Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of “Ten Things You Need to Know as In-House Counsel!” This is one of my favorite posts of the year because every summer for the past nine years or so, I have written about “cool tech” for in-house lawyers – and this year is no exception. If you would like to see past editions of the “cool tech” edition, check out footnote 1 below.[1] As always, I have been scanning the technology horizon like Captain Ahab, searching for the most elusive prize of all – useful technology that will make in-house lawyers more productive (in addition to making work easier and – hopefully – more fun and interesting). In my new book on productivity for in-house lawyers, I have chapters on technology generally and ChatGPT specifically. And if you have been reading my other books, this blog, or my LinkedIn posts over the years, you know that I am a big fan of technology, especially technology that enhances the productivity of the legal department and its value to the business.
As always, I like to find and highlight technology that is easy to use and low cost – delivering big value with little effort or expense (though occasionally – like today – I will highlight something that is a bigger lift cost-wise but likely to pay big dividends). As usual, I make no promises or warranties of any kind, implied or express (got to cover my ass when I can) and I can also assure you that I get nothing for recommending the technology below. I just think these are all useful tools and worth your time checking them out. Ready to get into it? Great, here we go with my “Ten Things” cool tech 2024 edition:
1. Slido. I do a lot of presentations and webinars. And I love including interactive polling so the audience can participate and weigh in on key questions. It makes for a more engaging experience and more fun for me. Several years ago, I mentioned Poll Everywhere as a “cool tech” winner. It’s still a good tool for live polling. My experience recently, however, is that it is glitchy and sometimes just doesn’t work at all – which can suck the air out of the room during the live presentation or webinar.[2] Then I found Slido. It is easy to use, and it works every time. It takes seconds to load and then you can create super slick “live polls, Q&A, quizzes and word clouds whether you meet in the office, online or in-between.” I highly recommend this product.
2. WordTemplates.org. I love, love, love templates. They speed up work and keep you from reinventing the wheel or spaghetti or whatever (… sorry, not sure where I was going with that sentence). I also love “free.” So, a site that provides free Word templates? Yes, I will have some, please! And you can too by going to WordTemplates.org. Pretty simple premise here – dozens and dozens of free Word templates covering meetings, reports, project management, and many other business documents. Each template gives you a description and image and an easy download button. You don’t have to set up an account or sift through paid templates – everything is free! If you are looking for more than Word templates, try OfficeTemplatesOnline for a host of free templates for Word, Excel, and other Office products.
3. Tubi. I am a Boomer. I say that not as a pejorative or as the opening sentence of a 12-step program meeting, but to let everyone know that I love watching television. And man have I watched a lot of TV, starting as a kid back in York, Nebraska. And it did not rot my brain, make me prone to violence, or fat and lazy. Well, maybe not fat. Regardless, if you like television and are tired which has, of whatever they are serving up these days, e.g., “The Real Housewives of [Insert Generic City Name Here]” or “(Not) Finding Bigfoot” then I have the perfect solution for you… Tubi! Tubi is a TV and movie streaming service with over 200,000 movies and TV episodes. It has live TV (featuring recent and classic shows and tons of movies) and on-demand as well, all contained within a super easy-to-navigate user interface. Best of all, it’s free! You can watch it anywhere you have access to the internet.[3] I watch Tubi quite a bit (especially when I am on the road) and can always find something I am interested in (unlike the 500+ channels DirectTV is serving up to me for big bucks).[4] I also like PlutoTV which I highlighted a couple of years ago. It’s similar to Tubi and worth checking out as well.
4. Ninite. The internet is a scary place – like Jeffrey Dahmer’s basement scary. It seems everywhere you go online, someone is trying to trick you into clicking on something that launches malware or ransomware or underwear or some other type of “ware” that will result in bad things for you, your computer, and your employer. This is especially true when you are looking to download or update programs, apps, or software on your computer. The best place to go is the software company’s website. But, if you have a lot of different programs to update or manage then that can be a real pain in the ass. The solution? Ninite! Ninite is a single source of truth for internet downloads, where you can access hundreds of programs and updates in one location. I don’t think I can describe it better than Ninite does on the site:
Ninite will
- start working as soon as you run it
- not bother you with any choices or options
- install apps in their default location
- say no to toolbars or extra junk
- install 64-bit apps on 64-bit machines
- install apps in your PC’s language or one you choose
- do all its work in the background
- install the latest stable version of an app
- skip up-to-date apps
- skip any reboot requests from installers
- use your proxy settings from Internet Explorer
- download apps from each publisher’s official site
- verify digital signatures or hashes before running anything
- work best if you turn off any web filters or firewalls
- save you a lot of time!
