Futurelawyer

Cloud HQ - Apps To Make You Better.

Cloud HQ. I love this suite of applications, and I love the ones that are extensions to my web browser, Chrome. One of the daily irritants I have been struggling with is that my GMail box begins with tiny, unreadable text that I have to squint to see. While I have used Cloud HQ in the past to record my computer tasks, or to create screen shots that I can use elsewhere, I discovered one of Cloud HQ's apps that allows me to increase the size of GMail text with the click of a zoom tool. Another one allows me to create a unique link to any email, that I can send to friends, family or colleagues, with a click. While I pay for the basic software that I use for screen grabs, the extensions are free, unless I need premium services. Check out Cloud HQ. It will make you better.

Why You Should Google Yourself Every Now And Then.

Law Practice Achieves Modern Service With Kofax PDF Advanced. Every now and then, I google myself. It isn't a vanity play; although, I have been accused of it, on occasion. But, I am always surprised by something, and, today, I was surprised to find that I was the subject of a case study for my chosen PDF applications, Kofax PDF Advanced. I have no issue with this, as I have always recommended the software, from the days it was owned by Nuance, then Kofax, and, now, apparently by a company called Tungsten Automation. But, they used a photo of some nameless guy above a quote by me. I have emailed them with a couple of images of the real FutureLawyer. If my words are being used to sell the product, I would prefer they use my real face. Do you agree? Or, am I too scary to contemplate? :-)

Android Phone? Speed It Up By Turning Down Animations.

Turn On Developer Options. What if I told you that you could make yourself into an Android Developer? You can get under the hood of Android and do all sorts of amazing things. While you have to be careful under there, one change you can make is to make your Android phone faster and snappier. Fancy animations make the device slower, and can even make response times sluggish. This article shows you how to turn on Developer Mode, and then adjust the three animation settings. I turned animation off completely and my phone now feels like it has received an energy boost. Simply put, you an go to the About tab in Settings, and tap the Build Number seven times to get into Developer Mode. When you do a Developer Mode button will appear at the end of the Settings Menu. Click it, and scroll all the way down until you see the three Animation delay settings. You can turn them down from 1.0 to .5, or, as I did, turn them off altogether. Zoom, Zoom.

Legal Research In A Time Of Generative AI.

Chat GPT Is Not Good At Legal Research...So Let's Use It To Teach LegaL Research. This is a great article by David S. Kemp, the Managing Editor of Verdict, and a former Law Professor. As a former Law Professor myself, I can attest to the fact that Law Professors spend the bulk of their time briefing and discussing appellate case law in their classes. Of course, that also entails a discussion of the statutes, regulations and other materials that serve as the incubators for the disputes resolved in case law. But, the actual learning of how to find applicable case or statutory law is a subject usually relegated to a couple of first year courses, and is really learned in the trenches. In my day, pulling case books off the shelf, poring through indexes and treatises, and then, later in my early career, learning how to search cases collected on CDRoms, and later the Internet and computers. Chat GPT and the other current resources are really tools to analyze a complete database of legal materials, and they aren't actually current. (Chat GPT is up to around April, 2023). And, due to the construction of the algorithms, the bots tend to make up citations occasionally, or, as is more common, they refer the user to an actual database of cases, or a lawyer. But, if not useful as a case finder, they are really good at distilling a body of legal knowledge into a cogent analysis of a particular legal problem, which is the first thing law students need to learn how to do. So, I am not afraid of the future of generative AI. I look at it as making lawyer's abilities enhanced. With these computer tools, we can all become legal researchers on figurative steroids. Meet the super lawyer, who can leap complex legal issues with a single prompt. Now, get out there and lawyer on.

Chat GPT Plus Or Microsoft CoPilot? Pick Your Poison.

As an original Chat GPT Plus subscriber, I pay $20 per month for priority access to the latest Large Language Model used by Open AI, which, at this time is GPT-4.5. However, I noticed, on my Windows computer, the addition of a button in the lower right of the screen that takes me to the Microsoft AI offering, CoPilot. I was curious about whether I needed both, since CoPilot also has a priority based product, which also costs $20 a month. Since CoPilot uses the same LLM as Chat GPT, I asked CoPilot to compare. This is the answer I received:

"The pricing strategies for Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT Plus differ due to the distinct features and services they offer. ChatGPT Plus is a subscription plan that provides users with enhanced features of the ChatGPT service, such as general access even during peak times, faster response times, and priority access to new features and improvements, all for $20 per month¹.

Microsoft Copilot, on the other hand, is integrated with Microsoft 365 apps and offers a range of productivity tools and AI capabilities. It’s designed to assist users in various tasks across different applications, which may justify a different pricing structure. For instance, Copilot Pro offers premium AI features, including priority access to GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo, and is priced at $20 per user per month². Additionally, there’s a version of Copilot for Microsoft 365 that costs $30 per user per month with an annual commitment, providing integration with Teams, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, and other Microsoft 365 apps³.

These pricing differences reflect the varying levels of service, integration, and features provided by each platform. Users can choose the option that best fits their needs and budget."

