locations.

Doing this sounds like time consuming work, but it is very necessary. Not to mention that there is a service called cloudHQ that specializes is synching documents across multiple cloud storage and file management sites (such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Basecamp, Evernote, and many more). That means that all your documents can easily be placed into multiple locations and automatically kept in sync so that you won’t have to lift a finger while security is optimized. Your information will be safe from destruction or loss, because you will always have an up-to-date copy of every case file that you place in Evernote.

Again, if you think that it might be a good idea to start making an online workplace for the betterment and improved efficiency of your office functions, then Evernote would be a great place to start—especially if you are looking for features that specifically facilitate the collaboration of multiple users in a virtual environment. However, once you have made this your workstation, be sure to implement the proper protection by creating backups of all your materials. To do this, use a service such as cloudHQ. Once you have taken the proper steps to work better and protect your data, then you will truly see how much more efficient and effortless your everyday tasks can become.

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