The June issue of Law Technology News contained two articles that particularly caught my attention. The Test Drive section presented a “See Through Billing” review of Viewabill software from No Surprises Software. The company says its product is “designed to bring transparency to legal billing.” It works by allowing firm clients accessible views of all legal costs and entries entered up to date, instead of having to wait anxiously for the monthly bill. The dashboard interface of the product also presents a “pencils down” feature next to each matter, allowing the client to send a message to the billing partner instructing to stop all work on that matter. Viewabill software clearly puts new pressure on a firm and its staff to enter billable time on a frequent (i.e. daily) basis, and even though the task of billing time is certainly a headache for many, such frequency might be worth it to prevent costly and damaging billing “misunderstandings” with the client down the road. A more in-depth look at Viewabill software is available here.
Also presented is the article “How Not to Crash,” which describes the scenario of a trial team that forewent using an experienced trial technician to present their case, and instead conscripted a firm staff member to do it with a popular trial presentation program. The staff person (who probably had a few other jobs to do as part of trial prep) was not experienced in using this program, and was fumbling around early in the trial before she accidentally showed portions of the transcript the judge had excluded. She was soon surrounded by her irritated team who was demanding to know what she had done. Luckily for her, the opposing side recognized that this was a technical mistake and not some sneaky trial tactic, and the heat of the incident soon blew over. LTN uses this wince-inducing story to demonstrate how, in the absence of a true expert, a trial team might be better off using familiar old standbys like Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Windows Media Player. Such basics also have the added benefit of being recognizable to modern jurors.
