I once defended a product liability case where the client was adamant that the product always be called a “personal watercraft.” It most definitely was not, he insisted, a Jet-Ski. The issue was the use of a trademark to refer to a similar product. What's the risk?

It can be tough to keep up with the content hamster wheel. Especially if you are trying to keep pace with bigger firms that seem to push out client alerts 24/7. So don’t drive yourself crazy. Get off the wheel. There’s still a way to publish regularly and stay in meaningful touch with clients and contacts.

Whether you are a solo attorney or in a big firm, the ability to generate business is critical to your success. But we all struggle with how to do it without draining our bank accounts. So here are some tips on how you can get a referral business running on a budget — like I did.

If you've got a certain word or phrase, formatted or not, that you type over and over, and it's driving you crazy, here's a Microsoft Word AutoCorrect hack you're going to love. Creating legal documents often involves some really fiddly typing. Long party names, repetitive phrases, all that Latin ... it can all get a little frustrating. But a lot of Word users don't know they can hack the same dictionary Word uses to automatically correct typos and use it as an automated text expander.

In rural areas across the U.S., people are experiencing a unique legal problem: Lawyers are hard to find. Aging rural lawyers are retiring, and no one is around to replace them. This means criminal defendants are more likely to take pleas because they don’t have representation. Rural residents are more likely than urban ones to die without a will. Small-town individuals will tend to handle their own divorces, making crucial mistakes. Those who do manage to find a lawyer drive long distances — sometimes 100 miles or more — just to meet with their attorneys.

Law firm media mentions can be great for business — but are you making the most of them? Here’s a handy checklist to follow.

Chances are, you use a pointing device with your computer today. It could be a touchscreen. It could be a built-in trackpad. It might be a trackball. It could even be that original of the species, the humble mouse. Your keyboard? That’s only for creating text, of course. Who needs it to execute commands? You do — if you value faster computing. Keyboard shortcuts, both built-in and custom-created, give seasoned keyboard jockeys a step or two up on their shortcut-deprived colleagues.

When I was practicing law at a large firm, the associate annual review period was always an interesting time around the office. This may not be true at all firms, and perhaps there’s more frequent communication happening these days, but in my experience, things were always so busy that it was rare that candid, comprehensive feedback was provided outside of annual reviews. I remember quite a few times when I saw fellow associates walk dazed and dejected back to their offices following an unfavorable review. They weren’t performing up to expectations, they were told, and they felt blindsided by the news. The thing is, it was often news only to them. The rest of us could see it coming from a mile away.

A number of years ago, a good friend shared what he considers the "magic business development pill." It's simple. There are only two ingredients: 1) Make your conversation all about the client or potential client) and keep it about them; and 2) Show up with great frequency. According to my friend, keep repeating these steps and everything will work out.

There’s no denying it: Lawyers have the highest behavioral impairment rate of any profession. Research has shown it, and it is spotlighted in the media, as in a recent New York Times feature on a lawyer who tragically spiraled into addiction behind closed doors. The same innate drive and problem-solving skills that make a good lawyer also enable some to present as “high-functioning,” while they successfully conceal addiction for as long as decades. Meanwhile, as with any chronic, progressive disease, it worsens until the lawyer’s behavior and capabilities deteriorate. The good news is once the problems are acknowledged, our community can join together to help remedy them.