Since it’s often a less hectic time for professionals, given the proliferation of vacation days being spent, summer is usually a season for getting re-centered. It's an especially good time for entrepreneurs, like attorneys, to work on outstanding—typically administrative—projects and bigger-picture plans. To that end, here is a list of important summer projects for your law practice, upon which you can ply your energies. ...

One reason lawyers buy iPads is to work productively away from the office. When it comes to editing legal documents, however, any time saved by working on an iPad may have to be spent, and then some, to repair the damage done by various document editing apps. Here are some strategies to help you edit documents on your iPad without creating additional problems—or to at least help you minimize the time needed to repair them after iPad editing. ...

In February, time management guru Paul Burton explained here why clearing peripheral clutter improves your focus. Brilliant! We all need that. So, we dutifully scooped the piles off our desk … and plopped them into tidy baskets and bins under the desk. Everything felt so much better. For a while. But, alas, those bins under the desk are now […]

I felt like Indiana Jones. Instead of snakes, there were power cords slinking around my feet. Instead of a whip, I held a ballpoint pen. Instead of a hat, I wore, well, my hair was perfect. I was not looking for treasure. No, I was looking for a different relic. I was looking for the infamous dictaphone!

In his new book, Secrets of Lawyer Video Marketing in the Age of YouTube, trial lawyer Gerry Oginski lays out the dos and don'ts of creating effective videos for your law practice—the kind that compel viewers to actually call and hire you. In this excerpt, he explains why the most successful videos you make don't say a peep about the lawyer, or the law. It may seem counter-intuitive, at first ...

It would be great if collecting accounts receivable from clients just happened, like clockwork, once you sent off the bill. As you've likely discovered, however, the money doesn't come rolling in automatically. Technology tools can help, of course, making it easier to capture more time, produce impeccable invoices, and track exactly how many days late your clients are in paying your bills. But even the best technology can't guarantee your invoices will get paid on time, if at all. There are, however, a few management tactics you can apply to help you collect more successfully.

This summer, the hottest ticket at state bar association annual meetings seems to be sessions focused on the future of the business of practicing law. And with just cause. There's a lot going on out there to make us nervous. Increased competitiveness. Shaky economies. Too many lawyers. Transforming technologies. So when the State Bar of Texas asked Attorney at Work's Merrilyn Astin Tarlton to deliver a keynote on the topic last month, she reached out to some top practice management experts for their thoughts. ...

Shel Silverstein's writing had a profound impact on me and my family. Thumbing through his classic Where the Sidewalk Ends recently brought back some nice memories, and then set me musing in another direction. My own "sidewalk's end"—retirement and where it might lead me. My generation of lawyers—the Baby Boomers—expected to graduate, start our careers and then work 40 years for the same firm, doing basically the same thing, with increasing responsibility. Then we figured we'd retire and start living the life we always dreamed was out there.

At last, it's a nice long summer holiday break! With triple-digit temperatures the norm, there's no better time to pour a nice tall cool one, put your feet up in a shady spot and take a bite out of your summer reading list. Don't have a list? That's what we're here for. Today we reprise our big list of summer reading lists with a few new twists for Summer 2012. ...

When I think about the stereotypical successful lawyer, I think of someone who wears designer suits and expensive jewelry, lives in a big house, drives a luxury car, has season tickets and always plays with the latest techno-toys. A lot of us are fed that ideal in law school, along with the notion that we should aspire to be partners at large law firms. This may be someone’s measure of success, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But it's not mine. ...