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May 27, 2014

Weekly Review for Law Practice Tips for Friday, May 30, 2014

Florida Law Practice Updates Friday, May 30, 2014

Here are some recent articles of interest that I found this week related to law practice management, law technology, and legal marketing. Enjoy!

Legal Tech Tips: Android Guide: Extending your Android Device’s Battery Life
One of the biggest gripes among device users is battery life. Devices and batteries are not created equal and the status quo for battery life seems to be about a day, from the time that someone wakes up in the morning and unplug their phone from the charger, to the point where they plug it in at night before they go to bed.
This all assumes that you don’t have one of those days where you’re talking to people all day or you get into a heated texting discussion with a friend, or you just can’t get off of Facebook. Read more here: http://www.howtogeek.com/school/basic-android-guide/lesson3/

Legal Tech Tips: 5 Ways to Run Windows Software on a Mac
Macs have a thriving ecosystem of software, but some programs still only support Windows. Whether you want to use business software or play Windows PC games, there are many ways to run Windows programs on your Mac.
Some of these methods are similar to the ways you can install Windows software on Linux or run Windows programs on a Chromebook. Virtual machines, dual-booting, the Wine compatibility layer, and remote desktop solutions are all included here. Read more here: http://www.howtogeek.com/187359/5-ways-to-run-windows-software-on-a-mac/

Legal Marketing Tips: Top Words To Use In Your Law Firm Blog Post Headlines
You know that strong headlines that attract attention to your blog post, articles, ezines, emails (and more) are very important. How would you like to know which words you can use that will do exactly this – attract the attention of your readers? Imagine a stronger interest in your law firm blog posts, simply with a few tweaks to your headlines?
Read more here: http://lawmarketing.com/top-words-to-use-in-your-law-firm-blog-post-headlines/

Law Practice Management Tips: Do You Tell People You’re “Affordable”?
You’re “affordable.” I know that you’re affordable because I read it on your website. It’s in bold. “Affordable” means cheap, right? You’re cheap? Yep, you’re underpricing. Why are you underpricing?

1. You think that if it’s cheap you’re less likely to be rejected,
2. You think you’re less likely to disappoint, and
3. You won’t feel badly when you sell it.

Those are good ways for avoiding emotional pain. Those aren’t good reasons for underpricing. The only reason you should be cheap is because you’ve figured out a way to offer your service for less than the competition. And even then, you should carefully craft your pricing strategy in light of the market. Low prices are the last refuge of the marketer who’s not particularly good at his job. Is that you? Read more here: https://www.divorcediscourse.com/people-youre-affordable/

Litigation Tips: Ten ideas for better depositions
I recently became involved in a case where all the depositions had already been taken. The opposing lawyers were partners in a very large, very well-known law firm. And my predecessors on the case came from a firm with a recognizable name. The case was pending in Federal Court, so the depositions were all limited to 7 hours. While reviewing the depositions for use at trial, I marveled at the amount of time spent on things that were of no interest to the trial as well as some other quirks that struck me as pointless. So I started keeping a list, which I shared with my partner, Mark Sayre. Mark added a few of his own pet peeves, and together we created this list of 10 “Don’t Do These Things At Depositions.”
Read more here: http://www.patrickjlamb.com/2014/04/27/ten-ideas-for-better-depositions/

Legal Practice Tips: Beware of the Tricks Used to Encourage a Witness to Volunteer
Most witnesses do not understand the purpose of a deposition and believe their job is to teach the questioning attorney everything they know; indeed, many believe if they did any less, they “wouldn’t be telling the truth.” But a witness who talks too much, either in deposition or trial, can be a liability because volunteering information can potentially highlight vulnerabilities for the other side. Witnesses need to be educated about the purpose of a deposition – i.e., it is a fact-finding opportunity for opposing counsel, not an interview or a casual chat. Given this purpose, it is the opposing attorney’s burden (and job) to ask the right question, not a witness’ job to help and offer more than was asked. The first step in the process of getting a witness to stop volunteering too much information is educating the witness about the strategies opposing counsel might use to goad new (and sometimes even experienced) witnesses into talking a bit too much, thereby opening up potential and unexpected vulnerabilities for the case.
Read more here: http://www.thejuryexpert.com/2014/05/beware-of-the-tricks-used-to-encourage-a-witness-to-volunteer/

Thank you for reading (and sharing). Stay tuned for next week’s weekly review for Law Practice Tips!

