Posted By Diane Pfadenhauer: "For those considering hiring teens this summer, these links to pages on the USDOL website offer useful information for compliance with state labor laws relating to minors. The first is a Summary of State Laws Concerning Child Labor Standards Affecting Minors Under 18. In addition, this link provides a summary of Employment/Age Certification Issuance Practices Under State Child Labor Laws.

For those in New York, here is the link to the New York State Department of Labor's information on child labor law.

Now there are no excuses for making mistakes when hiring minors this summer."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

In the news: "After three years of law school, a hundred grand of debt and weeks sweating out a bar review and exam, it's time to start practicing law in earnest, right? At a handful of firms, the answer is fast becoming "not yet." These firms are putting new recruits through additional apprenticeship programs that they say will better train their attorneys for life at a law firm and for handling clients. The new programs may appeal to clients, but not everyone's buying the idea that they're better for new associates.

Read full text

Posted by Reid Trautz: "The American Lawyer has a short but valuable article today about the role of fear in negotiating alternative fee arrangements: Clients fear they will get shoddy service for their money, and law firms fear they will lose money on many deals. The article deftly states that an open dialogue, sharing of financial information, and a foundation of trust can overcome these fears so that both the client and law firm can benefit financially. 

With business a bit slow for many firms, now is the time to explore alternative fees with one or more clients.  For more information on this topic, read Winning Alternatives to the Billable Hour by Mark Robertson and Jim Calloway."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Posted by Evan Schaeffer: "You can create a more interesting and visually-compelling videotaped deposition by showing the witness an exhibit every so often. When you are preparing for trial, you can set up the video playback to display the exhibit on the screen as the witness is being questioned about it. This will break up the monotonous continuing screen-shot of the witness which becomes tedious after ten or fifteen minutes. 

[His] Source: Mike Rogers, "Practice makes perfect visual presentations." Trial, June, 2009.

Related posts:

1. "Tips for Video Depositions"
2. "Cross-Examining Experts During Depositions."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Posted by Garr Reynolds: "People often ask if technical or science-related presentations can be as compelling as presentations covering other less technical topics. Now, not every presentation has earth-shattering, Nobel-Prize winning significance, but I assume if you are talking about your research or current issues in your field, etc. that your words have a benefit for someone else. I assume it is important, otherwise why waste your time and the time of others? And if it is important, then being effective matters. No one ever said that clarity and a connection with the audience were sufficient conditions for an effective talk; we only ever said they were necessary conditions.

Three years ago I gave some advice for people giving technical presentations in this post. The money quote I still believe is from engineer and scientist Dr. Jay H. Lehr in his 1985 article "Let There Be Stoning" (download article in PDF).

"Failure to spend the [presentation] time wisely and well, failure to educate, entertain, elucidate, enlighten, and most important of all, failure to maintain attention and interest should be punishable by stoning. There is no excuse for tedium."

                                                            -- Jay H. Lehr

This week I heard from Naveen Sinha, a graduate student in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. He too has noticed three things that the good lectures/presentations share. In his words:

1. They have an outline near the beginning of the talk, which they repeat along the way so the audience can become reoriented with the larger-scale structure of the presentation.
2. The slides use a full sentence at the top to summarize the key point, or none at all. Shorter titles are rarely effective. I learned about this from "The Craft of Scientific Presentations" and it's been good advice so far.
3. The slides are as simple as possible.

Continue reading this interesting post at the source site listed below.

From the blog: "If you know and follow the rules of grammar and usage--good. If you've ditched legalese and strive to write in plain English--good. If you know who Bryan Garner is and try to do most of what he teaches--good. You're ready for the next step: developing style. To learn what style is and how you can begin to acquire it, read What Attorneys Can Learn from Children's Literature, and Other Lessons in Style. It's by Ben Opipari. He knows what he's talking about."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: the (new) legal writer, 21 June 2009

From the site: "On May 31, 2009, Air France flight 447, out of Rio de Janerio bound for Paris, vanished into thin air. A frantic search for passengers and the black boxes, turned up with a number of bodies but no black boxes. Hosts Bob Ambrogi and J. Craig Williams invite Attorney Justin T. Green, partner with the firm Kreindler & Kreindler and Attorney John A. Greaves from the firm Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman, PC, to discuss the crash, the litigation and jurisdiction issues and the quest for compensation for the victims' families.

Podcast: Play on page | Play in new window | Download"

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Legal Talk Network, 25 June 2009

Posted by Ron Friedmann: "I came across an interesting technology use survey sponsored by LexisNexis. It has a lot of data on tech usage and attitudes and compares legal and other professionals and three generation of users. It's worth a look though it's a bit overwhelming in scope and I am not sure it is actionable for IT managers and CIOs. 

The LexisNexis Technology Survey Gap [PDF]. LN conducted the survey (via a third party) in summer 2008. My take-away from the copious data and analysis:

• Almost all professionals now rely on technology. [What's up with the few who don't?]
• Gen Y [born 1980+] legal professionals spend more time on applications than Gen X or Boomers but may be less productive as a result
• I found page 23, hours per day spent using various devices, the most fascinating. All respondents report spending time using a fax machine, typewriter, and pager, for an average total of 2+ hours / day. Excuse me? I don't see how this can be reliable. Even when fax was important, legal professionals did not spend much time using a fax machine (maybe reading faxes). I can't think of anyone I know who owns a pager. I don't think there are enough typewriters available to support the implied usage.
• CIOs who want to control non-work applications may find some good ammo for their arguments

As I read the survey, it does not address a long-standing question I have: are Gen Y legal professionals more tech savvy than older generations? Many lawyers and tech managers assert this is true. And this survey shows they use more applications. But that still leaves open the question of whether, when it comes to practicing law more effectively with technology, newly minted lawyers are better than older ones.

The active link is available at the source site listed below.

Source: Strategic Legal Technology, 16 June 2009

Posted by John Jantsch: "Marketing podcast with Scott Belsky (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download - subscribe now via iTunes

For this week's episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I visited with Scott Belsky, founder of Behance, a company that develops products and services that boost productivity in the Creative Professional Community. Scott's first project was the creation of the wildly successful Behance Network, the leading place for creatives to hang out and learn more about enhancing their business.

We spent most of time talking about the impact that our work space has on our ability to create and be productive. The idea for this show originated from some time that Scott and I spent attending a meeting at a very creative workspace in New York City called Meet at the Apartment. Meet at the Apartment is a study in the impact seating, lighting, color and placement can have on one's ability to think creatively vs. work efficiently.

Scott shares some research that suggests the need for businesses to consider creating different environments for different kind of work. There was a day when companies created cubes for admin workers and the creatives got the fuseball table. Turns out that cubes are not such a bad environment when you need to slam something out, but a space with high ceilings and lively images on the walls is important when big strategic thinking is required.

I know that I am much more productive when my office and desk are uncluttered and neat. I'm more creative with Motzart but crank paperwork with James McMurtry on the stereo. I often take a field trip to a public library branch when I get stuck.

The world of office design is dominated by interior designers more schooled in the visual aspects of office space, but my feeling is there is an opportunity for the growth of more off site spaces like Meet at the Apartment as well as space design that's all about the different kinds of work we need to do.

Related articles by Zemanta

• USA Today's Ask an Expert Steve Strauss on Duct Tape Markting (ducttapemarketing.com)
• SXSWi notes: Tips for Making Ideas Happen (chrisunitt.co.uk)
• The Behance Network Designers List - Add Your Details (imjustcreative.com)

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Duct Tape Marketing, 22 June 2009

In the news: "For some lawyers, being busy is not the problem when it comes to time management. Instead, even when they have time on their hands, they are persistently, habitually late. And promises to change rarely lead to permanent success. The result, for them, can be a permanent state of anxiety and shame. Moreover, their reputations (in the firm and with clients) may suffer. Steven C. Bennett, a partner at Jones Day, provides some advice and tips for the perpetually tardy, and for those who must cope with them."

Read full text

Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire. 29 June 2009. Copyright 2008.  ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Subscribe <http://store.law.com/registration/register.asp?subscribeto=nw>.

Posted by Carolyn Elefant: "Nearly a year ago, I posted here about the launch of Virtual Law Partners, an 18-member corporate and transactional virtual firm of "elite" lawyers. Though some observers expressed doubt about the viability of the VLP model, today the firm has nearly 40 lawyers. 

But VLP isn't alone -- more and more virtual firms are cropping up. As the National Post blog describes, there's the Rimon Law Group and Atlanta-based FSB Group. Both of these are virtual firms comprised of lawyers with at least 10 years of large firm experience; like VLP, Rimon focuses largely on transactional and corporate work, while the 50 attorney FSB Group handles a wide range of practice areas.

In addition to these large virtual firm models that serve corporate clients, there are also smaller virtual practices geared toward individuals or small entrepreneurs. Larry Bodine has a post today about Natoli-Lapin, a two-man virtual shop founded in 2008 that is building a niche in low-cost legal services for entrepreneurs, artists and others launching new business ventures. And Stephanie Kimbro's Virtual Law Practice blog lists a dozen solo and small firms operating virtually, including Kimbro herself in North Carolina. The ABA's GP Solo magazine documents the solo/small firm trend to create virtual practices, with this article by Aviva Cuyler and Niki Black.

The experiences of these virtual firms, large or small, suggest that they provide a win-win for lawyers and clients. Because the firms rely on experienced lawyers and slash overhead by eliminating large offices and administrative infrastructure, lawyers can charge substantially less for the same services provided by a large firm. For example, Rimon caps its rates at $185, while VLP partners charge around $350-$400 an hour, a huge discount off their former $700+ BigLaw rates. As for the lawyers themselves, virtual practices offer more flexibility.

The younger generation of lawyers should be following the virtual trend for several reasons. Notably, the large virtual practices do not want inexperienced attorneys, which means younger lawyers could potentially be left out in the cold. At the same time, virtual law practices make it easier for younger lawyers to go solo because they remove the cost barrier. In theory, newer attorneys could start a virtual firm by handling smaller, less complicated matters to cut their teeth, like Natoli and Lapin, and move on to more complex cases down the line. Is this something recent law graduates you know are considering?"

From the Web Site:

A publication that discusses the importance of federal judges' papers as a documentary record of judges' careers and the work of the federal courts. The guide describes how students of the federal courts use judges' papers and offers guidelines for judges' selection of a repository to house a collection. The guide also offers recommendations for the management of documents in chambers.

Direct to Full Text (89 pages; PDF)

[Their] Source: Federal Judiciary History Office (via Federal Judiciary Center)

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: ResourceShelf, 26 June 2009

In the news: "Your company has just been served with a 30(b)(6) deposition notice under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and it is your job to respond to the notice and determine who will testify on behalf of the corporation. Is there anything you can do to ensure that your company puts its best foot forward at the deposition? The answer is yes, say attorneys Lori L. Pines and Ardith Bronson, who offer strategies for selecting and preparing witnesses to participate in these depositions."

