We are deep in Pilot rollout of Windows 7 and Office 2010 at Field Law. It is fun, interesting, frustrating, and intense.
Fun – I love learning new things, especially technology things. I especially like being in Pilot groups where I can see that my feedback is shaping the way we offer these tools to the rest of the firm.
Interesting – It is interesting to see how ribbons and menus were contemplated by the developers who are likely not the same folks who created Windows originally. New technologies are often, for me, a glimpse of how the current generation of programmers think. This is particularly relevant when you are moving from very old to pretty new.
Frustrating – I try to always choose to use new software the way it was intended to be used, rather than forcing the system to work "my old way". As you can imagine, I am not as quick producing work. It is extremely frustrating for me to take 5 minutes for a 2 minute task, even if both of these are a billable point one. The good news is that as I learn, I learn the new shortcuts – as will everyone who is going through this upgrade – approximately 75% of law firms this year.
Intense – Every new trick I learn, I ache to share. This may be a character flaw but you are reading this post, right?
For today, I will share my joy at how lovely the browser plugin for CanLII works in IE9. They work in other browsers also and you can find them on the Tools page at CanLII.
This isn't brand spanking new functionality, Simon crafted a CanLII search bookmarklet years ago in his Mac environment. Still it is a step saving, time saving device.
I had the plugin installed for our regular browser setup so at least our common task of case gathering by citation or name can still be a very fast turn around.
What is your favourite browser plugin?
