Nicole Black explains how online client portals can benefit both lawyers and their clients. 

If you’re a law firm owner or partner, you know the drill — when you’re not working in your business, you should be working on your business. For most of us, that includes a lot of networking — attending mixers, going to lunches, interacting with contacts on social media and the like. Recently, I’ve noticed an increase in annoying networking behaviors that are at best ineffective, and at worst a guarantee that I will never do business with those people or send them any referrals. (I use Sage ACT! to manage my contacts and there are actually entries that have a note saying “NEVER REFER ANYONE HERE.”) I wasn’t sure if it was just me who was getting frustrated by these behaviors, or, frankly, which ones are the most annoying, so I sent out a simple survey to get input from lawyers and other professionals. According to the 50-plus people who responded, these are the three worst networking offenses. ... READ THE REST

At "Hackcess to Justice" last week in Boston, lawyers and developers spent two days hacking away at a "technological-enabled solution" to improve access to justice. Sponsored by the ABA Journal and hosted by Suffolk Law School in Boston, Hackcess to Justice is just one of several hackathons that have made their way into the legal community. Here are fivenifty things to know about the event, which abutted the 2014 ABA Annual Meeting. ... READ THE FRIDAY FIVE

Do you ever wish you could just open your closet in the morning and pull out an entire coordinated outfit? Imagine deciding to dress "business casual," and reaching in to retrieve a hanger holding a complete outfit — from neatly creased khakis, to shirt, shoes and accessories. Off to work you'd go, looking like a million bucks!

The use of dictation has evolved as an active part of a productive law practice. In many cases, dictation tools are both easily available to a lawyer and completely intuitive as apps for smartphones or tablets. If you have shied away from today's dictation technology, here are four good reasons to consider using it to operate more efficiently and improve billable hours — beyond simply dictating a memo, letter or brief. 1. Capture time and billing info promptly. While the practice of law has changed in many ways over the past few decades, the pain of time and billing recording has remained constant. ... READ THE REST

So it’s August, and you are sitting down to reconcile your bank accounts for July’s activity.

Who are these “enterprising lawyers”? Actually, they are easy to spot. Look for the more engaged and happier lawyers in the crowd. Deeply invested in the power of the work they do for their clients, they have ample interests beyond the practice of law as well. And they seem to have more energy for getting things done than anyone in the crowd. You probably know one or two — you may even be one yourself! Meet Ralph Pais, Partner and Chair of the Technology Transactions practice group at Fenwick & West LLP, and innovator of the NewLaw entity FLEXbyFenwick. ... READ THE Q&A

Getting serious about solving that irritating practice management problem but need a little help? Did you know that you can access — at no charge — hundreds of Attorney at Work daily dispatches by simply searching our archives? There you'll find practitioners' perspectives and expert how-to's on countless conundrums (be it the best billing formats or what the well-dressed wear in court). Speaking of great advice, here are the five most-read Attorney at Work posts from the past 30 days. These are really good ideas! ... READ THE REST

Here’s one for the books. You can bank on it. Clichés are overused phrases that everyone knows. Pundits of good communication advise shunning clichés as unoriginal and boring — which is why readers of these posts may be surprised to see me take a contrary view.

Lawyer, writer and writing instructor Gary Kinder wants lawyers to get to the point quickly in their communications with clients. “Too often lawyers write a letter to the client and won't tell them the answer to the client’s question,” he says. Or if they do, they frequently bury the answer pages deep into the letter.