Recent Articles

Be Aware: Copying machines can have hard drives and store copies - That’s potential out-of-the-box discovery

Adolph J. "A.J" Levy
March 03, 2010 22:17

Did you know that some copying machines have hard drives and store digital copies of the copies they have made? Or that the hard drives could even contain 25,000 copies that have been made? Copier + Hard Drive: A Dangerous Combination. Lawyers are used to discovering e-mail, but now what about...

How to use Adobe Acrobat as a typewriter to fill in forms

Adolph J. "A.J" Levy
February 01, 2010 23:07

I suspect many law firms have typewriters squirreled away somewhere just to fill in forms. Ross Kodner, computer guru extraordinaire, has an article about how Acrobat Standard, Professional or Professional Extended editions can be used as a typewriter to fill in those forms. He gives very detailed...

Using Facebook, MySpace and Google to collect on judgments

Adolph J. "A.J" Levy
September 01, 2009 16:11

How about this? The I.R.S. and state tax people are using Facebook and MySpace to collect on back taxes. There are a number of recent articles on the topic, including one from the Wall Street Journal entitled Is “Friending” in Your Future? Better Pay Your Taxes First.  (For more...

A creative way to use Google street views: Using it to find a cheaper hotel room

Adolph J. "A.J" Levy
May 29, 2009 20:05

The ABA Techshow was recently held at the Chicago Hilton located at 720 South Michigan Avenue. Even though the ABA got a discount on the normal room rate, it still cost attendees $199 per night. While I was at the conference, I started speaking with someone who was attending who could not have...

How to have the Post Office automatically update you on people’s new addresses

Adolph J. "A.J" Levy
May 25, 2009 20:34

What happens when you send a letter to someone and that person has moved? Your letter will automatically get forwarded for the first 12 months after the service. But you won’t get the person’s new address. Here’s how you can have the Post Office automatically send you the new address: Just place...

More sites for finding info on jurors, lawyers, and others

Adolph J. "A.J" Levy
April 22, 2009 17:10

I wrote earlier about using pipl and other sites for finding information about potential jurors and others — including discovering what federal and state political contributions they had made and which parties or candidates received their contributions.  While I was at the latest American Bar...

Selecting mock juries and focus groups: A very out-of-the-box approach

Adolph J. "A.J" Levy
March 30, 2009 20:32

The normal approach to selecting members of mock juries and focus groups is to try to obtain a cross-section of the community in which the case is going to be tried. I recently read an article about how one plaintiff lawyer purposely does not pick a representative group when he selects people for...

How to find information about potential jurors and others — including info about their political contributions

Adolph J. "A.J" Levy
March 21, 2009 21:11

Do you want to find information about potential jurors and others? Here’s where at no cost you can search multiple sites with one search: Kim Komando (that’s really her name — her site is Komando.com) has listed sites in which you can search social networking sites simultaneously. The sites...

Here’s an out-of-the-box way for unemployed attorneys to get new clients

Adolph J. "A.J" Levy
March 19, 2009 16:10

There are now all sorts of articles about how lawyers have lost their positions. Carolyn Elefant has detailed the problem in Legal Blog Watch as has Bruce MacEwen in his Adam Smith, Esq., whom she cited. As they noted, some out-of-work attorneys have started volunteering to do pro bono work as a...

Out-of-the-box uses for Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Adolph J. "A.J" Levy
March 12, 2009 21:05

 All of us – or at least most of us – have heard of Dragon NaturallySpeaking and its use as voice recognition software in law offices.  But there are many more uses for Nuance Corporation’s Dragon!!  Uses outside of a law office I read a while back about how a husband whose wife was deaf was using...