To whom can attorneys turn for real, practical office management and computer tips geared especially for them? For starters, turn to your colleagues, professional staff, and consultants. The Law Practice Section and Solo and Small Firm Practice Committee cosponsored "60+ Hot Practice Management and Techno Tips in 60 Minutes" at the Bar's annual convention in June. In the interest of space, the presenters offer their favorite tips. Nothing said in this article is to be construed as a State Bar endorsement of any brand or product. Tips from Debra Hix-Sykes, President & CEO, DHS & Associates, Milwaukee. Tips from David Grove, Owner of Grove Law Office, DeForest. Tips from Ross L. Kodner, Founder of MicroLaw Inc., Milwaukee. Tips from Lori Kannenberg, Law firm administrator, Lawton & Cates S.C., Madison.

Here are some of the most useful new additions to WordPerfect 9:

Real-Time Preview. To see changes to text, for example to see how a paragraph would look in a different font, or how that font change affects the document's layout and pagination, just drop down the font list from the screen and let your mouse "hover" above the desired font. The text automatically changes so you can visually see the result. If you like it, click, and it's selected. If you don't like it, just move away from the font drop-down list and the document remains in original format.

Autoscroll. For those lawyers generating long documents and a need to proofread in detail, the new "autoscroll" feature is helpful. You click on the icon and then move the pointer towards the top or bottom of your screen. As you move in that direction the text scrolls up or down. The closer you go to the top or bottom of the screen, the faster the scroll. No longer do you have to keep hitting the down arrow or page down key to move smoothly through a document.

Browser-like "Back" and "Forward." Two little arrows on the WordPerfect 9 toolbar move you to the prior or subsequent insertion points in your document, making document editing easier. For example, to go back to the third last paragraph you edited, click the Back button three times.

Block "Make it Fit." The Make it Fit expert, first introduced in WordPerfect 7, provided valuable capabilities when you had to squeeze a too long or short document into a specific number of pages. The Make it Fit expert put document sizing on autopilot, automatically mixing and matching document layout and text format changes to subtly cram in that extra text. But that worked only for entire documents. In WordPerfect 9, Make it Fit allows you to select a chunk of text - of any size - and apply Make it Fit just to that block.

While there are lots of other additions ranging from XML capability to the inclusion of Microsoft's VBA as an alternative macro programming language, the items above are the big additions.

How to Survive When "Tech Support" is Merely a Fond Memory.

The era of low-priced, low-profit hardware and software has brought the demise of vendor-provided technical support as we know it. This is not a surprise, nor is it a new development. Free tech support is rare these days. "Per incident fees" dominate, but often the exchange of credit card number for alleged "solutions" ends up costing you money without any answers in return. So what should we do?

Help each other. Virtual communities of lawyers, legal professionals, and legal technologists are all over. Further, the world of "lay users" has built a sprawling web of online technical resources staffed by real users who have solved the same real problems you've faced. Two general types of community-based self-techno help are available.

Electronic Resources.

These consist of Web sites, electronic mailing lists, and newsgroups. In the legal-specific segment, look to the major legal tech-oriented electronic mailing lists:

o ABA LPM Section's Network2d (www.abanet.org/discussions/M-rlists.html to subscribe) (a close-knit group where some of the most well-known legal techno-dudes hang out).

o Lawtech, another ABA email list run by the organization's Legal Technology Resource Center (www.abanet.org/discussions/I-llists.html to subscribe) (great answers to the most obscure and perplexing problems).

o Netlawyers - Lew Rose's respected and widely-subscribed discussion on all things Net-related with occasional general technical diversions (www.net-lawyers.org to subscribe).

o Technolawyer List, a topic-driven email list run by New York lawyer and netrepreneur Neil Squillante (www.technolawyer.com to subscribe) (tends to have lengthy and meaty postings of periodic immeasurable value).

State Bar Resources.

Discussion Forums. Take advantage of your State Bar Web site-based legal discussion forums. Any State Bar member can participate in an active discussion forum (bulletin board) on legal techno-topics by visiting www.wisbar.org/dg-menu.htm.

Email Lists. The State Bar supports more than 25 electronic mail lists for various sections, committees, and programs. While most State Bar lists are restricted to members of a very specific group, many are open to all members of a particular section.