All true. All awesome. And all for free!
5. Visme Timeline Maker. As someone who came up on the litigation side of the in-house world, I can vouch for the power of a simple timeline. Not only are they critical in litigation, especially with the judge or jury, but they can also make complex business discussions, updates, and presentations clear and understandable. That’s why I love the Visme Timeline Marker. It’s free and easy to use. And it makes killer timelines using a vast array of professionally designed templates. Did I mention it’s free? If you think about it, most legal department presentations, updates, or discussions for the business (litigation-related or not) can benefit from a timeline of key events or key steps. Visme provides mix-and-match colors and fonts, hundreds of thousands of icons and photos, and easy drag-and-drop tools. Need a timeline? Get Visme.
6. The “Travel Pack.” Okay, this is really not one product, but I was looking around my office and realized that I have a lot of pieces of cool tech that I take with me whenever I travel – which is often. So, what I am going to do, is put all of that under what I will call the “travel pack” and you can decide for yourself if any of it is interesting to you:
- EDC mini-pocket flashlight: a flashlight is a necessity when you travel. You never know when the power will go out or when you may get stuck deep in a creepy cavern with no lights because you trusted the bargain basement tour guide to buy some decent Energizer batteries for the flashlights.[5] The EDC flashlight can save the day. It has multiple modes, a hands-free headband, and a motion detector. I bought one from my wife and daughters given how much they travel too. Currently, only $9.00 on Amazon.
- Rolling Square inCharge 6: Sometimes you forget to pack the right cables for all of your gear. If so, given the lack of uniformity in charger cable tips, you are screwed. The inCharge 6 is a tiny (keychain size) multi-prong charger device. It allows you to connect any portable device to any power source for charging: USB to USB-C, USB to Lightning, USB to Micro USB, USB-C to USB-C, USB-C to Lightning, and USB-C to Micro USB. It has saved me more than once in 2024. $20.00 on Amazon.
- oneFire Travel Lamp: Apparently, some hotel rooms were designed by Mr. Magoo & Associates, i.e., without any thought to lighting. You walk in and realize that the lamp on the desk (if there is a lamp) is way underpowered or has a weird shade that you cannot remove yet directs all of the light into a 3-inch circle on the desk. Or the lamp is on the other side of the room bolted into the floor with industrial-strength titanium rivets. Given I can’t see worth a shit in the dark, either situation is a problem. The solution? A portable travel lamp! The oneFire Travel Lamp solves all of these problems. It’s rechargeable, compact, folds up nicely, and throws off a supernova level of LED light (though you can adjust the brightness and the color). If you put a cutout bat on it, you may be able to call the Caped Crusader and Robin the Boy Wonder. $14.00 on Amazon.
- Koonie Portable Desk Fan: Guess what else can be a surprise in a hotel room? Yep, airflow! There is little worse than being stuck in a warm hotel room or any place with little ventilation or low-powered air conditioning (including on an airplane, in July, at DFW). The Koonie Portable Desk Fan has been my salvation. It’s around 5 inches tall, has three speeds, is pretty quiet, and has a rechargeable battery that lasts about 10 hours. Stop sweating. Get a Koonie. $13.00 on Amazon.
- Anker 20W USB C Power Strip: Well, obviously I have had some bad hotel room experiences while traveling because this next piece of cool tech has saved me numerous times when there is a lack of power outlets in the room or anywhere near the desk/table. The 5-foot Anker power strip has 3 AC outlets, 2 USB-A ports, and 1 USB-C port and powers everything on your desk from a single compact power cube. It is small and portable, roughly the size of a tennis ball, and fits easily into your luggage or backpack. It is also very handy on an airplane where trying to access a power outlet can escalate to a “Lord of the Flies” type of situation pretty quickly.[6] Plug this bad boy in and everyone in your row has access to power. They may even buy you a drink! $15.00 on Amazon.
The great news about all five of these is that they are inexpensive, truly compact, and easy to pack and tote along on your next business trip.
