♫Tell him “no”, oh-oh-oh, Tell him “no”..♫
Words and music by Travis Pritchett, recorded by Travis & Bob.
A posting on InfoWorld’s web site today reports that British Schools have been advised not to upgrade to Microsoft’s Vista operating system and the Office 2007 productivity suite. The reasons are telling:
“We have not had sight of any evidence to support the argument that the costs of upgrading to Vista in educational establishments would be offset by appropriate benefit,” it said.
Furthermore, it continues:
“As for Office 2007, “there remains no compelling case for deployment,” the agency said in its full report, published this week.”
InfoWorld states that the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) advised that ‘the added value of Vista’s new features was not sufficient to justify the cost of deployment, while Office 2007 contained no “must-have” features.‘
In a telling move away from proprietary file formats: ‘the agency also recommended setting up desktops to make it easy to use such open-source applications, and advised schools to insist their suppliers deliver office productivity software that can open and save ODF documents, setting it as the default file format.’
This may be an early sign for organizations generally, including law firms, to move toward greater standardization around ODF formats. And if file formats become open and standard, that leads to questions as to why one would need a proprietary word processor, if Open Source software can easily meet the needs of a business organization.
This means that when the automatic request comes to purchase the next upgrade from Microsoft, the answer may be, to tell him no…
♫ Come together right now over me ♫
Words and Music by Lennon-McCartney
I have been remiss in making a new post due to my scrambling to finish my papers for two presentations at ABA TECSHOW 2008 in Chicago in March. Papers are due this Friday!
This year’s rendition of the Worlds Premier Legal Technology Conference promises to be as good, if not better, than all past Conferences. I find the quality of the discussions between presenters and attendees, the first-class presentations and the ideas that crackle in the air to be a fairly heady mix! For anyone looking for new approaches, concepts, applications and inspiration, this conference is an extremely nutrient-rich environment!
I also hope to again co-host one of the Taste of Techshow dinners…so if you are coming to Techshow, sign up for my dinner and we can chat in person at one of the fine restaurants in Chicago!
Check out the schedule and hotel and travel information on the Techshow web site. Oh and come to my sessions: Records Management Technology: It’s a Small World After All and Drafting Bills Your Clients Will Rush to Pay.
See you there - March 13-15, 2008.
Come together..right now….over me!
♫ Only night will ever know
Why the heavens never show
All the dreams there are to know
Paint the sky with stars...♫
Music by Eithne Ní Bhraonáin, lyrics by Roma Ryan, recorded by Enya.
It is nearing the end of the year…time to look back on the year and reflect on what is past…and what is yet to come. You recall your earnest resolution at this time last year that “things were going to be different next year!” Reflecting for a moment you realize that not much has changed, people are more or less performing as they were last year. Your own performance has fallen into a predicable range – or rut. You ask yourself “How do other businesses manage to achieve better-than ordinary results?” What is their magical formula? Short of cracking a whip, how do you motivate yourself, and others, to excellence?
The high art of achieving extra-ordinary results from people has been clearly demonstrated time and time again. However, it is an inexact science with many factors and ingredients. Let us examine the tips and techniques that have been put forward towards achieving lofty goals:
- The Oracle at
- In doing some research into this matter, the April 2002 issue of Fast Company had an article on the
- So what motivates people to perform? Money? Study after study show that while employees desire money, they are motivated by intangibles: challenge, recognition, opportunity for growth, involvement, meaningful work and pride. Money is a way of determining success – keeping score, so to speak, and is therefore the result of doing excellent work, not the inducer. What is the world’s most powerful motivator? Achievement. “I do because I can”. Motivation is tied to “internal matters” – grey matter, ultimately..
- Assume full accountability for your future. Now surround yourself with other high-achievers. Place yourself in a high-nutrient mix – where the peers with whom you associate will radiate higher expectations and their own pursuit of excellence. We tell our kids not to associate with certain crowds – do we drink of the same medicine?
- Acknowledge other’s successes. Don’t dwell on errors – praise results in public and deal with problems in private. Listen to your staff and their suggestions and act on good ideas. Whenever possible, give immediate feedback (shortens the learning cycle) and positive reinforcement. Give staff greater autonomy and encourage them to be confident and responsible. Do the annual performance reviews – and let the staff member verbalize their own strengths and weaknesses – and set their own methods on how they are going to grow. Let each staff member know why each person is put in their position. Let each individual know what skill development is required for them to go beyond their present job. Be clear on what it is that you expect them to accomplish in their present position. Make sure that the people with whom they work know this, too. Most of all, be consistent – be seen to be dealing with the deadwood as a way of communicating that low performance is not tolerated.
