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)

Anyway, now that finals are over, I thought now would be the perfect opportunity to check it out.

As you can see, it’s an attractive iPhone app.  The orange textured gradient is very web 2.0.

Once the program loads up, you’re able to register an account right on the iPhone.  At this screen, you select your username, password, and primary state.  This can be changed later if you’d like to receive credit in another state.  After registration, they send you a confirmation email, but you don’t need to read it before you log in.

The interface is very polished as you can see on the right.  Downloading was very quick over wireless network — I initially tried to download a talk over wireless on my pre-3G iPhone and then gave up.  I can’t really blame West for that, as it may be possible over 3G, and I’m just too cheap to buy a 3GS.

Now that we’ve got the course downloaded, the next step is to play it.  This, sadly, is where the program runs into some problems.  Maybe my expectations were too high, but when I opened up the course materials to see Word documents not even formatted for an iPhone, I got unreasonably annoyed.  There was also a “powerpoint presentation” which was clearly a .ppt file rendered to PDF.  I’m a bit baffled about why this design choice was made.  I’m fairly certain the developers could have used full screen images for each powerpoint page, and allowed users to flip between slides.  They didn’t, for whatever reason.  And there’s no way I’m going to read text not formated into iPhone-sized columns.  I would have expected something similar to the Lexis app’s case formatting.  As far as I’m concerned, the supplemental materials feature is in an early beta stage right now.

So presentation problems aside, the audio playback is quite good.  Given the unpolished supplemental presentation code, I half expected that viewing the supplemental material while listening to the audio lesson would stop the playback, but it kept playing without skipping a beat.

Although I’m just a lowly law student, I can definitely see the benefit of a program like this.  If I had a long commute to work, I could make the decision to get some CLE credit, find a course, download it, and submit the course for credits all between leaving my house and getting to work.  In that respect, it’s a clear upgrade from a pure podcast system.  It’s sort of a one-stop-mobile-shop for Continuing Legal Education.

If this program gets to the point where it’s like playback of my law school classes — that is, you listen to the audio while a fullscreen powerpoint presentation advances itself, this could definitely be a powerful little app.  For the moment though, don’t go into it expecting a terribly polished system.  Still, I have high hopes.  I’m graduating in a few months, after all.

It’s sort of a hack, because the AutoCorrect feature is primarily intended to catch misspellings and automatically correct them, but why not use it to your advantage?  It’s fast because you don’t have to run any external software, and it’s easy to set up.

Note: This tutorial was prepared using Word 2007.

Step 1: Open word.  (1) Click on the stupid Windows button on the top left-hand corner, and (2) click on Word Options.

Step 2: Select the (3) Proofing tab, then click on (4) AutoCorrect Options…

Step 3:  Type the shorthand version of the word you want to add to box (5) and the longhand version in box (6).  Click Add.  Repeat as necessary.

Now for some hints.  Don’t use a shorthand version of words in your native language.  For instance: test could be short for testator, but you probably don’t want to replace test with testator all the time.  For cases like that, I usually use an underscore ( _ ) as a prefix.  So test would be _test.  It’s quick, and quicker than writing testator.  In the case of symbols, this can save a lot of time.  I set _s to replace with the section symbol.

When you start adding symbols and replacing entire phrases with acronyms, this can be a serious time-saver.

Do you all have any other time-saving Word tips?

Admittedly, when I received an email pushing the new LexisNexis iPhone app, my expectations weren’t terribly high.  However, after spending some time with the program, I have been pleasantly surprised.

First and foremost, this is not a replacement for having LexisNexis open in your web browser.  In fact, you won’t be able to research at all.  The purpose of this application is to allow you to read and Shepardize a case when you already know the citation.  If you can come to terms with its limited functionality, the app performs these limited purposes well.

The user interface is very straight-forward, as you can see.  The first screen asks for a cite and you can either pull the case text or perform a basic Shepard’s analysis.

After clicking one of the two buttons, a login screen prompts you to enter your LexisNexis login and password.

I decided to pull up Brown v. Board of Education, and as you can see, the display is about the same as you’re used to seeing when pulling up a case in Lexis.  One major drawback in the display is that there are no clickable hyperlinks in the cases.  So if you want to look up a referenced case, you have to highlight the citation, then cut and paste it into a new search.  It is honestly a relatively simple process, but it’s strange that hyperlinks are missing because it would make the program much more functional and give it a more polished feel.  Still, the text is surprisingly legible, and I actually didn’t mind reading cases for an extended period of time even with the small typeface.

The main problem that I have with the app is the seriously crippled Shepard’s function.  Yes, it technically exists, and it will technically give you an idea of the disposition, but I question its usefulness.  While it will tell you the number of cases distinguishing, following, overturning, etc., it will not link you to them, and in fact it won’t even tell you the name or citation of those cases.  It seems that this function is only useful for a cursory glance at the general treatment, but nothing else.  In my opinion, this shortcoming isn’t a deal-breaker because as I explained at the beginning of this review, this is not meant as a replacement for researching on your computer.

In the end, I imagine this as a “I need to commute somewhere but I also need to read this case . . . guess I’ll just jot down the citation” kind of program.  Nothing more, nothing less.  And for that very limited purpose, I think the developers did a fairly good job.

Pros:
- User friendly
- Simple and clean design
- Legible case formatting for extended reading

Cons:
- Limited ability to research — must know case citation
- No hyperlinked cases in the case text
- Crippled Shepard’s functionality