Read full text 

Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire. 29 June 2009. Copyright 2008.  ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Subscribe <http://store.law.com/registration/register.asp?subscribeto=nw>.

Posted by Michelle Golden: "This topic keeps coming up. People have differing comfort levels with newish technologies and therefore have very different tolerance levels for others using it.

True that some people just don't "get it" when it comes to being polite. The cell-phone screamers and mid-conversation texters or email-checkers come to mind.

The common reaction seems to be "We need a company policy for [fill in technology here]?"

For everything from listening to ipods (wrote "iPods Are Not the Enemy") and blogging ("Blogging Policies" post) to streaming video watching at work or accessing facebook, business leaders want policies. Especially accounting and law types. We want to control it!

I've written an article that was just published in Practical Accountant and WebCPA, but it applies across many industries. It's called, "Charting a Firm's Social Media & Communications Policy" and I hope you'll check it out. 

Basically it explores a facilitated session I led with managing partners to explore how to deal with emerging technology urging them to take the time to fully understand it... hopefully BEFORE cranking out a policy banning or stifling its use.

I just read lawyer Jay Shepherd's blog post on Gruntled Employees called Does Your Company Need a Smartphone Policy and he raises some of the same issues and links to three other terrific posts. My favorite is A Two-Word Corporate Blogging Policy.

Something you'll find in my article, above, is that getting the partners/owners on the same page about your policy approach, in order to make policies that make sense, requires giving them the opportunity to hash through what REALLY concerns them, and dealing with those concerns, rather than jumping to policy FIRST."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Golden Practices, 25 June 2009

Written by J.P. Cusker: "This focused, readable blog is maintained by Wendy Seltzer, a visiting professor at American University and a fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.  The blog discusses copyright issues and disputes, especially those involving online or digital content, file sharing, digital rights management (DRM) and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Ms. Seltzer regularly tracks issues over time with multiple entries, for example tracking court cases from argument through to final ruling.  Ms. Seltzer has a clear anti-DMCA and anti-DRM viewpoint but takes care to demonstrate how overzealous use of the DMCA and DRM is self-defeating for creators and licensors, as it often alienates customers and makes digital content less widely available to potential audiences.  The site has a search engine and numerous features to aid in locating specific entries.  The site's tone of writing is a good mixture of plain speech grounded in real legal and technical knowledge.  Ms. Seltzer's blog would be of interest to anyone following copyright and computer law issues."

Source: "InSite." Vol.14, No.22. 29 June 2009 Cornell University Law Library. To subscribe send the following request to: listproc@cornell.edu: Subscribe InSITE-L [YourFirstName] [YourLastName]  

Posted by Joe Hodnicki: "On 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, Greg Lambert reviews myCorporateReources.com, a site that aggregates client alerts published by AmLaw 100 firms, calling the site "hands-down the best law firm articles and alerts aggregator" he has seen. Check out his review and the site for yourself. I think you will agree with Lambert's assessment. Lambert hopes to follow up his post with an interview of the site developers."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Law Librarian Blog, 29 June 2009

In the news: "Attorney Christina M. Storm founded Lawyers Without Borders to connect attorneys with pro bono projects in Africa and elsewhere. The group now coordinates international projects geared toward protecting the integrity of the legal process abroad. Storm, a partner in three-lawyer Byrne & Storm, says about half of the group's projects are geared toward individual attorneys and half are projects for law firm groups. And due to the economy, there's a long list of deferred associates and other lawyers looking to help out.

Read full text 

Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi: "Lawyer haters and tort reformers, this is your lucky day. We have for you not one, but two separate lists of the most ridiculous lawsuits ever filed. Even better, there is surprisingly little overlap between them. Thus, from one top-10 list and another top-11 list, we net a grand total of the 18 most ridiculous lawsuits ever.

First up is the 10 most ridiculous lawsuits as published in The Independent and originally in the Irish Independent. The authors blame it all on that notorious cup of McDonald's coffee, writing, "Now outrageous lawsuits are a fact of life no matter how farcical." Their picks:

1. The man who sued Budweiser after drinking its beer brought him no hot  

babes
2. The prisoner who sued himself for violating his own civil liberties
3. The judge's pants suit. You know the one
4. The suit by Batman, the city in Turkey, against Batman, the movie
5. The 77-year-old man who sued the 19-year-old woman who said no
6. The driver who sued the family of the bicyclist he killed for damage to his car
7. The Michael Jordan lookalike who sued Nike for making Jordan too recognizable
8. The parents who sued Oliver Stone after two thugs who watched his movie went on a crime spree
9. The man who demanded his cheating wife return the kidney he'd donated to her
10. The copyright battle over two separate recordings of silence.

Next comes the list of the 11 most ridiculous lawsuits of all time as selected by the New York Daily News. Three repeats here from above, but the others are new to the ridiculous tally:

1.      The woman suing Sacha Baron Cohen for offensively touching her at a bingo hall

2. The traffic cop who sued Victoria's Secret over an eye injury from her thong

3. Jordan lookalike v. Nike, supra

4. The man named "Jack Ass" who claimed the TV show "Jackass" defamed his good name

5. A man who sued the show "Fear Factor" for making him sick

6. A man who sued for emotional distress after finding women in a unisex bathroom

7. Beer drinker v. Budweiser, supra

8. The woman who sued Wendy's after planting a finger in her chili

9. Family v. Oliver Stone, supra

10. The suit over Sea World's failure to warn that killer whales kill

11. The woman who says Victoria Secret's bra violated her patent

Note to those who would say these cases prove the legal system needs reform: Virtually all of these ridiculous cases were thrown out of court."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Posted by Arnie Herz: "Regular readers here know that I'm a big fan of author/right-brain-champion Daniel Pink and his take on our new Conceptual Economy that places a premium on creativity in business.

Lawyers aren't known for being a creative lot. This is evidenced by the enduring nature of the billable hour over alternative fee structures, among other business practices. Some will undoubtedly say: "You can't change our stripes. Creativity is best left to other professions." But, I think this is a copout. There's a wealth of creativity to be tapped in our ranks if we can just find the right inspiration and outlets.

On the inspiration side, you can take a look at a great series of Fast Company posts on the business of creativity, including one featuring the 10 Most Creative People in Sports and one on the Top 10 Most Creative People in Health Care. Imagine what a post on the Top 10 Most Creative People in the Law would include.

On the outlet side, maybe it's about taking baby steps to tapping and expressing our creativity. Marketing is one area that's creativity-friendly. Lawyers are already venturing into this creative realm via LinkedIn; Twitter and Facebook...

Full text and active links are available at the source site listed below.

Posted by Evan Schaeffer: "I've written before about Your Witness: Lessons on Cross-Examination and Life from Great Chicago Trial Lawyers, edited by Steven F. Molo and James R. Figliulo.

One of the contributors, Peter C. John, has an article titled "Cross-Examination and Jury Ego," in which he advises lawyers to "lead but don't feed." In other words, you should aim to paint a picture for the jury which allows them to draw their own conclusion, the one you want them to reach. But you shouldn't make this conclusion too obvious, since the jury's "jury ego" requires it "to find the answer based on their own evaluation of the evidence, not yours."

If you force-feed the jury, it could be counterproductive. For example, you can demonstrate that the witness has changed his testimony time and again, but you shouldn't ask the follow-up, "Were you lying then or are you lying now?" Jurors will get the point on their own.

If you own (or can borrow) the book, check out the article. At the end, John gives some other general tips, including the following:

• "If you can score ten points in cross-examination, prioritize and only use five of them for maximum impact."
• "Never belabor your point so that witnesses can gather themselves and finally explain an answer."
• "Control the testimony by your questions, not the witness's answers, especially with expert witnesses."
• "Do not change your personality from direct unless it is an honest disbelief from the testimony or actual surprise. False reactions are obvious to the jury."

In addition to John's article, Your Witness contains another 49 articles from Chicago lawyers, plus an introduction by Scott Turow."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: The Trail Practice Tips Weblog, 11 June 2009

In the news: "You suspect an employee is leaking inside information. A computer forensic analysis reveals the employee has accessed a personal Web-based e-mail account from a company computer and that the login information has been recovered. Can you log into that account and read its e-mail content?"

The article discusses: Liability Under the Stored Communications Act,  Privacy Expectations Analysis Under the SCA, and the Dangers of Self Help.

Read full text

From the e-newsletter: "As long as you can get over any qualms about giving Google more control over your personal information than they already have, filling out a profile could be a good way to promote a legal practice and make sure that you actively participate in your online identity, rather than leaving it entirely to chance."

 Read more...

From the site: "This guide to "accurate and free" sites was compiled and annotated by Rebecca A. Martin and Sarah McHone-Chase, both librarians at Northern Illinois University.

Direct to Article

[Their] Source: C&RL News

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

From the e-newsletter: "The "Parenting and the Law" section of FindLaw's Family Law Center provides information and tips on legal topics including parental liability for children's actions, keeping your children safe, and termination of parental rights.

Read more..."

Posted by Joe Hodnicki: "In Shadow Lawyering: Nonlawyer Practice within Law Firms, [NELLCO] Paul R Tremblay (Boston College Law School) articulates a framework for assessing choices lawyers make when they delegate some tasks to nonlawyer colleagues. The framework relies on insights about lawyering judgment and risk assessment, client informed consent, and unauthorized practice of law prophylaxis. From the abstract:

Any delegation of work by a lawyer to a nonlawyer involves an exercise of the lawyer's judgment about an appropriate balance of risk and efficiency, along with an eye toward the client's informed choice about how to achieve the goals of the representation most efficiently. The prevailing unauthorized practice of law dogma prevents a client from seeking the most economical representation by only retaining a nonlawyer, but that dogma trusts lawyers to protect a client's interests. With those considerations in place, this Article shows that the profession cannot, and in fact does not, deny the lawyer any categorical options in making delegation choices, except for those involving public court appearances. Aside from sending a nonlawyer to court, a lawyer may responsibly delegate any of her lawyering activities to a nonlawyer associate, subject to the prevailing conceptions of competent representation and subject to the lawyer's retaining ultimate responsibility for the resulting work product and performance.

Some commentary and some court opinions suggest a different answer to the questions addressed here, but those authorities do not withstand careful analysis. This Article shows that a more careful reading of the commentary and the court dicta supports the framework and the thesis offered here. Nonlawyers may not independently engage in activity which equates to the practice of law, if by "independently" we mean without supervision and oversight from a lawyer. That important and uncontroversial limitation, however, is the only categorical restriction on a lawyer's discretion. A supervised nonlawyer may play a much more active and important role in a lawyer's overall representation of her client than many have claimed. For the client, that is a very good result.

Required reading for newbie law firm librarians and paralegals and, maybe, young associates."

The active link is available at the source site listed below.