- Offer to pay for skill development (job-related, interpersonal and communication skills). Encourage staff to seek out managerial responsibilities in social settings – community groups, schools, social institutions, non-profits etc. – for the skills that they learn in those settings will come back with them into the work environment – as well as the recognition for a job well done.
- Model the behaviour you want. Care – passionately – about results. The test of anyone’s character is when the going gets tough. Keeping firm hold of the basics – grace under fire – tells volumes to the world and keeps the troops going. Edith Wharton said: “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” Churchill went further and said: “In the past we have had a light which flickered, in the present we have a light which flames, and in the future there will be a light which shines over all the land and sea.”
- Bring people into big projects. Let them feel and be part of the action. They can learn from their involvement and you can benefit from their energy.
- Eliminate bottlenecks and Red Tape. Process is important – except where it becomes an inhibitor of performance and new ideas. Recognize where your own procedures could be putting the stop to greater things.
- Have fun. Go to: www.spacecamp.com and read the testimonials from the alumni. Operated in conjunction with NASA, these programs challenge kids and adults to be, in effect, rocket scientists. (There is a Canadian version as well: www.spacecampcanada.com). Comments from those who went through the camps (The 500,000th camper, Samantha Rice, graduated June 15, 2007) consistently state that it was the experience of a lifetime. Achieving excellence and mastering new ideas does not have to be a slog. The evidence is clear – people who are having fun outperform those who are not.
Moving to higher ground may ultimately depend on ignoring the glitter and concentrating on that quiet place inside all of us where dreams are made and a candle glows on what might yet be.
(this post is based on a column originally published in PracticeTalk in the Canadian Bar Association - BC Branch’s newsletter BarTalk)
♫ And though my lack of education
Hasn’t hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall… ♫
Words and music by Paul Simon.
In talking with lawyers of all ages, there is a general consensus that while law schools teach the theory of law well, they do a less-than stellar job in actually preparing lawyers to practice law. While anecdotal evidence is interesting, Gene Koo of The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at
They found:
- “More than 75 percent of lawyers surveyed said they lacked critical practice skills after completing their law school education.
- Today’s workplace demands skills that the traditional law school curriculum does not cover.
- Many attorneys work in complex teams distributed across multiple offices: nearly 80 percent of lawyers surveyed belong to one or more work teams, with 19 percent participating in more than five teams. Yet only 12 percent of law students report working in groups on class projects.
- Smaller firms can stay competitive with larger firms through more nimble deployment of technology tools and by exploiting the exploding amount of data openly available on the Web. Attorneys at these firms need tech-related skills to realize these opportunities.
- Many attorneys work in complex teams distributed across multiple offices: nearly 80 percent of lawyers surveyed belong to one or more work teams, with 19 percent participating in more than five teams. Yet only 12 percent of law students report working in groups on class projects.
- Legal educators seriously under-utilize new technologies, even in those settings, such as clinical legal education, that are the most practice-oriented.”
The question is, are law schools adequately preparing student for real-life practice? According to Prof Gary Munnuke of
(www.abanet.org/lpm/magazine/articles/v33/is4/an13.shtml) (I wish I could find similar stats for
At least in
The Berkman study notes that law students should be exposed to four new skill areas:
- knowledge-generating (separating knowledge from data, or in other words, dealing with information overload)
- techno-social (working with colleagues via technology. An example is negotiating settlements via email and other ‘low emotional bandwidth’ methods, that require different social skills than face-to-face negotiations)
- metapractice (translation of one-off situations into systems of practice. This skill set incorporates ‘systems level’ thinking that allows a lawyer to combine technology with the process of law and build systems that deliver legal services in a cost-effective manner up and down the value chain) and
- for those who manage lawyers, technology management skills.
The emphasis on teamwork, collaboration skills (including on-line collaboration skills as are necessary to draft and edit a document among different parties in different time zones using the Internet) and how technology has changed the way lawyers practice law are overriding themes of this study.
