PerfectAudit.com

Do you wrestle with stacks of bank statements for your cases? Are you manually entering transactions from the statements into Excel spreadsheet? Are you begging for a better way? We may have one for you.

Jim Schaefer is a great forensic accountant based in Southern California. His firm, Schaefer & Company, specializes in family law forensics.  Like me, he is also a repaid tech geek. Today I am lucky enough to have Jim guest posting on a new discovery of his for discovery in your cases. Here's Jim to tell you about PerfectAudit.com:

As you know, a direct mechanical tracing is comprised of two parts:  check register and

characterization columns.  Perfect Audit automates the check register portion.  The software incorporates the bank statement formats for bank accounts and credit card statements to provide a pretty good quality OCR result from pdf format.  (Brokerage statements are beyond its scope.)

Picture feeding pdf bank statements into a hopper.  In a day or two you receive a searchable transactions listing that may be downloaded in Microsoft Excel format.  Thus Perfect Audit gives you the check register portion for about 40 cents per pdf page.  (you pay for what you use with no minimum monthly charge).

Before using the Perfect Audit transaction data, you will want to create a running balance column in your check register and check against bank statement balances.  I find that there are a few transactions that are double-entered that are easily corrected.

Perfect Audit really shines when you are searching for the other side of an internal money transfer for wire transfer as there is a search capability on the dollar amount.

One tip is important.  If you provide duplicate bank statements to Perfect Audit, Perfect Audit will give you duplicate entrees in its transaction listings.  Thus it is best to avoid sending duplicate statements to Perfect Audit.

I have seen unfavorable ratings of the software on the web.  My experience differs and has been quite good.  (…and my clients love it when I tell them we are using the latest robotic technology to reduce the cost of their tracing.)  

Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law 

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CourtCall Going Live With Video

If you are unfamiliar with CourtCall, it is a national provider of call in services for court appearances.  For years it has allowed parties and attorneys to conveniently appear at court proceedings by telephone, rather than driving to the court house.  It is a wonderful technology and a great option for us lawyers.

I just got an email from CourtCall announcing that they are starting to implement video calls.  This is a huge improvement.  While I have used CourtCall frequently, I have never made it my default for the exact reason that I feel it is vitally important for effective family law trial lawyers to have actual face time in front of judges.  We need to know what our judges look like, and how they operate.  Just as important, those judges need to know who we are, and they need to be able to put a face to the time.

You can get more information, and find out which of your judges are available by video, by clicking here.

Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law 

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Tips For Going PaperLess

Ernie Svenson is a New Orleans lawyer whom I have been internet stalking for years.  Ernie was one of the pioneer lawyers when it came to implementing internet technologies in the practice of law.  He has generously shared his wisdom on social media, technology, software (particularly Adobe Acrobat), and practice management process.

His most recent foray is in the area of going paperless.  Along with countless seminars, internet articles, and interviews he has spread the gospel on teching out your practice while saving trees. Along with Andrew Legrand, Adriana Linares, and Megan Hargroder he has even turned it into a business.

PaperlessChase.com is Ernie's (and friends) mother ship for learning how to make your law office 100% mobile –no more papers, no more filing cabinets, no more faxes, no more printing out stuff just to sign it (use your iPad or Acrobat and email it). It, and they, will help you do everything faster. There are hardware reviews, tips and tricks, newsletters and mail lists.

Here is an example of what they do. Visit the website. Look at it. It's beautiful. It's clean. It's hypnotic. It cost $500 to create! How? By hiring a virtual assistant to do the work. That's great information, and I got it for free by visiting PaperlessChase.com. The site also offers CLE classes, a free white paper on going paperless, and much more.

This blog, Family Lawyer Tech & Practice, is all about practicing law better and more efficiently. PaperLessChase is right there with us. Treat yourself to a visit!

Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law 

#Harding&AssociatesFamilyLaw #californiafamilylaw #divorce #family law #superlawyers #americanacademyofmatrimoniallawyers #Pleasantondivorce #AlamedaCountyDivorce #ContraCostaCountyDivorce #lawyers

Make Custody Calendars for Your Clients; We Use Custody X Change

I am always looking for technology and software to save time and help my law practice. Since 2005 I have been using Custody X Change for parenting plans and custody calculations (in fact, I was one of the first people to license the software after it was launched). Custody X Change helps family law attorneys create custody schedules and parenting plans for clients.

With the software, you can make a custody schedule with the residential schedule, holiday schedule, and vacation or summer break schedules. You can pick a residential schedule from a template or you can create your own. You can also add special events and really customize a schedule depending on the types of schedules you make for your clients.

The nice thing is that after you make a schedule you can print out a custody calendar to give to your client. You can print a few months or multiple years depending on what you want. Clients really like these calendars because they can clearly see each parent’s time with the children and the visual picture helps them understand the schedule.

As you make custody schedules, the software calculates the timeshare percentage of each parent along with the number of hours each parent has the children. This is helpful to know for figuring out child support because you can easily get an accurate number to put into DissoMaster. You can also use the timeshare percentages to discuss schedule options with your client or to negotiate a schedule with the other party.

The software also has a parenting plan feature that lets you print a legal description of the schedule and add parenting provisions. If you have a boilerplate plan that you can use for most of your clients, you may not use this feature very much. But, if you make a lot of custom plans, or you are just starting your practice, you may find the parenting plan and provisions helpful.

Unfortunately for Mac users, the software is Windows based. But as I mentioned in a previous post, you can run Windows software on a Mac.

The software has two versions—the Pro Lite and the Pro Full. The Pro Lite includes all of the scheduling features and timeshare calculations. The Pro Full has all of the Pro Lite features along with the parenting plan. The Pro Full also includes a journaling feature and a tracking actual time feature but these features seem more useful to parents. The price of Custody X Change ranges from $97 for a 6 month license of the Lite edition to $747 for a Lifetime license of the Full edition.

Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law 

#CustodyXChange #Family Lawyer Tech #Productivity #Software #Harding&AssociatesFamilyLaw #californiafamilylaw #divorce #family law #superlawyers #americanacademyofmatrimoniallawyers #Pleasantondivorce #AlamedaCountyDivorce #ContraCostaCountyDivorce #lawyers

Every Legal App for iPhone and iPad

iOS apps for lawyers abound, whether for case management, billing, or trial preparation. This page has every legal app for iOS that we could find.

Every Legal App for iPhone and iPad is a post from Lawyerist.com. The original content in this feed is © 2013 Lawyerist Media, LLC. This feed is provided for private use only and may not be re-published.

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Lawyers Should Take Notes by Hand

Based on this study, at least, there is no question how lawyers should be taking notes: by hand.

Lawyers Should Take Notes by Hand is a post from Lawyerist.com. The original content in this feed is © 2013 Lawyerist Media, LLC. This feed is provided for private use only and may not be re-published.

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