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.

If you’re subjecting yourself to an online cattle-call and hoping it will somehow result in a new job, you’d better hope that part of the job description is “sheep-like; blindly follows the crowd and pointless instructions from people whose interests are not aligned with theirs.”

From the co-author of "Internet Legal Research on a Budget." Why spend good money on legal research when so many free options are available online? Habit. Fear. Lack of time? "Sometimes it's just easier to stick with the tools you’ve used over the years," says Carole A. Levitt, a nationally recognized expert on online legal research and a former law librarian and attorney. "Yet with cost-conscious clients scrutinizing legal bills, how many lawyers can afford to keep depending on fee-based resources when free alternatives are available?" To help lawyers find reliable low-cost resources online and use them effectively, Carole collaborated with lawyer and current law librarian Judy K. Davis to write “Internet Legal Research on a Budget” (ABA, 2014). They tested and evaluated the best legal research sites — describing how to use each site, often step by step, and with plenty of screen shots. Saving money is always worth investigating, so we asked Carole for a few quickly digestible nuggets to get you started. Download your free copy of "10 Must-Know Tips for Internet Legal Research on the Cheap," and you'll find links to go-to spots for resolving legal quandaries on the cheap. Just click here to get the download.