Whether it's a special trip to meet a client or your daily commute, there's no doubt your travels will be sprinkled with 15-plus-minute periods of “bonus time.” Flight or traffic delays, late clients or other unexpected agenda disruptions that will be wasted, however, if you aren’t prepared to make the most of them. Productivity expert Jason Womack has eight tips for making the most of down time when you are away from the office. ...

Do you prefer to use a public toilet or a home-based one? When you have to, you can use the public one—but really, you try to touch as little of it as possible, right? Well, that's exactly how you should feel about your equipment when out and about “in public.” You should want it to touch as little “public” anything as possible—including limiting the number of web pages you visit. Every time you visit a website, almost invariably bits of code, cookies and digital flotsam and jetsam are exchanged and sometimes left behind. Over time, this electronic crap can bog down your equipment—slowing it down significantly. It can even contain malicious code that does everything from hogging resources, to logging all keystrokes, to whatever a coder can conceive and get code to do. And all you did was visit one website or, sadly, incorrectly type the url of a site you visit frequently. You never know. Yes, web surfing is that scary. Now that I have your attention, here are my top 10 quick digital security do's ...

Sometimes you just don’t have access to the Internet. Whether you're traveling in a plane, or in a remote (or sometimes not so remote) area that has no WiFi, 3G or 4G coverage, or simply because your cable or T1 line is down due to weather or some other outage, on occasion you will have some forced downtime because you can’t access your cloud-based documents, send emails, or pull up a client’s contact information from a cloud-based provider. In fact, it is likely to happen at the most inopportune moment. Fortunately, there are ways to access online information locally....

Uh oh. You’re at the start of a meeting or a client presentation and it takes a sharp left turn. Perhaps you misjudged your audience or suddenly you realize you are horrifyingly off topic. Or, more commonly, you may have inadvertently hit a hot button and a heated argument erupts. Whatever the cause, there is one sure solution: Hit the metaphorical reset button ...

Some of the best new ideas are actually born of old ideas. Or, at least, ideas others have used—with a tweak or two. Who would have thought, for example, that those obnoxious Myspace pages created by a bunch of kids at the turn of the century would spark one of the biggest transformations in how business is done: social media for grown-ups in forms like LinkedIn and Viadeo? There's much to be learned from other professions ...

In this excerpt from his book The View from the First Chair, veteran California defense lawyer Martin L. Grayson offers a crash course on the importance of courthouse demeanor, with tips for always (always) presenting your best professional image. Martin is also featured in LawyerAvenue Press’s new “How to Litigate” video series—and you can watch his “Courthouse Demeanor” […]

I have had the pleasure of being a public performer for 22 years as a gymnast, a classically trained singer, a flash mob performer and, more recently, a speaker on legal topics. Despite all of my experience, I still get nervous. Before most performances you will find me pacing back stage asking myself, “Why is this fun for me?” ... And then I got the advice that changed everything ...

Legal puberty is real. I am not referring to one of those laws in the South regarding 12-year-olds getting married and when you can buy alcohol. I mean that, just as in your real life, you'll go through certain developmental stages in your career—including puberty—in your life as a lawyer. The phases are similar, quite distinct and universal.

Attorney at Work has been after me for a post about Klout. Try as I might, the drafts are snarky. I simply can't get past my mantra: Until Klout replaces my credit score, I pay it little attention. I say "little attention" because rarely a day goes by where I don't see a tweet along the the lines of "I just gave so-and-so +K in fill-in-the-blank" or "I just received +K for fill-in-the-blank." As if on autopilot, I click on my profile in HootSuite so my eyes can take in my current Klout score. At one point, I experimented and added my LinkedIn profile and Google+ profile. My score went up. Fascinating. For all of 30 seconds. Still hasn't replaced my credit score, thus requires little attention. Oh. Wait. Perhaps I should backup for a second and explain Klout so you can better judge its uselessness ... er ... usefulness ...er ... draw your own conclusions.

Are you, too, remembering Maurice Sendak this week? Perhaps reliving the deliciously scary times you spent Where the Wild Things Are? Recalling bedtimes when you snuggled with your little one and a well-worn copy of In the Night Kitchen? Then this Friday Five is for you! We declare today “Wild Rumpus Day” at Attorney at Work, and invite […]