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.

Top tips from Reid Trautz, Sharon Nelson, John Simek, Catherine Sanders Reach and Marc Metheny.

Last month, I had the pleasure of attending the South by Southwest Interactive Track in Austin, Texas. This conference focuses on business and social media. I came away from the week with my head buzzing with ideas. Among them were concepts from a fantastic session I attended on unique businesses. One of the panelists, Scott Chacon of GitHub, had simple but incredible suggestions for solving problems more effectively. ... READ MORE

I'm lazy, and that’s a trait I try to take advantage of whenever possible. How? By relying on every software automation function available to me. If the software will do my work, I'm darned well going to let it. Not only is it faster (leaving me more time to garden if the snow ever melts), but software makes fewer typos than I do when left to my own non-automated fingers.

Staff members do a tremendous amount of work for your firm, and they interact directly with clients in numerous ways. And by the way, Model Rule 5.3: Responsibilities Regarding Nonlawyer Assistants is in play. So you will be on the hook for any slip-ups they make, right? Right. After all, a staff member's error or omission can lead to a malpractice claim or disciplinary complaint just as readily as a lawyer’s. And then there's the damage dissatisfied staff can do to your client base—and, ultimately, your wallet. Given this, perhaps a few staff-related risk tips are in order. ... READ MORE

When you finish up a big case or put the final signatures on a long-time-closing contract, things can get slow around your office. You might begin feeling a little panicky. It's dangerously easy at that point to slip into thinking you'd take any old legal work you could lay your hands on—just to keep the cash flowing. And sure enough, that's what you do—jump on your horse and gallop off in all directions looking for work. And, sure enough, you bring in "any old legal work."

Studying for the LSAT’s, more years ago then I care to count, I recall learning about "if-this-then-that" statements. These were the questions geared toward testing our understanding of logical concepts and our analytical reasoning skills. Who knew, years later, there would be a company called If This Then That (IFTTT) geared toward completely automating and streamlining how we get things done? IFTT is a free web service that allows you to connect two web apps together to perform automated tasks. It's incredibly easy to use—and the automatic integration that is possible between apps seems almost endless: Evernote, Gmail, Google Calendar, Dropbox, Google Drive, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, RSS feeds, Instapaper and so many more.