Source: Law Librarian Blog, 25 June 2009

Posted by Tom Kane: "Unfortunately, too many lawyers don't enjoy either. What a shame!

I remember in David Maister's book True Professionalism where he recounts that 75% to 80% of lawyers he has surveyed merely tolerated or disliked the work they did in the past year or so. And 65% to 70% had similar reactions when asked about the client 's they had done the work for. Truly sad!

Again, I have to give credit to Larry Smith and Richard Levick of Levick Strategic Communications and their 365 Marketing Meditations: Daily Lessons for Marketing and Communications Professionals for the timing of this post. Their meditation for today states "don't work with people you don't like."

The solution: spend your marketing and business development efforts and resources seeking the legal work and clients you do enjoy. Don't waste your marketing time or dollars on the rest."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Legal Marketing Blog.com, 25 June 2009

Posted by Allison Shields: "The Busy Lawyer's Guide to Success - Essential Tips to Power Your Practice by Dan Pinnington and Reid F. Trautz is one of the ABA Law Practice Management section's newest books. This book is only 132 pages long, but it is packed with powerful insights and tips for your practice. It's small enough to fit into any lawyer's bag or briefcase and it belongs in every one.

An easy read, the book is broken up into sections and provides short, to the point statements that can be implemented easily and effectively. If you choose one section (or even one page), take the tips to heart and take action, you'll see a difference in your practice.

If you've ever attended ABA Techshow, you know that the '60 tips' sessions are among the most popular and well-attended sessions in all of Techshow. This book is like an extended version of one of those lightning-fast tips sessions. It's broken down into these essential sections:

• Client Service
• Marketing and Client Development
• Technology
• Coping with Email (it's such a pain it needs a chapter all its own)
• Making (More) Money
• Ethics & Professionalism
• Management, Operations and Staff
• Strategy and Planning

Yes, the book is short. It's written that way on purpose. The authors, busy, active lawyers themselves, know how valuable a lawyer's time is. They know you don't want a big heavy book that you aren't going to have time to read anyway. They've dispensed with long explanations and extra verbiage and distilled the book and each of their tips down to its core. The result? You get a book filled with just the 'good stuff.' You don't need to search it out - it's there on every page. For those of you that want more, they've included a Learning More section which points you in the direction of other resources on these topics.

Creating a book that's comprised just of those golden nuggets undoubtedly took an awful lot of editing. It's often easier to write something long than it is to write something short, because the short takes more editing. Your words need to be more precise. So if you're wondering whether this 'little' book is worth the 'big' price, think about how much time (which, unfortunately, for most of you still translates into billable hours) these two guys saved you by giving you only the good stuff.

Still don't believe me? Perhaps this will entice you:

·         Check out pages 25-28 for a step by step individual marketing plan that you can start working on today.

·         To find out which are your highest and lowest value clients, use the client report card found on Page 65.

·         Learn how to conduct productive meetings by incorporating tips from pages 94-96 and 102-105.

You can get your copy of the book through the ABA ($69.95 for non-members, $44.95 for LPM members), or you can pre-order it from Amazon.com for $44.07, but it isn't available yet.

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Legal Ease Blog, 25 June 2009

From the blog: "Here is an interesting article for those of you who may be hitting the golf course this summer. A New York state appellate court decided that a golfer does not have a legal duty to yell "fore" before taking a shot, because the risk of a misdirected shot is an inherent part of the game. We might suggest that if you're playing with anyone from your summer job, you might go ahead and yell "fore" anyways...just to be safe.

From Law.com

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Moritz Legal Information Blog, 24 June 2009

From the blog: "The Undertraining of Lawyers and Its Effect on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in the Legal Profession
Source: New York University Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

The undertraining of law students documented in a century's worth of critiques of legal education, most recently by the Carnegie Foundation, has different and much more detrimental consequences for the post-J.D. careers of women and minority attorneys. However, studies of their early careers focus primarily on problems with law-firm mentoring and pay little, if any, attention to how the earlier training that these lawyers received (or failed to be given) in law school might have contributed to the later career obstacles they face. Conversely, studies of the ways that law schools undertrain law students pay little or no attention to how the deficiencies in the current model of law school education may disproportionately disadvantage women and minority law students later in their careers. This article examines an emerging literature, narratives of professionalization by women attorneys of color, and puts those narratives into the dual context of critiques of legal education (exemplified by the Carnegie Report) and critiques of law-firm practice (exemplified by the recent A.B.A. study "Visible Invisibility: Women of Color in Law Firms") in order to demonstrate how law schools contribute to the career difficulties faced by women and minority attorneys. Two types of undertraining occur: 1) formal curricular undertraining; 2) self-undertraining, caused by the disengagement produced by law school culture. Only by reforming the curriculum and culture of legal education can law schools live up to the democratic civic mission they espouse as proponents of equal opportunity.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 316 KB)

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Docuticker, 13 June 2009

Posted by Dennis Kennedy: "With the help of my St. Louis blogging pals, Matt Homann, George Lenard and Evan Schaeffer, I recently put together a roundtable article on "blogging for lawyers" for the St. Louis Lawyer magazine. The article is now out in print, but I believe it's only available in print to members of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis in its final form. I liked the way the article turned out so much, and the information in it is so good, that I couldn't stand the idea that the article wasn't widely available. So, I dug up our unedited draft of the article and post it below. As longtime law-related bloggers know, St. Louis has long been referred to as "Blawg City USA," and this is the first time Matt, George, Evan and I have shared in one place our recollections, observations and practical pointers about blogging. Hope you enjoy reading the article as much as we enjoyed writing it. Let us know what you think about the article.

A Blogging Guide for St. Louis Lawyers

Having a website has been a requirement for lawyers and law firms for many years. As people continue to migrate to the Internet as the place to find information, the return on investment from advertising in traditional print outlets for legal marketing, especially in the yellow pages, has been called into question. There's probably not a lawyer reading this article who hasn't been told recently that he or she should have a blog. Does a blog really make sense for you or your firm?

St. Louis is the home of four of the earliest and best-known lawyer bloggers. We brought them together to get their insights and reflections on blogging for lawyers in 2009.

In this article, you'll hear about blogging from Matt Homann (The NonBillable Hour), Dennis Kennedy (DennisKennedy.Blog), George Lenard (George's Employment Blawg), and Evan Schaeffer (Trial Practice Tips and The Legal Underground), who have combined for more than 20 years of blogging experience.

Questions include:

1. When and why did you start blogging?...

2. What is a blog?...

3. Why should a lawyer have a blog today?...

4. What do you write and how do you decide what to write about?...

5. Is it still a good time to start a blog?...

6. How would someone get started in blogging?...

7. What are the best benefits of blogging?...

8. How do the ethical rules affect blogging?...

9. Are there "best ethical practices" for lawyers who blog?...

10. What is the future of blogging?...

Full text and active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: DennisKennedy.com, 23 June 2009

Posted by Rick Borstein: "If you haven't tried clicking on the HUGE movie button on my full blog page, then you are missing out on some free Acrobat training.

These short movies play back via Adobe Flash and are only one to five minutes in length.

Today, I posted four new training movies:

• Find and Search: Understanding the differences
  Simple Find commands and full Search offer different capabilities. See how to search multiple PDF files
• Creating a Full-Text Index for faster searching
  Learn how to create a full-text index to search across many PDFs in multiple directories
• Accelerating Search in a PDF Portfolio for faster searching
  Create a full-text index which "lives" inside a PDF Portfolio to accelerate search
• Making Edits to PDFs with the Touchup Text Tool
  Change text on both PDF Normal (e.g. converted from an electronic source) and Scanned PDF document

If you are interested, you can learn a bit about my process for creating the movies using Adobe Captivate in my full article.

More...

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Acrobat for Legal Professionals, 21 June 2009

Posted by Nerino Petro: "I've posted before about CrossLoop as a potential IT solution and remote support tool for smaller firms in Cover Your Assets: CrossLoop - Affordable IT Support for Small Practices. CrossLoop provides a free screen sharing utility that allows you share your desktop with a friend. Or you can use it to work on someone else's system. You can also connect with one of the computer support people who offer their services for a fee on CroossLoop (CrossLoop refers to them as Helpers). However, at that time, CrossLoop was only available for the PC, not the Mac. That is no longer true with the release of CrossLoop for the Mac which you can download from the CrossLoop site here.

CrossLoop lists the Requirements as:

OSX 10.4 (Tiger) or later

an Intel processor

20MB disk space and 500MB of RAM.

One caveat though: PowerPC Mac users need not apply - it won't run on them. 

You can read more on the CrossLoop blog post CrossLoop Mac Gets a Lot of Love .. and Hugs which also inlcudes links to stories picked up by the NYT, Washington Post, LifeHacker, TechCrunch and other major outlets.

With CrossLoop available for both the PC and Mac, you now have an easy to use cross platform support program that's free, but which can also help you get professional assitance if you need it."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Nerino Petro's Compujurist, 27 May 2009

Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi: "Anyone who uses PACER knows that it has failed to keep pace with the Web 2.0 world. Its technology is outmoded and so is its cost structure. Now, some fed-up law librarians have launched a petition drive to ask the federal courts to enhance the system's authenticity, usability and availability.

PACER -- Public Access to Court Electronic Records -- is the system operated by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to provide online access to case and docket information from the federal appellate, district and bankruptcy courts. To use it, one must register and set up a billing account. The billing account is required because the courts charge for access to these documents, at the rate of 8 cents per page. Even if you search PACER and find no matches for your query, you are charged 8 cents to view the page that tells you that.

The petition to improve PACER is the work of Erika V. Wayne, deputy law library director at Stanford Law School, and her law librarian colleagues. It is modest in its requests, asking the court to make three enhancements:

1. Digitally sign document put into PACER so they can be verified
2. Make it more accessible by lowering its cost and improving its Web interface
3. Provide free PACER access to depository libraries

Those who sign the petition are invited to add comments. At the blog Legal Research Plus, Wayne highlights some of these and you can read all of them at the petition site.

One who signed the petition is Carl Malamud, who has taken a different path around PACER's problems by launching his own PACER recycling site. The idea behind it is to encourage PACER users to recycle the documents they retrieve by uploading them to Malamud's site, where he hopes to build a significant database of PACER documents available to the public free of charge."

    The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Legal Blog Watch, 23 June 2009

Posted by Carolyn Elefant: "OK, so I understand that a company like Thomson Reuters doesn't "get" the concept of free.  After all, Westlaw, one of Thomson Reuters' flagship legal products costs a pretty penny.  Even so, it's one thing to charge for a product that delivers value, as Westlaw undeniably does.  It's quite another to extract payment for materials that are either readily available for free or worse, are completely inaccurate.  Yet that's what exactly what Findlaw, a Thomson Reuters company is doing to solo and small law firms.