An interesting aspect is the growing need for lawyers to work in teams, supported by technology. This is not surprising for lawyers in larger firms, but the study found that 53% of respondents in firms of 2-20 lawyers report belonging to at least one team. Interestingly, while emails, conference calls and in-person meetings were found ‘useful’ for team collaboration, “Practice-specific software such as litigation support or document management systems represents another significant means of collaboration (46%)”. This rather counters the image of the solitary knight riding off to do battle on behalf of a client. It further underscores the importance that litigation support technology has come to play in helping litigation lawyers work as a team as well as organize the case!
Certainly there is a need for law schools to have clinical development programs, which expose students to the actual practice of law. However, the report noted for even for those law schools that had clinical programs in place, “not all clinical programs have robust technology infrastructures, meaning that students may not in fact be experiencing fully authentic practice”. The report’s author also found that lawyers entering smaller practices may need more extensive and specific training in technology management skills than their big-firm counterparts.
The report’s authors found that at one top-tier school with several clinical programs in place, only the largest clinical projects actively use Time Matters; the others apparently lack the resources necessary to customize the product to their needs. While the study found that generally speaking law students are much more skilled with technology than the lawyers in the firms in which they are hired, law students come out of law school with at best, a limited exposure to the legal technological tools that are actually in use in law firms. This raises the question of where lawyers are going to acquire the knowledge of how to effectively use legal technology – if not in law school and not in practice…then ..exactly…where? Perhaps it is time to look at the reports in black and white and read the writing on the wall…
(this is based on a column originally published in PracticeTalk in the Canadian Bar Association - BC Branch’s newsletter BarTalk)
♫ Money, it’s a gas.
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash. ♫
Words and music by Roger Waters, recorded by Pink Floyd
I received a call this week from a lawyer that I helped some three years ago. She was now considering the next step in her career and was taking some time off. Yes, time off! And she called to say that this was possible as she had followed my advice on the financial side of running her practice and could afford to take a break and consider what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. The advice that I gave her was straightforward and I condensed it into a column. Here it is:
You have just finished looking thru your aged accounts receivable printout and even thru closed eyes you can see the total amount outstanding. Is it really that large? Don’t your clients like you and like your work? Why are they not paying their bills? You start thinking about how to take some action. You groan when you think that most businesses would simply turn over the collection of their delinquent accounts to their lawyer. Write yourself out of this one, Joan Wilder….
One of the hardest things in business is constantly having to ask people for money – at the outset of a file, during the ongoing work on the case, at the end and worst of all, after everything is over but the payment of the outstanding bill. Let us examine some suggestions to try to avoid the problem in the first place realizing that sooner or later, someone is going to slip thru the best of systems….
Organize: You will need a collection system and a method to start dealing with your receivables. You need to track a number of bits of information regarding your clients and their billings including: a listing of all clients with all contact information, all accounts rendered to them, all payment terms arranged, retainers taken, funds applied to the account, funds remaining in trust, interest charges accrued and balances outstanding and all attempts made to collect the account (letters, phone calls, personal visits, referrals to collection agents and the like).
Be Proactive: Prevent payment disputes and complaints before they happen by setting up a system to verify that invoices are accurate and services were delivered as promised (timeliness, results, satisfaction, within budget), before the bill goes out. If you anticipate any difficulties along any of these parameters – meet with the client in person and seek to resolve them – now rather than later. Age may improve cheese and wine but it does nothing for bad debts.
Take Plastic: Accept credit cards or debit cards. Both cards allow instant payment before the client has left the office. Any credit card fees outweigh the cost of not being paid on the account by transferring the credit risk entirely to the card company. Check your jurisdiction’s ethics rules on taking credit and debit cards. Some State Bars (such as Oklahoma) have brought in affinity programs with financial institutions that will establish a credit card facility that will allow you to direct the credit card payment into your general or trust account, to comply with your trust accounting rules. Otherwise you will have to deal with your local bank directly.
Get it in Writing: We all have file-opening forms and written client retainer agreements, right? Your file-opening sheet should seek to gather as much personal information as possible – home and work address and contact info (mobile, home, office telephone and fax numbers, email addresses), bank, employer, drivers license et cetera.. Your retainer agreement should set forth in no uncertain terms your payment policies, retainer replenishment, interest on outstanding accounts and payment terms. Make it clear that you will ethically seek to remove yourself from any file where the client fails to honour their payment terms. Have the clients sign this retainer agreement before they leave and provide a copy for their records. If the client is unable to fit within your standard payment options, have them sign a monthly payment schedule that you and the client can both agree upon.
