Business travel can be bad for your health. In fact, studies show that health risks increase as travel increases. Extensive travelers are 92 percent more likely to be obese and 260 percent more likely to rate their health as poor. They also have higher cholesterol, higher body-mass indexes and high blood pressure. Even people who […]

In previous posts, Ritchenya Dodd discussed how to break through inbox clutter to deliver targeted messages, and evaluated the template-building capabilities of online email marketing services. Today, she discusses managing email contact lists to ensure your messages reach the right people—and how to avoid becoming an accidental spammer. If you’ve decided to invest time and effort into […]

Nobody really likes packing, lugging around and living out of a suitcase, but luggage is a necessary evil for road warriors. Luckily, there are simple tactics to prevent needless luggage-related stress. This week's Friday Five brings you packing tips from Jason Womack, author of Your Best Just Got Better: Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More. He says it’s easy!

Networking. You know you have to do it, but does the thought of engaging in endless awkward conversations at cocktail parties leave you cold? Does another round of seemingly irrelevant meetings of trade or civic or association groups make you want to scream? Do you find it difficult to engage in meaningful conversation with a client over lunch? If this describes your networking efforts then you’ve been wasting your time. ...

It’s a word that trips off the tongue without stopping to visit the brain on the way out. We use it all the time—and then ignore it as we go about the business of marketing our practices. That word, that concept, is "competition." When somebody wants what you’ve got, that’s "coveting." When someone is working to get what you’ve got or want, that’s "competing." It’s pursuing business—the prospective client—even as other lawyers are pursuing them. And it’s protecting your clients from being successfully wooed by other lawyers. It's not performed by the mere mechanics of marketing—but by strategy.

One of the fundamental "tools" of the attorney arsenal has long been the yellow legal pad. I keep an abundant supply of these around my office, but as my law practice has evolved from paper to digital, I depend more on my Android tablet and smartphone for notes and reminders. Android has an abundant number of apps for note-taking, some of which are fantastic, and some that fail miserably. Here are a few favorites.

Sometimes a law firm name tells us a lot. A firm name composed of three guys, some of whom may have passed on, tells us the firm has been around for a while. "The Divorce Clinic" tells us what they do. If you need help with a merger, don’t bother calling them. "The Resolution Center" tells us how they approach matters. Don’t look for the pit bull lawyer there. You would think that the ethics rules governing firm names would be consistent from one state to another, but they do vary and are worth noting. If you build up a brand name and then find out you need to change it, you’ve wasted a lot of time, energy and money. So when naming, or renaming, your firm, you want to be ethical from the get-go. ...

"Serving 21st Century Clients" was the theme that drove 11 fearless speakers to the stage at last week's LexThink.1 to pitch their personal angle—in a mere six minutes! How did they fare? For this week's Friday Five we asked writer Gwynne Monahan—aka the legal Twittersphere's "girl in the blue hat"—to report her impressions of the event, held the eve of ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago.

Most lawyers eventually supervise other lawyers. How you handle this new responsibility can make all the difference in the quality of work you get and in your relationship with lawyers you may work with your whole life. Here are some tips on doing it well ...

I have served as the commissioner of my fantasy football league for a decade. I've also never won. Perhaps I am a masochist. Or maybe insane. Regardless, I remain in charge of a frustratingly painful organization that requires me to spend hundreds of dollars and hours watching men I will never meet perform a sport I will never play. Normally, the commissioner position is despised, avoided and disrespected. After all, who in their right mind would want to schedule a fantasy draft and collect dues from a mixture of strangers and friends? The position is a three-headed monster: Frustrating, thankless and pro bono. I have, however, learned a lot about management that correlates directly to my job as a young lawyer ...