When I hear the phrase “red velvet rope,” I picture a Studio 54-esque scene with a line of people outside of a night club who are either on the VIP list or hoping they're hot enough to convince the bouncer to let them through. Many of us have left our night club days behind, but author Michael Port says we still need a red velvet rope. When opening a law practice, many lawyers believe they need to take every case that comes in the door. Port takes the opposite view and recommends turning away prospects who don’t fit the profile of your ideal client.

Question: I know we're not recouping many of our law firm's costs from clients. How do you effectively manage a cost recovery program? Four members of the Association of Legal Administrators — Grace Carr Lee, Vicki Hughes, Kimberly Giertz and Rob Mattern — explain a few of their methods and offer key insights in this edition of "Ask the Experts." ... READ MORE

Here's the situation. You're stranded in a future legal market, vast and unfamiliar, and you need to launch a new legal career. Luckily, you get to start off with several skills and talents in place — but it's a limited quantity, and you'll need to choose carefully. Which ones will help you the most?

As the world moves faster (and it does, doesn’t it?), you have to move faster, too, not only to keep up, but to amaze and astound your clients in a highly competitive field. While it may not astound them, your ability to quickly create, share and finalize documents at the drop of a client’s hat […]

Between deadlines, billable-hours requirements, responsibility for bringing in clients and so much more, we all know the legal profession can be taxing. Add to that responsibilities for family and any associations or boards you may belong to, and the daily pressure on a lawyer can be overwhelming. The stress most endure would make a cardiologist shudder. That is why it is so important to make sure your productivity system is absolutely under control, all the time. I know it's not easy, so this is for those of you who may have let your time management system slip, and those who may feel intimidated at the thought of starting anew.

No matter how they hear about you, there’s a pretty good chance that, at some point, people will search for your law practice online. What will they find when they perform these searches? What can you do, if anything, to influence what they see?

Which apps do lawyers like to use? For our summer download, A Matter of Time, National Purchasing Partners (NPP) identified a list of 20 — many of them free — for document review and markup, scanning, recording, note-taking, time-tracking and much more. For this week's Friday Five, we take a closer look at five of the iPhone and iPad apps aimed at revving up your practice's productivity ... READ MORE

Social media is here to stay, and forward-thinking lawyers are taking advantage of the networking opportunities it offers. But what about when your consumer client seeks you out to connect on social media? Should you accept connection requests from clients?

Stop — what you are doing? Flames are pouring out of the next room! It doesn't matter how this started. (A freak coffeemaker explosion, maybe?) It's time for you to go! Later, you will find out that your office is a total loss. All your files went up in smoke, and the water from the fire hose destroyed what was left of your electronics. Your hard drives were shattered into a million pieces by the falling structure. On a scale of 1 to 5, how f**ked is your practice? ... READ MORE

I often rationalize new gadget purchases by telling myself, "This will make my life so much better." That, in essence, has been the promise of most technology tools. They expand our capabilities and allow us to do more with less. But, to do so, control is absolutely key. You need to control your technology, as opposed to it controlling you. Here are some tips that have worked for me. ... READ MORE