Subscriptions to the following section email lists are open to section members:

o crimlaw - sponsored by the Criminal Law Section;

o famlaw - sponsored by the Family Law Section; and

o lawpractice - sponsored by the Law Practice Section.

The following email list is open to any State Bar member:

o ssp - sponsored by the Solo and Small Firm Practice Section.

To subscribe to a State Bar email list, send an email to majordomo@lists.wisbar.org. Do not put anything in the subject line of your message. In the body of the message, type the word "subscribe" (without the quotation marks), the name of the list you want to subscribe to and your email address - for example, "subscribe ssp jsmith@web.com."

For more information on email lists, including how to subscribe, post, retrieve, and sort email messages, please see "Using Electronic Mailing Lists to Discuss Legal Technology," by Ross L. Kodner, in the November 1999 Wisconsin Lawyer.

Free, nonlegal-specific support Web sites. Many are cropping up, including:

o Ask-a-Tech promises emailed help within 48 hours.

o Experts Exchange, a "knowledge-sharing community" built around 70 message boards where more than 5,000 registered experts answer posted questions.

o Windows Annoyances, Woody Leonhard's sites that provide tips about an annoying line of products from Microsoft.

o World O'Windows

o Tom's Hardware Guide

o Networking with Windows 95 - A Primer Intel's Web page for small firm Windows-based networking.

"Fee-based" Web support resources. Some online services include:

o Intel AnswerExpress Support Suite $20 per question or sign up for $100 per year.

o PC Crisis Line bills $3/minute for the first 10 minutes and $1/minute thereafter.

o PC Techline at a flat $2/minute rate via a 900 number.

Practice Preventive PC Maintenance. Well-cared-for PCs work better, crash less often, and work when we need them. The following are some simple self-maintenance tips to keep your PC working at peak abilities. Consider performing them monthly (ideally), or quarterly (at a minimum):

o Delete all files and folders with dates older than one week from your C:\WINDOWS\TEMP folder.

o Purge your Web browser's history and cache files.

o Run Scandisk (located in Start | Programs | Accessories | System Tools). Select the Standard option and turn on Automatically Fix Errors. Click on the Advanced button and under Log File, pick Replace Log; for Cross-Linked Files, select Delete; click Free under Lost File Fragments; under Check Files For pick Invalid Dates and Times. Finally, disable Check Host Drive First unless you have a compressed hard drive.

o Empty your Recycle Bin (first undelete any files you need to recover from it).

o Run Disk Defragmenter (located in Start | Programs | Accessories | System Tools) at least once a quarter for a heavily used PC. The program will tell you if your drive needs defragmenting or not.

o Update your anti-virus software by downloading new virus databases or signature files from your software's Web site. Do this at least monthly to be able to detect and kill the latest damaging viruses that might infest your system.

o Perform a Test Restore with your data backup system at least once a month, or more often if you have time. Backup systems that aren't working properly have the insidious characteristic of looking like they're working just fine. It's just plain too late when you need to restore from a backup and you get nothing more than "tape empty" messages. To test your backup system - regardless of type - try and select a few documents and restore them to the system (move the originals first to a safe folder or a floppy so that you have an empty area to restore to). Then see if you can access them - that is, pull up a WordPerfect document in WordPerfect. If this works, the likelihood is that your entire backup session is restorable when the chips are down. By the way, the next time you do this, test restore different files than the previous time.

o Keep your PCs and printers clean. Dust and paper particles and other miscellaneous PC-hostile gunk trashes PCs and cripples laser printers. Use a can of compressed air to blow out the crud from inside your laser printer. Take the covers off your PCs and blow them out as well.

o Consider keeping some spare PC parts on the shelf for components you would feel comfortable replacing on your own. For example, you might keep a spare mouse and keyboard handy. Make sure the replacements are precise replacements -identical to the most common keyboard and mouse used in your office and with the same kinds of connectors. You also might keep a network card, network cables, and a video card on the shelf.

o Finally, have a disaster plan to know what to do if key parts of your system fail - such as your PCs, printers, network system, and so on. This means knowing what diagnostic steps to take, who to call, and having a list of all your key software and hardware with version numbers and serial numbers.