Law Firm Tech Bio: Bryan Sims, Naperville, IL Lawyer

1.  Name, name of firm, location and practice areas.
Bryan Sims; Sims Law Firm, Ltd.; Naperville, Illinois
Commercial Litigation, Mortgage Foreclosure Defense, Appeals, Landlord/Tenant, and Mechanic’s Liens

2.  Name 3 to 5 of the most important or frequently used software (desktop or cloud) products in your practice and describe, briefly, how you use them?
Adobe Acrobat Pro. I essentially practice paperlessly. Thus, I use this program all of the time to manage and manipulate by documents.
Tabs3. My time and billing program. I love this program. It’s easy to use, it increases the capture of my time, and preparing invoices is a snap.

Microsoft Excel. Most attorneys never open a spreadsheet program. Thanks to my wife, however, I have learned to love Excel. I use it regularly to keep track of things such as travel expenses, to calculate amounts owed for contract actions, and to calculate interest for post judgment collection proceedings.

Dymo LabelWriter 450 Twin Turbo. I love this printer. Long ago I gave up the fight of trying to reliably print addresses on envelopes. Something always seemed to go wrong. I have switched to the Dymo. My addresses always come out perfect, plus I can print my postage on the same machine.

UltraMon This is a utility that allows me to manage a multiple monitor set up. It works great, gives me a separate task bar on each monitor, and makes it easy to move windows between monitors.

3.  What’s your favorite tech tool under $100?

This is a tough call. It is either Chrometa ($99), which I use to audit my time on a daily basis to make sure that I have recorded it all; or Active Words ($49.95), which I use all of the time to reduce key strokes on frequently performed tasks or typed text.

4.  Name on favorite app for phone or ipad.

Google Voice. This allows me to place and receive call from my cell phone, but using only my Google Voice number, not my cell number. It also provides easy access to my Google Voice voicemails.

5.  What do you use for legal research?

WestlawNext. I have an Illinois package and like it a lot.

6.  And…off tech…what’s the neatest and/or most useful piece of
non-tech swag that you keep on your desk or in your briefcase?
My Moleskine notebook that I keep and my briefcase and use to take notes. I found that I like it better than a legal pad for most purposes.