Like many other commercial legal product providers, Findlaw is jumping aboard the solo express, scrambling to offer products and services to this previously overlooked segment of the legal population now that solo is the new Soho.  Now, even though I've been serving solo and small firms at My Shingle for six and a half years, I don't take resent the johnny-come-lately's, particularly if they can offer useful content that I can't provide.  And on the surface, Findlaw's recently upgraded Law Firm Business Center seemed to do just that, with some informative (albeit extremely basic) videos on topics like law firm structure or fee agreements as well as a collection of articles (albeit outdated and sparse) on practice management issues. 

I grew excited when I came across a link to Attorney Forms and what appeared to be a searchable data base of forms that lawyers can use in starting a practice.  So I began playing poking around and to my horror, I discovered that (1) Findlaw is charging for the same forms that are available at MyShingle FOR FREE and (2) many of the forms that Findlaw holds out as "official forms" for a jurisdiction are substantially different from the FREE forms which the jurisdiction provides and which are also accessible at no charge through MyShingle.

For example, I decided to take a look at adoption forms for California.  While the site allows for a free on-screen preview of the forms, you need to pay $12.95 to download a usable version.  However, you can access those same adoption forms for free directly from the California court site, which in turn is directly accessible from MyShingle's Soloformania.  Moreover, by visiting the court website directly through Soloformania instead of downloading the forms, you're assured of getting the most up to date version.

The Findlaw site is even more pathetic when it comes to retainer agreements, engagement letters or other forms for running a practice. As most lawyers know, the provisions required in retainer agreements are often state specific.  Many states have "magic language" that require lawyers to spell out certain matters to clients in contingency cases or other requirements.  For example, compare the sample engagement letter for Missouri that Findlaw is selling for $12.95 with the retainer letter sample that is available FREE from the Missouri bar and accessible through MyShingle.com at our Bars Reviewed (under Missouri, practice resources).  Now granted, the Bars Reviewed links to just 10 or 12 bars that have sample agreements on line, but the agreements are free and far more robust than anything on sale at Findlaw.

We're entering a precarious time when charlatans, opportunists and even established organizations that never gave solos a passing glance are angling for a piece of this growing market.  Findlaw isn't the first company to try to prey on solos and small firms with a garbage site masquerading as content and it won't be the last.  Caveat solos." 

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Posted by Jim Hassett: "I rarely read newsletters on weekdays.  But I could not resist reading the June 10 edition of Rain Today when I saw the headline:  "What to Say When Your Clients Ask for Lower Fees."

Rain Today is written for lawyers and other professional service providers, and the lead article -- "You Can't Back Down When Your Back Is Against the Wall" -- began with these words:  "One of the most consistent questions I'm asked... is, 'What do I say when they want a reduction in fee?'... You say, 'No.'"

The author -- consultant Alan Weiss -- goes on to explain that reducing fees is usually a mistake and that people who consider doing this often suffer from underlying doubts, including:  "Poor self-esteem: who am I to ask for this much?"

When it comes to lawyers, I think this is bad advice.  If you asked a thousand people who work inside law firms to list their employers' personality flaws, I don't think a single one would accuse the average attorney of poor self-esteem.  And we are talking about a profession that has shown little reluctance to ask for more.   Last December, with the economy deep underwater, the American Lawyer reported in its annual survey of law firm leaders that 97% of AmLaw 200 firms planned to increase their rates in 2009.

Generally speaking, I try to follow Dale Carnegie's advice in How to Win Friends and Influence People:  "The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it."  And I certainly don't want to pick a fight with Alan.  I've respected his work for many years, and often consult his website for its excellent advice.  I even think the concept of standing firm on price is often right.  But for lawyers in this economy, it can be downright dangerous. This is the wrong time for lawyers to take a hard line on fees.

Many lawyers recognize how serious the price pressure is, and are already cutting their rates.  But some don't, and this advice could cause them to lose business.

The underlying economics remind me of the housing market.  A few years ago, I loved tracking the price of my home, as it went up and up, and then up some more.  But if I tried to sell it today for the peak price, no one would buy.

In the news: "Attorneys Frank Natoli and Moshe Lapin launched their new law firm in March 2008, just six months before the economy began its free fall. The timing proved something of a boon because of the firm's niche: low-cost legal services for entrepreneurs launching new business ventures. Natoli credits the firm's success to its business model, which includes offering unbundled, flat-fee basic services geared toward new business owners. Following a virtual law firm model also means 80 percent of the firm's revenue is profit."

Read full text

Posted by Tom Kane: "Entertaining clients and referral sources will not, by itself, result in new client work or a new matter. However, taking a client out to a ballgame or to the opera can enhance a relationship and help build a friendship. It can also help maintain long-term clients and referrals.

As I was searching for a blog idea, I ran across yesterday's "meditation" by Richard S. Levick and Larry Smith of Levick Strategic Communications from their little handbook entitled 365 Marketing Meditations: Daily Lessons For Marketing & Communications Professionals. It reads:

"Do not count on entertaining clients as a way to get their business. That is only a first step. Some executives go out of their way not to hire people who take them to ballgames."

I have no personal knowledge that executives would resent being entertained, but I can see that it is possible, without a pre-existing relationship of some sort, that such an invitation may be taken the wrong way. And I'm not sure that entertaining is necessarily the "first" step, when in fact it could be the 10th; but, the overall message is valid.

We need to keep in mind that we are in the relationship building business, and that entertaining is just one tool in developing business from clients and referral sources. But standing alone, it isn't enough."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Posted by Sabrina I. Pacifici: "Criminal Justice Surveys and Public Opinion Polls: Ken Strutin's article examines key sources for surveys and public polling concerning the criminal justice system. In addition to overview studies about the application of surveys to criminal justice, the selected topics include: crime, criminal histories, death penalty, public defense, sentencing, sex offenses, treatment, and reentry."

The active link is available at the source site listed below.

In the news: "Despite the bench's mounting frustration with the senseless, slipshod way keyword search is conducted in e-discovery, lawyers still don't know how to fashion effective, defensible queries. Until better judicial guidance emerges, follow EDD Special Master Craig Ball's step-by-step guide."

Read full text

Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire. 24 June 2009. Copyright 2008.  ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Subscribe <http://store.law.com/registration/register.asp?subscribeto=nw>.

From the blog: "The Ohio Supreme Court is seeking comments until July 21st on new and proposed revisions to various probate forms. According to the Court's press release, the new forms would address adoptions, name changes, and incapacitated adults. Click here to read the proposed changes to corresponding rules and take a sneak peak at the forms. Click here to link to Cuyahoga County Probate Court's forms page." 

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Posted by Ed Poll: "In a decision this week, the US Supreme Court decided to change precedent. And who said "conservative" justices don't make law, are not "activists"? This decision is one of those based on ideological lines.

The Court in a 5-4 decision said that the burden of proving age discrimination lies solely with the plaintiff. In previous cases, the plaintiff merely had to prove that age was a factor ... and then the company had to show that there were legitimate reasons for the termination. How, now, will plaintiffs be able to show that age was the primary factor? Afer all, the plaintiff was not in the room when the decision to terminate him/her was made."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: LawBizBlog, 20 June 2009

Posted by Jeff Beard: "I'm honored that ILTA asked me to contribute a white paper on best practices for legal holds.  It's a topic near and dear to my heart, as I advise companies seeking to implement more effective hold policies and procedures.  The legal hold process is a critical stage in eDiscovery.  Implementing and executing a well-designed legal hold process can significantly reduce the risks and costs associated with eDiscovery and other compliance requirements.

Crafting, adopting and implementing legal hold best practices often raises the following questions:

• When is our legal obligation to preserve information triggered?
• Where is all of our data relating to this matter?
• How should we notify people of the need to preserve their information?
• Who needs to be notified?
• How much or how little information do we need to preserve?
• How can we best preserve and collect the data to meet our legal obligation?
• When should we rely upon custodian self-selection of data to preserve, and when is it more appropriate to follow a different procedure?
• When can we dispose of the information preserved subject to the legal hold?

You can download a PDF reprint here at LTG, which answers these increasingly important questions along with examples from recent key eDiscovery case decisions.

I also recommend downloading and reading the full white paper collection, made possible by the combined efforts of ILTA's Litigation Support, Records Management and Law Department Peer Groups.  There are a number of great contributions on the subject which many should find quite helpful:

Litigation Support: Document Forensics and Legal Holds
Articles included in this white paper:
- Overcoming Data Encryption for Forensic Imaging and Collections
- When is Full-Blown Forensic Collection Necessary?
- When "Deleted" Doesn't Mean "Gone"
- Disaster Recovery or Discovery Disaster?
- Legal Hold and Subpoena Compliance Coordination
- Best Practices for Legal Hold Processes
- The Effects of Litigation Holds on the Corporate Lawyer

I frequently hear that what keeps GC's and AGC's awake at night is their legal hold preservation and collection process, or lack thereof along with the fear of sanctions for spoliation and other discovery violations.  If your organization has issues with its legal hold and other discovery processes or you'd like to know how you can improve their repeatability and defensibility while reducing cost and risk, please contact me via either the e-mail link on this blog or the e-mail address in the white paper.  I'd be happy to discuss."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

In the news: "Starting this fall, Howrey will begin selling recruits on a new, two-year "apprentice" program. In their first year, associates will take classes on legal writing and research and will work on pro bono projects. In the second year, they'll be embedded at client sites for several months at a reduced billing rate and continue with classes on litigation skills. While associates will be paid less in their first two years, managing partner Robert Ruyak said the new approach is not a way to save the firm money."

Read full text

Posted by Larry Bodine: "Carolyn Elefant makes a great point on Nolo's Legal Marketing Blog that you need to pay attention to your Wikipedia entry.  Not sure if you have one? You better check.  I looked up my own name and was surprised.

A Wikipedia entry can help your law firm generate new business. "If you're like most lawyers, you probably use Wikipedia for a variety of purposes.  Some of you may be avid enough users that you may have even registered for a Wikipedia account and contributed to some of the entries.  But chances are, you never considered creating a Wikipedia page for yourself or your law firm," Carolyn writes. 

Most major law firms already maintain pages on Wikipedia.  What's more, the
UK Law Society points out, Wikipedia has enormous reach:

Wikipedia is one of the largest reference websites -- 684 million visitors yearly. For a sniff of its power, whether you like it or not, cogitate on this snippet from the New York Times 'Bits' technology blog on 30 March, entitled 'Microsoft Encarta Dies After Long Battle With Wikipedia': 'Microsoft delivered the coup de grâce Monday to its dying Encarta encyclopedia, acknowledging what everyone else realized long ago: it just couldn't compete with Wikipedia... In January, Wikipedia got 97% of the visits that web surfers in the United States made to online encyclopedias, according to the internet ratings service Hitwise. Encarta was second, with 1.27%.' That's how powerful Wikipedia is.

