Thursday, July 21, 2005

Working off hours

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Many of us tend to work in the evenings, or on weekends, if deadlines are approaching or the weather is bad or we needed to attend numerous meetings during the business day.

Legal extranets are terrific tools to help work move forward off-hours. The ease in accessing the data contained on the extranet can help facilitate progress (if you are sitting in a business center in a Chicago hotel without the special software you need to access your Firm's network, it sure is nice to have a way to reach a document you need from a PC with a standard internet connection) when working on cases, settlement negotiations, trial preparation and other related activities.

This also reduces the reliance one has on others to retrieve documents and information on their behalf. Delays associated with asking party A to contact party B to pull information for you and then send it over can be eradicated with the use of legal extranets. The information you needs -- case status reports, documents, calendars, exhibits, etc.. -- can be posted on the site for anyone to use anytime.

If you tend to work off-site or off-hours, it might be wise to investigate legal extranet technologies to see if they might make life easier and more productive for you.