One way us old guys comfort ourselves about aging is by proving our continuing usefulness to the firm through mentoring new lawyers. While we may think that pearls of wisdom just drip from our lips, I wonder: Do we really have anything useful to contribute? Today’s young lawyers are looking for an edge in a legal world that is […]

For better or worse, we’ve become ‘always-on’ professionals. We want access to all our data, all the time and we want it now. In the past, data housed on an office network or personal computer could be very difficult to access remotely. With the advent of Cloud storage, however, accessing that data has become much easier. The question becomes which cloud provider are you going to use and what data are you going to store there?

Each year, some of the greatest minds in the world of law practice management convene at the Annual Meeting of the College of Law Practice Management. Fellows of the College are accomplished professionals from all walks of “legal” life: small firms, big firms, in-house departments, bar associations, service providers and academia. The past three years […]

“The best thing about owning our own firm is to have the control and autonomy to decide how you want to do it and when you want to do it,” says Roberta D. Liebenberg, a senior partner at Fine Kaplan in Philadelphia. Whether you prefer to work late at night or in the morning, it’s your […]

Standing next to a projector in your best Sunday suit and speaking to a crowd through a microphone doesn’t necessarily make you an effective public speaker. We’ve all suffered through presentations that should never have made the big time. And we’ve all walked away from one muttering about how the speaker not only failed to entrance but, […]

LinkedIn is reportedly the most popular business social networking site used by lawyers. A recent BTI Consulting report shows that nearly 70 percent of corporate counsel use LinkedIn, and that 38 percent of them rely on LinkedIn for activities specifically tied to selecting and hiring attorneys. What’s more, executives from every Fortune 500 company are using it. So, […]

A law practice management software system can be the principal organizing feature of your law firm, a full-scale repository and collaboration tool and a hedge against malpractice. But, with so many options available, how do you choose the one that’s right for you?

The ABA’s National Solo & Small Firm Conference, held October 20-23 in Denver, offered a huge range of CLE (more than 50 hours’ worth) for busy lawyers. For this week’s Five, we asked Jim Calloway, director of the Oklahoma Bar’s Management Assistance Program, to report back on the sessions that particularly sparked his interest. As […]

It’s 3 a.m. on a wet Sunday morning and Micheal O’Shea is a worried man. Fifteen minutes ago he was breathalyzed by the road traffic police on the drive home from his sister’s 40th birthday party and, well, he might have had one or two too many. He walks into his den, switches on his computer […]

Part of making Microsoft Office work better for you involves tweaking key settings. Trouble is, finding which settings can make your life a little easier is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Here are four you should consider checking.