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Law Office and Case Management on the Macintosh
by George Qualley IV

Paradigms
Before I get into interconnecting or "linking" objects, I should probably take a few words and explain some of the basic concepts in Daylite and how they relate to common paradigms that most lawyers will be familiar with. If you've already explored Daylite, you'll know that there are nine primary "views" or areas within the program that represent or display different things. Naturally, some of those views require a bit more explanation than others.

That the first major view in Daylite is the Calendar should come as no surprise (and perhaps as a bit of a comfort to those who might be new to Daylite). Obviously, whether you're managing a law office or some other type of business, calendaring is a critical function. Daylite's calendar module is generally pretty capable. However, given that most people are relatively familiar with the way that an electronic calendar functions, I'll save an in-depth discussion of the calendar module for a later part of this article.

The next major view is the "Contacts" view. Here again, this is a pretty familiar concept, but Daylite's contact function does have some unique features that warrant discussion. First, unlike some other programs, contacts in Daylite are solely for people (as opposed to companies or organizations). Much like cards your old-fashion Rolodex, Contacts in Daylite represent people that you interact with, whether they be clients, employees, vendors, court staff, etc.

When you enter a Contact in Daylite, you'll find that you can record a wealth of information about a person including (among other things) multiple (and practically unlimited) physical addresses, phone numbers, and electronic addresses. In addition, you can assign a category and multiple keywords (both of which are completely user definable) to your Contacts as well as 16 fields of custom information. Although this might sound like overkill, I'll give you at least one very practical example of how this information can be invaluable.

Consider conflict-checking for a moment. It's an essential task for almost every firm and one that becomes exponentially more complex as your practice grows. With Daylite, a little categorization can go a long way towards making this arduous task a bit more manageable. In my practice, I have several categories for contacts. For example, I have Vendors, Court Employees, Experts, Insurance, and Clients (among others). When I setup a Contact, I select the appropriate category. Should I need to perform a conflict check against this person in the future, I immediately know the context of my interaction with this individual and I can immediately see any cases that this contact is associated with (which is a benefit of Daylite's linking mechanism which we'll discuss in greater depth later in this article).

Of course, that's just one relatively simple example. As I said, Daylite offers an almost overwhelming array of customization options just for Contacts. So, chances are that if you're currently using some sort of contact manager, Daylite is going to be able to easily meet or exceed your existing solution.

Earlier, I mentioned that the "Contacts" view was solely for individuals. Naturally, you will probably also want to store some information about companies and other organizations. This function is served by the "Organizations" section of Daylite. In the legal context, you may find yourself storing information for different courts here. By and large, Organizations work the same way that Contacts do in Daylite (there are a few exceptions, but they aren't worth mentioning here).

Changing gears a bit, the next section of Daylite is the "Projects" section and it represents something that you probably won't see in your run-of-the-mill address book or calendar program. In the legal context, Projects have an excellent analog in cases. In my day-to-day use, I spend most of my time in the Projects section of Daylite and my bet is that you will too. However, an in depth explanation of the Projects function definitely warrants a separate section of this article. At this stage, it should suffice to say that a Project can contain everything that would traditionally be associated with a legal matter.

Next up is the Opportunities section. Opportunities are essentially Projects that have not been "won" yet. In other words, if a prospective client comes into your office, you may find yourself doing some research on their matter before actually accepting their case. Notably, Opportunities can actually be converted into Projects. There also some additional functions that Opportunities offer that Projects do not (e.g. the ability to generate estimates). However, I should mention that I don't find myself using Opportunities in my law practice very often. Your situation may be different, but Opportunities seem to be most effectively used in a highly sales driven business model. Most law offices don't fit this definition (although, as I said, your situation may be different). That said, once you understand Projects, you'll also understand Opportunities so you can make your own decision as to whether Opportunities will work for you.

Moving on, "Groups" is the next area of Daylite that I will discuss. Similar to Opportunities, I don't find myself particularly inclined to use Groups in the course of my practice. Essentially, Groups are collections of other Daylite objects. Groups can contain Contacts, Organizations, or even Projects. In theory you could use Groups to make ad hoc collections of objects to suit your own organizational style. Perhaps, someone will come up with a good use for Groups in the practice of law. If you do, please don't hesitate to let me know!

To-Dos (or "Tasks") are a staple of almost any organizational system and as such, they're naturally a part of Daylite. Although the function of a Task should be pretty self explanatory, a task in the legal context could be anything from sending a fax to making a phone call. In fact, you may have already discovered that Daylite even includes a way to designate whether you're sending a letter or sending an email (among other classification options). Needless to say, you'll likely find yourself using tasks on a very frequent basis.

Although I've already mentioned Daylite's Calendar view, there is another view which serves a similar function—"Appointments." Unfortunately, this is another area of Daylite that I don't find to be particularly useful. Like Tasks, the function of an Appointment should be fairly obvious. Appointments will show on your Calendar as well as in a list in the Appointments view. As I said, I don't find this method of viewing my appointments to be functional, but that could be completely different for you.

"Notes" is the final function of Daylite that I will discuss in this section of this article. Here again, you can probably figure out the basic functionality. However, Daylite's notes function is particularly useful in that notes can store text as well as all kinds of other media directly in your Daylite database (as opposed to storing your files somewhere on a disk and then linking them to Daylite, something that we'll talk about later). For example, I use notes to store voicemails (stored as .wav files) which I receive via e-mail. In addition Daylite Mail Integration (a companion program to Daylite which integrates Apple Mail and Daylite) also stores your e-mails in notes for later retrieval.

As you can see, Daylite is pretty comprehensive when it comes to managing the type of information that your law practice depends on. Moreover, I haven't even touched on several other useful features of Daylite. That said, if you've read this far and/or you've actually used Daylite, you should have a fairly decent idea of how Daylite can deal with many of the key pieces of data that you will encounter in the practice of law. Of course, while storing all of your information in one central location is certainly one benefit, the real power of Daylite lies in how you integrate the objects that I've mentioned in this section of this article. I'll discuss this in type of integration in a future installment of this article. Read on...

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Copyright 2008

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