Using Computers in the Law Office (West Legal Studies Series)

I don't know what the other reviewer was talking about! Maybe they didn't read the book! I found the book to be extremely helpful. I didn't see any typos, or instructional errors (whatever that means!). It was required for my paralegal class and I thought I got my money's worth. I got a CD with free software and I thought it was worth every penny. It covers a wide range of computer uses in law offices and it was easy to read and practical. My teacher said she has been using this book for years. The other people in my class didn't seem to have any problem with it. I highly recommend it. It wasn't written for secretarys - it's for paralegals - maybe that was the other reviewers problem. Anyway, don't hesitate to buy it, you won't be sorry.

I bought this book for a legal assistant class and I enjoyed it. I learned a lot. It's hard to learn computers from a book - but not this one. The book comes with software and has tutorials and exercises that accompany the software. My class also liked the fact that there are tons of practical applications for how computers are actually used by practicing paralegals and legal secretaries in the book. Also, when it comes to litigation support - one of the most difficult legal computer applications to master - it was fantastic. It comes with three different litigation support programs, including Summation. Summation is fairly involved to learn and the book, tutorials, exercises and software did a good job of teaching this to me. I am confident now in my ability to do basic litigation support. The chapter on using the Internet to do legal and factual research was also excellent.

This book is essential for anyone working in a law office. Computers are used in nearly every aspect of working in a law firm. The book is huge - nearly 700 pages - and it covers every main type of program used in a law office. It comes with software, and lots of exercises and I thought it was very easy to read and straight forward. It covers hard topics like litigation support and Access databases in a way that I could understand without totally going over my head. The book covers both entry level and advanced topics. For example in the word processing chapter the Word tutorial had 7 lessons that got progressively more difficult, starting with basic word processing and ending with mail merges and creating tables of authorities.

I think this is a fabulous book. It comes with demonstration versions of 5 legal software programs including three litigation support programs, a time and billing program and a case management program. There were a number of in-depth, hands-on exercises for each program, so I really got to learn about each type of program by using it. Also, although I have used Access, Word, Excel and Powerpoint before, I liked the fact that there were in-depth exercises for learning legal applications for each of these programs. This is a very practical book.