ViewWise 5.3 - Dec/Jan '03

ViewWise 5.3

The quest for a paperless office isn’t going to end anytime soon. As long as there are Post-it Notes, paper-happy opposing counsel and bulk-rate junk mail, papers will continue to pile up and get lost at the worst possible time.

To date, most of the hype surrounding the paperless office craze has centered around the prospects of a clutter-free existence. And, while a clean desk is a virtue worthy of pursuing, the real power behind the paperless office concept lies in the ability to organize and retrieve the documents once they have been removed from your desk.

Computhink’s ViewWise 5.3 is a document imaging and management program that provides plenty of power to any office looking to go paperless. It comes in single and multi-user versions, with a Web server option for offsite viewing. Although it was not specifically designed for law firms, any firm with a reasonably talented database programmer should be able to take advantage of the program’s inherent value.

The ViewWise desktop has an expanding/collapsing file tree on the left. The top level of organization is a “room,” and each room contains cabinets that hold folders for document storage. On the right is a large view of the present page and a thumbnail navigator beneath. To make it easier to move around a zoomed page, the thumbnail shows a “bird’s eye view” of the page with a rectangle representing the zoomed area. You simply drag the rectangle around to see different parts of the page.

You can make notes directly on the page or redact portions of the image. Pages can be printed, faxed, e-mailed or exported in more than 100 formats, including portable document formats. For lawyers who work outside the office on a regular basis, a helpful feature allows you to check the documents out to a laptop and work on them while on the road.

Of course, the first step in using the program is to scan the documents into the computer. With support from Technology Without an Interesting Name (TWAIN) or Intelligent Scheduling and Information System (ISIS) compliant scanners, ViewWise gives you several easy-to-use options for doing so. One option is to scan pages directly into existing document records. This approach works if you are only scanning a few documents.

For larger jobs, the software includes batch scanning features that allow you to scan pages into a temporary queue. You can then create the database entries all at once and use the drag-and-drop feature to place pages into the document records. Image editing features allow you to de-skew pages or change brightness and contrast settings. A few times I was not able to doctor a page to my liking, but it was simple to rescan the page and insert it into the appropriate spot in the document.

The ViewWise search feature relies on a structured query language (SQL) engine backbone with an unlimited number of user-definable fields. Since most larger law firms already track documents in a database of one form or another, the step to ViewWise should be painless. Essentially, ViewWise takes your existing database and attaches an image of the document to the database record. It’s also possible to use optical character recognition with the document and attach a full-text version to the database record.

The expanding tree and database work together to give you two ways to find a document. You can use the expanding tree list to navigate directly to the document, or you can search the database for matching records. The two methods can be combined to drill down the scope before searching.

Aside from the full-power database functions, ViewWise also includes powerful security features in the multi-user versions. User access can be restricted to certain records or certain functions. For example, document coders could be given only the ability to scan but not to print; members of one practice group might be given the power to view only those documents that relate directly to their own assigned cases, and so on. The security functions are flexible enough to meet just about any imaginable need.

Lastly, ViewWise provides optional links to Novell GroupWise, Metastorm’s e-Work and ReadSoft’s Eyes & Hands.

ViewWise might not completely rid your office of paper. It certainly has all the tools to do so, but my gut feeling is many lawyers will not be able to make the shift to paperless without major prodding. The change requires a major investment of time and training, and there is a certain visceral feeling that goes with having the physical document in front of you. No software, no matter how good, is going to be able to rid lawyers of their inner Luddite without having a willing participant.

Computhink Inc.
(800) 98-THINK
www.viewwise.com

Price: $599 for single user; $4,995.95
for five users
Windows 98/98 SE/NT 4.0/2000

Reviewed by David Hiersekorn, a recent law school graduate and legal researcher based in Orange County, Calif.

Dec/Jan '03 Issue

PROS
Powerful database and image editing features; unlimited ability to customize.

CONS
It might be difficult to get used to.

VERDICT
For those who want to go paperless, I recommend ViewWise. It has all the tools you need. For those waiting in the wings, it might be reason to make the leap.