7. Check Plug. Sticking with the travel theme one more time, Check Plug has quickly become a favorite website of mine. Basically, it tells you what type of plug and/or converter you need for any country in the world. How f&^$ing genius is that?! So simple but so helpful. I have been in enough foreign countries to know that it makes a huge difference to know beforehand what plugs you need and what current you will be dealing with (and whether you need a voltage converter). With Check Plug, you enter where you are now (home country) and where you are going. It then tells (and shows) you exactly what type of plug(s) you will need. It also shows you ads for plugs and converters in case you don’t have them already. Yes, that is correct, actual useful advertising! I love this website.
8. Yep! When it comes to video conferencing, I like Zoom, Teams is okay, I tolerate Google Meet, and I cringe with fear when I see a Go-To-Meeting invite. The one thing they all have in common is an elaborate Kabuki dance of passwords, codes, clicks, and so on to get up and running. Sometimes, you just want a super simple, one-click, full-feature video conference service. Yep! delivers just that experience. I have used it when the other tools are stuck in start-up mode hell or the audio fails or whatever video conference call disaster you can think up. I can be on Yep! with the other party/parties in under 20 seconds. No sign-ups, no passwords, no accounts, and no bullshit. This is from the Yep! home page:
“Yep! has no time limits, is completely free, is super easy to use, doesn’t make you log in, doesn’t ask for your email, works with up to 12 people, doesn’t require any download, lets everyone share their screens at once, loves iPhones, PCs, Androids, and Macs, makes remote work feel not so remote, doesn’t make you knock to join, doesn’t know who you are, and doesn’t care.”
Damn. I am almost crying this is so awesome. Give Yep! a try. It may become your go-to video chat tool (or certainly your backup plan when the big boy tool you are using goes to shit).
9. ChatGPT – GPTs. I know there is no way you thought I would do a 2024 “cool tech” blog post and not mention generative AI. You are indeed correct! I am a huge fan of generative AI and my tool of choice is still ChatGPT (though Claude is a pretty good second). I use ChatGPT pretty much every day for something, work-related or personal. I am smart about what I enter into it, and I know to be leery of the results, but 11 times out of 13, it is dead on perfect.[7] And with that percentage (84.6% if you are playing at home), I’ll take it! Earlier this year, the good folks at ChatGPT did away with browser extensions and created “GPTs.” GPTs are tools created by developers to add or enrich ChatGPT’s functionality. Basically, they are browser extensions without the browser part. While confusing as hell, at least for me (Boomer – remember?), once you figure it out, these GPTs are very powerful and useful. There is even a GPT store on ChatGPT where you can find pretty much whatever you are looking for organized by category (e.g., productivity, writing, etc.). Here are a handful that make my cool tech list this year:
- AskYourPDF Research Assistant – this GPT interacts with PDF documents, allowing you to: query PDF documents, summarize PDF documents, search PDFs, and request information from a specific page. And this is only scratching the surface!
- FiscalNote – this GPT allows you to keep track of proposed and existing legislation, engage with government officials, lobbyists, and other stakeholders, and helps you advise the business on policy implications of the same. If you are at all interested in legislation and government affairs (and who isn’t), this is the GPT for you.
- There’s An AI For That – yep, a site that helps you search for GPTs to help you find the perfect GPT for the task at hand.
- Whimsical – a GPT that allows you to create flowcharts, mind maps, and sequence diagrams. If you need a chart or a diagram to get your point across, this is the GPT for you.
- Data Visualization Expert – this GPT allows you to drop data files and create data visualizations from that data, i.e., think KPI dashboards. I also like the Diagrams: Show Me GPT which literally diagrams anything. Both are fun to play with, so dump some data in and see what you get!
- PromptPerfect – a GPT that helps you refine your prompts (which are the key to getting the most out of generative AI tools).
There are thousands of GPTs available and it can be a challenge to weed through them all to find good ones. Here is an article that discusses GPTs in-depth and the author presents his list of best GPTs (while aimed at academics, it’s a great list for in-house lawyers as well).