Be on Top: Once your system is in place, you need to review the reports generated by your accounting system and take appropriate action. Someone in the office should be responsible for monitoring the system, sending out monthly statements and drawing all exceptions to your attention. Once a matter is in your hands, be decisive. While most people write letters on overdue accounts, this is probably the least-effective method of collection. Meet your creditor in person – and be forthright in the facts – that the account is overdue, that you have a signed retainer agreement and ask how they intend on paying the bill. If the answer is not satisfactory – cut your losses and exercise your right to get off the file (ethically, of course). If your client has a concern regarding the legal work, solve it now as it will only come back to haunt you. If the account is small or it is inconvenient to meet your client, call them (and document your meeting or telephone call in writing). Use collection letters only as a last resort.
Follow-thru: Completed a file? Is the bill out yet? There is a proven relationship that the more time that passes between the completion of a file and the rendering of the final account, the less the motivation to pay the account. Accordingly make it a habit to get the bill out concurrently with finishing the file, then call the client to come in for a final meeting and present the bill in person. Discuss the bill and ask for payment- in full – now. After all, if they have no complaints about the bill they have no reason not to pay.
Make it Personal: When dealing with larger organizations, find out who is the appropriate person to receive the invoice. In larger entities, a bill can spend days or even weeks kicking around before it finds the right desk – and then it must fit within their payment cycle (usually larger organizations cuts cheques only 1-2 times a month). By addressing the bill correctly in the first place you can shorten the inherent delays. When dealing with any collection – don’t settle with talking to the bookkeeper – speak to the client.
Use Discounts and Shorten Payment Terms: Consider a 2% discount if paid within 7-10 days – this works to the benefit of both the payor and payee. Furthermore, there is nothing that says that payment terms must be 30 days – consider shortening your “due” period to 15 days after presentment (check your ethics rules on collections and in particular, for the minimum time period for which a legal invoice must be outstanding prior to any legal action for collection - you may find that you are prevented from suing a client for fees until 30 days after presentment or such).
Squeak: There is an old adage that the squeaky wheel gets the grease – or in our case, the money. While being cognizant of the rights of debtors, call your delinquent client as often as you can and stick to the facts (don’t badger or get emotional – remember you are trying to get something from them, not lecture them on their morals or ethics).
Draft Bills Carefully: Jay Foonberg in an article “How to Word Invoices that Clients are Happy to Pay” states that the most important thing in wording invoices is to list every single document you prepared or reviewed. His advice: list all forms your secretary prepared. Use words such as “further” and “continued” to avoid the impression that you are repeatedly charging for work you did once – vary your descriptions to provide a flow of work over time. Don’t bill for telephone calls – confirm the conversation in writing and bill for the confirmation. Show dates on which you provided service but not hours of service (unless your retainer agreement requires you to do this). Always read your invoices carefully before they are sent. Lastly, ask your clients how they want to be charged and where they want the bills to be sent – and follow this.
Don’t flog dead horses: Your time is money – if an account is truly noncollectable – write it off and go on to new matters. Resolve to learn something from the file - why did the debt become noncollectable? Is there something that you could or should have done at the beginning that would have changed the outcome? By learning from our mistakes we can avoid repeating them.
By keeping an interest in your cash flow, you can grab the cash and truly work smarter and not necessarily harder. And that buys you the opportunity to decide what is important enough to you to spend the rest of your life time pursuing…
(this is based on a column originally published in PracticeTalk in the Canadian Bar Association - BC Branch’s newsletter BarTalk)
♫ Don’t let nobody take care o’ your business better than you do,
Do what he wants, give what he wants expect ‘em come to you ♫
Words and music by James Brown.
The ABA has recently published a little gem of a book entitled: The Lawyer’s Field Guide to Effective Business Development. Written by William J. Flannery, Jr. and only 150 pages in length, it is a very practical guide to implementing business development into your day, your practice and your life. Bill has a background as a lawyer and marketing consultant and has worked extensively with such companies as IBM and the Association of Legal Administrators and the American Bar Association. This book is all about growing your skills in building and managing a profitable book of legal business (it is billed as a ‘success guide’). Bill uses a five step process (Plan, Interview, Design, Solutions and Decision) to retain and recruit new business. I was immediately impressed when I started reading it and now carry it in my backpack along with a yellow highlighter, in order to read another snippet when I have a moment. Furthermore, I came across this endorsement and I couldn’t resist reprinting it here:
“Soul music had James Brown, the ‘Godfather of Soul.’ Law firms have Bill Flannery, a true pioneer in business development for our industry. The Field Guide provides a comprehensive road map for business development strategy. Like the best soul sound, the Field Guide’s straightforward prose will resonate with your lawyers.”
