American Prepaid Legal Service Institute

Bill Go's Musings on Life in the Law Office

Buying an Office "Turbo" Computer Barbarians at the Gate Avoiding Phone Tag Saving on Cabinets and Caterers The Search for Security Law Office Equipment Basics Provider Point : Buying an Office "Turbo" Computer To me, computers are like cars: add turbo to the description and I am salivating over it. I want the biggest memory, fastest hard drive, and of course, the special speakers with a subwoofer. Given the fact that my driveway is filled with cars that are too impractical to drive, it became painfully obvious to me that I should not the one to select our new generation of office computers. For everyday driving, an economy car like a small Toyota or Honda is ideal. They get great mileage, high reliability, with no extra frills to go wrong or unused. Naturally, the testosterone-driven side of me would not choose such a car, so why should I think any differently about computers?

Using my best guy logic, I pondered: who really does drive a practical car; because the individual who drives such a car is probably the one I need to pick our new computers. Standing in the office parking lot, my gaze turned to my office managers car. Sue drives a sleek black convertible, which features a Raiders decal the size of a Roman Legionaries shield on its hood. Obviously my theory of women being more practical than men with vehicle selection had a few holes in it, but a true leader never lets flaws in ones logic interfere with the important task of delegation.

Now this is perfect, I thought. Have Sue pick out the new computers, and no matter what happens, I am ahead. Like a professional card player playing Texas Holdum, I calculated my odds. Given Sues personal choice in cars, I just might get all the bells and whistles on the computers. Conversely, if she went the practical economy route, the decision was totally out of my hands. So I went to speak to my office manager.

I firmly believe women have a radar for guy logic, and office managers have a super-radar for boss logic. Like a ballerina dancing softly across a minefield, Sue purchased our new office computers using that same logic that made the Raider decal look natural on her car. The first of the new computers arrived loaded up with all the goodies: a DVD player, CD burner, big sound card memory all were included. Wise is the man who delegates, I thought as I patiently awaited my new turbo-charged wonder. The subsequent computers, including my own, were strictly Toyota Corrola in nature. These machines were fast, they had a big hard drive, but as far as extras, I only had a 3.5 disk drive.

Sue, using her Raider fan office manager wisdom, decided that occasionally we might want to burn a CD, but to equip all the machines with this hardware would only result in extra cost and temptation amongst users to play with the extra goodies. In essence, we have one machine with all the bells and whistles in a location where everyone could have occasional access to it, with the remainder of the machines are our basic transportation.

Due to my decisive leadership, the average cost of our new standard CPUs (central processing units) is $425.00, with the following specs: 2.66 Ghz, 478 Precessor, 256 M.B. memory, 3 ½ Teac Floppy Front USB port and 40 gig. (Published in NewsBriefs, October 2003)

Provider Point : Barbarians at the Gate I told you a few months ago about someone using our Bank Account number and passing off bogus checks and the security measurements taken to address the problem. Recently the firm was once again "attacked" by would-be criminals attempting to use a so-called "Trojan Horse" Virus via the Internet.

A Trojan Horse virus is typically introduced via email communications. The virus, simply put, allows the attacker to access your database to obtain useful financial information such as social security numbers and identities. As you are aware, many legal plans have switched to Internet billing, so the potential for identity theft fraud is huge. For our own protection and our clients' protection, several offensive measures have been taken. The simplest measure is do not let the Trojan Horse in, which means do not open up any emails you do not recognize. This measure is only partially effective however, because even an apparent friendly email could be quite the opposite. The next step is somewhat of a compromise that many of you may decide is too inconvenient. As a computer virus spreads to other computers because they are linked together via a network, you may wish to isolate the virus to just one computer by not linking all the computers to the Internet. In essence, designate one or more computers for Internet use and try to remove sensitive material from these computers.

The next step is more involved technically and involves the use of a "firewall" which is essentially placed at your computer router. A firewall basically blocks the virus at the firewall before it attaches your computer. To obtain firewall protection you may need to use a central file server and switch from your old "hub" to a more up-to-date router. Finally, as a very basic protective device, install anti-virus software on you computers, and for those computers that are linked to the Internet, download from your Internet provider additional software that allows your computers to recognize viruses.