10. LawVu. All of the cool tech noted above is free or available for very low cost. But I also like to talk about cool tech that is not inexpensive and requires an implementation plan. For 2024, I want to highlight LawVu. By pure chance, I met some of the LawVu team in the “green room” at a client offsite. I was there to do some presentations and they were there to give an overview and training of the system (the client had just implemented it). We struck up a conversation and the more they told me about what LawVu can do, the more interested I was in a demo (and I was impressed that the team showed up en masse on their dime at a client’s offsite). Long story short, the demo blew me away. LawVu is a Swiss Army knife tool for legal departments that can handle (separately or in multiple modules): matter management, contract management, e-billing/spend analysis, intake/self-service, and advanced data analytics. The platform is vendor agnostic, i.e., if you want to use LawVu for one thing and integrate another tool into the platform for something else, not a problem. I don’t have enough space to go deep into all it can do. I will just say that if you are interested in any or all of these tools mentioned above, be sure LawVu is on your RFP list. If you want, email Mark Arthur for a demo (hint: don’t mention my name or he will likely block you and call the cops).
*****
Rats. That’s ten. Already? I am looking at my notes here and see that I easily have five or six more things I could add. For example, just getting better at using the features of your smartphone – costs you nothing (e.g., 15 cool iPhone features). And I didn’t even get to the ABA Tech Show “60 Apps in 60 Minutes” (a true highlight of cool tech goodness). But, I am going to stop at ten because that is as high as I can count. I hope you find a few things on the list above to help you (and your team) become more productive or make your work life a bit easier. Most importantly, as my friend Colin Levy says: do not be afraid of technology.[8] In my experience, it’s hard to break and you can always unplug it or uninstall it and start over (that’s what I do when things get weird). And if it doesn’t really help you do things better or faster, just drop it and move on quickly. That’s all for this post. Now go hug it out with some tech!
Sterling Miller
September 10, 2024
My new book (number 6), The Productive In-House Lawyer: Tips, Hacks, and the Art of Getting Things Done, is now available for sale! As Mrs. Ten Things told me yesterday, “… this is your best book yet with the word “productive” in the title.” With praise like that, how can you not buy a copy (and a copy for all your friends and siblings)? You can buy it here: Buy The Book!
My fifth book, Showing the Value of the Legal Department: More Than Just a Cost Center is available now, including as an eBook! You can buy a copy HERE.
Two of my books, Ten Things You Need to Know as In-House Counsel – Practical Advice and Successful Strategies and Ten (More) Things You Need to Know as In-House Counsel – Practical Advice and Successful Strategies Volume 2, are also on sale at the ABA website (including as e-books).
I have published two other books: The Evolution of Professional Football, and The Slow-Cooker Savant. I am also available for speaking engagements, webinars/CLEs, coaching, training, pet sitting, and consulting.
Connect with me on Twitter @10ThingsLegal and on LinkedIn where I post articles and stories of interest to in-house counsel frequently.
“Ten Things” is not legal advice nor legal opinion and represents my views only. It is intended to provide practical tips and references to the busy in-house practitioner and other readers. If you have questions or comments, or ideas for a post, please contact me at sterling.miller@sbcglobal.net, or if you would like a CLE for your in-house legal team on this or any topic in the blog, contact me at smiller@hilgersgraben.com.
[1] You can check out the past editions of “Cool Tech” at the following:
I also try not to repeat anything I have already listed but after nine years of this, I make zero promises (see waiver and disclaimer of warranties above – legal in all states except Alaska…).
[2] Seriously, not sure how they were able to screw up such a good product, but mission accomplished. And the help desk was not particularly helpful when I contacted them. So, “bye-bye” Poll Everywhere.
[3] But if you are traveling outside the USA, get Nord VPN and then set it to a US-based server. Otherwise, you won’t get anywhere near the same content as you would sitting at home in Pittsburg. Or, if you live outside the USA, then vice versa. If you live in Russia, sorry. You are shit out of luck.
[4] Remind me to cancel DirectTV.
[5] Sadly, a true story. But, no details. Sworn to secrecy by an iron-clad NDA.
[6] Which the 5-foot powerstrip can quickly turn into a lethal “Morning Star”- like weapon in case of zombie attack, Martian invasion, or noisy neighbors on the 7th floor who blast the TV in their room at 130 a.m. You can bring a big dose of “cool tech” justice when whipping this around your head and screaming like a banshee. Just saying.
[7] Or as my friend Brian Fantana says, “Sixty percent of the time it works every time…” I live by that motto and have started a petition to get this put on all US currency.
[8] Better yet, get a copy of his book! “The Legal Tech Ecosystem: Innovation, Advancement & the Future of Law Practice.”