The recent post here about whether lawyers' paper business cards are obsolete reminded me that, yes, there are important things to be done with all the cards you collect at a conference or meeting. First, let’s talk about business card management while you are at a conference or a similar event.

Who are these “enterprising lawyers”? Actually, they are easy to spot. Look for the happier, more engaged lawyers. 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! In this interview, we talk with Kelly Phillips Erb, who you may know as Taxgirl at Forbes.com. ... READ MORE

As you know, it’s nearly impossible to accurately track your email time with merely a start/stop timer. You’re probably bouncing from email to email in rapid fire mode. The last thing you want to worry about is timekeeping, especially if you switch from one client to another as you reply to email messages. The “magic” […]

If you use WordPress for your blog or law firm website, you may know that this month the WordPress community faced perhaps its largest brute force attack. Reports from around the web confirmed a large botnet was using brute-forcing passwords to attack WordPress and Joomla sites. While there are a variety of ways hackers can try to attack your site, if you follow some basic security measures, you can protect it and avoid the overwhelming majority of common attacks.

You never stop learning. And with so many big conferences this time of year, there's no shortage of opportunities. This week the Association of Legal Administrators held its 2013 Annual Conference and Exposition, covering a wide spectrum of law practice management topics, from leadership to finance to, yes, social media. We asked Lorri Salyards, a longtime law firm manager and ALA leader, to share five things she learned there. ... READ MORE

Question: "What’s the current thinking on business cards? They seem like an anachronism in a digital world, yet I don’t know how else to invite someone to contact me without them. What do lawyers 'in the know' do?" In this edition of "Ask the Experts" we hear from Legal Marketing Association members Tina Emerson, David McCann and Stacy Smith ... READ MORE

Anyone who knows me (or follows me on Twitter) knows that I love sports, particularly my beloved Golden Gophers. So it should come as no surprise that I watched the press conference with our new men’s basketball coach, Richard Pitino. After 40-some minutes, this 30-year-old coach with precisely one year of head coaching experience had won me over. Was it his appreciation for the University of Minnesota and its facilities? How he handled questions from the media? His promise to run an up-tempo offense? Sure, all of these things factor in. But the real reason I was sold can be boiled down to one word: enthusiasm.

Maybe it's time to accept that email just wasn't designed to do all the things we try to get it to do. Like manage projects and files, share documents or (groan) schedule meetings. It's not just that it's considered "old-fashioned," but with so many other options for collaboration and communication, email may soon be downright obsolete. Just ask your teenager to check his email and see what the response is! ... READ MORE

Social media. A familiar topic for me, and a staple now at ABA TECHSHOW. I'd be remiss if I didn't say I walked into the session, "Social Media as Information Gathering Tool," a skeptic last week. Obviously, social media is an information gathering tool. Though I've said social media will be a defacto aspect of eDiscovery, I now understand why it has taken a few years for that to be true. The session totally blew my mind on how ridiculously lame social search functionality is. Okay. Maybe that's a little too strong. How ridiculously arcane social search functionality is. With the exception of Google+, every single one of them requires a number of hoops to jump through, both to search what you need and to get to Advanced Search options.

Just kidding with the 999—though we could easily report on hundreds of ideas exchanged at the Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference this week in Las Vegas. More than 1,300 legal marketing professionals gathered there to share secrets and strategies on how to develop business in the “new normal” legal economy. But for this Friday Five, we asked Mark Beese to bring back just a few take-aways to sharpen your marketing and business development efforts.