At times it seems like the office is a castle with "barbarians at the gate" trying to breach the castles' defenses. If someone isn't digging through the garbage to find check numbers, someone else is trying to breach the walls through the Internet. Even the telephone is filled with danger, as recently a "vendor" called to verify our order for toner for the copy machines. When the assumed vendor asked what model our copy machines were, it became evident another barbarian was at the gate. (Published in NewsBriefs, April 2002)

Provider Point: Avoiding Phone Tag At the end of each day I like to review my computer "Phone Call Tracker" to see how many and what type of calls our offices received during the day. By reviewing the calls I can determine important information such as where the calls are coming from and what type of matters predominated that day.

After years of doing this, it has become clear that Mondays, the day after a full moon, and the first working day after a holiday are our busiest telephone call days. After a long weekend, the call volume can be almost triple the norm. It is also worth noting that the week after New Years constitutes the heaviest volume of "driving under the influence" calls, and the month after Christmas for bankruptcy calls.

Having this information is very useful for staffing information, especially in light of the fact that office personnel seem to call in sick on Mondays more often than any other day. If you expect a big volume of calls, then you should be prepared to have redundant staff available in case of staff illness.

Our firm does not like "call backs"-you return a call, the member is unavailable and you have to leave a message. Leaving a message invites a call back, initiating a game of telephone tag. The bottom line is to try to take the call as it comes in. Taking the call as it comes in greatly reduces the volume of returned calls, as well as telephone expense in returning the telephone call and logging them in.

If your office receives 50 legal plan calls per day and you are only able to speak to half of them, then 25 will have to be returned. When you return those 25, they will be away from their desk half of the time, and so on and so on. Simple math shows you can't let the calls build up.

Now it may sound like I am nitpicking about calls, but at the moment I am looking at my telephone tracker call counter on the computer which shows 25,855 incoming calls to me since we started tracking the calls by computer. If we applied the above math to one half of the calls not being taken at the time they were received, we probably would be over 100,000 additional calls on our telephone bill!

People frequently remark our firms telephone bill is very reasonable for the number of calls we handle. In considering the bill, remember you don't pay for the calls you receive, only the calls you make. (Published in NewsBriefs, March 2002)

Provider Point: Saving on Cabinets and Caterers I was shopping for more filing space and found the bargain price of $600 per four drawer lateral cabinets. Multiply by twenty, and that's $12,000! Good grief, I am not going for that. What to do? Well, it was time to visit the used office equipment store, that vast repository of dented and scratched items.

Looking at these unsightly cabinets I recalled the summer in high school that I worked at Earl Scheib Auto Painting. Using a little bit of Bondo (plastic body filler) to fill in the dents and Krylon gray spray paint, I repainted the cabinets, removed the dents, and wound up with twenty refurbished cabinets at a total cost of approximately $2,000, or a $10,000 savings! That filing cabinet experience brought me almost as much joy as painting my Chevy in high school.

All that money saving worked up quite an appetite, so let's talk about food. Ever notice at a wedding or hotel party that catered chicken is $25 a plate, and the prime rib is $32 a plate? Imagine having a firm function in which you invite 100 people who expect to be fed.

Doing the math, 100 times $32 equals $3200, which is quite a food and entertainment bill. A few firm functions a year can quickly dissuade one from being a gracious host, so immediate action must be taken to feed the hungry employees and still stay solvent.

Personally I don't like dried out catered chicken, or the poor excuse of beef they pass off as "prime rib" at weddings. Working with $25 to $32 a plate, just about anyone can do better, so now is the time to save some money.

