How much should you actually save for retirement? Everyone from your brother-in-law to your favorite (or least favorite) financial pundit has a view. But, are those opinions even remotely accurate? As opposed to pontificating about retirement rules of thumb, let’s use financial planning software and look at an example. Before we dive in, note that […]

Ask the Experts at 2Civility.org: "I have heard of email tracking software, often used by marketing companies to monitor email traffic. While this would be helpful in my practice at times, are there ethics considerations to tracking email? I mean, I send some important documents through the U.S. mail with a return-receipt requested, so is this similar with email?"

Search engine optimization, or SEO, can be a swirl of should-do, could-do, would-do-if-there-was-time … suddenly it’s an alphabet soup and not much has changed for your website. But an SEO workshop earlier this year at LMA Tech West struck me as particularly helpful and actionable. As the panel discussed trends in search, questions flew left and right. Amid the high energy, I realized that legal marketers are hungry for some quick, relatively easy-to-accomplish SEO tips to start optimizing their website and content.

Many lawyers are intimidated by technology issues, including how to keep their data safe. Yet in a world where large cities can be held up by ransomware attacks and hackers can shut down multinational law firms, we are far past the point where solo and small firm lawyers can ignore cybersecurity issues. Plus, under the ABA Model Rules, we have a duty to maintain technological competence. And it is hard to see how operating with no security in place can possibly meet this burden. One simple step every solo and small firm lawyer can take is the use of a VPN.

At first glance, communications may seem like a bygone problem for lawyers today. Haven’t smartphones made it easier to stay in constant contact with your clients? It’s true that smartphones offer you more mobility and instant, real-time communication via text messaging, but those tools alone are relatively one-dimensional. They may foster contact, but they limit comprehensive engagement, as they lack the abilities to easily archive and organize client calls and voicemail messages or handle faxes.

As you edit your work product, pay special attention to instances where a stronger verb could replace a verb and its direct object. Besides being less persuasive, weak verbs plus explanatory words lengthen your writing [not, “make it longer”].

Let me tell you a story about a brainy brief writer. She was smart, hardworking and loved practicing law. But she had few clients of her own. This made her beholden to others at her firm. Over the years, she came to believe she could never be a rainmaker. Then one day, the brief writer had enough. She left and started her own firm. Suddenly responsible for her own fate, she let go of the belief that she could not attract clients and embraced the idea that different people do it in different ways. And she soared. That brainy brief writer with no clients was me. If I can do it, you can do it. Here are five steps to get you started.

Few would argue lawyers’ ethical responsibility to communicate with clients using email. It’s fast, secure, cheap and provides a digital paper trail. Or that lawyers have a duty to safeguard clients’ private information, which means understanding risks associated with various tools, whether email, text messages or document storage in the cloud. How do these ethics standards apply to the use of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence?

A personal brand is the thing that sells you when you’re not there to sell yourself. Here’s a primer on lawyer branding. To borrow a phrase from Charles Dickens, for young lawyers in today’s legal market, it’s both the best of times and the worst of times. Worst of times because there’s no place to […]

In "Why Lawyers Really Struggle with Work-Life Balance," I listed six steps to building a practice that runs smoothly and allows you to have a life: 1) acquire better management skills; 2) implement better technology; 3) create and install better systems and procedures; 4) develop better teams; 5) build better market focus; and 6) deliver better legal services. So let's talk management.