RocketMatter, bills itself as "The web generation of legal software" and began offering it's online practice management product has reached out to lawyers displaced by this summers floods. In response to a post from my friend Ernie Svenson (Ernie the Attorney Blog) has extended it's offer of assistance first made to Linn County, Iowa attorneys, by extending the offer to Wisconsin and other Midwest attorneys as well.

According to Larry Port's Rocket Matter Blog post of July 2, 2008:

For lawyers displaced by this season’s natural disasters, who have lost their office and need to find new digs, we are offering Rocket Matter free of charge.  This offer stands for the remainder of 2008, and we can extend this until a new permanent home is established.

Larry had spoken to me before I went in for Eye Surgery earlier this month and extended this offer to Wisconsin Members. Now that I am able to work again, I am belatedly getting this information out. The full full post can be found here.

If you have been displaced by the floods and don't have a practice management solution, then you should take a look at RocketMatter. While Rocket Matter may not be right for every practice setting or type, it's worth looking at if you like working from the Internet or are looking for a less cluttered or complex practice management solution that you don't need to worry about maintaining.

Putting aside any potential privacy issues with using Gmail as your primary email for your law office, one still cannot overlook the profound impact that Gmail has had on email. Gmail is a great tool to use for elist subscriptions with it's large storage, filtering and conversation view which are just a few of the cool features about using Gmail. However, there are some things that Gmail  still doesn't do and the fact that it is still in Beta after a number of years. Here is a good artilce titled Whay I became a Gmail Convert  that is worth reading for those of you that don't use Gmail already or are already using it and want to learn more.

While there are other search engines that are available for use to search the Internet, Google has ascended to primacy for most users. Some of the best ways to use Google are the least known such as its ability to work as a calculator, convert currency and units of measurement, track packages, find the location of area codes and more. Google provides a helpful page on many of these features here. PC Magazine just published its 20 Google Tips and Tricks detailing these and others here.

To get the most out of a Google search, resources such as Google Guide can be extremely helpful in helping you draft your query and the interpreting the results. Google Guide also has several cheat sheets including this one for general search use and this one for doing basic and advanced calculations.

As lawyers, we too often focus on legal specific search and research tools provided by LexisNexis and Westlaw, but to be truly proficient, you need to use all of the tools at your disposal. Google can be a valuable addition to your Internet toolbox.

Ever wondered how to create a shortcut to today’s date in Excel or how to find enormous attachments in Outlook? Answers to these questions and five hundred and twenty-seven more can be found in PC Magazines article 529 Computing Tips

If you have ever wondered how to do something on your computer, your PDA or even Apple OS X, this is a good place to start your search.

I’m a big fan of backing up your data (as I’ve made clear in prior posts including this one). Using traditional email programs such as Outlook, Thunderbird, Outlook Express, you have copies of your emails on your computer and can make backups of them. With the increasing use of web based email such as Google’s Gmail email service, how do you create a local backup of all of your emails? While I can’t address every web based mail service, you can learn how to make a local backup of your Gmail account from this article on Wired’s How-To-Wiki.

(For Hotwire users, check out this article from Wired.)

Remember, don’t be an idiot: backup your data.