"With that kind of traffic, a listing on Wikipedia could theoretically bolster a firm's search engine visibility.  So I decided to test my theory and ran a couple of searches on some of the law firms listed in Wikipedia.  Sure enough, the firms' Wikipedia listings came up within the top five to ten front page search results on Google," she writes.

"Many large firms with long histories describe the firm's origins and provide bios of firm founders and well known alumni.  A smaller firm might also link to reported cases or cross reference practice areas described on Wikipedia.  For example, a bankruptcy lawyer could cross link to the entry on Bankruptcy in Wikipedia, thus providing a good resource for clients with basic questions," she writes.

"Ultimately, I don't think that Wikipedia is an indispensable component of a lawyer marketing portfolio," she says. "But for lawyers looking for something different or who can devise a unique use for Wikipedia, it might be a marketing tool worthy of further consideration."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Posted by Carolyn Elefant: "OK, so I realize that most of you are probably coveting a Kindle, Amazon.com's digital book device. But you haven't yet figured out how to justify its cost as a business expense when you're planning on using it to read novels on the beach, right?

Thankfully, Justin Rebello of the Wisconsin Law Journal gives you five ways that you can use the Kindle for your law office. First, the Kindle can be used to read deposition transcripts and make notes on the screen via an online content manager. Second, lawyers can load documents onto the Kindle using a digital text self-publishing tool and take them home for review. Third, the Kindle's digital text platform allows attorneys to upload, format and sell books at the Kindle Store -- which can help you to establish yourself as an expert or attract clients through education-based marketing. Fourth, the Kindle lets you catch up on blogs while you're out of the office because you can download the blog content to the Kindle for review. And finally, while the Kindle isn't cheap -- $359 for the current version and $489 for the next upgrade -- in the long run, you can save money on printing costs by converting Web versions of magazines and newspapers for the Kindle.

Are you using a Kindle in your law practice yet?"

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

From the site: "Do the iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre have what it takes to topple Blackberry as a lawyer's smartphone?  On this edition of the Kennedy-Mighell Report, co-hosts, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell take a look at all three devices - hardware, software, functionalities and services - to compare.   In the Q & A segment, Dennis and Tom will answer an audience question and wrap up with Parting Shots, leaving you with lasting tips and observations.  After you listen, be sure to check out Tom & Dennis' co-blog and book by the same name, The Lawyers Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies.

Podcast: Play on page | Play in new window | Download

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

In the news: "Apps -- those easy-to-download, seamlessly installed, usually cheap add-ons available at Apple's App Store -- are a powerful way to customize an iPhone (or iPod Touch) to do just the things you want it to. Here are some of Alan Cohen's favorite apps: some useful, some just plain fun."

Read full text

Posted by Carolyn Elefant: "Where a law firm allows an associate to handle a matter pro bono through a legal aid organization, does the firm retain an obligation to supervise the associate? Yes, said Acting Supreme Court Justice Ellen Gesmer in a domestic relations dispute where advice provided to a pro bono client by a Skadden staff attorney was so rife with errors that it justified voiding the ensuing settlement stipulation. The New York Law Journal covers the story.

Lisa Poursine, a staff attorney for Skadden volunteered through the firm's pro bono program to handle a case for inMotion, a non-profit legal group that assists low-income women in matrimonial, family and immigration law cases. Poursine inaccurately advised the client that she her divorce would go smoothly if the client signed a settlement agreement which made it more difficult for the client to relocate to another state as she hoped. Even worse, the settlement agreement forced the client to waive her rights to future claims for equitable distribution. The Poursine explained to the client that without the settlement agreement, the case would be constested and that Poursine lacked the experience or resources to handle a contested matter. 

The client sought to vacate the settlement agreement, testifying that Poursine never explained the equitable distribution waiver provisions or that the settlement would make it more difficult for the client to relocate. The Judge found that Poursine's advice was inaccurate and confusing, and resulted from lack of "appropriate training and supervision." Accordingly, she vacated the settlement.

Skadden says that it accords the same standard of care to pro bono clients as paying clients and now has an adequate system in place to assure that lawyers handling pro bono matters are properly supervised. Even so, this case is likely to make law firms with displaced associates think twice about dispatching them to legal aid organizations if the firm must retain a supervisory role." 

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

From the blog: "For those of you working as a Summer Associate, here are some helpful reminders that may just be the key for getting that coveted permanent offer.

From Ross-Blakley Law Library Blog"

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Moritz Legal Information Blog, 18 June 2009

From the site: "When an 88-year old white supremacist walked into the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC opening fire, reaction was swift to question if this tragedy could have been prevented. And with those questions comes the examination of First Amendment rights. Lawyer2Lawyer co-hosts J. Craig Williams and Bob Ambrogi welcome  Attorney Brian Cuban, a Dallas Attorney working for Mark Cuban Companies, Attorney Steve Freeman, Director of Legal Affairs for the Anti-Defamation League and renowned trial lawyer and First Amendment lawyer, Attorney Martin Garbus, to discuss First Amendment rights - the balance between protecting free speech for the many and restricting hate speech for the few.

Podcast: Play on page | Play in new window | Download"

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Marketing Yourself with Webinars

Posted by Sabrina I. Pacifici: "Marketing Yourself with Webinars - Attorney Wells H. Anderson recommends presenting periodic webinars as an effective, direct and efficient technique to attract new clients and professionals who refer business to you."

Get the link here.

Review of HTC Magic (G2) vs iPhone 3G (and 3G S)

Posted by Sabrina I. Pacifici: "Review of HTC Magic (G2) vs iPhone 3G (and 3G S): Techie expert extraordinaire Nicholas Moline compares the upcoming T-Mobile G2 (HTC Magic) with the iPhone 3G, which has the new iPhone 3.0 Software. Nick ran detailed and thorough tests of each Smartphone's usability and functionality, and he highlights the respective range of features, including bar code readers, removable memory, cameras, GPS, touchscreens, email, web access, and lots more. He also shares his thoughts about which gadget delivers the best applications for users."

Get the link here.

Source for both: beSpacific - Accurate, focused law and technology news by Sabrina I. Pacifici. 21 June 2009. Copyright ©2002-2008 BeSpacific LLC. All Rights Reserved. Subscribe <http://www.bespacific.com/mt/subscribe.html>. 

It's Time to Rise and Market
In the news: " It's a difficult time to be a law firm associate or new lawyer, so here is a networking road map to help guide you to success, from consultant Stacy West Clark. Included among her tips is the reminder to be thoughtful about how you treat your contacts and not to keep them at an impersonal distance. Clark uses a quote from Maya Angelou to demonstrate how important this step can be: "People will forget what you say, they will forget what you do, but they never will forget how you make them feel."

Read full text

At Trial, Don't Leave Technology Behind
In the news: "As you jump on the elevator with binders, records and writing boards in one hand and your entire case on a pull cart, you wonder: "Do I have everything I need for trial?" If it were 1999, the answer would be yes. In 2009, no, you're missing software like InData TrialDirector."

Read full text

Should Twittering Jurors Know Better?
In the news: "While the technological revolution may have enabled a lofty goal of "democratizing" ideas, as with the online mobilization of protests over Iran's elections, there are times and places where access to information must remain steadfastly controlled. Such times are jury trials and such places are courtrooms. It is wrong, indeed it violates a defendant's constitutional rights, to allow jurors to do their own research to uncover "the whole truth," write Joel Cohen and Katherine Helm."

 
Read full text 

In-House Counsel Preparing for New Emissions Regulations
In the news: "In April the Environmental Protection Agency started a process that will allow it to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles, and it's expected to soon do the same for emissions from factories, power plants and other industrial facilities. But before any new regulatory scheme becomes official, businesses need to determine how their operations might be affected. So in-house lawyers are working closely with engineers and consultants to assess the size and scope of their companies' emissions."

 
Read full text

Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire. 22 June 2009. Copyright 2008.  ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Subscribe <http://store.law.com/registration/register.asp?subscribeto=nw>.

From the e-newsletter: "The International Criminal Court (ICC) website can be viewed in French or English, and it should be noted that it is not part of the United Nations system. The "About the Court" link on the left hand side of the page is especially useful to provide the history of the founding of the court, as well as the purpose behind its founding. On the homepage are News and Highlights, as well as links to streaming video of the proceedings in two different courtrooms, in French or English and with a 30-minute delay. Several links underneath the video links provide the "Court Schedule", "Decisions", "Documents" and "Press Releases". On the left hand side of the page is a link to "Legal texts and tools", which includes the Official Journal of the ICC. The Journal contains the governing statute, which is the "Rome Statute", as well as "Rules of Procedure and Evidence" and the "Elements of Crimes". The Legal Tools comprise an impressive 25,000 documents and legal commentaries, 13 collections and databases, and four reference tools, all on international criminal law and justice. The "Recruitment" link on the left hand side of the page should interest any visitors looking for a unique job or internship opportunity in the area of international criminal law. [KMG]"

From the e-newsletter: "Collaborating on documents is a huge part of being a lawyer. Revision after revision is made by a constantly expanding circle of reviewers, all of whom work on their own copies of the document then circulate the file to personal computers, laptops and mobile devices. In all of that, it's easy to lose track of which changes have been accepted and which iteration of the document constitutes the final version.

Read more...

Related Resources
• Find a Legal Service Provider"

Posted by Jim Calloway: "Effectively Staffing Your Law Firm" was just released by the ABA General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Division. It addresses an important area of law firm management from the smaller firm perspective. I made a modest contribution to the book with a chapter on "Care and Feeding of the Law Office Staff." You can see the table of contents and read the first chapter here. 

"In only ten television seasons, Murphy Brown went through some ninety-three secretaries. L.A. Law's McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak had Benny Stulwitz, the mentally challenged office worker. Real-life California lawyer Edward L. Masry had Erin Brockovich. And, of course, Perry Mason had Della Street. So, who's helping you get the work done?

"Every lawyer in a solo or small firm likes to think that only those who've taken the oath and been admitted to the bar are at the helm, but the reality is that the engine driving the office is the staff." --- jennifer j. rose, Editor, *Effectively Staffing Your Law Firm*"

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog, 18 June 2009

Posted by Allison Shields: "This is the final post in my series on tips from the "Get a Life" conference, sponsored by the Total Practice Management Association - this time on hiring.

Tim Ryan from Total PMA gave one of the most engaging and effective presentations from the conference, on a topic that directly affects both the bottom line and the quality of life at law firms - hiring. Payroll is usually a firm's biggest expense, and poor hiring decisions impact morale, productivity, client relations - and just about everything else in the firm.

Many lawyers lament that it's hard to find good people. What kind of staff do you have? If they left, would you be in trouble, or would you breathe a sigh of relief?

Ryan made a great point during his presentation about the reason why many law firms are not successful when it comes to hiring: they hire using a job description, rather than a people description. Ryan recommended taking a look at your best employees (the ones he calls your 'rock star' employees). Identify the behavior, thinking and attitudes that make them great. Use that information to create a blueprint for future hires.