First of all, what does a caterer have that you don't? A caterer has chaffing servers, dinnerware, and above all, the ability to cook. Pricing out the chaffing servers, they come in at $45 apiece, the carbon steel knives and chef quality utensils, at $30 per knife, and about $5 per place setting with silverware. Throw in tablecloths, napkins, and other items, and all we are left with was someone to start cooking. If you can't cook, surely you know someone who can. Come on, just about anyone or anything can do better than "wedding chicken." If you sit down and figure it out, even after buying all the catering equipment, you are still far ahead, not to mention, it will only get better with future events. Our firm puts on weekend seminars in which we charge $50 extra for food. During these seminars we serve about 600 meals per year. $600 time 50 equals $30,000 in catering expenses, but as we cater all the events ourselves, we save well over $20,000 per year.

Using firm staff to cook and serve, (yes, they volunteer, because its fun and we pay very well to do these events) we have a win-win situation. Great food, great write-offs, catering, equipment, and ample tax deductible leftovers all add up to a winning recipe (sorry, I couldn't resist that one).

This year we once again "fired up" the Go & Associate ovens for our annual office holiday party. With food, wine and entertainment, this could easily exceed the cost of a high school prom queen's wedding, so again, decisive action had to be taken. Tune in next time for a discussion of frugal and fun office parties. (Published in NewsBriefs, January 2002)

Provider Point : The Search for Security As many access and provider firms have to obtain members' social security numbers and other personal information, the possibility of identity theft becomes a real concern.

Our firm was recently a victim of forged company checks using our account number, and the necessity of internal security for client and firm sake became a top priority. Looking through our garbage, I realized an unscrupulous individual would easily find a bonanza of information that could be used for purposes of fraud.

To address this problem, the firm purchased a shredder for every workstation in the office. After staring at the long strips of shredded paper, I took the extra precaution of buying cross-cut shredders for our accounting office to turn that financial information into confetti- like bits of paper.

After my shredder buying spree, I walked into my local Walmart to discover the more expensive cross cut shredders were on sale for about $20 apiece, or about one half the price I had paid. Even factoring in the higher price, shredders are a smart investment in these times of rampant identity theft.

Following my unfortunate tradition of finding a better deal after the fact, I also recently found that Dell Computers, which had sold us Celeron Computers three months ago for $700, is now selling Pentium Four Computers with 128 MB of Ram and a 20GB hard drive and monitor for the same price.

If your earlier generation computers are getting old or the memory cannot support the new Windows which requires 128 MB of Ram, this may be an excellent time to upgrade.

Staring at my power bills has renewed my interest in generating electricity from roof top solar panels and possibly selling the excess power back to the power company. Many years ago technology could not support the wild promises made for solar power, so I will keep you all posted on what I find out. (Maybe I can save enough money to pay for the shredders!) (Published in NewsBriefs, December, 2001)

Provider Point : Law Office Equipment Basics As some of you may know, I have been a big fan of HPII LaserJet printers based upon their reliability and low cost of printer cartridges. Recently, however, due to age of the units, both parts for the machines and printer cartridges have been difficult to find. In particular, HPII printer cartridges have almost doubled in price.

To address this problem our office has started replacing the HPII Units and HPIII Units with used HPIV units. These units run on the used market between $450 to $550 apiece, and offer a print speed of approximately twelve pages per minute (double that of the HPII). While the cartridge cost of an HPIV is about twice that of a HPII, so is the life of the cartridge, therefore the per page cost is about the same.

Another recent acquisition for the office was the purchase of several used Pentium II laptop computers. With 80 meg of ram and a three gig removable hard drive, these units were great buys for $270 per machine. I suspected from past experience that new units with all the "bells and whistles" would be underutilized by our attorneys, so the used machines will suffice quite nicely for their intended purpose of running support calculations, word processing software, etc. Given a difference in price of over $1,000 between the used units and new units, this represents a savings of almost $10,000 for our office.

Finally, while I like to buy used when it makes sense, now is a good time to replace your old monitors, and upgrade to new 19-inch monitors. As with just about all computer equipment, prices have fallen dramatically. New 19-inch monitors can be had for as little as $200 apiece, and if you have been using 17- or 15-inch monitors, the difference in size with the 19-inch is immediately appreciated by the user. (Published in NewsBriefs, November 2001)