Fantastic Free Software for Your Firm

Often, Rekall deals with financially strapped law firms, and in all honesty, who isn’t financially strapped today?  In these situations, we like to give our clients free options.  Many times, it’s not even a matter of money, a client needs a certain task accomplished and free software can do it better than pay software.  Below are a few free pieces of software that we have worked with.  We only work with free software that passes our standard which is pretty high.

Skype – www.Skype.com

Everyone knows Skype is a great way to keep in touch with people by way of text and video chat, but did you know that you could call people for free who have a Skype account.  The account is free, the usage is free, the call is free.  You need a mic & speakers, webcam is optional, or just a phone.  This is all fine and dandy for home users, but for business, we have used this as an alternative solution to costly conference calls over seas.  It also works great for multi-user conference calls. Many offices use Skype as inter/multi-office chat as well. This is very useful when dealing with an office of 10 or more, or firms with remote offices. This is a great free service for growing firms, we highly recommend it.

Dropbox – www.Dropbox.com

Drobox is a sync-able folder. You can install it on as many computers as you like as well as iPhone & other mobile devices. When you put a file into this Dropbox folder, it automatically syncs it with all your devices that you have installed Dropbox on. If I add a document on my home PC to my Dropbox folder, it will not only be viewable on my iPhone, but also editable on my work PC and my 2 laptops. Free accounts have a cap of 2GB, but with referrals, you can go up to 8GB for FREE. For clients with no remote access, we have given them this solution to work on their office documents while at home as long as their OK with the lack of full security on the product. Before they leave for the day, they drag the document to the Dropbox folder and when they get home, they can finish their document. Think of it like a document transporter.  There is also a web interface where you can download files and folders in a pinch. Many people use Dropbox as a home backup simply because if their computer crashes, a copy of all data resides on the Dropbox servers. This is a great product that is versatile and easy to use. If you want more space, you have to pay, but 2GB is good enough for regular users, and if it’s not, get some friends and get referrals!

Bullzip Free PDF Printer – www.Bullzip.com

For the common use of office workers, PDF’s are important because they produce an un-editable, secure file.  Adobe corners the market on PDF software and many people believe that they need adobe to produce PDF files.  This is not true.  Any file can be turned into an un-editable PDF file with a virtual PDF printer. Bullzip installs a PDF printer into your printers list. Once you are done typing up a document, simply print to the Bullzip PDF printer, tell it where to save the newly created PDF file, and you now have a secure PDF file.  You don’t need to spend $600 on Adobe Acrobat Professional, Bullzip will handle the PDF creation for you, and for free.