Law Technology

Opinion of Federal Judge Striking Applicabilty of Red Flag Rules to Lawyers Released

Posted on December 02, 2009
Law.com, in picking up a story from The BLT: Blog for Legal Times has a post regarding District Judge Reggie Walton's written opinion of his October 29, 2009 decision that the FTC's Red Flag Rules did not apply to lawyers and their clients.

Marketing Tip: Return phone calls promptly to both clients and potential clients

Posted on November 30, 2009
Poor communications is in the top ten of most lists of grievances filed against attorneys. Establish a policy for returning phone calls such as: ...

Marketing Tip: Create a detailed list of all of the services you offer

Posted on November 23, 2009
This can be a single sheet of information or a brochure ? and make sure you give it to each client and prospective client. Don?t assume that your clients know all of the services you offer.

Not so fast Mr. Employeer ? You may not have a right to read my personal email.

Posted on November 20, 2009
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, some courts are backing away from the blanket concept that all emails sent using company equipment and networks are company property.

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Great tip ? using Google Local Business Center to attract new clients

Posted on November 19, 2009
Lawyerist.com has a great tip in its post here on taking advantage of Google's free Local Business Center to attract new clients. Using the Google Local Business Center, you can customize how your business listing appears in Google and Google maps.

LexisNexis Sells HotDocs Software Business to UK Company

Posted on November 17, 2009
LexisNexis announced today that Capsoft of Scotland has purchased the HotDocs software business from LexisNexis. LexisNexis retains its Automated Forms group and will continue to provide HotDocs enabled forms including those found on its LexisONE website...

Alternative Tools for Running your Practice (& Your Life)

Posted on November 17, 2009
The Codswallop blog has a great list of 100 alternative tools for collaboration, organization, calendaring and more in the article The Freelancer?s Toolset: 100 Web Apps for Everything You Will Possibly Need.

Marketing Tip: Create a marketing plan.

Posted on November 16, 2009
This doesn?t have to be a tome, but should layout specific steps to take each month. Dedicate a set time each week and month to execute the plan i.e. every Monday from 11AM-Noon

That?s a Wrap! 2009 Wisconsin Solo Small Firm ConferenceWSSFC,

Posted on November 16, 2009
Wow, if you didn't make the 2009 Wisconsin Solo & Small Firm Conference October 29-31 at the Kalahari resort in the Wisconsin Dells, you missed a lot! Here's just a brief overview of what this years 298 attendees received by coming:

If you Steal From a Client, Don?t let your Website Domain Lapse.

Posted on October 24, 2009
Perhaps an even worse fate is to take an advanced fee from a client on the same day your license is suspended, cash the check and then advise the client they can pick up their file but make no attempt to return the fee. Then, allow your domain registration to lapse and have the client purchases it...

Illinoins State Bar Association announces new Illinois Lawyer Now Quarterly

Posted on September 28, 2009
Congratulations to Illinois which has announced availability of another publication in electronic format similar to the State Bar of Wisconsin's InsideTrack enewsletter. The Illinois State Bar has launched its new publication Illinois Lawyer Now Quarterly which joins Illinois Lawyer Now (Online) containing information and articles for lawyers licensed in Illinois.

Easy File Folder Navigation with QuickJump ? Compujurist Readers Save 20%

Posted on September 16, 2009
Techhit Software makes a number of Outlook utilities that I use regularly including SimplyFIle, EZDetach and MessageSave . On September 15, 2009 TechHit released their latest utility called QuickJump which is a Windows file navigation utility. A beta version had been in use by a number of firms and people including myself and I'm happy to see the commercial launch of this latest tool...

Avoiding Legal Malpractice Risks in Tough Times ? Use Best Practices

Posted on September 14, 2009
My friend, Dan Pinnington (director of practicePRO), article Legal malpractice risks change in tough times (But the best risk management strategies don?t) was recently made available to a wider audience and is worth reading. Dan provides sage advice and even though he is in Canada and this was originally aimed at Canadian lawyers, it applies to those of us here in the U...

Good deal on an external drive and CMS BounceBack Ultimate software

Posted on September 11, 2009
If you?re looking for a backup system for a single computer, CMS backup has a 250GB external drive plus a copy of BounceBack Ultimate for $99.00.

Do Lawyers need another legal search tool? LegalGrub thinks so.

Posted on September 11, 2009
Just when you thought it was safe to start searching the internet after the release of Wolfram|Alpha , a new legal research tool was announced today by Miles Technologies called LegalGrub.com . According to the announcement, LegalGrub.com is supposed to make lawyers research lives easier by conducting searches only "...

Review of Redaction Software: Redact-It by IGC

Posted on September 09, 2009
Using software tools to redact text from electronic case documents is obviously more efficient than printing out pages, striking out sensitive text with a black marker and scanning the altered documents back into your system. However, improperly redacting an electronic document can have disastrous consequences with the unplanned disclosure of information, such as in Hepting v...

