Use this small law firm year-end checklist to quickly assess your firm's practice systems and ethics risks — and plan to improve them for the new year.

So you’ve spent a year creating content. You’ve written articles, created a client newsletter, are active on a blog and comment thread on your bar association website. You publish and provide comments in the local business press. And you should be proud. But creating content without a robust distribution strategy is like an elaborately wrapped box with nothing in it. It just sits there.

What's worthy of your technology investment next year? We asked the practice management technology pros to recommend one good way for lawyers to upgrade their tech in 2018. Here's wise advice from practice management technology pros Heidi Alexander, Sheila Blackford, Joyce Brafford, Jared Correia, Tom Lambotte, Sharon Nelson and John Simek, and Lee Rosen.

Pay-per-click, PPC, paid search — these terms might be familiar to you. Perhaps you’ve even tried Google AdWords but found this digital marketing channel unsuccessful. Usually, that is due to a poorly optimized account instead of the channel “not working." Google receives well over 100 billion searches per month, and more companies are actively following best practices for ranking their websites organically. With so much competition, you can’t afford to leave PPC out of your firm's marketing strategy.

Cybercrime is quickly chipping away at clients’ trust in how law firms manage and secure sensitive financial data. Some have even launched class action lawsuits in protest. As state bar associations are beginning to clamp down on technology incompetency, you cannot afford to cut corners with safeguarding your clients’ personal data. In fact — as the ABA has indicated — you have an ethical obligation to take reasonable steps to protect that data. That is where Abacus Private Cloud enters the picture.

Across professions, there is a process to mastery. Hard work and perseverance don’t guarantee success, but it’s almost impossible to achieve success without them. This is particularly true in the legal profession, which is as competitive as it gets. There are no overnight success stories, just stories of dogged persistence over time. The big lesson from all of this: What you practice is what you perfect.

Today Attorney at Work readers get the first look at Bob Denney’s annual “What’s Hot and What’s Not in the Legal Profession.” For the past three decades, Denney & Associates has been taking the temperature of the profession and reporting on trends in the business of practicing law. Which practice areas are heating up or cooling off? Take a look at the 29th annual What's Hot report.

Some lawyers choose to limit overhead by working from home. They may arrange for supplemental virtual services and conference room access. While not every practice area may lend itself to working from home, technology has made this a more common choice, especially among lawyers just starting out. Besides the obvious office rent savings, working from home confers significant tax benefits.

In the competitive world of law, it is not uncommon to feel (consciously or unconsciously) that failure is not an option. However, the quest for perfection is a double-edged sword. While striving toward it can motivate us to improve, perfection is never the goal. For perfection to serve a useful purpose, it must be a direction, not a destination. Having a direction helps us to continually move, grow, learn and improve.

Law firms are under constant pressure to adopt new, improved technology so they can increase productivity and provide better client service. Yet budgets rarely increase with the speed of technology changes. With so many technology needs out there, how do you know which investments will garner the fastest return?