Kudos to LexisNexis for its efforts to reduce paper waste! At a moot court orientation session at the University of Minnesota Law School this morning, the LexisNexis rep showed up and—this blew me away—did not hand out a single sheet of paper.

The Westlaw rep, meanwhile, made a huge book available. Mercifully, they did not pass out copies to everyone this year. I took one the first year I taught moot court, and it went right into the recycling bin.

“Green” is becoming as lame a word as “extreme,” but I still like to see companies reducing waste. Especially the paper garbage they churn out. Score one for LexisNexis.

In a comment on the ever-popular “Speeding up Time Matters” post, Tom Rowe, who is apparently a Time Matters consultant, wrote the following:

As a long time CIC and Time Matters users, I have to say that many of the posts here are fair. I am sure that many of the posters who are/were using TM 6-8 had many of the issues described.

The problem, according to Rowe, was that Time Matters was (and still is) written with included outdated code that could not handle a modern computer. According to my research, the code included in the current version of Time Matters is still outdated.

In fact, the programming language–Clarion–used 16-bit components until very recently, according to Wikipedia. (For those of you who do not understand the significance, I think the last 16-bit Windows operating system was the ten-year-old Windows 98, and even that was a hybrid 16-bit/32-bit OS.) Rowe suggests that “dropping back to a circa 2003 computer” might have solved most of the problems. In other words, Time Matters is ancient tech. It is slow and crashes because it was designed to run on the computer and operating system you had ten years ago.

With Time Matters 9, Rowe claims many of the problems were solved:

In any event, in TM8, SR2 (and then carried over into TM9) the dlls were updated and performance dramatically improved. I know … I am responsible for several thousand TM seats, and while there are still problems, TM8SR2 and TM9 are dramatically more fault tolerant and stable.

If that makes you feel better, note that while Time Matters may have finally upgraded to 32-bit, computers and operating systems coming out today are moving to 64-bit. Keep using that circa 2007 computer if you want basic functionality. It will be another decade before Time Matters catches up.

(On the other hand, if you are stuck using Time Matters, Tom Rowe seems to know the software inside and out, with all its faults. Maybe he can help you keep TM chugging along.)

A little over a year ago, I posted about my frustration, both with the speed and stability of Time Matters with Billing Matters Plus v7 and with the CIC Solutions Forum, which purports to be a place where users can get support from certified consultants, but where my post about how to speed up TM7 was quickly quashed.

The post has been popular, attracting a significant portion of the search engine traffic to this site and a number of posts from similarly-frustrated Time Matters users and IT professionals.

I have not used Time Matters since shortly after that post. While I said there that Time Matters was a time saver, even with its flaws, I quickly found the opposite to be true once I stopped using it. I used the Billing Matters portion until last September, when I switched my business form and closed out my books, but those were frustrating months, even though I hired a consultant to work with me.

I have never been happier. Case management is much easier without Time Matters, and a good deal faster. I use Outlook, Evolution, Thunderbird with Lightning, or several other programs as they catch my fancy. I am much happier keeping my books using GnuCash, although I would use Freshbooks if I had more hourly-fee clients to bill.

Commenter Wells Anderson is undoubtedly right that Time Matters is a popular piece of software. So is Internet Explorer 6. Neither are particularly good programs; many users simply are not aware that there are better alternatives. Or don’t care.

Lexis has an atrocious mandatory binding arbitration clause in its contracts. Consumer Law & Policy Blog’s Paul Bland described Lexis’s arbitration clause this way:

Lexis’s arbitration clause includes a gag order on its customers requiring tem to keep all arbitrations confidential. A number of courts have struck down similar secrecy provisions in consumer arbitration clauses as unconscionable.

Lexis’s arbitration clause requires any customer with a claim against it to arbitrate the claim in the headquarters city of Lexis, which is apparently Dayton, Ohio. What a deal if the customer lives in Seattle or Maine! A number of courts have struck down similar provisions requiring consumers to travel long distances to arbitrate claims.

Yikes. Fortunately, as Mark Steinbach of O’Toole, Rothwell, Nassau & Steinbach found out, they are willing to drop the arbitration provision up front if a client puts their foot down. Good news!

For those of you who need a paid legal research service, consider using Lexis and asking them to drop the arbitration provision from the contract. Use your power as a consumer of legal services to show Lexis and Westlaw that they can benefit by making their agreements more fair.

I tried to post a question to the CIC Solutions Forum, but apparently my request for tips to speed up Time Matters was objectionable:

Your post was deleted by Matt Stone.

Subject: Speeding up Time Matters?

Reason: Thank you for contributing to the CIC Solutions Forums. Your message was rejected by the list moderator because its content is seen as editorializing, broad qualitative comment, a customer complaint, or lobbying for particular features or improvements.

I didn’t think I was editorializing to say that Time Matters was slow. It is. I have talked about Time Matters with many people, and every single time TM’s slowness was mentioned quickly. I just wanted some tips on how to minimize the slowness.

Let me be clear: I think Time Matters is far from perfect. In addition to being slow, it crashes frequently. Although I am a efficiency nut, I still use it. Why? Because with all its flaws, TM is still a time saver. But if there is a way I can streamline or speed up the program, I want to know about it.

So how about it? Do any of you have tips for speeding up Time Matters?

2008.07.16: Since this post is so popular, I want to point out that I ditched Time Matters about a year ago, and am much happier—and more productive—as a result.