Kathleen H. Hilton, Director of Client Services, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP
The Field Guide is $59.95 (USD) and available from: http://tinyurl.com/2ubkg7.
After all, no one takes care of your business better than you do – by doing what your clients want and giving them what they want, you can expect them to come back to you.
(originally appeared in The Verdict, the publication of The Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia)
♫She’s right on time
She’s right where she should be
She’s right on time..♫
Words and music by Billy Joel.
Allison Wolf in her Lawyer Coach Blog has recently posted on “When is the right time to ask for business?” She raises the excellent point that you have to work from your values and first build the trusting relationship and the right time to ask for business will present itself.
Allison has listed ideas and tips on how to genuinely come across as sympathetic and listening and use them to build the base of trust.
But some of us are genuinely uncomfortable in entering a crowd of people that we don’t know and start to make the small talk that leads to the creation of personal relationships.
Ellen Freedman on her blog has a recent post “Learning How: Breaking the Ice” wherein she lists a number of books on the fine art of making small talk and conversation when entering a crowd of strangers.
By following these tips, we can find ourselves right on time, right where we are supposed to be, building those trusting relationships and asking for business at the right time…
♫The winner takes it all
The loser standing small
Beside the victory
That’s her destiny…♫
Words and Music by: Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, recorded by Abba.
I have come across a very interesting blog by Bob Warfield called: SmoothSpan Blog whose goal is to “combine radical technology innovation with equally radical business model innovation to literally reinvent and extend SaaS.” He has some great thoughts and observations on the implications of the Web 2.0 model as it evolves. One of his latest posts - Oct 4, 2007 is entitled:
“What is a Social Network, Anyway? (Hint: It’s Not Geocities!)“.
I think that Web 2.0 is one of the most important technological developments in the last little while. I believe lawyers have yet to fully appreciate the implications of web 2.0 and its importance for them.
David Maister in his blog, has started a discussion (Wed. Oct. 3, 2007) entitled:
“Relationships: What’s the Problem? “
where he is exploring the difficulties in lawyers forming relationships with clients. This leads to the question: How many lawyers have incorporated the power of Web 2.0 in thinking about their relationships with their clients? How many law firms have considered how to use Web 2.0 to reach out to their clients? Where is the overlap between Web 2.0, lawyers and the new business model?
This is an interesting discussion and competition and one that is certainly being crafted as we speak. And my sense is that whoever figures it out first, the winner takes it all…that’s her destiny.
♫I’ll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places
That this heart of mine embraces
All day and through..♫
Words and Music by Sammy Fain / Irving Kahal, sung by Billie Holiday.
Wednesday Oct. 10, 2007 will see the 2007 edition of the Pacific Legal Technology Conference held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. This conference will be the 5th PLTC and this year The BCLMA (the British Columbia Legal Management Association), the LMA (The Legal Marketing Association - BC Chapter) and the GPSSF National Conference of the Canadian Bar Association (The CBA’s General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Conference) all have joined the Conference as additional sponsors. This is in addition to the four founding sponsors: The TLABC (The Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia), the CBA - BC Branch (The Canadian Bar Association - BC Branch), the LSBC (The Law Society of British Columbia) and the ABA-LPM Section (The Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association).
This year’s conference starts with a bang at 8 am with: 60 Technology, Management, Marketing and Finance Tips in 60 Mins and concludes with 25 Things You Really Need to Know and Take Home. The noon plenary features Frank Fowlie, the Ombudsman for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Frank has a unique view of the growing trend towards on-line dispute resolution and will talk on the different technology platforms in use, the state of ODR and the opportunities - and challenges - that ODR poses to the legal profession. The full program can be found here.
In-between these plenary sessions are a further 18 sessions divided into six tracks: The Solo and Small Firm Track (sponsored by the GPSSF section), the Tips and Marketing Track ( sponsored by the LMA), the Applications Track (sponsored by the ABA-LPM Section), the Implementing Technology Track (sponsored by the LSBC), the Administrators & Managing Partners Track (sponsored by the BCLMA) and the E-Discovery and Litigation Track (sponsored by the TLABC).
