It’s amazing to me that this “thing” floating around in my head doesn’t exist:

1.  You pick a project.
2.  You press a button whenever you’re working on the project.
3.  You’re given the option of noting what you’re working on.
4.  You press the button when you’re done with that task.
5.  The time per project/task is automatically calculated, and the data is sortable.

It’s possible there’s a high-end (read: expensive) solution to offer such a service, but there’s also a reasonable alternative: any computer with Excel or access to Google Docs.

To follow along with this #hack, you should download the Excel file here.

Once you’ve downloaded and opened the spreadsheet, you should be looking at something like this:

The spreadsheet itself is extremely straight-forward.  Remember that start and stop button I imagined?  We can substitute that by pressing [Control] + [Shift] + ;

The above key combination will insert the time into the cell you have highlighted.  So if you’re doing one task (like researching case law) for one client, you insert the time into the cell where you begin, and you do it once more when you’re finished.

- BEGIN MATH ALERT –

The automation comes from the equation I’ve worked into the TOTAL sheet.  You should probably understand how it works in case you need to alter the table to suit your own purposes.  What we really want to do is figure out how much time elapsed between your inserting the time, right?  So assuming you do that in the correct cells, what we really want to do is subtract the beginning time from the ending time, and that should give the total.  So the excel equation in it’s simplest form should look like this:

=D2-C2

The only problem with that is that it won’t account for time done on the same project in the other begin/end columns.  To fix that, we need to add those up as well, so the equation becomes:

=((D2-C2)+(F2-E2)+(H2-G2)+(J2-I2))

- END MATH SECTION -

Don’t worry about having to input that equation more than once, either.  If you select the cell containing the equation as indicated by the circle in the diagram, then click on the square in the bottom right-hand corner and drag down, the equation will insert itself into the cells while editing itself to match the new rows (projects).

I’ll be interested to see if people are able to use this method to suit their needs, and I’d love to hear how you adapt the basic concept to make it more applicable to your work.  As always, if you have any questions or problems, just post in the comments and I’ll try to help out.

(Note: this process is exactly the same, including the equations, on Google Apps)

As lawyers and law students, we’re forever pasting text into Word from PDFs and our internet browsers.  Isn’t it annoying when you’ve got all your headings the way you want them, the text is formatted for your filing, and you paste a rule from LII only to have it mess up all your formatting?

I’ll answer for you.  Yes.  Yes, it is annoying.

So here’s how to fix that: Read the rest of this entry…

For those of us contemplating graduation in the near-future, figuring out how to spend Rewards points efficiently probably comes after bar applications, finding a job, and bar prep.  Luckily, lawhackr has done the math for you.

After crunching the numbers, it appears that Lexis and Amazon have a deal worked out whereby Lexis point values are automatically assigned a value based on the Amazon price and modified by the category in which the items can be found on Lexis.  I couldn’t go through every sub-category, but in my testing, it seems that the sub-categories differ in value substantially less than the category.

Here are all of the Lexis Reward Categories ranked from worst deal (20) to best deal (1).  Numbers in brackets indicate the number of Lexis points to the dollar (so the higher the value, the more Lexis points it takes to equal one dollar).

20. Books [97], Movies [97]
18. Music [95]
17. Kitchen & Housewares [93]
16. Video Games [92]
15. Software
14. Computers [89], Electronics [89], Furnishings [89], Jewelry [89], Office [89], Outdoor Living [89], Photography [89], Spa & Personal Care [89], Sporting Goods [89], Tools & Hardware [89], Toys & Games [89]
3. Fashion [86]
2. Retail / Restaurant Cards [72]

And by far, the best deal when spending your Lexis Points is:

1. Lexis Rewards Card (Any Value) [65]

Before you go out and stock up on Lexis cards, be sure to read up on where they’re accepted.

Note on methodology: To calculate the value of items, I have used the Amazon pricing for consistency.  What that means is that if the Amazon price is not the cheapest price, then the item may be a worse deal than indicated here.

Many of us are traveling for the holiday, and what better way to save some money than with free in-flight wifi?  Because here at lawhackr, will any of us refrain from messing around online if our flight happens to have wireless?  Hopefully not.

Apparently the codes are good for new accounts only, so if you want to use them more than once, you’ll need multiple email accounts.  But hey, gmail addresses are free, right?

Here are the codes (courtesy of flyertalk):

Expire 12/31/2009

• DELTATRYGOGO
• AIRTRANTRYGOGO
• AATRYGOGO

Expire 1/7/2010

• 2287548427snk
• 2472564126dvu
• 2285632980tlk

Let us know if you have success with them.  Preferably from the air, because that would be neat.

Many attorneys do the absolute minimum amount of work required to get their files online.  I can’t tell you how many times I got huge, non-searchable PDFs from professors and partners while interning.  Luckily, lawhackrs aren’t your average attorneys, right?

While I generally don’t like to ask my readers to rely on commercial software when open source (or at least freeware) solutions are available.  The problem is that in the case of windows, there really isn’t a comparable OCR PDF solution to Adobe Acrobat.  For the purposes that we need, Acrobat Standard is perfectly sufficient, so don’t feel obliged to spring for the Professional or Professional Extended versions.  I recommend buying through Amazon rather than from Adobe though, because you save around $40.

Once you have Acrobat installed, the first step is to scan your document.  Since the scanning process differs greatly depending on the type of scanner you use, I’ll leave that up to you.  I scanned my document at 300 dpi, but you can use whatever you normally use to make your text legible.

Now that you have your document scanned, open it up in Acrobat.

Read the rest of this entry…