In other words, Microsoft is offering a version of the same product, tailored to its applications, and accessible from within the applications. I also get the feeling that it is more attuned to advising how to use Microsoft apps for particular tasks. Both are superior to the other AI offerings, in my opinion, because they allow, in the premium versions, the ability to create personalized databases, created by the user. I use this to create legal research apps, one of which pulls together everything available on the Internet relating to Florida specific legal databases. AI isn't going to take over the world. But, if you are a tech savvy lawyer, it will make you a lawyer on legal research steroids.

Elon Musk To Open Source Grok. AI Power To The People.

Elon Musk To Open Source Grok Chatbot. Unhappy with the decision by OpenAI to open a for profit arm of Chat GPT, Elon Musk, one of its founders, left and has now created generative AI for X, formerly known as Twitter, and will provide free open source access to its Chatbot, Grok, to X subscribers. Just one more reason that advocates of free use of AI will want to use X. More and more apps and sites are integrating generative AI into their products, and, in the future, assistive AI research will become invisible. It will just be there. Open source means that anyone can access and improve Grok, and it will become a collaborative programming exercise. Let the war for free intelligent machines begin.

iScanner - The Scanner For Your Smartphone.

iScanner. We live and die with our scanners these days. I have twin ScanSnaps at my home and office, and they get a  workout all day every day. For law practice, which is document dependent, turning paper into permanent pdfs is something I do multiple times every day. I store receipts, contracts, pleadings, documents of all types, and anything that can pass through a scanner. Recently, I had the daughter of a long time client call and ask for copies of the client's Will and Trust, and I located them in a minute, and emailed them to her. They were signed 20 years ago. Every day I make notes on my Kindle Scribe with an Eink pen, and send the final calendar to my computer via email for long term storage. I have been scanning since 2004. But, what about the times I am away from either desk? There have been many attempts to use the increasingly capable smartphone cameras as scanners in recent years, and my choice, for $20 a year, has to be iScanner. The app can scan and take photos of any document. It can count the objects in a photo. It can scan ID cards, passports, QR codes, and solve math problems. It can show distances on screen for any space in the camera's range. It can mark up, edit, make notes, and other things on the documents scanned. It can convert images to pdf or jpg format. It can share the documents as pdf files, doc format files, txt format files, jpg files, and can fax and print. So, use that futuristic phone in your pocket for something other than selfies. Make it a tool in your lawyer arsenal. 

ChatGPT For Google Email And Search - Solo Lawyer's BigLaw Weapon.

ChatGPT For Email. I have been having a lot of fun creating legal specific applications that leverage the power of Chat GPT to give my solo practice the power of an army of law clerks and paralegals. I have created databases that include all Florida case law, all Florida law found in statutes, regulations, and secondary sources, and, earlier today, a database permitting generative AI searches into every word ever written or published in my FutureLawyer blog, or any other social media site. CloudHQ, an application that I use to sync stuff between web based applications has created a ChatGPT search box that automatically does a Chatbot search of anything I look for in Google, and which creates intelligent emails based upon email that I receive in GMail. The possible applications of this technology are mind boggling, and I am just scratching the surface. All of this is possible with a $20 a month Chat GPT Plus subscription, and a few dollars for the Cloud HQ application. So, before you spend hundreds of dollars on somebody who promises you the moon, play with it yourself. You will be amazed at what you can accomplish with a little investment of your time and intellect. I cannot emphasize this too strongly. Learn this stuff of say goodbye to your law practice. I will likely be dead before that happens; but mark my words, those of you who are young enough to be looking a decades of law practice in the future. You must know this. 

AI Generated Case Summaries From AnyLaw? Yes, Please.

AnyLaw. Legal research empowered by AI. Everything is changing rapidly, now that computers have learned how to use LLMs (Large Language Models) to mimic human thought. Legal research, dependent as it is on large quantities of human language fashioned in opinions, statutes, regulations, and so forth, is tailor made for AI. Now, my favorite legal research company, AnyLaw, is offering a 7 day free trial to AI powered case summaries that will speed legal research exponentially. What do you get with AnyLaw? How about full coverage across state and federal courts, with daily updates,  linked citations, allowing seamless navigation across all content, fast, easy, and intuitive keyword search functionality and proximity operators, responsive, live filters based on court level, state, date and more, and, the ability to save and print cases? Now, in addition, AI generated  case summaries. The cost is minimal, at $40 a month, or $400 a year, and free to try. Get thee to AnyLaw, and see what true computer research can do for you and your practice. FutureLawyer recommended.

Are Your Files Backed Up In The Cloud?

Google Drive Files Disappearing? CloudHQ is a great utility that can make connections between cloud services, and can sync files across services. This article about a problem some users are having with files stored in Google Drive, and having six months of files disappearing, caused me to use Cloud HQ to sync my Google Drive files with Microsoft OneDrive. Cloud HQ makes it easy, and I now have all my filed synchronized in both locations. When a file is added to OneDrive, it is synced automatically to Google Drive, and vice versa. Be careful out there. Do you know where your files are? In addition, I use GoodSync to save all of my essential files and documents to a Micro SD card in my computer, and also on a USB external drive. Backup your files. The backup is your lifeline.