June 1, 2006
Will Office 2007 Turn Us Into McLawOffices?
On May 30th I interviewed Barry Lancaster, Director of Technical Services for Juris, Inc. concerning Microsoft® software updates anticipated to impact law firms over the next two years. The podcast includes a discussion of Office 2007.
With regard to Office 2007, I also took Jeff Beard’s advice from LawTech Guru Blog and watched the User Interface video tour for Microsoft Office 2007.
The video is a job well done. The effectiveness of a video in conveying information and training related to software is the reason that Juris has an in-house studio for its video production. The studio also doubles as podcast central for morepartnerincome.com.
But that aside, Microsoft's new results-orientated ribbon interface with context sensitivity and rolling results view is a true breakthrough in usability. However, I do have a concern. Like “Newspeak,” which set out to simplify the language by eliminating words, I’m afraid we will all wind up with great-looking documents and presentations that are all the same.
One way to increase efficiency is to eliminate creativity and innovation. Over time, efficiency begins to triumph over effectiveness and what emerges is consistent mediocrity.
I can't wait to get my hands on 2007, but I’m concerned that once we all have it, we will become “McDonald’s”-like in our consistency.
Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.
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Filed under Blog by Tom Collins