Using a blog as your website: Mogilevsky Law Firm, P.A.

Posted on September 04, 2009
I came across a WordPress blog of Mogilevsky Law Firm, P.A. operated by Attorney Jane Mogilevsky that is being used as her website in, I think, a clever way. You don't realize it's a blog when you first look at it, since your eyes are drawn to the the separately framed topic titles which are actually posts.

Fraud for the holidays.

Posted on September 03, 2009
Scammers and con artists continue to become more sophisticated in their methods and have been preying on unsuspecting lawyers and law firms for over a year now. The time just before holidays is fast becoming a preferred period for these nefarious villains to try and hit law firms with their tricks...

Free Acrobat Forums with Rick Borstein

Posted on August 27, 2009
Thanks to my good friend Bryan Sims of The Connected Lawyer blog for pointing out that Rick Borstein from Adobe (and the author of Acrobat for Lawyers blog) will be conducting a series of 3 hour Acrobat Forums for Legal Professionals around the country in September and October 2009, starting with Chicago on September 15, 2009...

Ethics checklists for solo and small firm practitioners

Posted on August 25, 2009
Today's issue of YourABA e-news includes a link to Ethics checklists for solo and small firm practitioners. This is really a compilation of prior ABA articles, free CLE audio and sample forms on ethical issues facing lawyers. These are well worth reading and adding a bookmark in your browser so you can refer back to these as needed.

What do restaurants and law offices have in common? Customer Service!

Posted on August 20, 2009
If you haven't subscribed to the gruntled employees blog by Jay Shepherd (Shepherd Law Group), you should do so immediately. I always enjoy reading Jay's blog as he consistently provides insights and information on management and law firm operations often times relating real world nonlegal experiences everyday needs of law offices and lawyers...

RECAP Firefox plugin: Helps make Pacer records a public archive.

Posted on August 14, 2009
Slashdot posted Firefox Plugin Liberates Paywalled Court Records today which is a link to Timothy B. Lee's Bottom-up blog. It seems that Mr. Lee and fellow grad students have a created RECAP, a Firefox plugin that allows you to take Pacer court records that you've purchased and upload them to a public internet archive...

Can I use Twitter in my Business?

Posted on August 13, 2009
The folks at Twitter have created Twitter 101 A Special Guide to help answer this question. The guide contains tips and tricks as well as Best Practices, Case Studies and outside Resources. If you're wondering if you should be using Twitter in your practice, I'd recommend taking a look a this guide before you get started...

When You Go To Heaven?

Posted on August 10, 2009
We've all seen the pictures of the person sitting at the desk against a backdrop of a mountain of papers (or something similar) and many think, "Yeah, right." To prove that truth is stranger than fiction, checkout fellow Practice Management Advisor (PMA) for South Carolina Courtney Kennady's post When You Go to Heaven...

LexisNexis issues Technical Alert and fixes for MS Word Plug-in issues for TimeMatters and Total Practice Advantage Version 7

Posted on July 27, 2009
LexisNexis has also provided fixes for the MS Word Plu-in issue in TimeMatters Version 7 and Total Practice Advantage Version 7.

What do you mean my blog looks funny in IE (or Firefox or Opera or?.)

Posted on July 21, 2009
Ever come across a website or blog that just didn't look right on your computer at work, but looks OK at home? If you're using different web browsers, this in fact can can happen. While there are various standards for web development, various browsers interpret them differently or may not follow them at all.

Technical Alert for LexisNexis Total Practice Advantage TM Version 8.0 Customers Using the Microsoft® Word Plug-In

Posted on July 20, 2009
Lexis Nexis has issues a Technical Alert for users of its Total Practice Advantage Product version 8.0 (TPA8) and TimeMatters version 8 (TM8). This Technical Alert details the steps users need to take to insure that TPA8 and TM8 continue to work with MS Word properly by reactivating the Verisign Trusted Publisher Certification by July 23, 2009...

Articles on Recession Planning from the ABA LPM Section

Posted on July 16, 2009
The American Bar Association's Law Practice Management Section has assembled more than a dozen articles to assist lawyers with ways to save money and keep your doors open in this recession.

Free Web Based OCR

Posted on July 15, 2009
There are still a large number of lawyers who don't have OCR software in their offices. While they may have the ability to create images of scanned documents using their office digital copy centers, they don't have the capability to take advantage of the uses of OCR for converting these images into usable text that can be brought into their word processor...

Strong Passwords for Protection: A Contrarian View

Posted on July 13, 2009
...interesting review of the major threats to account security with the authors finding the major threats are those that strong passwords alone can't defend against. Some of the paper is rather technical, but the underlying premise is that the major areas of concern are from phishing and keylogging which the strongest passwords in the world can't defend against...

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