It seems excellent lawyers do not always produce excellent legal writing. Whether due to a lack of time, of mental energy, of colleagues available to proofread, or of awareness of just how bloated a legal document can get, good lawyers sometimes can—and do—send out bad documents full of extra, meaningless words. Those interested in a quick, inexpensive tool to help them unclutter their writing should consider WordRake. This software program, developed by Gary Kinder based on his years of experience helping lawyers improve their writing, works with Microsoft Word 2010 to help lawyers move beyond basic spell-checking and proofreading to achieve clearer writing. .... READ MORE

The National Technology and Data Association (NTDA), a Virginia-based nonprofit focused on technology-related economics, combined with support from the Data Transfer Registrar (DTR), a governmental database logging national data transfer rates and formed via grants from the Congressional Data Mining House Subcommittee headed by Senator Peter Griffin of Massachusetts, recently completed a three-year study that found 88 percent of all lawyers under the age of 35 utilize smartphones during 92 percent of their workday, which occurs 60 percent of every total workweek, at a minimum.

In many ways, being a lawyer is still about pushing paper, even if much of that "paper" is now kept electronically, with redwelds and staples going the way of the triceratops and woolly mammoth, respectively. Certainly, the chief allure of electronic files is that you can find what you need faster ... no more frantic, headlong dashes into a cold storage room, and a resulting drill-tip search through rows and file folders and papers, large, small, crinkled. Of course, this only works when you know where you’re saving stuff, and how to retrieve it. If you don’t and can’t, paper can still push back, hard. ... READ MORE

Dan Pinnington and Reid Trautz, co-authors of the ABA book The Busy Lawyer’s Guide to Success: Essential Tips to Power Your Practice, share five of their favorites time management tips. 1. Handle more tasks with just one touch. Do as much of your work as you can the first time you touch it. Respond to […]

We've been hearing some mumbling among our iPad-owning colleagues lately. Something about the keyboard? Given that most iPad owners are passionately in love with the device, this grumbling is surprising. Is it an actual flaw? Or is it that we want the iPad to be something that it isn't? Inquiring minds wanted to know. So we asked some of our iPad expert friends in the legal community to share their thoughts—and their personal solutions. Here's what they said ...

Ah, for a week with endless hours to relax and read a few of the beautiful books on those end-of-year "top selling" and "best of" lists. Whether curled up by a cozy fire or digging your toes into some warm tropical sand, there's nothing better than a great book to help make the season bright. Unless it's a stack of great books. So, just in time for winter break, we bring you a Friday Five list of lists of books to read—and share. READ MORE

When you’re in need of an expert to serve as a witness in your case, to consult on a special matter, or perhaps even to serve as a speaker at your bar seminar, where do you look? Your first instinct may be to use a search engine, or to search a social networking site like LinkedIn, Facebook or Google+. But there are other, deeper places on the Web to find that one right expert you truly need. Today, in this special excerpt from The Cybersleuth's Guide to the Internet (now in its 12th edition), Carole Levitt and Mark Rosch give us the scoop on where to head. ...READ MORE

I graduated from law school 30 years ago. When speaking to law students about how to find a job today, I mostly cover the basics. But I draw on my own experiences, too, and offer one bit of advice rarely provided by most career counselors. I arrived at this advice when, to prepare my presentation, I asked myself: “Knowing what I now know about legal careers after all these years, would I have done anything differently when I attended law school?” It's not that I wish I had studied harder and obtained better grades. Even if I had studied harder, that was no guarantee my grades would have improved. No, I was looking for some aspect of my behavior where I had more control over the end result. It did not take me long to think of the answer. What I wish I had done differently was make more friends.

Sadly, there’s one feature in my Android smartphone’s powerful interface that I don’t take full advantage of: its built-in native speech-to-text recognition feature, which is really quite good. But Android also offers several standard dictation apps, for “old school” folks. Dictadroid ($1.99) is my favorite voice-recording app for Android. As I explained in my original […]

To some lawyers, the phrase “legal services industry” is a series of bad words. Out with the collegial profession, in with commoditizing legal “products.” But that's a very shortsighted view. The emergence of the legal services industry is not only a result of market demands and advancements in technology. Technology expands the ways you can practice law (or “deliver legal services”) to the benefit of clients and lawyers. It also creates new marketing and business development opportunities. Options for Building Your Client Base Joining a lawyer network website is one of many methods now available to lawyers to build up their client bases, by enabling online outreach and communication to potential clients they would not otherwise have been able to reach. These sites come in different shapes and sizes, offering a wide variety of optional services. But in general, their primary goal is to help lawyers develop new business through immediate access to potential clients. Here's a roundup of lawyer network sites at the end of 2012. ... READ MORE