Newsletter Header, 12-2013
November 2015
Giving Thanks for Tech
The BigHand 30-Day Challenge Wrap Up
FREE Webinar - 60 Tips in 60 Minutes
Don't Rush to Upgrade
The Surface Book - Ultimate Lawyer's Laptop?
November Speaking Engagements
Word Tip of the Month - Keeping Titles With Their Paragraphs
MacCorner - Thankful for Things "Macful"
LegalAnywhere Intranet and Extranet
Newsworthy - Links of Interest (Early Gift Guide Edition)
New on the Affinity Consulting Group Blog











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Tech for Which We Give Thanks
- Our Partners, Consultants, and Staff Pick Their Favorite Tech Items
We asked Partners, Consultants, and Staff at Affinity to name the tech for which they are most thankful this Thanksgiving season. The responses were varied and fascinating. Some picked the latest gadgets. Others went with software or web-based services. 

Read on to find out which tech products are valued most by our Partners, Consultants and Staff. You may find your next favorite tech item on this list. 

We Challenged You . . . and You Accomplished More
- The BigHand 30-Day Challenge Wrap-Up

Affinity Consulting Group teamed up with BigHand, Inc. to make you more productive by turning words into text and then into action with digital dictation. The Challenge ran from October 5 through October 30. 

We spent 4 weeks with the firms who chose to participate, giving them a 30 day free trial of this digital dictation and speech recognition software. 

Weekly emails were sent, providing helpful tips & tricks and we hosted brief webinars each Friday afternoon during the month. The weekly webinars included such topics as "Top Reasons to Dictate", "The Art of Dictation", "7 Things Successful Lawyers Do", and "What I Learned in 30 Days...". 

We had a great deal of positive feedback and are pleased that so many of our challengers found BigHand to be a huge help with their productivity. Congratulations to the winner of our challenge - Geneva Perry of Promise Law, PLLC who will be receiving a GoPro camera!

If you would like more information about BigHand or inquire as to how speech solutions might help you be more efficient, please contact us at speech@affinityconsulting.com.
Visit Our Webinar Archive
We archive our FREE educational webinars for 90 days after they are presented.

If you want to learn more about speech recognition and digital dictation, view Britt Lorish's FREE Webinar HERE. 
Free Webinar Series Continues November 17
-60 Legal Tech Tips, Gadgets and Websites in 60 Minutes
Debbie Foster and Stacy Devlin present the best of legal technology, practice management, electronics and incredibly useful websites for lawyers - all in 60 minutes!

Join Debbie and Stacy for this for this rapid-fire, entertaining hour full of great ideas you can immediately incorporate into your practice.. Register HERE for the 1 PM (EST) November 17 FREE Webinar.
Don't Rush to Upgrade!
It is hard to resist when a shiny new software or operating system upgrade is dangled in front of you - complete with promises of new features and improved productivity. But resist you must!

Premature upgrades can wreak havoc on your workflow by breaking links and integrations between missions-critical law office applications. 

For example, in the last several weeks, we posted warnings on our blog about upgrading too quickly to new products such as Microsoft Office 2016. Doing so can break links and integrations with products such as Worldox, HotDocs, and Amicus Attorney.

When in doubt, check with us or monitor our blog. We will let you know when it is safe to hit that upgrade button.
The Surface Book - Ultimate Lawyer's Laptop?
- Scott Bassett, Esq. 
Microsoft's recent hardware announcement had one big surprise - the new Surface Book. It is Microsoft's first laptop. But it is a laptop with an added feature - a removable screen to use as a tablet. 

My own use case for this form factor? I plan to work with the Surface Book in laptop mode as my primary travel computer. Then I will detach the screen to use it as a tablet at oral argument of my appellate cases. Others will have different use cases for the detached tablet mode Microsoft calls "Clipboard." In theory, it could be a Windows alternative to Apple's upcoming iPad Pro.

My Surface Book arrived on October 26.  I can report that it is a rugged and attractive design. Read on for my initial impressions after nearly a week of use.

November Speaking Engagements
As the holiday season approaches, our Partners and Consultants continue their trek across the U.S. and Canada with presentations in British Columbia, Minnesota, and Ohio before heading home for Thanksgiving. 

Please note that all Affinity offices will be closed for the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, November 26, and Friday, November 27. We reopen on Monday, November 30. 

Word Logo
MS Word Tip of the Month - Keeping Titles With Their Paragraphs
-Barron K. Henley, Esq.
Don't you just hate it when the title to a paragraph or section of your document ends up on the bottom of a page while the paragraph itself starts on the next page? 

Many Word users will simply add hard returns before the title to push onto the next page. That is the wrong way to solve this problem. This month we show you the right way. 

MacCorner
MacCorner - Thankful for Things "Macful"
- Jeffrey Schoenberger, Esq.
This month's newsletter theme is things that we're thankful for. Having just returned from Affinity's CaseAware® Bootcamp, I've got a list of a list of five tools that I'm thankful I had at hand.

LegalAnywhere Announces New Products
LegalAnywhere is a software and services company providing secure collaboration and file sharing solutions for law firms. LegalAnywhere recently announced a change to its product line up that will make its services more attractive to small and mid-sized law firms. 

There are now two separate and affordable services targeted to smaller firms. LegalAnywhereConnect® is an extranet product while FirmConnect® is an intranet product. 


To learn what an extranet or intranet can do for your firm, contact us at info@affinityconsulting.com.
Newsworthy - Early Tech Gift Guide Edition
Each month we bring you quick links to a variety of newsworthy items dealing with technology products, services, and other topics of interest to lawyers as they seek to better manage their practices. November is the start of the holiday gift giving season. Here are some links to get your started deciding what technology gifts are right for your loved ones. Just be careful out there on Black Friday.    
Meet the Team - Michelle Motyka
Affinity Consulting loves to help improve the lives of our clients. We thought you might enjoy getting to know about the lives of some of our team members who help make that happen.  Each month we will feature another member of the Affinity Team. Get to know us!

Meet Michelle Motyka, Senior Legal Technology Consultant.  Michelle joined Affinity in September, 2007.  After working as a paralegal for several years, Michelle returned to school for a Masters degree.  She supported herself working part-time as a Litigation Support Specialist and become very interested in legal technology and training.  She joined Affinity with critical practice management and time, billing and accounting experience and training.  Michelle currently works with the Ohio office of Affinity and has been married to husband Andrew for 11 years.  They have three "fur babies" - a dog named Monty and two cats, Howie and Sunny.

Michelle has many favorite stories about Affinity, but selected the following as her highlight....in 2012, Michelle and 9 other female Affinity co-workers participated in the Disney Princess half-marathon.  She laughs about their training before the race, "I believe we may have "trained" by going for one walk ahead of time."  They crossed the finish line before the time was up and had a fun weekend participating, but she acknowledges what it all meant to her: "I think it says a lot about the strength of the women of ACG that we took on the challenge and made it happen."

Learn More About Michelle HERE.
Visit Our Newsletter Archive
The Affinity Consulting Group Newsletter Archive has our email newsletters going back to January of 2010.