May 14, 2014

Weekly Review for Law Practice Tips for week of Friday, May 16, 2014

Here are some recent articles of interest that I found this week related to law practice management, law technology, and legal marketing. Enjoy!

Be “Offensive” to Succeed
In my experience, the best defense usually prevails over the best offense. The Seattle Seahawks, ostensibly the better defender, prevailed over the Denver Broncos, ostensibly the better offense, in the recent Super Bowl by bringing its best defensive skills into play.

However, the playing field is different in the practice of law. Unlike football players, lawyers need to be offensive, not defensive. In this case, offensive doesn’t mean hurting someone’s feelings, which is never a good thing to do in the business of law. Rather, offensive means being proactive.

In particular, lawyers must be proactive to develop effective client relations, which will always win the day. Effective client relations will create loyal clients who will sing your praises far and wide. What are some of the best practices that you might consider?
Read more here…

One Simple Ingredient for a Happier Workplace
Sandra asked the team of legal support staff she manages what would contribute to their motivation at work. They all told her “appreciation – being thanked when we do a good job.”

Mark , a young associate, is unhappy at his firm. One of the things bothering him about the culture is the lack of appreciation for people’s efforts.
Chelsea and her close colleagues laugh at themselves for being foolish: after all their years of practice they still hanker after an appreciative word from their partners for taking on some of the essential but non-billable work critical to the firm’s business. The word of thanks never comes.
Over the past few weeks numerous lawyers from law firms around the country have shared the same thought about appreciation with me – it goes something like this:

I don’t work for the money. Yes, money is essential, but the real satisfaction comes from helping people. And what I long for are a few words of appreciation when I go the extra mile for someone.

In law firms around the country it seems that one of the hardest things to come by is a kind word from someone for a job well done.

Weekly Review for Law Practice Tips for Friday, April 18, 2014

Law Practice Tips for week of April 14, 2014

Here are some recent articles of interest that I found this week related to law practice management, law technology, and legal marketing. Enjoy!

Working Remotely: Managing Solitude
Working remotely has many benefits as we’ve discussed in this series. It can also be lonely. If you’re working from home, it’s you, the computer and the four walls.
Contrast that with being surrounded by people on your commute to and from work, drop-bys and lunch with co-workers, and meetings with clients and visitors. But, it doesn’t have to be lonely. Here are a few tips to stay engaged and keep loneliness at bay while maintaining the kind of productivity that makes working away from the office appealing. Read more here…

Worst Times To Post To Your Law Firm Social Networks
When is the best time to post to your social networks? When is the worst time to post? If you’re going to take the time to post to social media networks such as LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter and Facebook, you want to certainly want to see some action – people reading your post, clicking through to your blog to read more or checking out a link that you referred/recommended. Read more here…

3 Ways To Get More Out Of Every Single Hour
Time is a key resource that we simply cannot replenish. The 24 hours of each day are all we are given—once spent, these hours are lost forever. This means that if you’re struggling to fit all of your priorities and “to-dos” into your day, it’s time to look for methods to use those hours and minutes more effectively. Here are a few research-backed suggestions that can help you make the most of the time you have. Read more here…

Will 2014 Be One of the Worst Years for Law Firms?
As part of our first quarter Legal Analytics activities, we’ve been analyzing invoice data for 2013 and the early part of 2014. While there were some expected trends, I’ve been genuinely startled by some of what we’ve learned. Our data shows that demand for legal services, as measured by billed fees, was fairly flat across the industry from 2012 to 2013. And it confirms one of the things we in the industry have observed anecdotally for some time: work for outside counsel is moving from the largest Am Law 100 firms, whose fees were up less than a third of a percent, to smaller ones, with Am Law 101-200 firms showing a 4.9% increase and Unranked firms seeing a 2.5% rise. Read more here…

Thank you for reading (and sharing). Stay tuned for next week’s weekly review for Law Practice Tips!

