Like most attorneys starting a new firm, I want to know the best way to build my reputation—and my client base—so I asked for some advice from Erika Napoletano and Ari Kaplan. Napoletano is Redhead Writing and author of the book, "The Power of Unpopular: A Guide to Building Your Brand for the Audience Who Will Love You." Kaplan is an attorney and author who speaks frequently on the power of social media and marketing, with Ari Kaplan Advisors. Here’s what I asked and what they had to say.

I live and write in the great, white, cold north, where the winters are long and the snows are deep and frequent. It takes a far hardier person than me to endure the endless winter months without heading south for an extended period of time to, as someone near and dear to me once described it, “tan my tonsils.” This winter, I headed down to enjoy the warmth of Florida, where I linger a bit on into early spring as I recover from the stress of our major law firm merger. Since my time here is "extended," I continue to work—but I do it remotely.

The 2012 winners of the "Oscars of legal marketing"—the Your Honor Awards—were announced last week at the world’s largest gathering of legal marketers. For this week's Friday Five, David King Keller points us to five of the nearly 60 2012 winners recognized at the Legal Marketing Association's Annual Conference at the Gaylord Texan Resort. Why? Because your clients are receiving this great stuff and, frankly, we think you ought to know about it. Maybe it's time you got going?

March 30th approaches! For the uninitiated—or those who've ignored the alerts Facebook has been sending—that's the day all Facebook business pages will switch to the new Timeline format. And, like it or not, if your law practice has a Facebook page, you're going to have to figure out how to handle the changes. (If you don't have a business page, you need to figure out why not.) If you spend any time at all on Facebook, by now you're familiar with Timeline on personal Facebook pages. Actually, it's quite spiffy. You get to dress up your page with a “cover” image, and arrange and display what used to be your “wall” in a variety of ways—with a lot more flexibility. With Timeline on your business page, it's going to be much easier to look like a pro and have some control over your message.

A successful business trip is not only defined by your productivity. It's also about staying healthy, mentally and physically, so you can actually enjoy what you’re doing and return back home ready to go. Easier said than done. So we asked Jason Womack, author of the new book Your Best Just Got Better: Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More, to give us his best tips for smooth and uneventful travel. He says it's simple ...

The folks in the Mountain View studios of Google have been very busy of late, working out a number of new endeavors, including the launch of Google+, and the application of overarching revisions to the company’s privacy policy. The most significant development of all, though, has been the recent unveiling of a change to Google search protocol that incorporates items shared or posted by your Google connections into returned results. What does Google’s "Search Plus Your World" mean for lawyers, forced to the crossroads of search engine optimization and social networking? In part one of this post, I'll cover the need-to-knows of the new search protocol. In part two, I'll explain how lawyers can make the most of it.

Law practices, like automobiles, require regular maintenance checkups to perform at their best. Think of all the moving parts that determine your practice's profitability, from billing rates to overhead to your collections headaches. If your car has a set maintenance schedule, why should your law firm be any different? As the end of the first quarter of 2012 approaches, now is a good time to check "under the law firm hood" and make sure everything is in optimal working order.

Electronic briefs are certainly not a new development in the legal field. I remember receiving many electronically constructed briefs on CD when I was practicing. The ebrief is an incredibly convenient format for navigating through an appellate brief and its associated exhibits, pleadings and case law. Today, however, you don’t need to tote around a bunch of CDs to keep on top of the ebriefs you receive. With an iPad, you can carry all of them in one place and reviewing them is a snap. Let's take a look at three different iPad apps you can use to read ebriefs. READ MORE

Here at Attorney at Work, we're suckers for stories of personal reinvention, and second (or third) careers. So when we heard Darlene Quinn's first novel was published when she was 70 (and it won a national award), we were intrigued. And we wanted her advice for would be lawyer-novelists. Darlene's third novel was published this past fall—at age 74. Takeaway? “It's never too late!

If you think the "i" guys are the only ones with apps to brag about, think again. Some of the big names in legal technology proudly carry Android devices, and they've got plenty of apps to brag about, too. Among the notable users: Andy Adkins, the CIO for Steptoe & Johnson; Future Lawyer blogger Rick Georges; Monroe Horn, who's Chief Technology Officer at Sunstein Kann Murphy & Timbers; Nerino Petro, the Practice Management Advisor for the State Bar of Wisconsin; Catherine Sanders Reach, the CBA's Director of Law Practice Management & Technology; and Droid Lawyer blogger Jeff Taylor. These tech wizards were happy to talk with us about their favorite apps. Plus NPP and Verizon pitched in with a bonus download listing more than 40 apps for your practice!