How prepared are you when interviewing staff for a position? Are you reviewing the resume five minutes before the candidate arrives? If you are, you need to re-think your hiring process.

Here are some of Ryan's general tips about hiring:

[For his tips please go to the source site listed below]

Ryan also reminds us that in addition to hiring the right people, sometimes you have to fire the wrong people. If you continue to allow 'bad' employees to remain, what does it say to the people who matter - your "rock stars"?

Hire slowly, fire quickly. But fire people in a way that allows them to keep their dignity."

Full text and active links are available at the source site listed below.

Posted by Carolyn Elefant: "This past week, both Philadelphia-based Saul, Ewing and Chicago-based Kirkland & Ellis announced alternative fee arrangements (described here and here) for their respective clients. So does that mean that lawyers at those firms can toss their time sheets out the window, or clear those electronic billing programs off their hard drive? Maybe not. As discussed below, while proponents of alternative fees contend that they make time sheets irrelevant, others believe that firms still need to keep track of hours spent either to ascertain profitability or justify bills to clients.

Back in February 2008, Tom Kane endorsed alternative billing at Legal Marketing Blog, (specifically, the Jay Shepherd approach), but remarked that it seems foolhardy not to keep time records, if only to evaluate profitability of fees and levels of costs. Ron Baker, alternative-fee guru and founder of Verasage Institute heartily disagreed, asserting that many firms that employ alternative fees operate without time sheets. Miller explains that these firms know their costs up front, so they don't need to review them after the fact by looking over a time sheet. Instead of time sheets, Baker endorses fixed-price agreements and change orders, chief value offers and price-lead costing. 

But what if clients don't go for that approach -- and insist on viewing a law firm's time sheets? That's the concern that Rees Morrison raises today at the Law Firm Department Management Blog. Morrison believes that corporate counsel has the right to request timekeeping records even where a firm works on a pre-agreed, set fee arrangement. Morrison addresses both sides of the records issue from the client's perspective.

If the law department decides that a fee for a service is acceptable, why should the law department be entitled to know how the sausage was made? If a law firm manages to make a big profit on the representation, having taken a risk on a set fee, that's no client's concern. Also, part of the trade-off by a law firm for agreeing to a fixed fee is to be able to eliminate the hassle of detailed bills.

Still, if I were a general counsel, I would not want a firm to beseech me for additional money if a matter demands more work than they thought when they agreed to the fee if that firm has squirreled away some of my payments on very profitable matters. That situation assumes a portfolio of matters being handled by the firm. Additionally, I would want to know the economics of the services provided so that I can use that information if I need to find a replacement firm.

I understand Baker's point that timesheets are necessary or particularly meaningful for analyzing profitability. But if clients want to see a time sheet, are we, as attorneys obligated to provide one if a fee has been agreed to in advance? What's your view?"

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Posted by Tom Kane: "Every lawyer should have a good referral system in place, since at least 71% of new work comes from referrals, as mentioned in an earlier post. As that post noted, "giving vs. getting" is a very important element of any system. And every lawyer should check to insure his/her outgoing referral - whether to another lawyer, accountant, banker, etc. - was satisfactory to those being referred.

Bob Weiss has an item in the current issue of ABA's Law Practice Today that points out the importance of checking on referrals you make to assure that the person was well served. A bad referral is worse than no referral. Bob suggests:

"Calling the person you referred soon after making the referral. Make sure the call was taken, or that the email sent or voice mail left was responded to timely. Eventually, find out how well the matter was handled, if the results attained were satisfactory and if the fees charged were fair."

Then, provide feedback to the professional involved. He also recommends, when making a referral, to provide "three names," so the client can make up their own mind after talking with each. Of course, let each referral contact know that you gave their name to a client." 

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

In the news: "If you want to increase your network, boost your productivity and develop your book of business, consultant Neen James says you can achieve those goals by getting familiar with LinkedIn and using it in your everyday interactions with colleagues and clients. James provides some productivity tips to get the most out of LinkedIn. For instance, she notes you can use LinkedIn as a research tool by posing a question to selected people in your network, which she says works well because it allows for a quick response."

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Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire. 19 June 2009. Copyright 2008.  ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Subscribe <http://store.law.com/registration/register.asp?subscribeto=nw>.

In the news: "When you are away from the office, if you can't be without the resources on your computer, you can either take it with you or access it remotely via software. Law.com's Legal Technology editor Sean Doherty reviews I'm InTouch from a remote location to test how well it keeps you connected."

The article discusses: subscription models, how to get started, "Secure Key" and "Secure PC."

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Posted by StephanieWestAllen: "We are still more than 6 months away from the 10th annual Create a Great Funeral Day but here's a video of which I just became aware on the topic of planning your end-of-life event. Click to play Stairway to Heaven? Planning Your Own Final Sendoff (219 Magazine).

In it, you will see still another online alternative to my Creating Your Own Funeral or Memorial Service: A Workbook. So many resources available today for planning your event. Back when I wrote my workbook, many people thought me very odd. I got more than a few raised eyebrows."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

From the e-newsletter:"'Defamation' involves harm to a person's reputation. 'Libel' and 'slander' are two different forms of defamation. FindLaw's Accident & Injury Center contains in-depth information on these distinct types of personal injury cases.

Read more..."

Posted By Tom Kane: "Some may think that I have schizophrenic tendencies for saying "Surprise Your Clients!" in one recent post and "Clients Abhor Surprises" in an earlier one. Well, let me make this perfectly clear. That doesn't prove a thing. Although it does, it doesn't. Oops.

In a recent article by Amy Miller in The AmLaw Daily a number of In-house counsel, who attended E. I. du Pont de Nemour's recent legal network meeting, made it clear that it is "okay to spoil the ending" and "to be boring." In other words, the message from "In-House Lawyers to Outside Counsel: No Surprises, Please." 

They pointed out that predictability, "maybe even more than alternative-billing arrangements," is what they want. Additionally, they:

• Don't want their lawyers to be strangers,
• "Be budget friendly," and
• Look for early resolutions to their cases.  

Nonetheless, I would venture to say that in-house counsel would not mind pleasant surprises, such as outside lawyers that beat their own deadlines, understood their business, seek feedback and let clients determine the value of a matter. Those are just some of the good surprises that were mentioned in my post "Surprise Your Clients!" In fact, if outside lawyers were to make those "surprises" routine, then they wouldn't really be surprises and my schizophrenia would disappear. That's a good.

The important point is to avoid bad surprises and emphasize the good ones in your client relationships."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

In the news: "At a conference organized by DuPont aimed at helping outside counsel increase referrals -- to each other and to firms outside their network -- in-house counsel said what they want these days, maybe even more than alternative billing arrangements, is predictability from their outside counsel. Discouraging surprises wasn't the only piece of advice. Other tips included: Don't be a stranger. Be budget-friendly. Find early settlement and early dispute-resolution opportunities. And "don't get fat and happy."

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Posted by Allison Shields: "Marketing is more important now than ever. The people who are bringing in business are the ones who have integrated marketing into their practice on a daily basis. But for lawyers, that isn't always easy, and it doesn't always come naturally. 

My colleague Paula Black is launching her latest book: "The Little Black Book: A Lawyer's Guide To Creating A Marketing Habit in 21 Days." Designed to help lawyers integrate marketing into their daily lives, this book is quick, easy and inspirational, and it will give you easy ways to make marketing a habit in your practice.

...A compilation of advice from some of the most sought-after experts in the legal arena, "The Smart Lawyer's Toolkit" gives you instant admittance to an incredible collection of tips and information.

(Experts include: Larry Bodine, Bruce MacEwen, Arnie Herz, Ed Poll, Tom Kane, Gerry Riskin, Patrick Lamb, Patrick J. McKenna, Paramjit Mahli, Ben Glass, Alexis Martin Neely, and more. There's even a resource included from me - and it's one of the ones my clients like best.)"

Full text and the active link are available at the source site listed below.

Posted by Patrick J. Lamb: "My great thanks to Adrian Dayton, the person behind Marketing Strategy And The Law--Social Media Edition.  I was honored to be Adrian's guest on Weekly Voir Dire, a weekly podcast.  The interview in available here.  I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion with Adrian.  Some of the discussion focuses on the billable hour, but also on the growing importance of social media, even to an old guy like me.  Thanks so much, Adrian (great website, by the way)." 

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

From the site: "Is the Workers' Compensation system really there to protect us if we are injured on the job?  On this Workers' Comp Matters program, host Attorney Alan S. Pierce welcomes Dr. Patrice Woeppel to take an inside look at the ins and outs of the workers' compensation system and discuss her new book, Depraved Indifference: the Workers' Compensation System.

Podcast: Play on page | Play in new window | Download

Related Podcasts

• May 12, 2008 -- Organized Labor & Workers Comp
• April 1, 2008 -- Workers Comp & the AMA Guides 6th Edition

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Legal Talk Network, 16 June 2009

Law Practice Today's June 2009 issue focuses on working remotely. Features include:

Mobile Technology: Tools for Practicing Law from Wherever You Want to Be

By Tom Mighell - From BlackBerrys to netbooks, here are some tips to help you choose the mobile devices right for you.

Is It Time for Your Firm to Reconsider Remote Access?

By Allison C. Shields - Many attorneys find that working remotely provides a better work/life balance, and here are more reasons to consider it for your office.

The Virtual Firm and You

By Robert Cannon - Virtual firms are becoming more and more prevalent. Here are some things to consider before launching your own cyberfirm.

Working Remotely on the Mac

By Jason Wietholter - Get advice for using your Mac as a work tool no matter where you are.

"Glance" at Your Colleague's Computer Screen - Remotely!

By Stephanie Kimbro - This Tech Tool Review introduces an excellent application for sharing computer desktops via the Internet.

Source: Law Practice Today, June 2009

Posted by Adriana Linares: "How does it happen? Two voices in your head simultaneously cry out, "Go ahead and click send, you're all set" while the other one is screaming "You forgot the attachment!" or "Hey Dumb***, you clicked Reply to All" or even worse, "Don't send it while you are still fuming! Wait!" We all know how that movie ends and we all know how we wish it could unS-END.

Can you recall, retrieve or unsend an email message that has gone out? No, the answer is the NO. In the old days of AOL and even Groupwise, you sure could (if the recipient had not opened it). But today, short of getting onto the recipients actual PC and/or smartphone and/or webmail and/or laptop and/or the other tens of places your ONE email can land, you can fuhgedaboudit.

GMail has a new feature in its Google Labs that allows you to "unsend" a message within 5 seconds and that's kinda cool - I say meh.