The sessions range from How to Know What You Don’t Know - a Primer on the Newest Legal Technogies to Electronic Evidence Best Practices; from Working with Adobe Acrobat to No Limits! What a Young High Tech Firm Could REALLY Look Like!; from Security Overview: Backups, Removing Metadata, Digital Signatures, Secure Email, Handling Spam, Fraud and Other Tips to Tips on Becoming Creative with Technology in the Practice of Law.
The conference features outstanding speakers: Sharon Nelson and Dan Pinnington (both past ABA TECHSHOW Chairs) as well as a number of other outstanding speakers from ABA TECSHOW and from BC (Doug Jasinski, Allison Wolf, Steve Matthews just to mention a few…(24 great speakers in total). The Conference draws attendees from as far away as Halifax and down into the USA (MCLE Credit is available for Washington, Oregon and California and pending from Idaho) and the Conference offers 9 hours of Professional Management Instruction for reporting by BC lawyers.
The theme of this year’s conference is Leadership, Technology and You. This conference is unique in that it is designed from the bottom up in a collaborative manner with all past attendees. Each year, the Advisory Board pulls together a list of possible sessions that are posted to a SurveyMonkey web site - and every past attendee is invited to participate and indicate which sessions would be most relevant to them.
From the survey results the session program is pulled together from the top rated sessions. As a result, in every year the Conference has been held, it has received a 100% “YES” answer to the question “Would you recommend this Conference to your colleagues?” in the conference evaluation. As the Chair of the Conference, I am proud of that distinction and believe it indicates the world-class speakers, exhibitors and information that is integral to the success of the Conference.
I hope to be seeing you at the Vancouver Westin Bayshore Hotel and Resort on Wednesday October 10 for the Pacific Legal Technology Conference this year!
Dave
♫ It’s magic, it’s magic, it’s magic.
Strange magic,
oh, what a strange magic…♫
Words and Music by: Roy Wood, Jeff Lynne and Bev Bevan, recorded by Electric Light Orchestra
My good friend Jim Calloway put me onto Jott in his blog. I think it is one of the coolest things I have run across lately. Being in Canada, it took a bit more to get it to work, but all that meant was a bit of perseverance. First I will talk about the Jott concept and then we will move to how to actually get it to work.
Most of us wish we had a digital recorder with us when we are ‘out and about’ when an idea hits. However, if you are like me, the best that you have is a cell phone. Here is where the elegance of Jott comes in. You dial the Jott number that is programmed into your cell phone (*hopefully by speed or voice dial*) and connect to Jott. Then you select the person to whom you wish to Jott a note (being yourself or you can select one person from your list of contacts or you can select a group of contacts that you have established with Jott) and dictate up to a 30 sec note. Jott then transcribes your dictation and emails your note to the selected contact or group. It is really that simple and easy. The best part - it is free!
Here is how to get it to work (*with directions from both the USA and Canada*):
Step 1: Go to the Jott web site (www.jott.com) and register your name, email address and create a password (and approve the terms of service).
Step 2: Then follow the directions on the Jott web site and validate your email address (they send you a confirming email to your email address).
Step 3: You have to validate your cell phone number by calling the Jott number. In order to do this, you have to have ‘number blocking’ turned off or use the prefix that your cell phone company provides that will ‘unblock’ your number for certain calls. In my case you have to prefix *82 in front of the Jott telephone number. I also found that I had to call the specific number that they list for Canada rather than the USA number. Once I combined both of these, the Jott service validated the cell phone.
Step 4: This is optional - but once validated on the Jott service, you can establish a list of contacts to whom you wish to ‘Jott’. This serves as a way to quickly “Jott” to someone on your list a quick memo.
Following the speed dialing of the Jott number on your cell phone and the selection of a contact (lets assume it was yourself), you would dictate up to a 30 second memo (you can do this over and over for a longer thought!). Later…once you are on your computer, you can see the emails of your Jott memos in your in-box…from there, you can click on them to take you to the Jott website. Signed into the Jott site, you can see your transcribed messages (and listen to the original voice recording) and send the eamil memo to others (including the audio file), set reminders, click them off as being ‘done’ etc.
This ability to ‘Jott’ yourself a email note from wherever you may be, using only your cell-phone, is as close to magic as we can come. Of course Arthur C. Clarke said that: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is virtually indistinguishable from magic.”