March 18, 2009

Share and Backup your Documents Online

Dropbox for your document management needs. Learn how to easily share, collaborate, and simultaneously backup your documents online.

Would you like to have your documents available anywhere you have an Internet connection? How about having those same documents automatically downloaded and installed on a computer of your choice? Would you like your documents to be saved each time a change is made so that you could have multiple versions of the same document to either backup or restore? How about the ability to easily share your documents with other people? Would you like to do this all without changing the way you work or adding any complicated new software?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, there is a new solution out there for you. The solution is Dropbox . Dropbox is a new product that provides an online storage solution for your documents. The killer feature is the ability to seamlessly share these documents with other persons of your choosing while having those same documents downloaded to your computer as a backup option. The ability to have the documents automatically downloaded to your computer requires you to install a small unobtrusive program that works in the background. While it is not necessary, this little handy application provides you with updates when new documents are added to your repository or if changes are made to your documents. In this way, the online repository and your computer are automatically kept in sync so long as you have the program running with an Internet connection. You can install the application on as many computers as you like so you always have working copies of your documents. Changes made to your documents either on your computer or online will automatically sync to all other installs of the application. Sharing with other users is as simple as using the online invite feature which only requires that you type in the other user’s email address.

The install and use of Dropbox is a piece of cake. I recently switched from Microsoft Sharepoint to Dropbox to manage all of my client file and document needs. The beauty of the system is that I do not have to work differently in any way. If you can use the file manager for Windows, then you can certainly use Dropbox. For my purpose, I simply installed the Dropbox directory on my law firm’s file server. Then I copied my client files in their present directory format to the Dropbox directory. Dropbox then took care of the rest by automatically copying each of the folders and files to its online repository. Once all the documents were copied, those documents were then available online as well as through normal access on the file server. However, from this point forward, all versions of the documents would be automatically retained and safely backed up online. In my case, Dropbox takes care of several needs simultaneously. First, it gives me online access from anywhere with a browser. Secondly, my documents are now backed up online. For example, in the event my file server was to crash, my online Dropbox repository would still have all my documents. Third, I can now share individual directories with my clients giving them online access to their own case files. If the client chooses to install the Dropbox application, all their documents are automatically synced to their personal computer and they are also given updates when new documents or changes are made. All documents are safely stored, password protected and encrypted.

Dropbox is relatively new and is working on adding several improvements. The only notable fault at this point is the fact that if a document is accidentally deleted by one user that document is then deleted for all users and removed from any computers that the online repository syncs to. Obviously this could be a problem if mistakes are made, however this really is only an inconvenience since all deleted documents can easily be restored through the online system. Dropbox promises to have a solution in place soon where you will be able to remove a user’s ability to delete files. Once that feature is implemented, I see no faults with the Dropbox system.

Dropbox is a subscription based service. The free version gives you 2GB of space. That amount of space will easily let you test out the service to see if it is sufficient for your purposes. The paid version comes with a whopping 50GB of online space. That amount of space should be more than enough for most users as I only use half of that for all of my legal files including my closed file archive from the past 15 years. The paid version costs either $9.99 per month or $99 for the entire year. For what is offered, this is an amazing value when you realize that the cost for backing up that amount of data online is often more expensive than what Dropbox is charging. Overall, I give Dropbox a hearty two-thumbs up.

To give it a whirl yourself, click here .