Now, what you CAN do if you are an Outlook user is set up your outbound messages to sit in your outbox for a few minutes before they deploy. By default, Outlook is set to send an email out of your OUTBOX and in to another's INBOX as soon as you hit the SEND button - immediately. You can turn that off and then tell Outlook how often it should send - like every 3, 4, 5 or ten minutes. Here's how you set that up:

[Go to the source site listed below for step-by-step directions]

So my outbound emails, will wait for a few minutes before flyingout which then gives me the chance to open the email (if needed) and edit it before I look like an idiot.

Now, these tips are really good for those of use without an Exchange server and an IT department controlling our mail options. If you find that you can't change these settings or they don't seem to comply, talk to your local IT person and see if they can help.

By the way - want to learn more about using Outlook? I'm doing some webinars on Outlook (first one in a series of three is this Friday) and a few other topics in my monthly webinar schedule. Check it out here."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

In the news: "As a large firm, Burns & Levinson was continually struggling with document stability and maintaining a consistent look with the documents it created. Esquire Innovations iCreate and iRedline were the best fit to establish a consistent branding across stable and functional documents."

The discussion includes the implementation and key benefits and results.

Read full text

Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire. 18 June 2009. Copyright 2008.  ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Subscribe <http://store.law.com/registration/register.asp?subscribeto=nw>.

Posted by Allison Shields: "Today's post focuses on more advice from speakers at this year's Total PMA Get a Life Conference, including advice from the panel on outsourcing, featuring Alexis Neely and Max Gardner and advice from Stephen Fairley about law firm systems and marketing because systems, delegation and outsourcing combine powerfully to make you and your firm more productive.

Outsourcing

When outsourcing, you must also consider security and confidentiality concerns. Make sure that those you hire to do work for you understand the attorney-client privilege and confidentiality issues. Have security in place so that outsourced work is protected.

The golden rule of outsourcing (from Alexis Neely):  Focus on what you love to do, what provides most value for your business, and what you're great at - outsource the rest.

Why use a virtual assistant? Max Gardner says that using virtual assistants eliminates concerns rabout benefits, vacations, payroll functions, while providing you with the extra hands to get the work done..

Create systems that will help you to grow your practice

Stephen Fairley advises that organization and systematization are important for all law firms. Systems you need include: client intake, client education, client retention, referral development, marketing and business development and Key Performance Indicator tracking... 

Full text and the active link are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Legal Ease Blog, 17 June 2009

Posted by Penelope Trunk: "The Institute of Social and Economic Research recently published a study about the connection between popularity in high school and earning power later in life. New York magazine, information source to the rich and popular, summarized the study like this: "This study may seem to burst our Revenge of the Nerds fantasies, but it's logical that people who are attractive, likable, and socially comfortable--the class officers, the cheerleaders--should get ahead in corporate settings."

There is absolutely irrefutable data to support the idea that good-looking people do better in life than everyone else. Gordon Patzer, in his book, Looks, draws from a wide body of research to describe the advantaged life of a good-looking person from the time they are a baby (good-looking babies get better parentings) to the time they are in sales (the whole sales team performs better if there are more good-looking people on the team.)

As a result, I have jumped on the plastic surgery bandwagon. Super-smarty Chelea Clinton got plastic surgery before she entered the work world. We should all do that. And while I haven't taken my own advice, I do find myself pinching and pulling at my nose to see what it would look like after at $10,000 investment.

But wait. Before you take out a loan to straighten your nose, maybe you should just start thinking like a tall person. Being good-looking means having the right mix of a lot of things, and for you, being tall might be the final keystone to hold it all in place. (Wondering if you're already tall? Fast Company has the answer: over 6'3" for men and over 5'9" for women, which, by the way, makes me half-an-inch into the land of the tall.)

Tall people make $789 more per inch per year, and are 90% more likely to ascend to the CEO chairs of Fortune 500 Companies, according to Arianne Cohen, author of The Tall Book. She scoured the sociology, psychology and workplace research to determine why tall people succeed (she herself is 6'3"). And Cohen discovered that the behaviors tall people display can be mimicked by anyone in order to get the career benefits of being tall.

Here's what Cohen says to do, based on the research she's gathered:

Be unforgettable...

Act like the boss...

Find a way to look down on coworkers. Literally...

Guard your personal space...

Don't be shy...

Focus on image rather than competence...

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist, 16 June 2009

The active link is available at the source site listed below.

Source: beSpacific - Accurate, focused law and technology news by Sabrina I. Pacifici. 16 June 2009 Copyright ©2002-2009. BeSpacific LLC. All Rights Reserved. Subscribe <http://www.bespacific.com/mt/subscribe.html>.

Posted By Tom Kane: "My friend Stacy West Clark has 25 suggestions for adding value to your relationship with "current clients, referral sources and potential clients," which are for the most part "free." And I agree that by following her suggestions, "you will get business" as well.

Stacy's article appeared in both The Legal Intelligencer and on Law.com's Small Firm Business. Here are a few of her suggestions that I especially like, and have discussed at one time or another myself:

• Visit your clients off the clock;
• Ask for client feedback;
• Buy your clients products and services, where possible;
• Send them customers or clients;
• Support your client's charity(ies) of choice;
• Offer free CLE programs for their legal department;
• Attend board meetings free;
• Nominate your client for an award;
• Give the client's kids tickets to events, theme parks, and such;
• Entertain clients;
• Ask client to join a panel with you; and one of my favorites
• Befriend your clients. 

Whatever moves you, do something that will add value to your client relationships."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

In the news: "It's a bleak time for many attorneys, as business in some practice areas remains sluggish and firms continue to cut staff. What options do out-of-work lawyers have? The good news is that for those who feel lost professionally, like they're being forced to start from scratch, there are programs out there for lawyers to turn to for help. For instance, in Pennsylvania, the state and local bar associations, as well as some law schools, are stepping up to assist lawyers who are looking for work in this recession."

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Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire. 17 June 2009. Copyright 2008.  ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Subscribe  <http://store.law.com/registration/register.asp?subscribeto=nw>.

From the site: "In many workers' comp cases,  claimants wrongly assume that Medicare should pay their medical expenses instead of their Medicare Set‑Aside account. And this mistake could lead to some serious and sometimes financially disastrous consequences. Ringler Radio host, Larry Cohen welcomes Mike Westcott, the new president of the National Alliance of Medicare Set‑Aside Professionals, to discuss how to handle these workers' comp issues, explore some of the workers' comp and Medicare Set‑Aside concerns and look at impending liability issues.

Podcast: Play on page | Play in new window | Download

Related Podcasts

• January 6, 2006 -- Medicare Set-Asides
• June 1, 2009 -- Medicare's Mandatory Reporting Requirements
• May 18, 2009 -- Forensic Economics: Part Two
• January 22, 2009 -- MSA Update for Workers Comp Cases
• June 23, 2008 -- Medicare Set-Asides and New CMS Rules"

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Legal Talk Network, 15 June 2009

Posted by Sabrina I. Pacifici: "New on LLRX.com: Bridging the DiGital Divide: Custom Search Engines Put You in Control - Law librarian, legal research expert and blogger John J. DiGilio's new column focuses on technology trends that leverage the web to achieve more efficient and effective results. Here John recommends using customized search engines to manage the sites you search."

The active link is available at the source site listed below.

Source: beSpacific - Accurate, focused law and technology news by Sabrina I. Pacifici. 14 June 2009 Copyright ©2002-2009. BeSpacific LLC. All Rights Reserved. Subscribe <http://www.bespacific.com/mt/subscribe.html>.

In the news: "Law firms running Microsoft SharePoint already own most of the required tools to recover from a complete or partial data loss, so implementing a backup plan need not be costly. But be sure to include an automated, site-level backup, says Fenwick & West's SharePoint expert Mark Gerow."

Important points include:

ELEMENTS OF A SHAREPOINT BACKUP PLAN
CREATING A BASIC SITE-LEVEL BACKUP
OPTION NO. 1: SCRIPTING SITE-LEVEL BACKUP USING STSADM
OPTION NO. 2: PROGRAMMING SITE-LEVEL BACKUP USING C#

RESTORING A SITE-LEVEL BACKUP

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Posted by Allison shields: "Gerry Riskin gave two separate presentations at this year's Get a Life conference. His pearls of wisdom were invaluable.

According to Riskin, studies show that only 30.7% of clients recommend their primary law firm. That leaves a lot of room for client poaching - and it means that the vast majority of clients aren't referring others to their lawyers.

Competition in the legal arena is fierce. Competitors can draw clients away from you by creating a 'cool offering,' listening to clients, understanding and meeting their needs, caring & showing they care, being responsive and handling problems. If you're not already doing the same, you're vulnerable. Identify and 'bulletproof' your best clients by meeting them at their place of business for the purpose of discovering and meeting the client's needs (off the clock!).

Riskin reminds lawyers that latent client needs can only be unearthed through active collaboration with the client - you'll never know unless you're constantly working with and listening to your clients.

Unfortunately, although most lawyers are good at getting the substantive legal work done, they aren't as successful at completing 'non-billable' work - including important business development and client relationship work. But the good news is that it doesn't take much to change that. According to Riskin's "slight edge" theory, the difference between winners and losers is action - but it only takes marginal moves to be a winner. In other words, you need to be only slightly better, but consistently so.

Finally, Riskin noted that lawyers think differently than other people - which doesn't always work to their advantage. They are perfectionists. Lawyers need to learn that it's OK to make mistakes - they need to TRY things that aren't going to work.

It is only through trial and error - taking action - that real progress can be made.

At the end of one of his presentations, there were some questions about what lawyers should do when they practice in an area which is generally comprised of 'one time' clients. Lawyers often make the mistake of thinking that a client is a one-time client, in part because they fail to identify those latent client needs and fail to establish long term relationships with them.  Kevin Chern of Total PMA pointed out that 'one time' clients don't have to be. I agree - and I wrote about it in a post entitled "There's No Such Thing as a "One-Off" Client.

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Legal Ease Blog, 12 June 2009

Privacy Expectation in the Age of GPS
In the news: "Applying the "expectation of privacy" -- a privacy law touchstone -- to advancing technology has proved troubling. Attorney David Bender looks at a ruling by New York's high court on warrantless GPS tracking that may generally serve as a paradigm for the use of high-tech tracking."

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10 Steps to Hiring New Outside Counsel
In the news: "The most effective way for a general counsel to reduce the costs of outside counsel may be to change law firms. The dramatic step can save your budget, but it confronts the incumbents' advantage. To introduce new law firms and to reduce the disadvantages faced by hopeful new firms, so that you can consider competitive newcomers hungry for your work and test the market for cost-saving replacements, consultant Rees W. Morrison offers 10 steps to level the practice field for nonincumbents."

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Grooming Young Lawyers for Law Firm Management
In the news: "Failure to train younger lawyers as managers in both the business and practice of law can be disastrous. The worst-case scenario is a "palace revolt" because the firm is unwilling to address the question and provide the opportunities, but there can also be a decline in earnings and the exodus of key partners, according to consultant Joel A. Rose. He discusses how law firms can help cultivate lawyers to be the next generation's managers -- with advice that can also help young lawyers looking to get into management."

