Once you get comfortable with social media, you'll no doubt chuckle at your early days—including the etiquette quandaries and minor panic attacks. (Will they know if I unfriend them? What was I thinking with that profile picture? I didn't know that comment was public!) Rookie mistakes on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+? We've made plenty. So for this week's Friday Five, we're sharing a bit of what we've painfully learned and called in the big guns—Stem Legal's Steve Matthews—for advice on avoiding, or overcoming, some of the gaffes lawyers make with social media. ...

While some people are “lawyering up,” lawyers are labeling up. Advertisements, as well as brochures and emails, often seem to be screaming out at even the most sophisticated audience: “Lawyer Advertisement!” “Advertising Material!” “This is an Advertisement!” Of course lawyers don’t label up because they are concerned people will be confused about whether firm websites […]

In part one of this series on how to use project management software to manage people, Brett Owens started simple with some easy-to-use, off-the-shelf apps—Workflowy and Basecamp. In part two, Brett shows us how delegation and collaboration might be handled via your firm's practice management system, specifically Rocket Matter and Clio—two popular programs for smaller law firms.

One of the benefits of being a lawyer with a laptop, tablet or smartphone is that you really can work anywhere with access to Wi-Fi and your files. But the question of security must be addressed. How can you protect yourself and your clients when working in public spaces? While at ABA TECHSHOW last month, I picked up some valuable advice for lawyers who like to work in coffee shops.

Do a lot of keyboarding? (We're thinking yes.) Small City Law Firm Tech blogger Vivian Manning has an easy way to boost your speed and your accuracy, to boot. Text expansion software, she says, can free you from tons of repetitive typing—and can ensure that much of your keyboarding is error-free. Today she guides a nice round-up of your options, both plain and fancy ...

Sure there are plenty of project management apps to keep us on task, personally. But can project management software be used for managing others, too? In "Project Management: Easy as 1-2-3," Brett Owens highlighted products to help you manage your practice. So we asked him back to apply his "effective, yet simple" criteria to explore that intersection between the products and the people needed to get things done.

Attorney Bill Gibson still remembers the ordeal of making a transatlantic phone call back in the 1970s when his wife lived in Europe. You had to put in a request at the post office or American Express office, then return hours later at an appointed time for the call to be put through. Today, he’s taken groups of lawyers to China, and has seen people call their office in the US standing atop the Great Wall. Yes, things have changed, particularly with ease of communication, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do a little preparation before hopping that plane. Here are seven things you can do ward off potential problems abroad so you can focus on getting the most from your trip, whether it is for business or pleasure.

Obviously, Attorney at Work lives here on the Internet. As does nearly everything else in the civilized world. But sometimes—be it solar flares, high winds, an ISP blunder or a vast electronic conspiracy—you lose access for a while. An hour. A day. A week! And even though you’ve often said, “Sure, the Internet is addictive, but I’m no addict” … you are lost without it. Well, believe it or not, there are still a few things you can do offline. Enter this week’s Friday Five, unplugged. We’ve got some great ideas for you whenever you have new-found non-Internet time.

The cloud offers lawyers unparalleled software-as-a-service (SaaS) resources to manage their practices, organize documents and communicate with clients—but it can also blur the bright-line ethics rules. To safeguard the integrity of files in the cloud, you must think critically and creatively about the ethical and practical implications of using SaaS providers. State bar ethics opinions haven't kept pace with the issues. So for now, you have to devise your own strategy to keep out of trouble. Here's a set of guidelines regarding SaaS Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to help you do just that.

Stop right there! Before you take step one to create your law firm's new website, pause to figure out what it is you really want your website to do—and who you want it to attract. Define your intended visitors as narrowly as possible. Do you want to appeal to recently injured autoworkers, for example, or in-house counsel of global technology corporations? Those are two very different websites. Ready now? Here is a fistful of basic, but absolutely critical, things to keep in mind as you get started on your new website. ...