Seattle Spotlight

By Monica Bay

David Jaffe

ON a whirlwind two-day visit to Seattle, Law Technology News visited the Redmond campus of Microsoft Corp., and Bellevue-based Applied Discovery.

It was fascinating, if just a bit overwhelming! First, David Jaffe, Microsoft's lead product manager for its Office Suite, brought us up to speed on how the latest version incorporates changes suggested by the Office Legal Advisory Council (set up to identify issues faced by the legal community.)

Charmaine Gravning

Jaffe showed us improvements in conversion tools; new "reveal codes" functions to display formatting; improvements to Tables of Contents and footnotes functions; security, and more.

Trina Seinfeld, product manager of Microsoft's new SharePoint, educated us on how the new software can be used to create Web sites and portals, and to establish basic document management, client relationship management, and collaboration tools, particularly for small to mid-sized firms that may not want or need full-strength document management software.

Jennifer Jeans and Robert Williamson Jr.

Consultant Jennifer Jeans, of Hunt Inter-active Inc., and Robert Williamson Jr., network administrator of Eisenhower & Carlson P.L.L.C., talked about how SharePoint was installed and now is in use at the Tacoma firm.

Jon Price showed us Visio 2002, nifty software that helps users create organizational charts and diagrams. We also learned about MapPoint 2002 (see page 3), and Charmaine Gravning brought us up-to-speed on the XP operating systems. Finally, Scott Erickson briefed us on the OS X version of Office.

Applied Discovery

Next on the agenda was a visit to Applied Discovery Inc. where Mark Kroese, vice president of marketing; corporate counsel Virginia Llewellyn, and C.E.O. Michael Weaver walked us through the company's electronic data discovery operations.

Martha Stewart and Mark Kroese

That was followed by a fabulous tapas lunch at Spazzo, where we learned a bit more about Kroese, who is truly a Renaissance man. You may recognize him: He does regular segments about household technology with Martha Stewart on her television show.

Formerly a Microsoft marketing exec, Kroese, who calls himself a "hopeless generalist," took four years off and focused on volunteer work for Access Fund and other charities, before rejoining the workforce at Applied Discovery. During his hiatus, he also wrote a book, Fifty Favorite Climbs, after interviewing 50 mountain climbers.