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25 Value-Added Free Services to Offer Your Clients
In the news: "It's a fun time to be a lawyer right now, isn't it? Your firm is telling you to go out and bring in business; clients are scrutinizing your fees and every hour of your time like never before; colleagues are losing their jobs; and there's less work to go around. Concerning the issue of generating business, at least, consultant Stacy West Clark has some advice. She suggests 25 services you can offer at no cost to current clients, referral sources and potential clients. Because everyone loves to get something for free."

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Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire. 12 June 2009. Copyright 2008.  ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Subscribe <http://store.law.com/registration/register.asp?subscribeto=nw>.

From the e-newsletter: "Thursday, June 18, 2009, 12pm to 2pm EST. The blog wave is growing and hasn't come close to cresting. Find out why - and learn how to use this powerful communications vehicle to enhance your firm's visibility."

 Read more...

Source: FindLaw's Modern Practice. 11 June 2009 Copyright © 2008 FindLaw, a Thomson Business. Subscribe <http://newsletters.findlaw.com/>.

From the site: "Layoffs in the legal profession have been in the news lately, but downsizing from the top?  More experienced attorneys, even senior partners in some larger law firms are not as secure in their jobs as they once were in what may be more signs of practicing law as a business.  Law.com bloggers and co-hosts Bob Ambrogi and J. Craig Williams welcome Ed Poll, a recognized expert and author in law practice management and Stephen E. Seckler, president of Seckler Legal Consulting, to discuss the new benchmarks the legal profession is seeing in job performance and what the business of law may look like in the future.

Podcast: Play on page | Play in new window | Download

Related Podcasts

• June 3, 2009 -- Greening Your Career: Surviving after a Layoff
• April 14, 2009 -- Legal Hold: Don't Destroy Those Documents
• March 5, 2009 -- Paralegals in a Down Economy"

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Legal Talk Network, 11 June 2009

From the blog: "If you have not already heard, the U.S. Courts offer podcasts on news and federal rulemaking. Some of the latest news podcasts cover a jury phone scam and new sentences for crack cocaine. The rulemaking podcasts are recordings of meetings on proposed amendments to federal rules, including proposed changes to Federal Civil Rule 56."

From the blog: "Thinking about a career in the federal government? You may want to check out this list to see which department or agency boasts the happiest employees.

From beSpacific"

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Moritz Law Library Blog, 11 June 2009

Posted by Greg Lambert: "I just couldn't live up to my reputation as the "cheap geek" if I didn't share this with you. There are a couple of new presentation ("free" presentation) tools out there that I thought all of you might be interested in.

1. Adobe ConnectNow (http://www.acrobat.com)

Basically a free version of webEx.

Extremely slick presentation. Share program, desktop, etc.

You can use microphone to present, plus a built in chat feature.

It also has a phone number you can use, but it is not a toll-free number. So, you'd need a MagicJack to get around the toll charges! ;-)

2. Present.IO (http://present.io)

This is a resource from Drop.IO

Not as slick as Adobe, but still free!!

I think you can upload files, but cannot share your desktop (correct me if I'm wrong on this one).

Same as Adobe, it has a phone number you can call in to conference, but not toll-free

Plus, another freebie:

3. Authorstream now has a "Present Live" feature on presenting PowerPoint Presentations.

Simple and effective way of presenting PPTs.

Allows you to move through the presentation and lets everyone keep on the same page

You can embed the presentation into a webpage (say along side your UStream video presentation)

Problem that I found is that anyone can move the PPT to the next or previous slide. So, some 'crafty' geek (cough - Toby - cough) would be having fun moving things to the next slide when you're not ready.

Okay... that's my "free" resources that you can use for the day!! Big tip-o-the-hat to Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell for their mentioning of ConnectNow and Present.IO in there podcast on The Future of Search."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, 9 June 2009

From the e-newsletter: "With the economy down, car torchings are up. Well, not all cases involve an automotive blaze of glory, but more and more people are faking the theft and/or destruction of cars they can no longer afford in order to collect insurance money. The few thousand dollars in upside to such a scheme are almost assuredly outweighed by the multitude of consequences should it not turn out as planned.

Read more...

Related Resources
• Auto Give-Ups (Coalition Against Insurance Fraud)"

Source: FindLaw's Public Advisor. 11 June 2009 Copyright © 2008 FindLaw, a Thomson Business. Subscribe <http://newsletters.findlaw.com/>.

Posted by Jim Calloway: "OK, after watching someone get an extra complication in their life by not knowing this, I decided to pass along this tip that many lawyers know-- just in time for summer. If you are out of the office, your voice message should say when you will return. It should not say when you left.

Correct: "I am out of the office and will return June 15th." Incorrect: "I will be out of the office from June 3rd through June 15th." It is unneeded information that could lead to incorrect assumptions.

If a client calls on June 13th, they understand you will be back in a couple of days. You don't need to alarm a nervous client who may think, "Oh, no, nothing has been done on my matter for more than a week." You don't need a client who is working double shifts and hasn't had a vacation in five years assuming you have been relaxing on a beach in Tahiti when you've been sitting through endless depositions in Detroit. And the shorter message is easier to understand with less chance of mixing up dates.

This post is not intended to address advance notice to clients when you anticipate an extended absence or similar issues. It just addresses what your voice message should say."

For other great tips, visit Jim's blog site link below and click on "Main" above the title.

Source: Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog, 20 May 2009

Posted by Penelope Trunk: "I never watch American Idol, or other talent shows. I think I got my fill of them in the 1970s, watching year after year of the mind-numbing Miss American pageant. But there was too much hoop-la with Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent, so I had to see what I was missing. I ended up watching her audition fifty times. Because every time I'm feeling slow or unmotivated or depressed, the clip cheers me up.

Last night she sang in the semi-finals, and what struck me most while watching her is how much we can learn about our own careers from watching Susan Boyle's. For example.

• Everyone loves to be a shepherd of talent...
• You can only shine if you set the bar high...
• Settling for a day job does not destroy you...

Full text and active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist,  26 May 2009

Court Rules Vehicle Seller Not Liable for Prior Owner's Tampering With Odometer

From the site: "2008-1451.  State ex rel. Cordray v. Midway Motor Sales, Inc., Slip Opinion No. 2009-Ohio-2610.

Opinion: http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/0/2009/2009-Ohio-2610.pdf

(June 10, 2009) The Supreme Court of Ohio ruled today that the state law requiring the seller of a motor vehicle to provide the buyer with a statement certifying the accuracy of the odometer reading is not a "strict liability" statute, and therefore does not impose liability on a seller of a vehicle unless the seller knowingly provided an inaccurate odometer statement."

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Court Upholds State Law Barring Cities from Requiring Employees to Live Within City Limits

From the site: "2008-0128 and 2008-0418.  Lima v. State, Slip Opinion No. 2009-Ohio-2597
Opinion: http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/0/2009/2009-Ohio-2597.pdf

(June 10, 2009) The Supreme Court of Ohio today upheld as constitutional a 2006 state law that bars a political subdivision of the state (e.g., a city, county, township or school district) from requiring its employees, as a condition of employment, to reside within that political subdivision."

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Source for both: The Supreme Court of Ohio, 10 June 2009

In the news: "Unlike in other practice areas, client demand in the health care arena is rising, mainly because companies want to prepare for the Obama administration's anticipated health care overhaul. As a result, firms are recruiting corporate, regulatory and transactional lawyers who have experience with health care, pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries. Attorneys have also been busy advising clients on M&A activity, as the health care industry hasn't been as affected as others by financing issues."

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Posted by Evan Schaeffer: "My small contribution to the area of legal writing includes three articles published in the Illinois Bar Journal, which you can find on my law firm's website--

• Improve Your Legal Writing with Five Simple Rules;
• First Drafts Made Easy;
• Five Steps Towards Persuasive Writing.

I enjoyed writing and publishing them -- I hope you'll enjoy reading them."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Trial Practice Tips Weblog, 2 June 2009

Posted by Mark Giangrande: "I hadn't been to the web site for the Law Library of Congress in quite some time, but I found myself visiting yesterday looking for some primary constitutional law documents.  They were there, in a newly reorganized form that brought all of LOC's constitutional materials together in two places (linked from one to the other).  The pages focus on the text and analysis of the Constitution, and the application to various topics, such as interpretation, executive privilege, military tribunals, presidential powers, etc.  They include links to PDF pages from law reviews, legal magazines, and other references.  This was great for what I was seeking. 

As with any site with substantial resources, I took a short tour and found a few other items I didn't expect to find.  There is the Sonia Sotomayor page, with links to her writings, cases, her past two confirmation hearings, and web resources.  Under legislation I found links to three subject areas, census, freedom of information/privacy, and immigration.  The subsequent pages had links to the full text (PDF) of selected hearings.  The census hearings went as far back as 1908 (60th Congress); the FOIA hearings back to 1975 (94th Congress); and immigration hearings back to 1923 (68th Congress).  These are test products from the LOC/Google partnership to digitize the entire collection.  I note that the publication of older Congressional materials on Google Books still tends to be spotty.  Searching for in that database brought up an even older hearing from 1918 (digitized from Harvard), but those listed at the LLOC site didn't make it in the initial pages.  In fact, hearings from the 1980s still showed up as restricted items for some reason.  Anyone who hasn't visited the page in awhile are likely to be surprised at the depth of material that is available online, particularly with international materials.  These short paragraphs hardly scratch the surface for describing them."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Law Librarian Blog, 10 June 2009

From the e-newsletter: "Last week, I told you about how college admissions offices are considering the social networking pages of prospective applicants. I now am here to report that social networking is not a passing fancy; indeed, the time spent by Americans on social networking sites is increasing dramatically. And, of course, where people go, the law will follow."

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Source: FindLaw's The Practice Paper: For Solo & Small Firm Lawyers. 10 June 2009 Copyright © 2008 FindLaw, a Thomson Business. Subscribe <http://newsletters.findlaw.com/>.

In the news: "Today's law students are more proficient in technology and organic self-marketing than most law firms realize. In a down market when everyone must increase their business development, consultant Ari Kaplan advises you harness that talent to increase your firm's Web 2.0 presence."

Topics discussed include: LinkedIn, FaceBook, opitmizing Google visibility and blogging.

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Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire. 11 June 2009. Copyright 2008.  ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Subscribe <http://store.law.com/registration/register.asp?subscribeto=nw>.

Posted by Elliot Wilcox: "If you try enough cases, you'll eventually get your hands on "It."   "It" is that amazing piece of evidence that makes or breaks your case.  "It" takes on many different forms:

• The "Are you lying then or are you lying now?" prior inconsistent statement