25 Technology Tips for Illinois Legal Aid Advocates Gwen Daniels Illinois Legal Aid Online

Resources For Legal Information & CLE

1. Getting MCLE Credit for Free Free: ▫Archived webcasts with free MCLE credit ▫Live webcasts with free MCLE credit ▫PLI audio and webcasts with free MCLE credit ▫CBF Legal Aid Academy in person trainings with free MCLE credit

2. Communicate Through the Discussion Groups Sign up to Listservs through “My Subscriptions” Participate via Participate via discussion group tab Archives posted to discussion groups

3. Online Legal Resources ▫Cornell University’s Legal Information InstituteCornell University’s Legal Information Institute ▫ABA’s LawLinkABA’s LawLink ▫ABA Law Blawgs DirectoryABA Law Blawgs Directory ▫National Support & Law News FeedsNational Support & Law News Feeds

4. Work Faster With HotDocs HotDocs interviews ask questions to fill out forms Save client answer files to use again for future documents Attorney HotDocs produce text files that can be edited

For Attorneys Advocate forms include: Divorce Simple Will Civil Procedure Forms Powers of Attorney Advocate Library Pro Se Library

For Clients Client forms include: Divorce Orders of Protection Guardianship Fee Waiver Security Deposits

Working with What You Have: Tips for Getting More out of Office & Google

5. Outlook – Calculate “Tickler” Dates Use special instructions in “Start Time” to calculate important dates!

Outlook – Syntax for Calculating “Tickler” Dates Days ▫30 days before 3/23/2010 ▫30 days after 3/23/2010 Weeks ▫6 weeks before 3/23/2010 [or 6 wk before 3/23/2010] ▫6 weeks after 3/23/2010 [or 6 wk after 3/23/2010] Months ▫5 months before 3/23/2010 [or 5 mo before 3/23/2010] ▫5 months after 3/23/2010 [or 5 mo after 3/23/2010]

6. Four Ways To Better Manage Your Inbox Flag that Needs Follow-Up and A Task Will Automatically Be Created Use Categories to Group s with Visible Color-coding Use Folders to Organize Information Create filters to keep less important out of your inbox More tips: Managing Information OverloadManaging Information Overload

7. Keyboard Short-cuts: The Standard Short-cuts “You should know by now”

Short-cuts Open a new word doc; Open a previously saved docCtrl+N; Ctrl+O Closes the active window, but does not Exit WordCtrl+W Closes Microsoft Word (or other open program)Alt+F4 Searches for specified text in the active documentCtrl+F Selects all text and graphics in the active windowCtrl+A Remove selection from active document (place on clipboard) Ctrl+X Copies the selection to the clipboardCtrl+C Inserts the contents of the clipboard at the insertion point (cursor) or whatever is selected Ctrl+V Saves active document with its current file name, location and format Ctrl+S Prints the active fileCtrl+P Undo the last action. Reinstate the last action.Ctrl+Z; Ctrl+Y Format / Unformat text (Bold, Italic, Underline)Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I, Ctrl+U Word Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard Short-cuts: Diacritic Marks Diacritic MarkKeyboard Short-cut The acute accent – (café or fiancé) Ctrl+ ' (quote) before typing the vowel. The grave accent - (là or où)Use Ctrl+ ` (tick) before typing the vowel. The circumflex accent – (côte, fête) Use Ctrl+Shift+ ^ before typing the vowel The tilde - (piñata, jalapeño)Use Ctrl+Shift+ ~ before typing the letter. The umlaut- (Chloë, naïve)Use Ctrl+Shift+ : (colon) before the vowel The cedilla – (façade, soupçon)Use Ctrl+, (comma) before the letter The ring – (the Angstorm symbol - Å) Use before the letter The compound AE - (hæmoglobin) Use Ctrl+ & before a The German S - (straße)Use Ctrl + & + s

8. Find Information Faster With Desktop Search

9. Getting More out of Google Set your preferences: Use the Advanced Search: n n

10: Specialized Searches in Google US Government Search: Blog Search: Book search: Product Search:

Internet Tools To Make Work Easier

11. Zamzar

12. Google Mobile Send a text to “Google” ( ) for: ▫Flight status ▫Restaurant locations ▫Driving directions ▫Sports scores ▫Translations ▫Weather ▫Web snippets

13. EverNote

14. Free and Cheap Online File Storage

15. TaDa Lists Quick and easy web-based to do list Free Can be private or shared with people you trust or publicly

Chat, Conferencing, Meetings & Webcasts

16. Meeting Wizard Send a meeting request to your colleagues….

…and review the responses

17. Campfire: Free Chat Room

18. LegalMeetings

19. Webcasting Through Illinois Legal Aid Online Contact Susan Muirhead at

Collaboration & Project Management Solutions

20. Central Desktop Free for small groups (up to 5 users) Nonprofit discount for larger use Supports: ▫Project Management (To Do Lists, Milestones, Collaborative Document Editing, Calendars) ▫Wikis ▫Help Desk/Trouble Tickets

21. BaseCamp Free version supports: messages, to do lists, milestones, writeboards, and chat

22. Zoho.Com Free versions of: ▫Wikis ▫Project Management Tools ▫Online Document Management

23. Writeboard Create Invite Versions Track & Edit

24. Microsoft Office Live Workspaces Integrates with Microsoft Office Upload Office documents that can be shared

25. Adobe Acrobat Share Share files Connect: Online workspace for up to 3 people Create online documents using Buzzword

More Tips & Resources Visit for this year’s 50 Tech Tips Powerpoint from the Equal Justice Conferencehttp:// Visit and go to the news section for monthly tech tips from ILAO, usually published the last day of each monthhttp://