Computing Opportunities

One of the things that drives me crazy is the sure knowledge that there are things that would benefit me that I don’t take advantage of. An expiry date on a fuel discount coupon, a limited time offer that I decide to late to accept, seat sales that I miss the deadline for.

Sometimes we miss efficiency opportunities because we don’t think hard enough about how something that we are doing will be re-done or repeated. For example, some not too old precedents that I recently unearthed had *** rather than a programmed form field wherever text needed to be replaced in the document. There are a couple of options to make the reuse of those precedents easier in the future: write or record a macro that will find *** and leave it selected so that when you “find” it you can simply type the replacement text OR find all of the *** and replace with a form field so that the next person can jump to the “blanks” in the precedent using the F11 keyboard shortcut. Both of these are relatively simple solutions that make better use of existing technology.

Think about the power of the software products that you are using – are you using them to your maximum advantage? Consider learning things that can increase your personal productivity.

• Rules in Outlook that put unsolicited email in a read it later folder
• Watch your computing habits; try out a new keyboard shortcut
• Use spreadsheets when you are dealing with numbers or dates that need to be calculated rather than making manual adjustments
• Use the spacebar to jump down one screen in your web browser
• And for the sake of anyone who has to edit a document you create USE auto numbering.

Everyone reading Slaw at this moment carries around more computing power in their pocket than NASA used to reach the moon. We have incredible advantages as individuals to build great things with a little knowledge and the technology that we already own.

How do you think you would score on the Legal Tech Audit?